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Seeing discussion of Trump's NATO comments ("I didn’t even know what the hell NATO was") put me in mind of one of the mistake that Democrats keep making in dealing with Trump's rhetorical style.

There is a brief funny scene in the movie Elf that illustrates the point nicely (link at bottom). Buddy, the protagonist who is a naive but kindhearted elf, walks by a diner with a neon "World's Best Cup of Coffee" sign in the window. He goes in and with great enthusiasm congratulates the staff in the run-down diner (who clearly do not serve upscale coffee) for having accomplished a great feat. Explaining a joke ruins it, but the humor comes from Buddy being too naive to realize that the sign was an exaggeration, not a literal acknowledgement that their coffee is the best in the entire world.

Putting legalese into a joke ruins it even more, but this is actually a real concept in the law. Businesses are not allowed to lie about their products, but if they make claims that are so exaggerated that they are clearly not intended to be taken as true by the customer, then they fall into the category of "puffery". Like the "world's best cup of coffee," which patrons would understand was not a literal claim of being the best in the world, but just the shop communicating that they think their coffee is pretty good, as far as these things go.

Trump is a real estate salesman, and puffery one of his favorite rhetorical tactics. Because in his pre-political world, puffery has always been a legitimate safe harbor. There are two ways you won't get in trouble for claims about your product: either the claim is exactly and provably correct, or it's so exaggerated that it's puffery. In real estate sales, puffery becomes part of your ordinary discourse. Any claims about the quality of your product that can't be proven correct, your customers have a legal cause of action against you - unless you use puffery, rather than specific facts, to communicate that quality.

Trump does this reflexively, using puffery rather than precision to communicate a general point. He'll say bacon costs five times more than when he was President, or he knew nothing of NATO before being elected, or that we had the lowest taxes ever on January 6th. He knows those things aren't true, and he knows his audience knows those things aren't true. He says them to communicate a general point through exaggeration ("prices are high," "I went from being an amateur to managing foreign policy pretty quickly," "I'm more in favor of keeping taxes low than the Democrats"). And he uses the rhetoric of puffery ("lowest taxes in history") rather than specific claims ("a one-eighth reduction in weighted tax rates compared to the latter two years of the Obama Administration" or whatever), because that's an effective way of communicating to a lay audience.

The trap for Democrats has been responding to his puffery as they would to lies or mistakes. If Trump claims gas costs six times more than it did when he was President, Democrats will treat that as one of his thousands of lies or that he doesn't know what gas costs. But that goes over as well it would if someone took that coffee shop sign seriously and filed a claim that the owners were trying to commit fraud. It shows that the critic doesn't understand the context of the coffee sign and is just being a persnickety scold failing to get the point. To most Trump supporters, the same is true of his puffery - he knows it's not literally true, the audience knows it's not literally true, and when the Fact Checkers swoop in they're actually just signaling that they both misunderstand the communication style and are implicitly insulting Trump's listeners by implying that they're not smart enough to know that gas isn't really $14 a gallon.

BTW, this doesn't make what he's doing right. Unlike a real estate salesman, the words of a President are parsed very carefully and have enormous impact - there's a reason why the norm for Presidents is to choose their words equally carefully. But it's why treating claims like "I had the best environmental numbers ever" as if they were literal claims to be fact-checked, rather than the verbal equivalent of the "world's best coffee" sign as a means of saying "hey, air and water quality was still generally pretty good when I was President," doesn't land.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIiu89zKa4U

"To most Trump supporters, the same is true of his puffery - he knows it's not literally true, the audience knows it's not literally true"

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Great post,but..................
The MAGA that I know do believe his blatant BS. Lately, a few I know have been on a "US Energy
production was decimated by Biden" rant. They really believe it. Can point out that it's actually
at a historical high, but they will not accept it.

Many examples of Trump buffoonery are out there,almost too numerous to list. If I was Maga,
I'd be insulted that he thinks he can tell his supporters anything, but they lap it up.

And Trump's always laying the groundwork-excuse of: If I win it was a free and fair election, but
if I lose it was rigged. Hell, he lost Iowa primary to Cruz in 2016, and Trump promptly
claimed election fraud. In a Republican Primary, run overwhelmingly by Republicans. And maga
swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

And mixed in with his puffery that much of his audience knows isn't true are just out-and-out fabrications that he knows aren't true, but his audience doesn't. He may think some of that is true, who knows? But a good chunk of his audience can't tell it isn't true, so it becomes possible and if a lib explains how wrong it is it becomes truer.

It becomes truer if a lib shows it's wrong - odd, but it seems in many cases that's what happens.

"using puffery rather than precision to communicate a general point.....Trump does this reflexively,BTW, this doesn't make what he's doing right. Unlike a real estate salesman, the words of a President are parsed very carefully and have enormous impact - there's a reason why the norm for Presidents is to choose their words equally carefully.

Perhaps.

"After Biden’s debate performance, though, the presidential race remains statistically unchanged, a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds. NPR’s Domenico Montanaro reports that we are in a "hyperpolarized landscape," with people having very fixed views of both men. But one thing that is notable in this latest NPR poll is this: two-thirds of Americans find it more concerning to have a president who does not tell the truth than one who is too old for the job.

But one thing that is notable in this latest NPR poll is this: two-thirds of Americans find it more concerning to have a president who does not tell the truth than one who is too old for the job.

Now how do we turn that into a message.

Hmmm.

Picture of Julianni with the caption "Old, and left in the cold, by Trump." Not on point but sounds good,

And do the same with the heads of Proud Boys and Oathkeepers.

And at the bottom isn't a Democratic sounding group, but Sons of Daniel Boon, or similar.

The MAGA that I know do believe his blatant BS. Lately, a few I know have been on a "US Energy
production was decimated by Biden" rant. They really believe it. Can point out that it's actually
at a historical high, but they will not accept it.

Sure. My point isn't that nothing Trump says isn't a lie or a false belief on his part. Rather, the reason none of this stuff lands as much as Democrats hope is that his critics don't do a good job separating out the stuff that is puffery. When you "fact check" a statement like Trump claiming that he had the bestest environmental numbers ever, or include it in your list of lies, you just make yourself look a little silly.

As far as energy stuff goes, that's a little more complicated. Because that's not necessarily MAGA followers believing a specific falsehood that Trump told. The generalized message that Biden is bad for energy production (which is different than denying that energy production is at an all time high) is all over conservative media, not necessarily coming from Trump himself. And it's enhanced by the fact that the Administration doesn't want people to be aware that energy production is at an all time high and wants to create the impression that they're restricting output of fossil fuels.

And part of it isn't necessarily believing a falsehood, but just generally having a negative opinion of the opposing candidate and then extending that to believing that everything they touch dies. For a flip side, go up to any Justice Democrat supporter and tell them that the economy during the Trump Administration right before COVID was really good, and better than the economy right now. They're not likely to believe you. Yet in Q4 2019, unemployment was lower, inflation rates were lower, interest rates were lower, GDP growth was higher, and prices for nearly every commodity was lower. Which is why efforts to get voters to reject Trump based on economic arguments aren't landing, either, BTW. But that false impression isn't due to Joe Biden going out there and claiming that current unemployment rates are lower than Q4 2019 unemployment rates - which would be a specific falsehood - but rather from general vibes that nothing about Trump could ever actually have been within normalcy.

Now how do we turn that into a message.

You do not turn it into a message. You could spend $100 million saying “You don’t like Coke, buy my cola instead” and Coke sales would be unaffected. You can go around the marketing corner of coke, as Pepsi did with “Twice as much for a nickel” back in the 30’s. Or you could gin up a 20 year campaign as they did in the 70’s with The Pepsi Challenge. In between they wasted hundreds of millions on “The Pepsi Generation” and “Be Sociable, Have A Pepsi” and “Taste that beats the others cold” and a dozen others, and that’s the point: you never know what’s gonna stick and what won’t. Not to be facile, but you don’t have 20 years, and you surely don’t know how to improve Joe’s standing.

There is no “advertising” that is going to erase the image of Joe’s press conference, and the MAGAs Do.Not.Care that Trump lies. (They don’t see it that way anyway, and you cannot convince them otherwise.) This is especially true because now that the debate image is out there, every slip of the tongue is going to be amplified every time Biden speaks. (I know, I know, Trump gets away with it. C’est la vie. Deal with it.)

There is no way to rehabilitate Joe’s image in the next 4 months, it’s an impossible task. The only thing you might do is mount an attack on Project 2025 and tie it DIRECTLY to Trump. That won’t matter to the MAGAs, but it could have some effect on enough in the middle to make a difference.

Albaby1 is wrong here; it doesn’t matter that people won’t delve into it. Tie it to Trump. Prove that it calls for the end of Medicare, Social Security, and Reproductive Freedom. Bring up one or two other horribles, and tie it AGAIN to Trump, and then tie it AGAIN to Trump.

James Carville would understand this. So would Roger Ailes. Make Project 2025 the Willie Horton of 2024.

Picture of Julianni with the caption "Old, and left in the cold, by Trump."

Do you mean Giuliani or, as I like to refer to him, Ghouliani?

"Albaby1 is wrong here; it doesn’t matter that people won’t delve into it. Tie it to Trump. Prove that it calls for the end of Medicare, Social Security, and Reproductive Freedom. Bring up one or two other horribles, and tie it AGAIN to Trump, and then tie it AGAIN to Trump"

------------------------------

I like that. Fight fire with fire. Counter Trump puffery lies with a bigger lie of your own.
I mean, it is surreal what comes out of Trump's mouth, might as well make the counter
argument even more surreal. Let's just go back to 10 year olds arguing on the playground:
Is Too, Is Not, Is Too, Is Not.............. seriously, it'll do as much good as any of the
counter arguments to Trump are doing.

I listened to this yesterday, basically none of the GOP politicians privately believe Trump election fraud BS. But publicly, they fell right in line behind him. So the hell with it,
Dems should just start 1 upping every lie that comes out of Trump's mouth. At the same time, copy the maga playbook and in response to every question you don't like, just get angry and talk louder. Seems to be working for them, might as well do the same, if this is what American Politics is now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOwQmSc2I3A

Albaby1 is wrong here; it doesn’t matter that people won’t delve into it. Tie it to Trump. Prove that it calls for the end of Medicare, Social Security, and Reproductive Freedom. Bring up one or two other horribles, and tie it AGAIN to Trump, and then tie it AGAIN to Trump.

The problem with that is that it won't work. You can't "tie it to Trump" any more than you can rehabilitate Biden's image from the debate.

The Willie Horton attack ad worked because people didn't know much about Michael Dukakis and because it was Dukakis who did the thing. So Bush was able to define him with the Willie Horton ad as soft on crime.

Project 2025 can't work that way. Voters know Trump. There probably hasn't been a politician in modern history that is more well-defined in voter opinions that Trump. There's no open canvas for a negative ad campaign to write on. His image is fixed, for good or bad.

And part of that image is that he's a malignant narcissist with no regard whatsoever for the mainstream institutions of the GOP. Which makes it a waste of time to try to argue that he'll follow Project 2025 instead of his own selfish whims. A core part of his political identity is that he doesn't give a flying F about conservative think tanks or what they think.

These strategies work when you're trying to disrupt some random Congressional candidate who doesn't have a fixed brand identity and is trying to position them as a centrist. Instead of attacking them on their stated positions, you tie them to someone else on their team that's more extreme, so you can hit the more extreme positions instead of there's. So Democrats use the Koch Brothers or Michelle Bachman or Trump himself in their ads against against Republicans, while the GOP ties Democrats to AOC or Nancy Pelosi. The argument is that the candidate is in service to someone else's agenda, and you need to vote against that someone else's agenda.

But you can't do that to Trump. It doesn't work against the person who is the top dog, the person setting the agenda rather than following it. And Trump's central political identity is that he's utterly narcissistic, completely uninterested in what would benefit anyone other than himself. He is the least Party Man politician that has ever existed. If you tried to convince voters to reject Trump because he's just going to implement the Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell agenda, or Rick Scott's 12 Points to Rescue America...the voters would just laugh at you. You can do that with downballot candidates, but not the "I don't care about anyone but me" Trumpster.

...include it in your list of lies, you just make yourself look a little silly.

Doesn't look silly to me, in general. But then the truth matters to me. Apparently to roughly 40% of the nation, it doesn't. Note that I don't include gaffes as lies, such as calling Jean Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples. That's just a sign of his dementia.

The only thing you might do is mount an attack on Project 2025 and tie it DIRECTLY to Trump. That won’t matter to the MAGAs, but it could have some effect on enough in the middle to make a difference.

Albaby1 is wrong here; it doesn’t matter that people won’t delve into it. Tie it to Trump. Prove that it calls for the end of Medicare, Social Security, and Reproductive Freedom. Bring up one or two other horribles, and tie it AGAIN to Trump, and then tie it AGAIN to Trump.

I agree. Make the association with Trump stick, regardless of whether Trump supports the various planks or not. Heck, make his campaign deny they support that document. That's almost as good.

But you can't do that to Trump. It doesn't work against the person who is the top dog, the person setting the agenda rather than following it. And Trump's central political identity is that he's utterly narcissistic, completely uninterested in what would benefit anyone other than himself. He is the least Party Man politician that has ever existed. If you tried to convince voters to reject Trump because he's just going to implement the Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell agenda, or Rick Scott's 12 Points to Rescue America...the voters would just laugh at you. You can do that with downballot candidates, but not the "I don't care about anyone but me" Trumpster.

So is there anything that might be successful in ousting Trump from his top position in the Presidential race? Just saw Biden was +2 over Trump, but it's only one poll.

The problem with that is that it won't work. You can't "tie it to Trump" any more than you can rehabilitate Biden's image from the debate.
The Willie Horton attack ad worked because people didn't know much about Michael Dukakis and because it was Dukakis who did the thing. So Bush was able to define him with the Willie Horton ad as soft on crime.
Project 2025 can't work that way. Voters know Trump. There probably hasn't been a politician in modern history that is more well-defined in voter opinions that Trump. There's no open canvas for a negative ad campaign to write on. His image is fixed, for good or bad.

Sorry. On this on you’re wrong. One of the things you *can* do with advertising is reinforce something that is true, or that people think is *probably* true. (You can make it true in their minds. A campaign of “Coke Rots Your Teeth” will be more successful than “My Cola Tastes Better”.) It would be child’s play to “make Project 2025 true” for Trump. Start with things like “reproductive freedom”, which has already turned into a disaster for him. “He lied about it last time, he’s lying about it this time.”

Next, eliminating insurance covering “pre-existing conditions”. “He lied about having a new health care plan last time, now it’s in writing in the new plan to eliminate pre-existing condition health coverage.”

Next: cutting Social Security. “Trump’s written plan says Republicans are going to cut Social Security. Don’t ask me? Read it right here in Project 2025, written by the people who worked for him!”

Next: and so on.

Make him disavow it. It does not matter - it puts him on the defensive, it makes him repeat the charge out of his own mouth (when Nixon said “I am not a crook”, it made people think: “Gosh, maybe he’s a crook”). It takes the ball out of his hands and puts it squarely back in the playfield. In politics if you’re not on offense then you’re on defense, and Biden’s on defense - and losing.

No, I don’t expect this will change the mind of a single MAGA. That’s a rock solid 35% of the electorate. But say it enough times (“her emails!” “Swiftboat!” “Willie Horton”) and it comes true for a significant fraction of those in the middle. It obviously won’t change the mind of the 35% that’s solid for Biden either, but then it doesn’t have to. It only has to get slightly more than half of the remaining 30% - and it will.

These are Facts:

* Project 2025 was written by people Trump has worked with previously. Up to 140 of them, by one report.

* Project 2025 contains many things Republicans have been salivating over for years.

* Project 2025 contains many things Donald Trump wants.

* Project 2025 it’s quite specific about eliminating well regarded programs like Social Security, Medicare, Headstart, the National Weather Service, even health insurance. It calls for eliminating overtime pay. It calls for … well, the list of hundreds and hundreds of pages is a gold mine of abuse.

Donald can say “I don’t know anything about it”, but that’s a lie, we all know it’s a lie, he has lied about it before (women’s choice, for instance), and is lying again - and that is something that’s easy to sell .

Tie it around his neck. Do not stop. Say it at every opportunity. When the question at the debate is “Should France be in NATO?” The answer is “In Trump’s Project 2025, he ….” Asked if the earth is round, the answer is “In Trump’s Project 2025…”

That’s how you run a campaign against these Republicans.

Sorry. On this on you’re wrong. One of the things you *can* do with advertising is reinforce something that is true, or that people think is *probably* true.

Right. But that's the problem. It isn't true, and it isn't something that people are going to think is probably true.

Trump doesn't do think tanks or policy documents. He's not "binder guy." He doesn't do 12-point proposals. He's not a Heritage Foundation guy.

Heck, he's not even a "team" guy. Democrats have spent the last eight years describing how Donald Trump has destroyed the GOP. He's converted it away from being a party of ideas into an authoritarian cult of personality that serves one man and one man only, and not a governing philosophy any more. That the GOP has been replaced with the Party of Trump.

Now you want to argue that Trump's assembled an overarching policy document in close collaboration with a conservative think tank? Now you want to run against that policy document instead of Trump himself? Good luck with that.

The reason you "tie" a candidate to something else is if you think you can convince voters that the "something else" is the real threat, so you run against that instead. So instead of some bog-standard GOP House candidate, you run against Newt Gingrich or the Koch Brothers or Paul Ryan's budget - something bigger than them, something more important than them, so that you scare the voter with the Big Bad.

But Trump's the Big Bad. Trump killed Roe v. Wade - why are you putting a policy document like Project 2025 between him and the thing people dislike? Trump hates NATO - why not say that, rather than waste time trying to first teach voters what Project 2025 says about NATO and then tie that to Trump? It's not going to work, and you waste your resources trying to build negatives up about two things (Project 2025 and Trump) rather than just one thing (Trump).

So is there anything that might be successful in ousting Trump from his top position in the Presidential race? - Lambo

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You might give unsolicited mass mail in voting and unattended drop boxes a try. Can't hurt.

So is there anything that might be successful in ousting Trump from his top position in the Presidential race? Just saw Biden was +2 over Trump, but it's only one poll.

Sure! There's lots of things that voters don't or won't like about Trump. He killed Roe v. Wade! He tried to kill Obamacare! He was found by a court to have raped a lady! He wants to make things more expensive by imposing tariffs! Etc.

One of the tactical debacles of the debate was that Biden failed to effectively make any of those points. Democratic nerves about his capabilities aren't just limited to whether voters will think he's got the ability to do the job of President, but whether he's got the abilities to do the job of Presidential candidate. Part of his job (with the rest of the campaign) is to raise the salience on issues that voters agree with him on (like abortion), and lower the salience of issues they dislike about him (like immigration).

But a lot of this might just be locked in, at this point. Voters don't like Joe Biden, and they haven't for a while. They don't like Donald Trump, either. But both men are so well-known and well-defined to the voters that there's probably not a lot that can meaningfully change things.

You might give unsolicited mass mail in voting and unattended drop boxes a try. Can't hurt.

Republican tactics like that don't seem to work for Republicans.

You might give unsolicited mass mail in voting and unattended drop boxes a try. Can't hurt.

Senate democrats just killed a bill that would have affirmed that you need to be a citizen to vote.
They didn't import 10 million people for nothing!

Prove that it calls for the end of Medicare, Social Security, and Reproductive Freedom. Bring up one or two other horribles, and tie it AGAIN to Trump, and then tie it AGAIN to Trump.

And don't just tie it to Trump. Tie it to Republicans in general. Because not only does that help some down ballot races, it's actually closer to the truth. Trump likes bits and pieces of it. MAGA Republicans like a lot more of it.

--Peter

Voters know Trump.

The most partisan voters (on both sides) know Trump. But those people don't matter. It's the swing voters. More completely, it's the swing voters in the swing states (and swing districts in the House and Senate and state races) that matter. I suspect Project 2025 is not well known among that demographic. Point out the couple of items in there that Trump DOES want to do, and you should be able to tie the whole thing to him.

--Peter

You do not turn it into a message. You could spend $100 million saying “You don’t like Coke, buy my cola instead”

Goofy, did you take a look at my message and realize it has nothing to do with that and is actually an attack add? And do you see that it's generic and you can actually have any candidate follow it?

There's no attempt by me in any way to rehabilitate Joe's image. If he doesn't step down, then he is going to have to rehab his image to have a decent shot.

I have a different approach. First you tie Trump to those parts of P25 he actually is on video agreeing with, or attempted/thought about the first time. You also place memes reminding people of people he's used and tossed aside. Like the Giuliani pic. So these are accurate at first, gauge the reaction, and mix in some of P25 where Trump hasn't commented. Later, you take those same memes in the Giuliani style - Old, left in the cold by Trump - and put Social Security across the bottom.

Part of it is a propaganda technique, and the other is more emotional. But it's designed to work no matter who the candidate is in the end.

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