If Donald Trump wants to win, more policy and fewer personal attacks

It’s a truth universally acknowledged among Republicans that Donald Trump will win if he stops talking. Or, more precisely, if he stops ad hominem attacks on his political opponents and starts talking about how he’s going to make people’s lives better.

Trump’s diatribe against ABC News on Truth Social last Sunday highlights the problem. The post read like it was written by an angry third-grader. Sure, it contained a legitimate critique, but missed the point. Trump banging on about media bias doesn’t feed a family, doesn’t fill a gas tank, and doesn’t make health care affordable.

“I think what Trump needs to do is point out how he can be a contrast from Harris or the Democratic agenda on inflation, and not be speaking to personality traits,” pollster Brett Loyd, CEO of the Bullfinch Group, told me over the phone last week. In Loyd’s view, which I share, Trump must focus on the top issue in our country — the cost of living — and remind people that inflation skyrocketed on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ watch.

Vince Fenerty, chairman of the Philadelphia Republican Party, agrees.

“Look, the [former] president needs to talk more about the cost of rump roast and how expensive it has gotten. That’s the issue. That’s what’s hurting people,” Fenerty told me.

Fenerty is not a pollster or a butcher. But he’s learned what matters to voters since he started canvassing Philly neighborhoods as a 15-year-old sophomore at North Catholic in 1972.

“Trump has to talk about not only the economy, but that the military was strong, our country was more secure,” Fenerty said about Trump’s record during his time in office. Fenerty said Trump needs to remind people that during his presidency, “there were more things made in America and good jobs for the working and middle class. The borders were secure.”

Fenerty wants Trump to focus on those policies, and how they can ease the pain of people like Anne Marie Muldoon. Muldoon is a chiropractor running her own office in Mayfair. She told me that when her patients struggle to feed their families, they stop coming in for adjustments because they have less money for chiropractic copays.

Muldoon also wants Trump to talk about how he’ll ensure people don’t have to choose between food and their health. But it’s more than her just ensuring patients come through the door. As a small-business owner, Muldoon told me her health-care costs have skyrocketed.

“My own health care has doubled over the past four years. I now have higher deductibles. I have services that are not covered,” she said. “Trump promised to overturn Obamacare and didn’t. Nobody has addressed this in eight years.”

Muldoon, a registered Republican, is a loyal Trump supporter, but she considered Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a strong second choice before he dropped out.

And that is Trump’s big problem. It’s not just winning over swing voters, it’s turning out more Republicans like Muldoon.

An August Economist/YouGov poll shows Trump is polling at 88% among Republicans. Only 2% of Republicans were considering RFK Jr. before he dropped out. Loyd told me that even if all Republicans who were supporting Kennedy threw their vote to Trump, it’s still not enough to win.

“One in 10 Republicans are not voting Republican in a presidential election year because of the top of the ticket, because of self-inflicted wounds,” Loyd said. “It’s the personality, it’s the rhetoric, it’s the personal attacks” that hurt Trump, not his policies.

“He has to get the message out better,” Fenerty conceded. The GOP boss knows it’s important not just to win over swing voters in a swing state, but to get out “every one of the Republicans in Philly.”

For the first time in at least 16 years, Republicans are trailing Democrats by only 500,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania. Since Barack Obama became president in 2008, the GOP has been steadily gaining voters in Pennsylvania while the Democrats keep losing them.

The Republicans gained 10,152 voters in Pennsylvania between March and May of this year. In the same period, Democrats lost nearly 4,600. Even better for Republicans, more than 18,000 voters left the Democratic Party to become Republicans.

Trump lost in 2020 with 94% Republican support, according to exit polling. He’ll have to do better this time.

Loyd says it’s not that Republicans don’t admire Trump, especially after he leaped to his feet seconds after being shot in the ear crying, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” And people like Muldoon tell me they are thrilled when he is magnanimous, like during the first 30 minutes of his Republican National Convention speech. The problem is that the speech went on for 90 minutes.

“Sometimes President Trump gets off track when he is speaking,” Fenerty said.

Muldoon said she understands why Trump goes after his opponents. Democrats, she told me, “make personal attacks on Trump all the time.”

Still, Muldoon said, “I just honestly want someone to be the grown-up in the room.”

Trump can do that by talking about how he’s going to lower the cost of rump roast, rather than roasting his opponents. Only then can he win in November.