How Can Trump (or Vance) Suffer Guilt By Association?
In the days since CNN reported that North Carolina Lieutenant Governor and Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson once used the comments section of a porn site to describe himself as a "Black Nazi" who approved of slavery, political pundits have speculated that Donald Trump's endorsement of Robinson--including his characteristically hyperbolic description of Robinson as "Martin Luther King on steroids"--could end up costing Trump North Carolina's 16 electoral votes. Color me skeptical.
The fundamental difficulty with this claim is that it is a guilt-by-association scenario going in the wrong direction. For all of his flaws and terrible views, Robinson is not as bad as Trump. Robinson has not been indicted, much less convicted, of any felonies. Robinson was not found civilly liable for sexual assault. Robinson lacks the capacity to permanently end American constitutional democracy. Suggesting that people who are otherwise willing to vote for Trump will not do so because of his association with Robinson makes as much sense (which is to say not much sense at all) as suggesting that someone who is otherwise willing to hire a recidivist child molester as a babysitter will reconsider upon learning that the child molester is friends with someone who has unpaid parking violations.
How, then, is the Robinson-drags-down-Trump phenomenon supposed to work? Perhaps it operates through turnout. The idea would be that voters who are turned off by Robinson won't show up at the polls, thus costing Trump their votes as well. But that's also backwards. Turnout is highest in Presidential elections, with down-ballot races riding in their wake. North Carolinians who are planning to vote for Trump but are turned off by Robinson will most likely show up, vote for Trump for President, and then leave the gubernatorial line blank, vote for Democrat Josh Stein, or vote for a third-party or write-in candidate.
Likewise, it's hard to imagine that J.D. Vance's willingness to sit for a fawning interview with Tucker Carlson will much affect votes or turnout, even though Carlson previously fawned over a Holocaust-denying guest whom he called "the best and most honest popular historian in the United States." Here the issue is less that the guilt by association goes in the wrong direction. It's not clear to me whether Carlson or Vance is the more execrable bag of smarminess. The choice between them is like that old chestnut, would you rather be electrocuted or eaten by sharks?
Even if we stipulate that Carlson could taint Vance, it doesn't matter. People don't base their votes on who the VP nominee is--except at the margins when the nominee is from their home state. But quite apart from Vance, Ohio was going to vote for Trump (and apart from Tim Walz, Minnesota was going to vote for Harris).
Moreover, what exactly does Vance's appearance with the Holocaust-denial-friendly Carlson demonstrate? That the Trump/Vance ticket is glad for the support of Nazis, white supremacists, and racists more broadly? Is that somehow news? Such "very fine people" have long been part of Trump's voting coalition, his legion of brownshirts, and his dinner guests. Are there more than a handful of voters in the country for whom everything Trump has said and done to this point is acceptable, but a Vance interview with Tucker Carlson is a bridge too far?
To be clear, I hope I'm wrong. I hope that Trump's association with Robinson and Vance's with Carlson make a difference in the election. But I suspect I'm right. To me, it's telling that the Harris campaign is trying to capitalize on the Trump/Robinson connection not by highlighting Robinson's support for slavery or Nazism, but by using it to underscore Republican efforts to curtail abortion rights and thus undercut Trump's recent efforts to confuse voters about an issue that is a key liability for him. When it comes to Robinson's outrageous statements about slavery and Nazism, the Harris campaign appears to have reached the same conclusion I have--that tolerance of racism and antisemitism is already priced into support for Trump.