‘Historically, a Vibes Campaign Can Be Very Effective’
The Harris/Walz strategy has winning precedent, according to historian
Although her political opponents rail against it, the kind “vibes” campaign that Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov Tim Walz, are running has been successful through US history.
That’s according to historian and author Tim Naftali.
Although Harris began sketching her policy proposals, she and Walz have been running more simply in contrast to the outlandishness of Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen JD Vance.
The Democrats have been surging in public opinion polling, leaving Trump, Vance and their campaign floundering for an effective response.
Campaigns light on specific policy have been successful, according to Naftali, associate professor of public service at New York University and the author or co-author of four books.
“It has been effective in American history. Franklin Roosevelt ran on the New Deal, of course, he was running at a time of economic collapse and he was running against an incumbent. But he didn’t actually say what the New Deal was,” Naftali said. “Indeed, his ideas about what a New Deal should be in 1932 would be very different by the time it was 1934, ‘35. John F. Kennedy ran promising to make the country move again. Well, how vague is that? He ran a vibes campaign for the most part in 1960.
“Richard Nixon in 1968 promised to end the war in Vietnam, but didn’t say how we would do it. He said he had a secret plan. He was as vague as he could be, again, saying, ‘I’m different from the people in power. I’m different from LBJ.’ And 2008, Barack Obama promised change. He did promise some policy changes, of course, but he was basically saying, ‘We’ve had enough with the Bush administration. We’ve had enough with its wars.’ So historically, a vibes campaign can be very effective, a campaign that is light on policy can be effective,” he added. “The challenge, of course, for Vice President Harris is that she’s actually in the administration at the moment. So she is going to have to tighten how she explains balancing the green economy with old economy jobs that you don’t want to go away. She has to explain a little bit better how she’s going to approach the border issue and why it took three years to implement that executive order.
“What she has on her side is that she was she’s vice president. Vice presidents don’t make those decisions. It would be okay if she opened up a little daylight between her and Joe Biden,” Naftali said.
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