Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America From Trump--And Democrats From Themselves

by Rick Wilson

  The Orlando metro area is trending blue because of a massive influx of Hispanic voters, but Democrats failed to capture them in 2014 and 2016. It was a classic Potemkin village Democratic Party effort both times: all talk, few deliverables. Rick Scott spent time and money talking to new Puerto Rican voters who hate Trump and won them over in numbers sufficient to ensure a narrow victory for U.S. Senate. There’s a lesson there, and it’s a grim one for Democrats who are complacent about minority voters.

  Florida is bigger geographically—it’s got ten media markets—than most candidates realize, and one-size-fits-all campaigns don’t fly. Prepare to become Florida Man (or woman; we don’t discriminate) in 2020.

  GEORGIA: 16 ELECTORAL VOTES

  Georgia is slowly—very slowly—trending blue, and despite the flutter over Stacey Abrams, it’s still a damned red state outside the “donut” of twenty-three counties surrounding Atlanta. Winning Georgia would be a coup. For a Democrat to capture Georgia, it’s going to take someone willing to butt up against a lot of pressure from their left on guns and abortion, both of which are make-or-break issues with the roughly 55 percent of voters who live outside Atlanta.

  Underappreciated fact: African Americans in Georgia living outside the Atlanta metro are much more conservative than their urban counterparts. The formerly Republican suburbs to the north are squishy Rs; a Democrat who doesn’t scare them off by being too far to the left could win their votes in 2020.

  IOWA: 6 ELECTORAL VOTES

  Iowa has long been a state that defies expectations. I place it on the swing list because while Trump captured it in 2016, Barack Obama won it handily twice, and John Kerry came within a few thousand votes of capturing it in 2004. Culturally conservative outside the metros, Iowa is now a very ripe hunting ground for Democrats; the trade war has given them a singular opportunity to crush Trump in the heartland, and the simple referendum question of “Is your farm doing better or worse because of Trump?” is an easy framing mechanism with an obvious answer. Don’t mistake Iowa for a progressive hotbed, though. It’s still culturally conservative, rural, and so very white…and we know Trump plays that demo to perfection.

  MAINE: 4 ELECTORAL VOTES

  Maine is tricky because it’s one of two states that splits its Electoral College votes by congressional district. In 2016, Trump captured Maine’s 1st congressional district. Since then, Maine’s timber and lobster industries have been hit and hit hard by Trump’s trade war, and, like Iowa, the referendum question to Mainers involved in the state’s two key industries is “Has Trump made your business better or worse?” Maine voters also respond strongly to environmental questions in polling, and to a slightly lesser degree to economic matters. Maine’s population is aging fast, and shrinking faster. This is a state where very focused efforts in the 1st CD can pay big dividends.

  MICHIGAN: 16 ELECTORAL VOTES

  Michigan was a perfect target for Trump in 2016. After the state suffered decades of industrial decline, Trump became an avatar of their fury over both parties promising miracles and delivering shit. The state had become older, whiter, and less educated due to the flight of one-third of its population to the Sunbelt. Michigan is dying, and Trump told them revenge was to be theirs.

  The promised return of the auto sector and heavy manufacturing to Michigan was the usual Trumpian nonsense, and Democrats who fail to make a real case—not “We’ll build windmills”—against Trump are missing the march. The suburbs of Macomb County—home of the famous Reagan Democrats—and Oakland County are the make-or-break ultimate swing counties, and attention must be paid there to ensure the state flips back in 2020. Michigan is going to be bloody, no matter how you slice it.

  MINNESOTA: 10 ELECTORAL VOTES

  Minnesota’s electoral performance in 2016 pointed to the Upper Midwest slowly trending more Republican, even in a state considered to be a progressive breeding ground. The last Republican to win Minnesota was Richard Nixon in 1972, but Trump came very close to defeating Clinton there, losing by just 1.5 percent. Democrats have also faced a slow march by GOP candidates in the state legislature over the last few years. It’s still a blue state at heart, but expect Trump to push hard there. Media is cheap; Minnesota’s rural non-college male Democrats are prime targets in his demo, and they can swing the balance if Democrats aren’t smart and careful.

  NEVADA: 6 ELECTORAL VOTES

  Hillary Clinton won Nevada, though not with the sweeping margins of Barack Obama. The state is clearly shifting into the blue column in presidential races. A massive influx of Hispanic voters in the past decade, and the California diaspora, have transformed the state and its politics. It’s a hot battleground, and with its relatively small voter pool, both sides will be hip-deep in trying to move the voters in booming Las Vegas.

  Nevada’s politics are particularly tuned to the overall economy, and when the overall economy gets a cold, Vegas gets Ebola.

  NEW HAMPSHIRE: 4 ELECTORAL VOTES

  One of the classic swing states, New Hampshire is a wee battleground, and Hillary Clinton’s razor-thin margin there means Trump will view it as amenable to spending big to wrap up votes there. One Trump ally told me he views it as a place where his rally-style politics is particularly effective. Famously crusty and cranky, New Hampshire voters are a weird mix of far-right politics on taxes and guns and far-left on healthcare, often in the same voter. It hasn’t gone Republican in a national election since 2000, but with former Trump enforcer Corey Lewandowski potentially on the ballot for U.S. Senate, Democrats shouldn’t take their eye off the ball in the Granite State.

  NORTH CAROLINA: 15 ELECTORAL VOTES

  A microcosm of a bigger trend in American politics, North Carolina’s metro areas are turning very blue, very fast. Its rural areas are moving more Republican at the same rate. Despite Democratic gains, North Carolina is still a tough target; even Mitt Romney’s 2012 effort posted a win there, and Trump won the state handily in 2016. North Carolina should be early on the triage list if the Democratic nominee needs to focus resources elsewhere. As with Georgia, North Carolina’s African American voters tend to be less flamingly progressive than the national Democratic average.

  OHIO: 18 ELECTORAL VOTES

  I have some bad news for Democrats. Ohio is the hardest target on this list. Yes, Obama won the state twice, but this is a red state, trending more red from the grassroots up. Can a Democrat win it? Yes. Will they? Not without a massive, costly fight. Alongside Florida, this is one of the most expensive states in which to run advertising.

  The case to be made in Ohio is simple: Trump’s lies over the economy and the disaster of the trade war are a twin hit. He lied about the return of steel and coal jobs, then put the manufacturing economy at risk with pointless trade decisions. In Ohio, it’s an economic and cultural challenge for Democrats as well. It’s still a state where pro-life Democrats at the grassroots will cross over to the GOP on abortion, as many did in 2016. The right candidate can win them—Obama did it, twice, but Ohio is a tough nut to crack.

  PENNSYLVANIA: 20 ELECTORAL VOTES

  If there was a real shocker in 2016, it was Pennsylvania, a state Hillary Clinton and her campaign very much took for granted. Another part of the arc of Rust Belt victories that Trump racked up that year, Pennsylvania—like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin—is a state where the industrial glories of the past are fading quickly, and his promise to restore the coal and steel industries was particularly resonant, especially in rural and western Pennsylvania.

  The famous Philly suburbs may be blue and trending bluer, but the Reagan Democrats in the rest of the state are now Trump Republicans, and he’s a master of playing their cultural resentments. Democrats will need to maximize African American turnout statewide and boost female turnout in Bucks County and the suburbs to be competitive.

  Pennsylvania is hellishly expensive for advertising and operations, so get ready to spend, and spend big.

&n
bsp; VIRGINIA: 13 ELECTORAL VOTES

  Virginia barely makes the list as a swing state these days. Donald Trump single-handedly destroyed the GOP there in the last two years, and the wipeout is starting to have massive political repercussions. Don’t bother campaigning too far outside the “Big Six” Northern Virginia suburban counties (Fairfax, Arlington, Prince William, Loudoun, Stafford, and Fauquier counties) in the 2020 race; Virginia was the home of soft-Republican votes and a more genteel style of politics now sadly out of fashion, and Trump has killed the party there. Still, the state will be a risk factor if Democrats take their eye off the ball: Everywhere outside the Big Six and Richmond, the place is as red as Alabama on a hot day.

  WISCONSIN: 10 ELECTORAL VOTES

  Wisconsin is another Rust Belt case study on how a narrowly targeted campaign focused on economic resentments can squeak out a win. The Democratic nominee has a massive opportunity to capitalize on the sweeping gains the party made in the state during the 2018 midterms. For three decades, Wisconsin’s rising GOP tide came from an organized party farm team, strong grassroots work, and a flood of donor money, much of it from folks who saw Tommy Thompson, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Sean Duffy, and others as the glowing future of the GOP.

  Trumpism is stronger here than it looks, even though his numbers have slipped and the GOP paid a heavy price there in 2018. Wisconsin agriculture, from dairy to corn to soy to Christmas trees, has taken a trade-war hit, so get ready to spend a lot of time eating cheese curds. Hillary regrets not doing so in 2016, believe me.

  SPEAKING AMERICAN

  I love words. I love rhetoric. I love the ringing cadences of a fantastic speech by a great orator before a rapt or raucous audience. It was the power of words that elected men from the time of the Greeks, and words still hold power and magic in the human mind. Watching great presidential speeches is my nerd hobby.

  Then there’s Donald Trump, for whom chanting “Lock Her Up” is the MAGA equivalent of Demosthenes. Sure, some days Trump will grunt and stumble his way through a teleprompter speech saying the words that Kellyanne and his speechwriters cut and pasted together at the last minute while praying Mr. Bigbrain Bestwords would, for once, stick to the script. (Spoiler alert: Anything Trump reads from the teleprompter is the lie; the truth is always in the asides.)

  He gave one of those speeches on the Fourth of July in 2019. He will give one of these speeches at the 2020 GOP convention. He will give one of these speeches at his next State of the Union. In this era, these exercises don’t really change minds, or hearts, because this country knows what Trump is. The teleprompter, far from guiding him, reveals his inauthenticity. He staggers and struggles through every line, because he believes in none of it.

  The real Trump is impulsive, crude, ignorant of America’s long traditions and of human decency. The tweets, the throwaway lines, the insult-comic shtick is the real rhetorical legacy of Trump. His fans are ravenous for it. His enemies loathe it. Most Americans think it demeans the nation.

  But it’s the genuine, seedy, shitty Trump. The authenticity of his awfulness is palpable. His lies and hideous nature are the product. In focus groups, even today, people who oppose him and consider him a chronic liar admit that he’s awful, and that awful person is the real Trump. America’s political cynicism is so deep that they still have a grudging respect for the worst president in history because he’s not a contrived politician.

  Democrats need to dig up a slim volume by former Bill Clinton speechwriter David Kusnet called Speaking American, published in 1992. I’ll update it for you here.

  As for the rhetoric of the 2020 campaign, below I’m going to teach you how to lie. This is where I do some of that amoral consultant shit y’all hated when it was directed your way.

  Political rhetoric is about selling people on your ideas, even when the true face of those ideas repels voters. For the major points below, I’m not reflecting my ideological preferences, but the polling, research, and experience on how voters in the targeted swing states behave. Readers should bear in mind that the language, messages, and policies that work for California don’t play in North Carolina or Michigan in the same way.

  Some Democrats will read these and think that it won’t motivate their base voters sufficiently. Your base is already motivated, and they don’t need the nominee to put on a show of performative progressive values to believe he or she will be better than Trump. Since this election is a referendum on Trump in purple and red states, the words that work for the base aren’t the words you need.

  ABORTION

  What Trump will say: “Democrats want abortion on demand, for any reason at any time, all paid for by the taxpayers. Right now, abortion doctors are taking infants from the womb and killing them. Democrats’ support for abortion is support for infanticide.”

  How Democrats should respond: “Abortion is a difficult, personal choice, and it’s a choice we firmly believe should be between a woman and her doctor. We believe states that pass laws giving women no options in the cases of rape, incest, or where the life of the mother is in danger are taking us backward from where even conservative courts have ruled on this question. We’re grateful that late-term abortions are very rare, and usually are performed only to save the life of the mother.” (Grit your teeth; I told you I’m teaching you to lie.)

  GUNS

  What Trump will say: “The Democrats want to end the Second Amendment. They will take all of your guns, and you will be helpless to defend yourself from criminals. They don’t just want to ban assault weapons; they want to ban hunting rifles and all semiautomatic weapons.”

  How Democrats should respond: “After all we’ve lost in mass shootings, we want to make America safer by closing loopholes that put guns in the hands of people who are criminals, terrorists, or mentally unstable. We believe in strengthening the background-check system and in requiring guns to be stored safely so no child can access a firearm. We believe in the Second Amendment.” (Yes, you have to say that.)

  IMMIGRATION

  What Trump will say: “Democrats are for completely open borders. Immigrants bring crime, violence, and disease. Immigrants will get free healthcare from you, the taxpayer. Immigrants are taking away your jobs, and only the Wall will stop it.”

  How Democrats should respond: “President Trump puts children in filthy cages without blankets, adequate food and water, or medical attention. His policies are killing people who want to come to America to seek asylum or legal status. America is a better country than this, and we have always welcomed immigrants to our shores. We believe immigration reform will make our borders more secure, and our nation more prosperous.” (If you can’t nail this one, no one can help you.)

  THE WALL

  What Trump will say: “The 3,000-mile Trump Wall is a wonder of modern engineering and is already mostly completed. The Wall is 400 feet tall, made of solid gold, with laser turrets, robot Dobermans, and a lava moat. It stops approximately 50 million tons of meth per day, as well as the entire population of Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Mexico from crossing the border in their relentless quest to dominate our job markets and park their taco trucks on every corner.”

  What Democrats should say: “The choice isn’t between a wall and the dreaded ‘open borders.’ The choice is how to deploy resources and assets that actually reduce the risk to American families of drug smuggling, human trafficking, and terrorism. We’re not stopping the real threats, because this president is too busy pretending to build a wall that won’t work and that we don’t need.”

  THE ECONOMY

  What Trump will say: “The economy has never been better. I am responsible for all the growth and employment because I deregulated and passed a middle-class tax bill. The stock market is breaking records because of me, and your 401k is doing great.”

  How Democrats should respond: “The tax cut is working great if you’re a billionaire, a hedge-fund manag
er, or a big bank. For average people, their costs keep rising, the trade war is bankrupting farmers across the country, and the promises of new jobs have been nothing but that—empty promises. Donald Trump promised he’d make your life better, but he’s put the donors and lobbyists in Washington first.”

  THE MEDIA

  What Trump will say: “The media is the enemy of the people. They are all lying liars who hate me, hate you, and hate America. Never trust their fake news, because only I tell you the truth.”

  How Democrats should respond: “Mr. President, you took an oath to uphold the Constitution. In case you missed it, in this country we care about freedom of the press, and no amount of whining about fake news will change that.”

  JUDGES

  What Trump will say: “No one has named more conservative, highly qualified judges to the federal bench than I have. Gorsuch. Kavanaugh. You must reelect me because Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Breyer could go at any time, and you can’t afford to have a liberal Supreme Court.” (“I like beer!”)