Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump--and Democrats from Themselves

by Rick Wilson

You lost because you made the election into a referendum on policy, not a referendum on Trump. You went into a reality-television contest not understanding the rules, and the master of the genre kicked your ass.

This book will piss you off, and you’ll rationalize hating it because you think it’s just some asshole Republican telling you to be more like Republicans. Honestly, I’m not.

Donald Trump is a terrible, horrible, no-good president. He’ll go down in history with asterisks next to his name for endemic corruption, outrageous stupidity, egregious cruelty, and inhumanity, for diminishing the presidency and the nation, and for being a lout with a terrible wig. But he’s trapped, desperate, and will do anything—and I mean anything—to win.

No policy victory is worth the damage he has wrought. No slate of judges can offset the destruction he has done to our institutions and our values. There is no moral accommodation with Trump, no safe path away from his authoritarian statism.

This presidential race is the ultimate referendum on the politics, character, persona, and actions of a man who has proven himself to us in a thousand awful ways. His enablers and ball-washers spend their lives in a state of constant revisionist panic, lunging from “He didn’t say that” to “He didn’t mean that” to googling “How can I enter the witness protection program?” Trump cannot be shamed. He cannot be embarrassed. He cannot be controlled, and he cannot resist his impulses. Turning this election into a referendum on Trump is a gift for Democrats, not a burden. Democrats don’t need to sell the progressive base on opposition to Trump. They don’t need to sell the rank and file. They don’t need to sell African Americans. They don’t need to sell most Hispanics. They do need to make the case that Trump is a mentally and morally unwell man, and that he sold a pack of lies to the voters in the fifteen or so swing states that matter in 2020.

If Democrats can’t tell Americans a tale of how greed, corruption, and self-dealing define Trump’s Washington, they need better writers.

The next four years will make the Trump administration’s first four pale in comparison. The kleptocratic festival of crony

capitalism, lobbyist giveaways, consumer-screwing protections for predatory lenders, environmental rapine, immigration cruelty, and fiscal insanity in his first term was a warmup act. In the second, all the political restraints are off.

Trump, who ran for president to reboot his failing brand and faltering image, has monetized every moment of his occupancy of the Oval Office to sell hotel rooms and golf course memberships. He’ll be looking for the big cash-out in ways no ...

Given the House Democrats’ unwillingness to hammer Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin for ordering the cover-up of Trump’s tax returns and for refusing to comply with black-letter law on this matter, Trump knows the second term is his time to pillage. What’s Congress going to do? Send a strongly worded letter?

For the Trump crime family, the next four years will be a lavish opportunity to extort every last thing they can get out of everyone who comes on their political radar. The “fuck you, pay me” mentality of the Trump enterprise will become even more vivid, and the menu of prices for government services will become more apparent. “You want to invade Kraplakistan? Sure, buy two dozen F-35s, and be sure to throw in Eric’s commission, and we won’t say a word.”

immigrant children are forcibly separated from their parents and placed in cages inside warehouses where they are maltreated and malnourished, America looks on in horror. If you’re looking for a referendum point on Trump with the suburban demo of former Republicans, this is it.

The cliché “This is not who we are” has suddenly taken on more weight, and it’s important to outline for voters how Trump’s cruelty and bigotry damage our national soul. This is a message Democrats can and must use to complete the divorce of women voters from the GOP. If Democrats can’t build an entire suite of messages and ads around this story, I don’t know if anyone can help them.

Trump is vulnerable in the area he perceives as his greatest strength. The trade war is a perfect example of Trumpism and its combination of blistering ignorance and robust cronyism.

To reach the target set of voters Democrats absolutely must win in 2020, the most important countervailing message against Trump is simple: He lied to you. Political lies are perfect weapons for dividing previously loyal voters from the pack, and history is replete with examples. George H. W. Bush went to his grave knowing that, while he’d done the right thing for the government in 1991, the tax increase he supported broke a promise to the GOP base. “Read my lips” was the political lie that the GOP’s rank and file would never forgive. Barack Obama promised “You can keep your doctor” and lost the House of Representatives a year later.

The working class of America hasn’t seen wages rise, nor the

prosperity of Silicon Valley and Wall Street trickle down to their neighborhoods. Trump promised a fundamental change from the way Americans outside the coastal prosperity zones lived, but every promise is a lie,

The cost of housing, college, and healthcare haunts Americans. They can’t pay for retirement. They can’t afford to truly save money. The stock market bubble is a beautiful boat on a toxic ocean.