I’m not sure I agree with you. I don’t like the doom and gloom of the Democrats approach but I very much think the campaign focus should be on Trump and not on Biden. And I don’t believe that 2016 or any other election provides a good example of why this would not be so. The circumstances this year are rather unique.
I remember you saying multiple times that an election which is a referendum on Trump is a favorable one for Democrats. I agree, since Trump is historically unpopular. But even with an unpopular opponent, it’s important to at least provide a policy contrast with them instead of just bashing them for being an #######. According to that study I shared earlier, “contrast” advertising was just 1% of Dems’ ads.
Here’s a study that looked at 2016 ads:
https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/for/14/4/article-p445.xml
“...Evidence suggests that negativity in advertising can have a backlash effect on the sponsor (Pinkleton 1997) and that personally-focused, trait-based negative messages (especially those that are uncivil) tend to be seen as less fair, less informative and less important than more substantive, policy-based messaging (Fridkin and Geer 1994; Brooks and Geer 2007).
In stark contrast to any prior presidential cycle for which we have Kantar Media/CMAG data, the Clinton campaign overwhelmingly chose to focus on Trump’s personality and fitness for office (in a sense, doubling down on the news media’s focus), leaving very little room for discussion in advertising of the reasons why Clinton herself was the better choice. Trump, on the other hand, provided explicit policy-based contrasts, highlighting his strengths and Clinton’s weaknesses, a strategy that research suggests voters find helpful in decision-making (Mattes and Redlawsk 2014).
These strategic differences may have meant that Clinton was more prone to voter backlash and did nothing to overcome the media’s lack of focus on Clinton’s policy knowledge, especially for residents of Michigan and Wisconsin, in particular, who were receiving policy-based (and specifically economically-focused) messaging from Trump.”
What frustrates me is that Democrats have a huge advantage in that their economic/healthcare platform is largely popular while the GOP’s isn’t — the absolute peak of Trump’s unpopularity came back in 2017 when he passed the tax cuts. But instead of acting on this, they seem content attacking Trump’s fitness for office.
Polls already show that 50%+ of people have decided not to vote for Trump under any circumstances this November. That’s great for Dems, but now they need to convince those people to actually come out and vote for Biden. The Biden team has some popular policy ideas, Democrats should emphasize that!