by Rick Wilson
How Democrats should respond: “We believe in appointing highly qualified judges to the federal bench, judges who will uphold the law, protect the rights of every American, and respect the Constitution.” (Leave Roe v. Wade out of it; the GOP already thinks all you care about is abortion.)
NO COLLUSION
What Trump will say: “I never conspired or colluded with Russia. I did not obstruct justice. It was all a witch hunt, and now we need to punish the real culprits—the deep-state coup leaders who tried to take out a president.”
How Democrats should respond: “Robert Mueller uncovered hundreds of contacts between your campaign and the Russians. The only reason you’re not charged in this case is the Department of Justice guidelines. Two of your former aides are in prison. Donald, the way you behave toward Vladimir Putin is so deferential, and the way you trust him over American intelligence and military officials has people wondering about you. If Putin doesn’t have something on you, it’s hard to tell.”
SOCIALISM
What Trump will say: “Democrats are socialists who want to take away your freedom, your money, and your property.”
What Democrats should say: “Donald, the only one here who wants to pick winners and losers in the economy is you. We want the winner to be the American workers and American businesses. Socialism is your administration paying farmers who lost everything because China beat you in a trade war you started and we didn’t need. Socialism is propping up dead industries and dead companies. Socialism is feeding the elites a massive tax cut that screws workers. If that’s socialism, Mr. President, you’re awfully good at it.”
HOW TO TALK ABOUT IMMIGRATION
We need to spend some extra time on this one.
Immigration is the killer app of Trumpism. For his supporters and true believers, it is a symbol of Trump’s imaginary strength at confronting an imaginary problem. And it is a permission slip for millions of Americans to Make Racial Animus Great Again.
With its sister issue the Wall, Trump’s immigration obsession motivates the rally crowds and a handful of high-profile Trump fellators like Lou Dobbs, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, and others. But the Wall is one of his most meaningful vulnerabilities and needs to draw as much ridicule as Democrats can muster.
Say it with me: There is no wall. There will never be a wall. The border wall is a Trumpian construct, a confection of horseshit and marketing that still tricks the rubes but isn’t changing anything on the border.
Don’t bother arguing the positive economic externalities; a 2017 focus group we conducted showed Trump voters are utterly convinced that all immigration—including legal immigration—should be ended. Not reduced. Ended. It’s a contemptible sign of their commitment to the post-rational Trumpist desire to Make America White Again, but you ought to understand that it’s real and it’s pervasive on the right.
On immigration, your audience includes a broad demographic that, you know, doesn’t like kids in cages. Here is your case:
Under Donald Trump, deportations are down; Barack Obama deported more people than Trump, and had a more serious plan to control the border.
Don’t take his bait. Remind voters that immigration isn’t about MS-13 or drugs or human trafficking. Those are symptoms, and ancillary symptoms at that.
Kids. In. Cages. The deliberate theater of cruelty designed by Trump henchboy Stephen Miller that led to the forced separation of families and detention of immigrant children was one of the most morally and politically damaging episodes in the Trump administration, and it led to measurable drops in Trump’s approval ratings across the board, even from Republicans.
Get back to America’s superhero origin story: As imperfect as our founding may have been, we’ve staggered and stumbled our way into being the most diverse nation on earth, a landing ground for men and women from every point on the planet. Be proud of immigrants, and tell their stories.
Speak American. The stifling language of campaigns too often seems designed to avoid appealing to Americans’ emotions, to feeding that appetite for inspiration that abides even today. Too much campaign talk comes across as contrived, crafted, a lifeless litany of barely there ideas. It doesn’t have to be the lowest-common-denominator war grunts of a Trump rally, but it does have to be vernacular, colloquial, and relatable.
Don’t build a watch; tell voters the time.
Don’t describe policy; tell stories of how you’ll be better for them, their kids, and the nation.
Don’t stay locked in a doom-and-gloom, we’re-all-gonna-die message; Americans are a relentlessly, passionately optimistic people who show resilience and determination. Be a happy warrior, not a doomsayer. “We’re all gonna die” is a Trumpian, negative frame that you can, and must, reject.
Speaking American isn’t tricky. It isn’t secret. It isn’t an act. It’s a recognition that leaving the confines of Washington and New York shows you a world where voters curse, fart, spit, love their dogs and their kids, play sports, drink beer, talk shit, recycle, pray, work, sing bad karaoke, and worry about the future but push on every day. It’s a social-media cliché that authenticity sells, but it’s not wrong.
They hate politics, but they love leadership. They hate partisanship, but they love passion. They’re flawed and frail and uncertain much of the time, but they still imagine a bigger, better life. Tell them you’re listening. Tell them they matter. For once, tell them it’s not about you, or the party, or some book of policy proposals but about them.
2020 Debate Fact Check no. 2
During the first of three presidential debates last night at Bryn Mawr College, President Donald Trump made the following claim:
“The trade war is amazing. It’s been so easy to win. China is paying us over a bazillion quatloos per minute because they love me. Because of the trade war, we’ve been able to force Naboo to give us many, many concessions because I am the world’s greatest negotiator.”
FACT CHECK
The trade war initiated by President Donald Trump with China and other nations has not, in fact, been easy to win. American industries from agriculture to manufacturing to raw materials have lost markets in China and elsewhere. Bankruptcies are rising across the Midwest, and the federal government has spent billions in farm support payments in a desperate attempt to stave off financial disaster.
“Bazillion” is not an actual number. “Quatloos” are a fictional currency from the 1960s television series Star Trek.
No evidence exists that anyone, anywhere loves Donald Trump.
Naboo is a fictional planet first mentioned in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
We can find no evidence of concessions to President Trump, or evidence to back his claims of being the “world’s greatest negotiator.”
THE FIRST RULE OF TRUMP FIGHT CLUB
When you start attacking, never, ever stop. Ever. Not for an hour, not for a moment. This is a lesson in military history that Democrats would do well to study. Any time you pause to let an enemy rest, replenish, or regroup, you’ve lost the vital momentum of the battle. Once you attack, you must press on. Once you break the seal, there’s no going back. Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the tweets of war.
This is particularly true with Trump.
Trump fills the political ether with a constant background radiation of tweeting, shit-talking, madness, and lies, using it to corrode both his political and his media opponents. He knows that the media and political ecosystem is trained and primed for one shitstorm to devolve into another shitstorm at his hands, feeding the ravenous but shallow attention economy with wave after wave of tweets and clicks.
Every Republican who faced Trump in 2016 failed to learn this lesson.
Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, and a dozen others weren’t temperamentally able to swing and keep swinging. Decency held them back. Their willingness to observe boundaries and norms kept them from l
anding the deepest cuts. Trump knew from the start that the opponents he faced in 2016 were unable to sink as far and as fast as he could.
This fight won’t be pretty. It won’t be easy. It will make you feel bad. It will make you wonder if it’s all worth it. Your friends and family will tell you that America really wants you to be nice. That they’re looking for normal. That you can set an example.
Have they been in a coma? If you believe that, even for a moment, you’re toast. Donald Trump secretly loves the decency of normal people because he knows it to be a weakness. Every woman he ever sexually harassed or assaulted, every business partner he screwed, every contractor he stiffed got to know Trump’s style of predation and mistreatment: He finds a weakness and bullies and intimidates you into silence at best or obedience often, and at worst forces you to become an accessory to his continued bad behavior.
Trump is a man without a single ethical scruple. He is without compunction when it comes to breaking the letter of the law. Hell, he’ll crack the spirit of the law just for fun.
Democrats must not be shocked by the depths to which he and his campaign will sink. Your father will become the latest Rafael Cruz, noted assassin of John F. Kennedy. Your husband or wife will become a figure of ridicule for his or her looks and weight. He will attack your children. Your successes will be portrayed as abject failures, your pinnacle moments as mere nothings. Ever had a medical issue you’d rather not discuss in public? How about your spouse? Your kids? They’ll use it. For Democratic candidates who have had an extramarital affair, you’d better have the come-to-Jesus talk with your spouse and your staff, because they will find it, they will use it, and Trump will have no shame or self-awareness about how hypocritical he looks attacking you on it.
Mentally prepare your family for this, because it’s coming. It will be amplified by a social-media machine that is vicious, relentless, and overwhelming.
I’d leave Barron out of it, but the minute Trump goes at your kids, everything is fair game. He talks shit about your spouse, you hammer the soft-porn mail-order bride currently serving as First Lady. He hits your kids? Fredo, Big Gums, and Fascist Barbie are fair game. Trump voters will be angry, but no candidate ever laid a glove on his family even as he went after theirs in the 2016 race. Decency is your enemy.
Ted Cruz did everything but cut his own balls off on television when he endorsed Trump after what Donald said about his father and wife. If I’d been in Ted’s shoes and heard Trump go after my family like that, I would have walked across the debate stage and left that punk bitch eating through a straw for six months.
Maybe fisticuffs are out, but you must hit back, in Trump’s own words, twice as hard. You will gain nothing with the American voter by letting Trump make you into the latest doormat for his shit behavior. The Democratic base will be judging you not on policy, but on your ability to take on Trump. If you’re strong, you win. If you’re weak, he wins. Zero sum.
Michelle Obama is wrong when it comes to fighting Donald Trump. “When they go low, we go high” is easy for a popular, talented, charismatic First Couple to say. No. When they go low, you bring out the goddamn flamethrower. You show real passion, real heat, and let people see you’re not taking one fucking iota more of his bullshit…and that no one else should either.
I know you will still hesitate. You will still wonder if you can win this with love and not combat. You can’t. I wish we lived in a perfect world where all this would be settled by a scholarly discourse, but this is a chain fight in a biker bar in Frogsass, Alabama.
You cannot shame him. You cannot correct him. You cannot hope he will reflect on his actions and words. He is the Douchebag Terminator, a bullying, demeaning thug until you raise the pain level. His audience thrives on seeing him attack with impunity, like the hangers-on around every bully in history.
His insults are projection, and you can and must use that. In fact, you need to get ahead of that with constant, personal, targeted attacks on the three softest points in Trump’s psyche.
First, he’s not rich. He’s poor. He’s—to use the famous words of my hedge-fund friend—“a clown, living on credit.” The billionaire image was a powerful marker for 2016 voters, but the pettiness and greed of his campaign to monetize his presidency is a great vector for attacks. Remind him that eventually we’ll know everything about the serial business failures in his hidden tax returns. The truth about his finances won’t move many in his base, but taunting him on it is known to make him lose his mind in spasms of tweeted defensiveness.
Second, his self-image is that he’s handsome, sexy, and athletic. (Try not to laugh.) Trump’s obvious obesity, sloth, and indolent lifestyle are hanging off him in rolls. Call it out. Tell him he’s not physically well enough to hold the office. Hit him hard on his creeping dementia: “Donald, you’ve lost a step. It’s sad and I’m sure your family is concerned. I know you don’t have a real doctor, but we’re worried about you.” One wag suggested to me that the Democratic nominee should insist on a weigh-in before the debates. I’ll max out to the Democrat who takes a scale onstage and dares Donald to step onto it. “What’s the matter, Donald? Is the IRS auditing that big ol’ belly?”
This is a dogfight, and unless America sees “some fight in the dog,” as we say down south, Donald Trump will walk all over you. When you start hitting, don’t let up.
2020 Debate Fact Check no. 3
During the first of three presidential debates last night at Bryn Mawr College, President Donald Trump made the following claim:
“The Wall is now completed. It is 3,000 miles long and covered in gold leaf. Very classy. The moat is very deep—some people say the best and deepest moat ever—and is filled with robot alligators. We’re stopping caravans every day filled with hundreds of thousands of MS-13 terrorists who want to force gay marriage and socialism on America.”
FACT CHECK
No new sections of wall have been completed. Approximately 50 miles of fencing has been repaired as of this time.
The U.S.-Mexico border is approximately 1,400 miles, not 3,000.
No moat exists in relation to U.S. border control measures. Medievalists tell us the average moat was less than 16 feet deep, but it is difficult to judge claims about a nonexistent moat.
Robot alligators do not exist, nor could we find any mention of their acquisition and purchase in the Federal Register.
So-called migrant caravans have been infrequent, occurring at most a few times a year. There is no evidence of “daily” caravan interceptions.
MS-13 members are estimated to number a few thousand worldwide, according to the FBI and internal law enforcement agencies.
There is no evidence of the ideological preferences of MS-13. No reference to either gay marriage or socialism could be found on their website.
START EARLY
Ronald Reagan won the election of 1984 in the fall of 1983.
George H. W. Bush lost the 1992 election in the spring of 1991.
Bill Clinton won the 1996 election in the spring of 1995.
George W. Bush won the 2004 election in the spring of 2003.
Barack Obama won the 2012 election in the spring of 2011.
The short and sweet explanations of each of those incumbent reelection campaigns come down to a strategic decision to start framing the race early, and clearly, using the awesome power of the White House to drive the news and shape the political battlefield.
Reagan announced his reelection campaign in January 1984, but the groundwork to organize the effort had been undertaken in mid-1983. In those simpler times when propriety was still a thing, the president stayed above politics until the last possible minute. Reagan, ever mindful of staging, imagery, and the chance to use the White House’s awesome powers for just that, let his advisors set up the apparatus early and framed the race as a simple referendum: prosperity at home and strength abroad.
R
eagan’s “Morning in America” campaign was messaging against the Democratic field generically, not specifically. It didn’t matter if they pulled Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, or Jesse Jackson in the general; it mattered that their ads, speeches, and surrogates were all-in on economic optimism and national security as the core messages, and early. Mondale’s cataclysmic, terrible campaign lost forty-nine states in part because Reagan’s team planned ahead.
In 1991, George H. W. Bush was in the catbird seat politically, with the highest approval ratings in presidential history, a successful war under his belt, and an economy that, if not booming, was still coasting along. The campaign, in the hands of Mary Matalin, never quite gelled, and was imbued with 41’s sense that it was a little undignified for the White House to be put to work too strenuously in the election effort. Even when Patrick Buchanan, the paleoconservative firebrand who, as it now seems clear, set a path that would lead to Trumpism, entered the race, Bush’s campaign was still slow to move, slow to respond, and slow to hit back. Late starts are fatal.
Bill Clinton, for all his personal weaknesses, was one of the greatest political card players in American history. He was and is a voracious consumer of polling data, a data nerd, and a man willing to follow the numbers where they led. In the spring of 1995, with a tenuous grasp on his power at the end of his first term, he followed the numbers to a political messaging strategy that gave him a marked advantage.
Clinton and his campaign manager, Dick Morris, read the surveys and got out of the gate early with the famed triangulation strategy. Triangulation has fallen out of fashion in our current political climate, but Clinton’s center-right posture on crime, drugs, and deficits and center-left posture on abortion, healthcare, and education left Bob Dole with little room to maneuver.
