Subject: Re: Priorities
<<Harris and her team need to get voters to believe that she will be a good steward on economic issues. And it is very hard to do that if the voters believe they don't know what she would actually do on the economy. ...Voters want to know where Harris' priorities lie - why she wants to be President, rather than why just why she wants to beat Donald Trump. There are some valid reasons perhaps not to give them want they want, but Democrats will pay a political cost for not doing it.>>

Here's the problem--and it is very much along the lines of a post you made earlier: Even though, when asked, most potential voters will typically say that "the economy" is the most important issue to them, a mountain of research has shown that most of them typically know little about the policy positions (or priorities) of candidates. Instead, voters make rough retrospective assessments of (1) relatively recent changes in their personal financial situations and (2) comparable changes in the nation's financial situation, and those things affect how they vote. Alas, there's not a lot that Harris can do about those two things. She can--and has--let them know that she sympathizes with their concerns and tell them what she would do about them if she were elected. But the economic things that really matter, vote-wise, are what they are.

So while I agree, with great regret, that it appears that a (slight?) majority of likely and potential voters have not concluded that Trump is manifestly unfit for office (and I do fault those citizens for their judgments in that regard), I do not agree that the Harris campaign should therefore emphasize economic messages instead. But neither should she downplay her economic priorities--and she hasn't. Nor, importantly, should reproductive rights be downplayed--and they haven't been. All of these things should be hammered home in the closing week. All of them.

Most of all, the ground game matters in these closing days. As it happens, in less than 24 hours Harris herself will be holding a rally in my neighborhood park, and I intend to be there. I will also be in Detroit in the coming week, assisting mostly ignored, impoverished voters in making sure they're registered (which can be done here right up to Election Day) and helping them get to early-voting locations in the city. I've done that for decades. (They don't need me to tell them which candidate or party to vote for.)

Cheers.