A Citizen's Guide to Beating Donald Trump

by David Plouffe

  Taking a state off the electoral college chess board due to a lack of resources is one of the toughest decisions a campaign manager has to make, and it will be tougher still if in the end, the lost electoral votes would have made the difference between victory and defeat. Even worse is to green-light a battleground state, only to realize a couple of months later that you really don’t have the resources to see it through. You’ve wasted millions, maybe more, and the optics are terrible. McCain pulling out of Michigan in 2008 is a good example of that terrible dynamic. Even for the Obama campaign in 2012, we sank a huge amount of resources into North Carolina, only to pull back on our spend in the closing weeks when it looked like it would be close but just out of reach.

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  The campaign will make its fund-raising and budget assumptions based on predictive modeling: number of donors now, how much their numbers will grow, and how much they will donate. The assumptions usually turn out to be quite accurate. Eerily so.

  So you donors will have an enormous influence on the most important strategic decision the campaign makes—the target list for battleground states—especially if you give early in the cycle, when the big decisions are made.

  As with volunteering, you must look at your financial contribution as a catalyst for others to act. As noted earlier, posting your donation on social media may spur others to do the same. But I repeat: do not sacrifice necessities for your family in order to contribute to this campaign. Just as there are more than enough people in the United States to defeat Trump if we can get them to the polls, there are more than enough people who can comfortably contribute and make sure money is not a reason we put ourselves at a disadvantage in the upcoming battleground wars.

  So please give what you can if you can. And make it fun, and even meaningful along the way. I devoted an earlier chapter to the importance of hosting supporters and volunteers in all kinds of venues under all kinds of circumstances. You can make fund-raising a communal activity as well. This doesn’t have to be an elaborate program. Pick a night and send out an email to everyone you know and suspect is a supporter of our nominee and/or hates Trump.

  Say something along the lines of, “I know many of you have already contributed to our candidate. I thought it would be nice to get together to thank those who have given, celebrate those who might this night, and coax the fence-sitters to join us so we can tell them how important their participation is. I’ll have our candidate’s best hits teed up on the TV, as well as some of Trump’s worst. It will be a casual night, and folks are welcome to speak about why they have gotten involved, but it’s really just a way for us to share our hopes, dreams, and fears for the election and strategize about how we can do more. And you can feel free to scream and shout about yesterday’s presidential tweets. Because I promise you, there will have been something new to scream about.”

  It’s that simple. Maybe have some snacks and drinks on hand, ask a few close friends to bring some as well. No fancy catering allowed. Have a sign-in table and a laptop or two as people enter. They can both contribute online as well as sign up for volunteer activities. If you want, ask a local elected official to come and say a few words, but that is by no means necessary. It’s just a nice opportunity for people to gather and make their financial support more communal, and come to life, and perhaps encourage some new donors to give and some existing donors to give again. It would be a chance to process the election generally and the specific events of that week with others, laughing, sighing, chewing fingernails, whatever is appropriate for the moment.

  If you can’t host an event but are invited to one, please think hard about attending, even though it’s not the kind of thing you usually do.

  You could even do a lighter-touch method, asking all the people you think may be interested to give together, virtually. Maybe it would be after a particularly great day for our nominee that gets you pumped up, or a day where Trump reaches new depths of depravity, getting you pumped up in a less inspirational way. “OK, everyone, let’s all make a donation in the next twenty minutes and post about it on Facebook. Let’s tag each other and thank all those who do give in the comments. Let’s try to get a hundred people to join us right now.”

  You know my theory: This election will be hard enough for us all to live through. It will be far easier to make it through together, on line and off.

  7

  THE CAMPAIGN

  As a citizen determined to deny Donald Trump a second term and thereby strengthen, if not actually save, our democracy, much of your impact in this election season will be accomplished on your own time, not through any formal channels. Not waiting to be asked, you’ll be asking the question, “What more can I do?”

  Whether it’s engaging in one-on-one conversation with a friend or a cousin or a coworker who’s wrestling with the decision, working your own network to register and volunteer, engaging in debate and sharing persuasive content on social media, and/or donating money, your daily advocacy is irreplaceable.

  And at some point—hopefully the day our nominee is clear—you will also work with and through the candidate’s official campaign. This is the operation that has prepared the literature and set up the phone banks and created the contact lists and linked everything to the GPS interface for the canvassing teams. The interface between you volunteers and the campaign apparatus is so crucial, it’s the subject of this chapter.

  We know what the volunteers do for the campaign—nothing less than deliver the margin of victory, that is, the registrations, the canvassing, the recanvassing, the re-re-canvassing; if necessary, the rides to the polls, the actual votes. Now I want to consider what the campaign can and should do for you. The more you know, the better you’ll be able to evaluate what it is doing, and how you can help make everything easier and more effective. No matter how much of a sacrifice your personal work is, no matter how far you have come in order to help, no matter if you’re working in your hometown or a thousand miles away, it is essential that the campaign staff honor your time and commitment with the tools, data, materials, and culture to make it both a rewarding and effective experience.

  I want this chapter to be useful for both volunteers and the campaign’s professional staff.

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  I started my career as a canvasser and organizer, and nothing I’ve learned has changed my own innate belief in the power of people to do their best and achieve great goals if the support staff and leaders give them their best too. The influence moves both ways. As a former community organizer, Barack Obama had reached this same conclusion, so he insisted that those who wanted to join our cause in 2008 were respected and valued. As did Michelle Obama.

  In 2008, in both the primary contest against Hillary Clinton, with Obama the decided underdog, and in the general election against John McCain, a toss-up from the get-go, our campaign’s commitment to nourishing our grassroots volunteers was essential—indeed, it was the essential ingredient in victory.

  We had put the volunteers first, and nothing changed for the 2012 reelection campaign. I don’t believe any presidential campaign in living memory has given more consideration to the experience of our volunteers. If our candidate called me from the road, or if I was traveling with him and he pulled me aside after an event, it was almost always about the same question. Not debates, not ads, not campaign strategy. He would be advising me that a volunteer or a local field organizer on our staff had told him they weren’t getting everything they needed. Maybe the data and lists were screwy lately, or there was not enough literature on hand, or not enough yard signs.

  I might have said something like, “But boss, yard signs don’t vote.” This expression originated who knows where, but every campaign manager is tempted to invoke it as a way to save money with the nickel-and-dime stuff. My boss would invariably say, “So you’re telling me that with all the money we’re raising from the very people who are work
ing so hard for us, we can’t make sure they get enough lousy signs to show their support? Especially for a volunteer who might be a Republican, and whose yard sign will send a message?”

  And the signs would be shipped right away. For Barack Obama, the volunteers were how he charted his course. If we weren’t serving them first and foremost, we probably weren’t doing anything else as well as we could. Our Iowa caucus campaign team—this was in the very early days of 2007, about twenty months prior to the general election—decided to memorialize their approach by painting the words Respect, Empower, Include on our headquarters in Des Moines and subsequently in the dozens more local campaign offices we opened up throughout the Hawkeye State.

  From Paul Tewes, our Iowa state director, on down . . . actually there was no “down.” The staff lived their inclusive motto every day. So did the precinct captains. So did all the volunteers who had been there from the beginning, as they welcomed those who joined up later. The Iowa kids were the most talented, selfless, driven crew I’ve ever been around. With all of them, there was a stirring belief in Barack Obama; in the need to turn the page from the Bush years; in the desire to make progress on issues from health care to climate change. The sum of their efforts became greater than the parts. Every Iowan who walked through our campaign office doors was treated as if he or she were the most special person in the world. Because it was true. It wasn’t manufactured. It was magical. And the caucus results reflected as much: Obama, 38 percent (more than twice what we’d started out with a year earlier); Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, 30 percent apiece, with Edwards a nose ahead of her.

  In 2020, I don’t know whether our nominee will motivate people to the same degree Barack Obama did. But I do know our candidate had better insist that the staff treats everyone as if they are the most special people in the world too. Let’s hope this comes easily and naturally. Putting volunteers first—“Respect, Empower, and Include” or the equivalent—must be baked into the campaign DNA. It cannot be faked. And much of the motivation needs to come from the ground up—staffers pushing and pulling one another, congratulating and lifting up those establishing the right culture in their region and pointing out those who are falling short. It needs to be as easy and intuitive as anything in life so that you don’t even think about it. You just do it.

  Logically, you volunteers are the first and most important customers of the campaign, coming before even the voters, because you are the connective tissue with the voters.

  We can debate Amazon’s business model, but I hope our nominee’s campaign has the high level of consistent, excellent customer service as Amazon’s does. The few times I’ve had problems with Amazon, the interactions actually left me more impressed. They move fast, they rectify mistakes, and they trust their customers. It’s in the DNA of the company.

  It doesn’t take long for any retail customer to get a reading on an unfamiliar store. Likewise, with you as a potential volunteer with the presidential campaign. You’ll know this outfit’s attitude toward you as soon as you begin the first interaction, in person, on the phone, or online. If it’s not genuinely welcoming, don’t hesitate to let them know directly, or even post your reaction or complaint on social media.

  No one getting back to you? Not being prepared for the number of volunteers who showed up for a shift? General disorganization in the local field office?

  Think about the snafu and suggest and help them change what needs to be changed. There is too much at stake to be shy about this. If they get this wrong with the volunteers, aren’t they likely to get it wrong with voters? I’m afraid so. And they will probably need your help fixing other stuff that’s wrong. From making sure there is enough water on hot canvassing days to making sure the office is decorated and organized in a way that is both inspiring and efficient.

  I hope the campaign spends a lot of time in dialogue with volunteers, formally and informally, to understand what will be the most helpful and effective way for the office to help the volunteers do the work they want and need and are desperate to do in order to help elect a different president. In the private sector, they call this user research: really understanding at a fundamental and deep level how the customers are living their lives, how the organization or company fits into these lives and aspirations, and then how to generate the best experience and therefore loyalty.

  Campaigns do the same thing regarding key voter segments. Too often, though, they don’t apply the same rigor to understanding their volunteers, learning more about their motivation, what drives them to want to be involved, what would make it a better and more effective experience for them.

  The good news: the basic user research regarding the first customers for the Democratic presidential campaign is pretty clear—I’m sure you hear the same things I do. What do you volunteers want? You want to help save the country you love from further damage and embarrassment by expelling the incumbent. You want to work hard in that cause, you want an up-to-date tech campaign, and you don’t want your time and energy to be taken lightly, much less wasted. And given the stakes this year, you don’t think all this is asking too much.

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  Here are some clear requirements for making your volunteers’ experience as effective as possible. The list is anything but definitive, but let’s begin with the most effective ways to play offense, sharing positive content with a voter with doubts, and defense, fighting back against all the lies and smears. This is one critical set of tools the campaign must nail right now. By the time you’re reading this book (Spring 2020), I hope our eventual nominee has this in their pipeline. It’s getting late.

  In this digital war, speed is of the essence. Above all, your response must be lightning fast. You see something ridiculous on Facebook or in an email chain, and you want to push back against it. You have a matter of seconds, literally, to find the responsive and persuasive content you need and copy and share it easily, and then move on with your day.

  You can always start with Googling or searching on YouTube or looking around the room for potential help. But the best way to accomplish this would be a simple app whose only function is sharing content for our distributed rapid-response army. There’s a way to create an easy, all-in-one interface, organized by issue (immigration, taxes, health care, education) and by medium (infographic, article, video, photo). For playing defense, the equivalent on this app would be an up-to-the-moment catalogue of all the latest lies, smears, and presidential insults that are flying across your phone and computer screen, along with the oldies but goodies. This would be a modern-day version of the Obama Fight the Smears website from 2008, updated for the smartphone era of politics.

  This isn’t just a cool-sounding kind of idea I think is good to include in the book. It’s a dead-serious requirement for any modern campaign.

  Does our candidate’s campaign already have such an interface? If so—and I hope so—make sure every volunteer can access it instantly on their smartphone or tablet. If the campaign doesn’t have this collated rapid-response rebuttal app for playing both offense and defense, can you make one? Some of you volunteers will be designers and engineers, and probably have better computer skills than the campaign pros. Use those skills. Come up with a prototype. See a need, jump in and fill the breach and help win the election.

  The campaign must also have a version of this function on its website, easy to find and use, for those who prefer engaging in these knife fights on a laptop or desktop. And all other organizations that are engaged in the battle to defeat Trump—from NextGen to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to Planned Parenthood to the Sierra Club—should have similar tools on the specific issues their members care most about and will want to be most voluble on, offensively and defensively. Make sure everyone knows what all the links are.

  You will need a printed cheat sheet that you can carry with you when canvassing, so you can look things up on the spot and inform your fol
ks behind the front doors of the best links. Someone—or a small group—needs to be responsible for updating this material in almost real time. What could be more impressive to a voter than an instant source of information or rebuttal to some silly Republican attack that happened early this morning? A fast, efficient communications operation in the campaign may imply a fast, efficient communications operation in the new administration taking over in 2021. Man, you guys are on the ball! A may-vote citizen and/or a may-vote-for-a-third-party citizen might make that connection. Give them a reason to.

  When supporters have an urge to share a good idea or good content with their social media network, or to respond to yet another falsehood, ten seconds is the longest it should take for them to do this. If it takes longer, many people will give up, and an opportunity is lost.

  Ten seconds, you say? That’s a crazy standard to be held to. No, if anything, it’s too long. People are used to getting what they want, the answers they need, the content they’ve heard about instantaneously—in two to three seconds. And that’s the population as a whole, including senior citizens.

  The younger the age cohort we are talking about, the higher the bar for lightning-fast speed. Remember the recent industry study trying to understand why millennial consumption of breakfast cereals was dropping precipitously? The number one reason wasn’t nutrition, cost, or taste. The number one reason was that eating breakfast cereal takes too long to clean up. Think about that. For my generation, Gen X, ease was the appeal. Shake it out of the box, add milk, eat, put bowl in sink, rinse bowl. But for a younger millennial, picking up food at Dunkin or a bodega is far preferable to the apparently complex and time-consuming process of eating a meal out of a box.