photo by: Creators Syndicate

Keith Raffel

It’s no surprise that one party is staking a claim on the White House based on freedom, foreign affairs, family and football. The surprise in 2024’s topsy-turvy campaign is that it’s the Democrats, not the Republicans, who are embracing those four pillars.

1. Freedom

Running on their “Contract with America” in the election of 1994, Republicans won a majority in both the House and Senate for the first time in over four decades. Grover Norquist, a key engineer of that strategy, boasted “the imperial city of Washington will fall to the forces of freedom.”

While Norquist dedicated himself to building the “Leave Us Alone” coalition in the 1990s, Republicans now seem determined to interject the federal government into the doctor’s examining room, the bedroom and the school library. It’s Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz who declares, “We respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make. And even if we wouldn’t make those same choices for ourselves, we’ve got a golden rule: Mind your own damn business.”

Freedom has definitely become the byword of this year’s Democratic campaign. In her address at the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris accused her opponent, Trump, of taking away “reproductive freedom” from American women. She went on to tick off her support for the freedom “to live safe from gun violence,” “to love who you love openly,” “to breath clean air and drink clean water,” and “to vote.”

2. Foreign Affairs

Republican presidents have a tradition of support for NATO and standing against Russian aggression. Two years before his run for the White House, Dwight Eisenhower took an indefinite leave as president of Columbia University to become the commanding general of NATO. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood at the gate dividing West and East Berlin and told Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” By contrast, Trump as president threatened to leave NATO. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, current Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance said: “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” Eisenhower and Reagan must be spinning in their graves.

In the 2024 campaign, Democrats are supporting an active and muscular foreign policy based on opposition to Russia and China. Regarding the Russian attack on Ukraine, Harris declared, “I helped mobilize a global response — over 50 countries — to defend against Putin’s aggression. And as president, I will stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies.” She also promised to see “that America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century and that we strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership.”

3. Flag

Every Republican president since World War II has served in the military except Trump. In a 1993 interview, Trump said avoiding sexually transmitted diseases in the 1980s was “the equivalent of a soldier going over to Vietnam” and called women’s vaginas “potential landmines.” In 2018, then-President Trump skipped a visit to an American military cemetery in France, reportedly saying, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”

Now the Democrats have nominated a man as vice president who spent 24 years in the Army National Guard and who, unlike all those Republican presidents, was an enlisted man, not an officer. On the campaign trail, Walz declared, “I’m proud to have served my country and I always will be.” Delegates at the Democratic convention waved flags and chanted “USA.” This summer, Harris condemned flag-burning during anti-Israel protests as “despicable,” writing, “That flag is a symbol of our highest ideals as a nation and represents the promise of America.”

Embracing the flag could prove good politics. A YouGov poll in June showed 30% of independent voters thought of the Republican Party as “patriotic” while only 13% thought the same of Democrats. There are votes to be won there. Former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger was invited to address the Democratic convention, where he said, “I’ve learned something about the Democratic Party, and I want to let my fellow Republicans in on the secret: The Democrats are as patriotic as us.”

4. Football

Republican President Eisenhower played college football for Army and Gerald Ford for Michigan. Reagan was known as “the Gipper” for playing Notre Dame football great George Gipp on the silver screen. Trump urged football legend Herschel Walker to run for a Georgia Senate seat in 2022.

Now it’s Democratic vice presidential nominee Walz who’s the candidate most strongly identified with America’s favorite sport. The party plays up his role as defensive coordinator at Minnesota’s Mankato West High School, which won the 1999 state football championship. “I like to call him Coach Walz,” Harris says. The campaign’s website is offering a Coach’s Collection that includes a football-shaped patch with the words “Team Harris Walz.” At the convention, Walz leaned into past glory: “It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense, and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field, and boy, do we have the right team.”

The Trump team has fumbled the ball regarding a proven strategy. Harris’ team has scooped it up and are speeding toward the goal line with it securely held.

— Keith Raffel is a syndicated columnist with Creators.