Harris, Walz play for Georgia. It's complicated.

Democrats are attacking Trump's weak center. Trump is going online with livestreamers. What's going on?

I must say I was surprised this past week. I encountered a group of well-educated, cosmopolitan, thoughtful, liberal-minded people. People with whom I enjoy conversations on many topics; people who are politically well-informed. People who are all in for Donald Trump. In Georgia.

It’s easy to lump people into groups, like college-educated, white, Christian, or liberal, and then assign them their vote as if there’s some reliable, inviolable DNA that pre-determines the outcome. But it’s complicated and nuanced. People have opinions, and those opinions are not necessarily what we think they based on the common taxonomies.

In that, I have to apply the opposite: it makes sense that there’s a group of church-going, rural, southern-raised people in Georgia who would walk on broken glass to see Kamala Harris in the White House. I get it, even if it’s not totally in focus for me to understand it. People base their opinions on many things, some of which are beyond argument because they are deeply personal. Some people are more venal, and vote for the candidate they feel will better their lives, regardless of policies or national interest.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton made the mistake of relying on the taxonomies, and she paid for it by losing the election. Not everything can be represented in data; at some point, and at some level, candidates have to connect with voters. It is in this area where Donald Trump excels. He has the way of the Music Man, spinning great lies into money, which he gladly pockets, in return for unfulfilled dreams. He never takes off the mask, and only rarely breaks character—to the point that it surprised me to see him sitting with podcaster Theo Von, talking cogently and movingly about drug addiction.

Vox writer Max Read termed the podcast tour arranged for Trump with such internet celebs as Logan Paul and Adin Ross (who livestreamed giving Trump a Rolex and a Cybertruck), “dipshit outreach.” But no, I say it’s much more nuanced than this, because these moments of clarity and personal connection ring much further than just the online crowd. I can tell you with confidence that people who spend their endless hours scrolling YouTube and TikTok don’t really get into the political ads inserted into those platforms with the density approaching Russian landmines in the Donbas.

However, more sophisticated types, including Boomers and aging Gen-Xers, along with some older Millennials, catch the intergenerational play between Grandpa Trump and the younger online celebs. The Boomers get it indirectly, and some of the others experience someone like Von or Ross for the first time. It might be fodder for the very-online Democrats and late-night hosts to troll, but it’s connection—gold—for those who might align with Trump but are concerned about his public rants. The personal talks reinforce the fact that all of Trump in public—at rallies, on Fox News—is kayfabe. It cements Trump’s image in WWE-level persona-building to people who view the world as one big stage for fakers.

So this column has taken me a long way to get to my point. J.D. Vance went to south Georgia, and it didn’t go so well. His visit to a donut shop in Valdosta went only slightly better than Michael Richards (“Kramer”) responding to a heckler in 2006. (Some helpful advice from Twitter: “Fire your whole team. They clearly hate you. This is TV production 101, and they failed it.”).

Vance is much better on the TV news shows, and in this, Democrats have tipped their strategy for Georgia and Trump’s weak center—those people who think they might be better off with Trump than Harris, but question the former’s commitment to causes and common sense. Vance went on “Meet the Press,” where he was asked what Trump would do with a national abortion ban.

“I mean, if you’re not supporting it, as the president of the United States, you fundamentally have to veto it,” he told Kristen Welker. True, but stupid to say out loud. Trump said he wouldn’t support a national abortion ban, and on his Truth Social platform, he posted “My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.” Those two words are Democrat shibboleths for abortion. Such talk might be aimed squarely at the crowd I encountered—people who would fear an evangelical theocracy, but are fine with Trump over Harris for other reasons. It’s confusing, but Trump has a natural understanding of these things that the data doesn’t show.

Meanwhile, Harris and Walz are planning a bus tour of south Georgia. This tour is clearly for Harris to connect with the state’s rural Black voters, and to bring a more centrist message to them, beyond the data. While Trump moves away from the evangelical position on abortion, Harris will try to move toward a more compassionate approach.

Harris doesn’t want to be pinned down on policy. Why would she? But Democrats do want to pin down Trump, and they’re using their secret advantage: President Joe Biden, to that end. A new Biden executive policy protecting up to 500,000 illegal immigrants from potential deportation is designed to highlight Trump’s policy of family separation. The Biden plan allows illegal immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens and have been in the country for 10 years to apply for permanent resident status without leaving the U.S. To me, it makes sense: these people have children and probably have (illegal) jobs. Making them leave is not only cruel, it’s also a waste of resources that could be used to deal with those newly arriving at our borders.

Yet 16 Republican-led states, including Georgia, have filed suit to stop this policy. Legally, they may be right, that it’s unconstitutional. But politically, it’s a terrible look. And on the news shows, Vance was grilled on Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy. He danced around the issue, but the answer is right there in black and white.

Harris and Walz want to connect with voters and have them ignore the economy, while Trump wants to focus on prices and “communism,” but Trump and Vance are being forced to play defense. It’s yet to be seen if Trump’s “human side” podcaster strategy will bear any fruit.

Originally, I was skeptical that a Democrat-led campaign focused on abortion and immigration would get them a single voter. Of course, they keep pounding on Trump’s character and his convictions. But Trump’s legal troubles aren’t swaying voters, though they do get applause from the D faithful and those Republicans and conservatives who oppose him.

Trump is still popular in Georgia—Barack Obama’s “size” reference aside—the Trump rally in Atlanta was packed, with thousands forced to wait outside in the heat. Georgia is a key state for both campaigns. Most analysts think Trump has no path to victory without carrying the state. The Harris campaign wants to repeat 2020’s result, but to do that, she needs to carry counties outside of metro Atlanta.

Both candidates have “hidden” pockets of voters who you would not think would be in their corner. Things are more complicated than they seem. Trump has a gift for understanding that. Harris is doing her best to learn.

ISRAEL FLEXED. Kudos to the IDF and Israeli intelligence for detecting an impending Hezbollah massive launch and launching a successful preemptive attack. Israelis are impatient because the Iran-backed terror army has launched thousands of missiles and rockets into Israel since last October 7th, and Israel has played defense. This 100-aircraft attack was a welcome change. A couple of reasons it was a good idea to wait.

First: Hezbollah moves their stocks and launchers frequently. Hitting just before a massive launch gave the IAF the best chance of actually hitting sites that were active and eliminating stocks of missiles that many times are buried underground out of the reach of Israel’s best ordnance.

Second: hitting just before a massive launch, and forcing Hezbollah to proceed with just a fraction of its intended wave of missiles, rockets, and drones, made the group look weak, without affecting ongoing hostage and cease-fire negotiations.

Trying to wipe out Hezbollah’s weapons in one stroke when Hezbollah is not at its most vulnerable—before a massive launch—is risky. Relying on intelligence is also risky: this could have been a feint, or a ruse. But it wasn’t, and this flex is a lesson to Israel’s enemies. It’s also the best path for a real cease-fire, and the ending of so much Palestinian suffering.

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