As she sits in the homestretch of her presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris has followed in the footsteps of many of her political predecessors by labeling her opponent as a “fascist.”
From former President Donald Trump labeling Harris as “Lyin’ Kamala” to President Joe Biden responding to Trump’s campaign rally in Madison Square Garden by denigrating the former president’s supporters as “garbage,” slurs from both sides of the aisle have echoed during the 2024 election cycle. But in the waning days leading up to the election, one of the loudest insults has been Harris’s move to repeat words comparing Trump to Hitler and repeatedly brand him as a fascist.
During an election year where voters’ top concerns are the economy and immigration, why do candidates seem often to be more focused on slurs than solutions? Is there a strategy behind negative campaigning?
For candidates who feel as if they’re not strong on an issue or lack a strong policy blueprint, negative attacks can be a tactic to fill the void, suggested Carol Swain, a former political science and law professor at Vanderbilt University.
“Negative advertising has proven to be effective in the past, so that’s one reason why, if you don’t have something strong to tout, strategically candidates may choose to go negative, rather than focus on issues where they’re not strong,” she said.
Data from AdImpact shows both Republicans and Democrats have taken full advantage of negative campaigning this election cycle. Of all the TV ads run across seven battleground states by the Trump and Harris campaigns in October, 38% were negative.
Swain pointed to a 1971 book written by Saul Alinsky, a Vietnam-era radical activist with Marxist tendencies, to further explain why campaigns roll out “fascist” labels and other inflammatory rhetoric.
Rules for Radicals contains directives such as “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it”; “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive”; and “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”
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