After over a year of polling, message testing, and focus groups against Donald Trump, there's a general agreement about what hurts him and what doesn't. Trump wasn't even halfway through his recently concluded Tulsa rally speech when Democratic ad makers in New York and Washington had started editing footage to take a jab at the slumping president.
The ad makers did not focus on the president's monologue about how strenuous it was to descend a ramp or drink water at West Point, the insignificant size of the crowd at the Tulsa rally, or even his use of the term Kung flu to refer to COVID-19 at the rally. On the contrary, the ad focused on the president's confession that he told officials to slow down coronavirus testing.
This reflects a widely accepted consensus among Democrats about what kind of attacks on Trump causes the most damage and persuades swing voters, and which ones aren't likely to have an impact. Back in 2016, ad makers focused on Trump's character, but now they have zeroed in on his behavior to substantive policy issues regarding the pandemic, nation's economy, and the protests after the death of George Floyd.
President of the progressive group American Bridge Bradley Beychok said it is impossible to chase the Trump clown car. Beychok pointed out that the way Trump threw the glass after drinking water was goofy and is an ideal material for a meme, but people do not care about that at the moment. American people are more concerned about the pandemic, Beychok added.
Trump's opponents had no idea what worked against him until recently. Since Trump announced his presidential campaign in 2016, not even the most inflammatory material seemed to cause damage. Hoping to cause significant damage, Democrats cashed in on points such as Trump referring to Mexican immigrants as rapists in their character-based ads, POLITICO reported.
Exit polls showed a large number of voters didn't find Trump trustworthy by Election Day, but they still voted for him. Throughout Trump's first term, as well as his impeachment, Democrats were unable to come up with an anti-Trump message that made an impact.
As part of their preparation for the impending election, Democratic groups spent over a year surveying voters in key swing states online and by phone. They assembled in-person focus groups and drafted voters in swing states to keep diaries of their media consumption.
Trump's approval ratings on his handling of the pandemic have dropped since March when outside Democratic groups began slamming him by running advertisements on this issue. Last week, a Reuters/Ipsos poll put public approval for Trump's response to the pandemic at just 37 percent, marking the lowest record.