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

by Rick Wilson

We’ve learned there is no bottom with Trump, no level to which he won’t sink, no excess he won’t embrace.

I didn’t even touch on the corruption of the Justice Department, the long-term impact of the ludicrous debt and deficits, the attacks on the free press, and other further corrosions of American values and virtues that are assured if he is reelected. The 2020 election is the one last chance the American people have to slam on the brakes and turn this country off a path to authoritarian statism, racially motivated nationalism, and ingrained corruption that sullies our history and image forever.

Are you willing to practice raw, pure, amoral politics before ideology?

Democrats looking at national polls are deluding themselves that this race will be easy, or that Trump will go down—or leave the White House—without a battle from hell.

We may hate him for different reasons, but I hope we’re united in the understanding that his defeat is an existential challenge for this republic, and that odd alliances, political compromises, and joint operations are worth the discomfort we may feel as we step back from our ideological priors.

Inevitably, campaigns create strategies that seem brilliant inside the bubble but cannot survive the hard collision with political reality. They view the country as one homogenous entity, not as it is, a patchwork of regions, cultures, and ethnic groups.

Republicans became masters at leveraging Democrats’ insistence on picking candidates based on what policies they like versus what wins.

In 2020—for the sake of the nation—they can’t afford to put ideological indulgences over strategy, or reliance on the witchcraft, folklore, and anecdotal evidence of campaigns over the mathematics, demographics, and operations of a sure-footed, focused election effort. They can’t afford to make this election anything other than a brutal referendum on Donald Trump.

It’s not even close to a national election. It’s an election in about fifteen Electoral College battleground states, and don’t you forget it.

You’re not playing a game of winning the popular vote, and whether you like it or not the game is exclusively about victory in the Electoral College.

You’re fighting an election in ten to fifteen states. Most of them aren’t blue. Some are pretty red and getting redder.

No, you’re not getting rid of the Electoral College in 2020.

The major players in the Democratic primary field—and nearly all of the fringe cases, some of whom are now out of the race—bought into the idea that we should abolish the Electoral College and spent valuable time on the stump in the spring and summer of 2019 talking about it.

Elizabeth Warren, Comrade Bernie, Beto O’Rourke, Julian Castro, and Cory Booker all made dumping the Electoral College a tentpole of their early campaigning (as did, among the early dropouts, Jay Inslee and Kirsten Gillibrand).

Leaving aside the constitutional concerns and political impracticality, this is one of those hothouse flowers of an issue that take on a life of its own in a party seemingly dedicated to stoking its base with promises they can’t keep on issues that won’t move votes. Every iota of energy and focus on an issue so esoteric and specialized is wasted. Not only is the Electoral College not going away in 2020, it likely never will.

All the talk of things that can’t happen in 2020 makes me fear for a Democratic base who believe some deus ex machina maneuver will save them. It won’t. In politics, God helps those who help themselves, and devil take the hindmost.

Donald Trump knows—and so do his little Russian friends—that the Electoral College is the ballgame. You want to change the Electoral College? Go for it some other time.

rest assured: It’s not going to win the 2020 election as an issue, and the rules of the game are not going to change before November 3, 2020.

One thing about Democratic campaigns that is entirely predictable and relentlessly exploited by the GOP is their addiction to policy. They talk about what they want, rather than doing what they should. Without a superstar candidate—and let’s be honest, no one in the 2020 field possesses the natural political gifts of a JFK, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama—they need to focus on a winning strategy that avoids telling Americans what they really want to do. “But policy!” you cry, right until the tidal wave of ads distorting your policy hits.

Many 2020 Democrats, notably Elizabeth Warren, have produced a corpus of policy papers and plans both voluminous and deeply granular. Some of it is serious, smart, and robust work. It’s also worth precisely the paper it’s printed on. A few press nerds read the papers, and then they disappear into the campaign memory hole, except when they’re being weaponized against the candidate. Do you know how many Americans are going to pull the lever for the Democratic nominee because of this or that policy paper on court-packing, reparations, gerrymandering, or late-term abortion? I don’t care how much intern blood, sweat, and tears went into those papers, the answer is: not enough. Even seriously worked-out policies on big issues largely fail to hold public attention. This is, after all, America.

The issues that excite Democratic voters when they watch the debates aren’t top of mind for the average voter, particularly those in the target states.

Hardly any of the boutique issues ever rise above 5 percent. The big-picture stuff—the economy, healthcare, national security—does, but even then, policy as a winning campaign strategy is an illusion.

No matter what consultants, pollsters, and policy geeks tell you, this race is about Trump. Policy distracts, and the Fox-Trump distortions of your policy distract absolutely.

Now,

Ha ha paragraph love

This race has absolutely nothing to do with policy. This race is about Trump and a competing candidate’s personality and presentation, not about soon-forgotten policy papers and the administrivia of running a government. Policy is a luxury good in this election because this race is against a man, not a party, a platform, or an ideology. Democrats are fighting a cult and a cult leader, and until they realize that the referendum against Trump is about Trump, he has the winning hand. Some Democrats think this is about picking someone who motivates their base into towering heights of political passion. They think they need the hottest, purest, wokest strain of AOCisma policies to get their voters fired up. The truth is, the Democratic base will be there with heat like a nuclear fire, no matter what. They’re passionate, motivated, and hungry for a win. To use a technical political term, they fucking hate Donald Trump.

What about healthcare? Gun control? The Electoral College? Climate change? Medicare for All? The Green New Deal? Reparations? Nope. Sorry. It’s all noise at best. Every media consultant working for Trump will merrily take those policies and twist, turn, and recast them as fodder for attack ads. You’ll never understand that once those messages are on the air, post hoc arguments are worse than useless.

There are some policy attacks that work, but they’re about Trump’s actions, and thus part of the referendum on him. Which ones? Here are a few: Show voters how Trump tried to eliminate healthcare coverage for preexisting conditions, highlighting how his corrupt government screws over working families. Educate voters on how the trade war is wrecking their economic future, and how farmers and manufacturing are both being crushed. Call out Trump’s cruelty and brutality toward immigrant children. Call him out as the unrepentant racist he has proven himself to be. Trump has handed Democrats all t...

Why give the GOP weapons in the messaging war to isolate, intimidate, manipulate, and terrify your target voters and motivate Trump’s base? Why allow them to scare the hell out of people with messages like “Democrats will take away your private health insurance,” or “They’re coming to seize all your guns,” or “They want to give free healthcare to criminal illegal aliens”? Don’t think for a moment that Republicans won’t turn your well-meaning policy papers into operatic terror messages to be bellowed out by the Mighty Wurlitzer of the Trump Right media apparatus. They have your number on this, and they’re very, very good at ringing it. I did this to your candidates, over and over, and Trump has a dozen Rick Wilson types with an unlimited budget and zero shame. They understand the Electoral College play, and that the fifteen or so target states are to the right of the coastal blue enclaves on issues like climate change, abortion, guns, taxes, and almost everything else. Why would Democrats give Trump and his allies the sword with which to cut off their heads?

Some Democrats will object that I’m recommending shallow, content-free campaigning. You got me. You’re right. So what? It’s smart and cynical, and if you need to beat a man who practices pure, unadulterated opportunistic politics, you’d better be ready to practice pure, unadulterated opportunistic politics.

May I remind you of death panels, migrant caravans, the war on Christmas, creeping sharia, Hillary’s emails, Seth Rich, the Clinton Body Count, babies being killed after birth, Antifa, and a thousand other weaponized issues and stories Democrats laughed at, saying “How absurd, darling. Is this organic kale slushie gluten-free?” while Republicans ate their political lunch? There’s an organized system for creating these weaponized outrages. I know; I helped build it.

No policy from the Democrats will ever be seen with even an iota of good faith, and everything they commit to a policy paper is like show notes for the latest Muslim Illegal Immigrant Soros Deep State Antifa Hour on Fox.

Until Democrats grapple with the fact that they must make the case against Trump to the few voters who can still be swayed—in other words, not his base or theirs—they’re playing on Trump’s battlefield, and by his rules.

the other side of the political divide. The Trump base may be smaller, but as two and a half years of painful experience demonstrates, Republican unity behind Trump is virtually unshakable. He is the parasite that ate the GOP from the inside out as an ideological force. In 2020, they’ll be utterly united, motivated, and angrier than ever; we’re moving away from red-hat, spittle-flecked, rally crazy and approaching bomb-vest crazy. I wish I was kidding. They are dead-enders, the last guys in the bunker. Fox News, talk radio, the debased clickwhores of the Trumpist conservative commentariat, social media, and those ever-helpful Russians will continue to be all-in with Trump, pouring a constant drip of fear poison into the minds of his base. You’re not going to change many of their minds.

For Democrats, the voters they need are right in front of their eyes: the large and growing cohort of Republican women who broke away from the GOP, and the white, Democratic men who broke for Trump in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida. Democrats who recoil at actually messaging to these old white dudes, writing them off as a lost cause or viewing them as an intractable enemy, are miscategorizing these voters. For many, their choice to go with Trump was diffuse; they voted out of anger and bitterness at a system that shanked them. It was the end-product of a successful thirty-year War on Hillary. After a string of broken promises—Thousands of coal mines! New car plants! So much winning on trade!—many of these voters are in the wind.

As Bill Clinton speechwriter David Kusnet once said, “Speak American.”

Donald Trump’s 2016 “policy” fit on a trucker hat.

Over and over again in elections up and down the political scale, simple, robust messages on heavy rotation triumph over complex policy.

In a Walmart Nation, don’t run on boutique issues.

“Never underestimate the power of dumb.” Language matters. Presentation matters. Charisma matters. Policy? Not so much.

The January 2019 Pew survey asked Democrats if they’d rather their party become more moderate or more liberal. The answer was clear: 53 percent said they wanted a more moderate approach, and 40 percent wanted a more liberal approach.4

victories of the Class of 2018 came from more moderate Democrats. Democrats won by running candidates who—and listen closely because there will be a quiz later—matched the politics and attitudes of the districts.

The 2018 election showed that the Democrats could compete in red and purple areas, particularly suburbs, when they ran more moderate candidates.

They’re Blue Dog Democrats, New Democrats, and just, well, Democrats. Pelosi’s DCCC—for once—didn’t insist on an ideological litmus test.

For the GOP, the culture clash between hard progressives and most of America is a prime opportunity.

Here’s a pointer: Think “Sheboygan, Wisconsin,” not “Cambridge, Massachusetts.”

In the spring of 2019, Obama understood that the huge Democratic field would inevitably become a proxy for the long-running battle between party pragmatists and party purists.

we start sometimes creating what’s called a circular firing squad where you start shooting at your allies because one of them is straying from purity on the issues.

Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, showing a little ideological daylight between yourself and the edge cases in your own party during the general election is helpful and smart politics. As a rule, your base is with you by that point, but you need more than the base to win. Winning politics is about addition, not subtraction. The shrinking, but still sizable, pool of independent and undecided voters is a nontrivial target in the key Electoral College states,

George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign talked a lot more about education and “compassionate conservatism” than people recall today. It was enormously appealing in suburban districts and regions for a reason: It was built in a lab to be just that. The message was “better schools,” not “bomb Iraq

Barack Obama ran and won in 2008 as a technocratic centrist, essentially scanning as a liberal Republican.