Why Joe Biden’s ‘Garbage’ Stinks Worse

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

 

I’m persuaded by Phil Klein’s theory, which should temper Democratic expectations around the political benefits they could expect to extract from “garbage-gate.” The off-color joke delivered by a comedian with niche appeal and limited name recognition at Donald Trump’s weekend Madison Square Garden rally is more likely to resonate with partisans than persuadable voters. But that’s not nothing. Assuming we take the tight public polling at face value, the margins matter. Events that mobilize dedicated, partisan voters in the final week of the race might, in the aggregate, have an outsized effect on the results next Tuesday.

 

Now, however, we have a competing “garbage”-related scandal to adjudicate. So, whose garbage stinks worse? That of Donald Trump’s lesser-known supporter, Tony Hinchcliffe, or that of Kamala Harris’s universally known surrogate, the president of the United States?

 

Some have sought to evaluate the proportional impact of these two late events on the race by performing a quantitative analysis on the number of people each of the campaigns’ agents insulted. After all, Hinchcliffe disparaged just about 10 percent of the Hispanic stateside population, whereas Biden appeared to have denounced roughly 47 percent of the electorate, right? That strikes me as the wrong way to look at it.

 

And just as the vulgar joke isn’t likely to upend many persuadable voters’ perceptions of either candidate, it’s possible that Biden’s remark won’t move the needle with those voters either — regardless of the office he occupies. Those voters are, by definition, not Trump supporters precisely. At least, they don’t think of themselves that way, or they wouldn’t be persuadable. They might even buy the spin that Biden was referring specifically to the individual whose remarks he was condemning, not the universe of Trump voters. (That is hardly a charitable interpretation of Biden’s remarks. Rather, it’s an indictment of the chronic absent-mindedness that got him booted from the presidential ticket.)

 

Biden’s mush-mouthed gaffe could remind that narrow segment of voters of why they soured on the president in the first place, and it might trigger in them some latent misgivings about Harris’s role in the effort to cover up his deteriorating condition. But the Biden problem will be remedied in January, one way or the other. On balance, it’s hard to see how a crucial mass of soft partisans and undecideds in the middle of the electorate would subordinate the issues they regard as salient in this election to the discovery of yet more evidence that reconfirms their conclusion that Joe Biden is unsuited to the presidency.

 

But, also like the joke, Biden’s remark has the potential to ignite the white-hot passions of Trump’s most loyal voters. Moreover, it’s liable to activate precisely the voters he needs.

 

It’s no secret that the Trump campaign devoted so much of the candidate’s time to appearances at mixed-martial-arts exhibitions and alternative-media podcasts to reach the young male voters who already gravitate toward his candidacy. That was always going to be a gamble. Young males tend to be the least reliable voters, and that hasn’t changed this cycle according to data provided by Harvard Institute of Politics polling director John Della Volpe. While 71 percent of 18- to 29-year-old Harris-backing men say they are “definitely voting,” just 59 percent of Trump supporters in this cohort say the same. Likewise, 71 percent of Harris-voting women in this age range say they are “definitely voting,” while 61 percent of young female Trump voters are similarly engaged. Again, if we take the polling as we get it, Harris enjoys a modest enthusiasm edge among these voters.

 

But then Joe Biden opened his mouth.

 

We can now conjure in our mind’s eye a portrait of a youngish, generally apathetic but dissatisfied male voter. He has already been primed by his exposure to Trump’s appearances in unconventional media venues. He tries to avoid exposure to Harris, but when avoidance invariably fails, he doesn’t like what he sees. An encounter with the Biden clip — and he will encounter it given how perfectly tailored it is for maximum virality — may provide the enthusiasm that was otherwise lacking. The positive factors motivating him to cast an affirmative vote for Trump were already present. Now, so too is a negative motivating factor. He has but one opportunity to jam a thumb in the eye of the people in American public life who so look down on him. He finally Googles his polling place.

 

That reaction is probably exclusive to voters who were already inclined to cast a ballot for Trump — Americans who consciously regard themselves as “Trump’s supporters,” with or without an apostrophe. And yet, whereas Biden’s line is likely to motivate voters who sorely needed motivation, the comedian’s botched joke hits home with voters who weren’t lacking for inducements to vote against Trump. On net, if these two sordid events matter at all, they’d probably matter more for Trump’s prospects.