In “Democrats plan to track and corner Republican 2024 candidates on Trump,” Jarrett Renshaw reports at Reuters:
When Republican U.S. Representative Don Bacon was asked if he supports Donald Trump’s bid for the White House next year at Nebraska town hall last month, he batted away the question, saying it was too early to say, given the former president hadn’t yet secured the nomination.
Despite the non-answer, a Democratic activist with a video camera filmed the exchange, and it was quickly blasted it online with the headline Bacon “refuses to tell Nebraskans if he supports Trump.”
Crenshaw notes further,
Democrats are monitoring local radio interviews, scouring news stories and hiring teams of political trackers armed with cameras to blanket Republican events, to capture the moment a candidate is asked a Trump loyalty question.
North Carolina, Arizona and Pennsylvania Democrats are currently hiring “trackers” to follow, record and post footage of Republicans at local events, according to job websites.
For $4,000 a month, a tracker will be responsible for “comprehensively tracking opponents’ schedules” and providing “same day footage” to “drive the campaign narrative,” one such job posting says.
Tracking, essentially following an opponent with the hopes they slip up or do something that can be used to influence voters, has become a ubiquitous practice in U.S. political campaigns in recent years. It will only grow in 2024, some Democrats say.
American Bridge 21st Century, the largest research, tracking, and rapid response operation in the Democratic Party, spent $84 million tracking Republican candidates and using the footage to run ads against them in their home states in 2020.
In 2024, the operation is “going to be bigger than it’s ever been,” President Pat Dennis told Reuters.
Renshaw adds, “Republicans in suburban districts are the most squeezed by Trump politics, making them the best areas to film, Dennis said….”The amount of damage Trump has done to the Republican Party in the suburbs is extraordinary. So that’s sort of the pain point for them,” Dennis said.”
Good to know that state and local Democratic parties are paying attention with determination to hold GOP candidates accountable. Now, if local media will do its job, Dems will have a fighting chance to elect a working majority that can get America moving forward in the post-Trump era.
Sounds great. But ‘Track and Corner’ and trap needs to be extended and used flexibly and adapted to its maximum potential to reach all persuadable audiences. In particular higher education suburbs, Trump support may put a bad stink on a local GOP candidate or put an anchor around the neck. In more blue-collar areas, Trump is a life-preserver and Biden is an anchor or any Dem-branding is an anchor. But that doesn’t mean the party should *not* use ‘Track and Corner’ just be smart enough to identify a policy thing the local GOP’ers are ideologically committed to that is real unpopular, like Medicaid cuts, contraception bans, harsh marijuana sentencing, corporate giveaways, and track and corner them on *that*.