How It's Done: A Fascinating Look at How Trump Turned the Tables on Kamala's 'Pro-Woman' Messaging

Despite the best efforts of his detractors, which include the mainstream press, Democrats, NeverTrumpers, and Big Tech, Donald Trump defied the odds Tuesday and became only the second president in the United States to win non-consecutive terms in office (with the other one being Grover Cleveland).

With his victory, Trump's striking political comeback while being one of the most vilified public figures in American history will be studied, analyzed, and debated for decades to come.

Perhaps eager to understand how Trump was able to cut through the media/left-wing noise machines to reach voters who were fed up with woke and being taken for granted, the New York Times published an in-depth piece Thursday detailing how the Trump campaign's decision to wade into the culture wars ultimately helped upend Kamala Harris' messaging strategy towards women.

Harris' entire campaign, as RedState readers will recall, revolved around emphasizing what Democrats refer to as "women's health" and "reproductive freedom," better known as "abortion rights." The idea was to capitalize on what they saw as a post-Dobbs opening with women who they believed prioritized abortion over all other issues.

But while Harris was leaning in on the women's vote, Trump was targeting disaffected men, specifically younger ones in black and Hispanic communities who the campaign knew through research were feeling ignored, abandoned, and insulted.

As it turns out, their strategy to emphasize masculinity, coupled with ads that included warnings about Harris' support for trans rights - including her prior push to pay for transgender surgeries in the California prison system with taxpayer money, ended up paying off big time with the exact voters he needed down the finish line.

It moved not just those younger male voters in his direction but more suburban women voters, too, a twofer that paid big dividends on Election Day:

But the ad, with its vivid tagline — “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you” — broke through in Mr. Trump’s testing to an extent that stunned some of his aides.
So they poured still more money into the ads, running them during football games, which prompted Charlamagne Tha God, the host of the Breakfast Club, a popular show among Black listeners, to express exasperation — and his on-air complaints gave the Trump team fodder for yet another commercial. The Charlamagne ad ranked as one of the Trump team’s most effective 30-second spots, according to an analysis by Future Forward, Ms. Harris’s leading super PAC. It shifted the race 2.7 percentage points in Mr. Trump’s favor after viewers watched it.
The anti-trans ads cut to the core of the Trump argument: that Ms. Harris was “dangerously liberal” — the exact vulnerability her team was most worried about. The ads were effective with Black and Latino men, according to the Trump team, but also with moderate suburban white women who might be concerned about transgender athletes in girls’ sports.
Those were the same suburban women Ms. Harris was trying to mobilize with ads about abortion.

Watch both ads below:

Kamala is for they/them.

President Trump is for you. pic.twitter.com/Yk1KBgMH4f
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 20, 2024

Kamala is for "THEY/THEM."

President Trump is for YOU. pic.twitter.com/Wbb0RgrtfL
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 31, 2024

The Times piece also pointed out that Harris' October interview on "The View," in which she said there wasn't anything she would have done differently than Joe Biden, cost her, with the Trump campaign blasting the clip to 10 million people on their cell phones and later running it in ads.

The especially interesting thing about all of this is that the most effective thing the Trump campaign did throughout was to simply use Harris' own words against her. And considering what she's said and done over the years, most notably all the far-left promises she made on the campaign trail in 2019 during her first failed presidential run, it was a rather large volume of quotes and policy positions they had to work with - which ultimately proved to be her undoing.

The point we've made here again and again continues to bear out: Kamala Harris was, is, and always will be her own worst enemy. It has nothing to do with the fact that she's black or the fact that she's a woman. It has everything to do with the fact that she's... Kamala Harris. It's just that simple.