David Plouffe, a top adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid for the presidency, told Georgia delegates to the Democratic National Convention Wednesday that an advertising offensive will soon kick off in their home state.
“We do have, as you know, if you turn on your TV or you open up your phone in Georgia, you’re seeing a lot of attack ads on our candidate,” he said. “We’re trying to respond the best we can, but we’re also very soon going to move to offense, a lot more offense about what she’s going to do, about what (former President Donald) Trump will do.”
The Democrats’ messaging will focus on two areas, the first of which is abortion access. Plouffe said.
“(Trump) said in his campaign that Roe would be on the ballot,” Plouffe said. “It was. He said it’s the thing he’s most proud of. A third of the country now lives under abortion bans. If he wins the presidency, the Republicans win the House and Senate. They will pass a national abortion ban, and whatever that liar says, he’ll sign it.”
The second focus will be Project 2025, a nearly 900-page policy proposal penned by the conservative Heritage Foundation outlining plans for a Trump presidency. Trump has sought to distance himself from the document, although some of its authors include former Trump staffers.
“I’ve never seen him run away from anything like Project 2025,” Plouffe said. “By the way, that’s generally not how he rolls. He’ll double down on stuff. He knows it’s going to hurt. And you’ll hear a lot more about that this week. We’re going to be on the air with that soon in your state on it, so we begin to educate people.”
In contrast with immigration and the economy, Democrats poll well on abortion, so it makes sense for them to prioritize that in their messaging, said Emory University political science professor Zachary Peskowitz.
“Abortion is a compelling issue for getting some of the moderate voters who don’t support six-week bans on abortion policies that have been made possible since the Dobbs decision, linking Trump, obviously, to the Supreme Court nominees that he placed on the court and that made the Dobbs decision possible,” he said.
Project 2025 may be a harder sell because it is less concrete, he added.
“I think the Biden campaign really struggled with making the centerpiece of the campaign about Trump being a dictator, wanting to be authoritarian,” he said. “I don’t think that was that particularly effective. A more effective strategy would have been focusing on policy issues like abortion. So I think there are aspects of Project 2025 that I think could be electorally effective, but the more abstract things like civil service reform and the like, I think those are pretty abstract issues that often aren’t particularly effective at persuading moderate voters.”
University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock agreed, but said those messages could be effective on the right groups.
“Project 2025, most people don’t know what that is, and even those who’ve heard of it probably don’t have very much of a command of what it is,” Bullock said. “Therefore, to the extent that it’s going to resonate with people, it’s going to be fairly well-educated folks, and Democrats need to get probably about 40% of that white college-educated vote. That’s about what (Sen. Raphael) Warnock and what Biden have gotten in the past, so that’s what I would interpret those as being targeted to.”
Plouffe told the gathered Democrats that he thinks Harris’ late entry onto the top of the ticket comes out to her benefit, but it adds the challenge of introducing her to the nation in an abbreviated timeframe.
“With all due respect to President Biden, one of the reasons she’s got so much tailwind now in the electorate is people are excited about her change. We know the numbers. A lot of people weren’t excited about the rematch. They’re excited that we’ve got someone different. But she’s auditioning right now. The way I put it is voters, as they often do, her kick of the tires, saying ‘OK, I’m really interested in this new person.’ You’d say ‘New? She’s the vice president.’ That’s how they see her.”
This story was provided by WABE content partner Georgia Recorder.
