I have read many articles quoting (brave) Republicans complaining about Donald Trump’s focus on personal, petty and implausible attacks on Kamala Harris. They often assert that if the election were decided on the basis of policy or issues, then Trump would win. Here is the latest discussion I read about that (just the available link and an excellent blog post).

My immediate reaction is to argue that the Republicans’ claim is false and that voters support Democrats’ policy proposals and vote Republican because of identity politics and effective personal attacks. I found a poll which showed much more support for Biden’s proposals than Trump’s. Before going on, I note that it took an extraordinary amount of Googling to find that page. It was buried in horse race summaries of voting intention polls and by polls about favorable and unfavorable views of candidates.

Also before going on, of course people claim that the strategy they advocate will lead to victory and, of course politicians claim both that their party’s policy proposals will lead to better outcomes and that the people support their policy proposals,

Going on I note the conflation of two questions: voters’ policy preferences and voters’ feelings about issues. One concerns what is to be done, the other doesn’t. I am old enough to remember complaining about voters deciding based on how they felt about the recent past and not what they and candidates said should be done in the near future. I was irritated that the incumbent president was considered responsible for everything good or bad that happened (also in 1996 when this helped Clinton).

Ah what a sweet summer 35 year old I was way back then. Now The Republican candidate won’t stick to feelings about issues even when his campaign begs him too. “there are still interesting details in the Post piece. The key one is that the campaign appears to have given up trying to get Trump to focus policy attacks which they think have traction against Harris’ campaign — mostly inflation and border policy. He wants to go with personal attacks. And they seem to have decided that’s just how it’s going to be.”

Giving up on advising Trump who doesn’t listen and can’t control himself anyway is interesting but not surprising. I was struck by “policy attacks” and “inflation.” Trump has no proposal to reduce inflation (which I personally think should not be reduced as I support a 4% target and it is now lower). He proposes tariffs which would cause higher inflation and mass deportations which would cause higher inflation by lowering labor supply. This “policy attack” is not a policy attack (if it were it would be that Democrats caused inflation by giving you $2000 which is not good strategy for Republicans.

We are so far from rational debate that the distinction between discussing policy and appealing to feelings about issues is obsolete.