By Noah Rothman
Monday,
October 21, 2024
It’s
crunch time, America. The days when fundraising totals mattered are behind us.
The organizational apparatus that will put one or the other candidate in the
White House is in place. The universe of genuinely persuadable voters is
negligible. The real work of winning this election is in the campaigns’ hands.
All that’s left for average political observers to do is sit back and count the
votes on Election Day. Right?
Wrong!
Don’t let anyone tell you that your only contribution to your candidate’s
electoral prospects is your own measly vote. Now is the time when you are
called upon to become obnoxious. Those who are sufficiently committed to the
cause understand that displays of unrelenting bombast and the kind of cynicism
reserved primarily for staffers on the campaigns’ payroll can meaningfully
alter the trajectory of political events. Your job, from now until Election
Day, is to make yourself as off-putting as possible.
That
imperative compels you to take drastic measures. Do your interlocutors on
social media seem unenthusiastic to cast their ballot for Donald Trump? The
only course available to those who “know what time it is” is to bombard them
with shoddy memes until they change their minds. Overwhelm them with the
compelling logical power of your certainty that Kamala Harris never worked a
day at McDonald’s. If that doesn’t work, demand from them proof that Harris
does not owe her political career to her willingness to provide transactional
physical favors to the powerful men in her life.
If
they’re still unconvinced, you’re dealing with heretics. The would-be assassins
who targeted Trump? Most likely a deep-state plot of which your
Harris-supporting friends and neighbors probably approve. It’s no cognitive
leap from that conclusion to another corollary: They probably thirst for the
cleansing fire that a nuclear conflagration will deliver to America’s cities in
a Harris administration — assuming those metro areas weren’t burned to the
ground by marauding bands of woke college students first. Make sure your
conversation partners know that you’re onto them.
Harris
fans can’t take that lying down. Go ahead and call him a rapist — you’re not a
lawyer, and no one expects you to have devoted the time necessary to comprehend
the imprecision of the charge. The liberal application of linguistic signifiers
like “bone spurs” and “hand size” are sure to trigger Trump’s insecurities when
he sees your latest searing critique, as he surely will. The targets of your
agitation clearly missed the events of January 6. You should remind them of
what took place and Trump’s alleged role in those events in as granular detail
as you can muster. And if all that somehow fails to produce any behavioral
changes, you’re clearly dealing with a fascist. They should know that you’ve
got their number, if only for the benefit of your vast and electorally
significant audience.
Both
campaigns’ supporters are obliged at this point in the race to respond to the
faintest hint of dissension with disproportionate force. Is your candidate
earning favorable media coverage? Ruthlessly hunt down anyone who objects to
that rosy portrait to inform them that they should “cry more.” If, however, the
other candidate finds herself in a similarly advantageous position, that can
only be attributable to a vast conspiracy arrayed against your specific
interests. Emphasizing your own persecution is crucial to winning over hearts
and minds. It’s important to convey to casual political observers that your
movement’s avatar is all but infallible save those rare moments when beset by
insurmountable forces beyond the candidate’s control. Establishing that
contrast is critical if you’re to be believed when you contend that the other
guy’s latest campaign-ending gaffe is all that voters will care about come
November 5.
Skeptics
will likely dismiss all this as the political equivalent of dragging that
20-year-old T-shirt out of storage on game day. But this is no superstition.
Your participation in the political process is not limited to voting, donating,
or volunteering. Winning campaigns can count on a phalanx of insurgent
hellions, and you’re obliged to do your part.
Those
who are willing to promulgate the most uncharitable assumptions about their
political opponents make or break a tight race. Don’t let anyone tell you that
you’re engaging in the desperate pursuit of agency when all other avenues to
shape electoral outcomes have closed. They may appear turned off by your
hectoring, but your casual sleights, memetic arguments, and the insistence that
you’re laughing out loud when you aren’t laughing at all can have a subtle
impact. So, get out there and show them what you’ve got. Your candidate is
counting on it.
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