Terry Prone: Competent Kamala Harris has her ear to the ground and an eye on the prize

Originally published in the Irish Examiner.

Let us address two Democrat tropes this morning.

The first is the sign James Carville reputedly stuck on the wall of the election HQ during one Clinton election.

Everybody recalls what it said. All together now. “It’s the economy, Stupid.”

Meaning that canvassers and ad-makers and the candidate himself should not be lured into anything other than the topic which did the candidate most good, which, at the time, was the economy.

It seemed, back then, to be an eternal verity that would apply in every subsequent presidential election, but that turned out not to be true.

Increasingly — and not just in the US — economic stats are not necessarily reflective of the personal experience of voters, and, as a result, those voters go “Yeah, yeah, yeah” when candidates (usually the incumbent) point to the robustness of the economy as their central achievement in office.

What might usefully replace Carville’s sign, today, is one reading “It’s how the voter feels about themselves, Stupid.”

New politicians always believe they get votes based on how the voters feel about them, the candidate, whereas the reality is that they get votes based on how the vote makes the voter feel about themselves.

First time around, when he was up against Hillary Clinton, Trump’s core vote felt great about themselves for being supporters of The Donald.

They felt morally traditional and defiantly cool for supporting a guy they felt they knew well from TV.

Hillary, meanwhile, made precious few of her potential voters feel good about themselves.

Except for a core group of her own age and gender, who felt loyally feminist and who believed they were uniquely prescient in their capacity to spot a warmth and humour in Hillary the majority of observers were seriously missing.

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