Trump’s daily personal disinformation campaign continues on Twitter, raising questions about Democrats’ strategies attacking his ineffectiveness as POTUS*.
About two months ago, the Center for American Progress Action Fund commissioned the firm Civis to test messaging that framed Trump not as corrupt or unethical but as “ineffective”—and to attribute that ineffectiveness to his being absorbed by his Twitter feed. The results were notable. Of the six messages tested on Trump, the idea that he was “more focused on his Twitter account than on delivering on his promises” was the only one that consistently moved the vote towards Democrats, including among Obama-Trump voters.
Though CAP too has begun attacking Trump over his Twitter habits, not everyone in the party has rushed to adopt the framing, for fear that it merely goes after the medium on which Trump expresses his bluster and bigotry, and not the bluster and bigotry itself.
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Those who have worked on the messaging say that going after Trump for being a racist and for being distracted by Twitter to the point of ineffectiveness is not an either-or. But, they argue, the former comes with the risk of turning off his supporters by suggesting that they are comfortable with his worst traits, while the latter emphasizes a characteristic of Trump that virtually no one finds flattering.
The reality is that repeating and amplifying the message may still outweigh any critiques of Trump’s Twitter behavior, considering that it is an insular audience including numerous bots that distort the size of his “followers”.
Trump’s Twitter habits are not exactly prolific considering how he retweets and cribs RWNJs. He has occasionally stopped using Twitter and does delegate some messaging there to underlings.
More likely victory in 2020 will be about GOTV, winning swing states, and the economy, stupid.
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll has bad news for President Trump on the economy.
To start, his net approval rating on the economy is down to a mere three percentage points — 49% of registered voters approve while 46% disapprove. This is a big drop from the 10-point edge he had in early May (51%-41%), and an even bigger dropped from the 16-point edge he had last July (50%-34%).
This drop of support on the economy has brought his overall approval rating to its lowest level of the year — 43% — according to the Wall Street Journal. At the same time, 55% said they disapproved of Trump.
Some 9% of voters support Trump’s handling of the economy but don’t approve of him overall. But in a “warning sign for Mr. Trump,” the Journal notes that those voters “prefer a Democratic candidate over Mr. Trump by 73% to 5%.”
thinkprogress.org/...
There’s no downside to continuing the message of Trump as unindicted co-conspirator and sexual predator.