A new poll published Sunday by NBC News includes data on Project 2025 that ought to be seen as proof of concept for liberals and their political messaging.
The data shows Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation plan drafted largely by Donald Trump associates as a far-right playbook for a second Trump administration, is very unpopular among voters.
According to NBC News:
[O]n Project 2025 — the conservative policy blueprint with ties to former Trump administration officials, which Democrats have featured in their campaign — a whopping 57% of voters have a negative view of it, versus just 4% who see it in a positive light.
Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 despite his previous praise for the Heritage Foundation’s policymaking, several of Project 2025’s contributors having served in his administration, and hundreds of its proposals matching policies he has endorsed.
The NBC News poll, which was conducted this month and has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, shows how toxic the plan could ultimately be for his campaign. Of course, conservatives bear much of the responsibility for whatever negative impact Trump’s links to Project 2025 have on his White House bid. After all, they’re the ones who not only backed the dangerous policies in it, but also posted them in an easily accessible document online. But liberals, and, frankly, everyone concerned about Project 2025’s proposals, deserve credit for the dogged and, at times, innovative ways they have raised — and continue to raise — awareness about them.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign have kept the proposals front of mind with their frequent references to “Trump’s Project 2025 agenda” in campaign speeches, social media posts and in commercials or scripted information segments. Remember when the Democrats tapped Kenan Thompson for a Project 2025-themed Q&A during the party’s national convention last month?
There have been many other contributions to the Project 2025 information mill. Actor Taraji P. Henson helped spread the word to an audience of millions when she used a segment of the BET Awards in June to warn about Project 2025. Young content creators online sprung to action around that time, too, using social media platforms to inform users about the conservative policy proposals. Other social media users boosted news coverage about Project 2025, which we at “The ReidOut” experienced firsthand in July as posts about Joy Reid’s then-upcoming coverage of the proposals trended online. And even cartoonists and artificial intelligence technicians deployed their talents to satirize and organize Project 2025’s ideas in an effort to make them more understandable and accessible to the public.
All of this has evolved Project 2025 from a set of largely unknown policy proposals to one of the most potent political memes of the 2024 election.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.