It is now six months before the election. Trump is trailing in the polls, covid-19 and his incompetent (if not worse) response to it has tanked his glorious economy, the GOP is behind in the generic ballot by eight points, and the guy he probably most didn’t want to win the Democratic nomination, is now the presumptive nominee. The other day, Trump campaign honcho Brad Parscale tweeted something about “death star” (apparently not knowing what happened to the big planet-killing machines in no less than three different Star Wars movies). Many people assumed he was talking about launching the re-election campaign. And I expect their campaign tactics to be good—whether the Dems have learned from 2016, I do not know, but the GOP excelled at targeting messages to audiences. Leftists were convinced that Hillary was a neoliberal corporate tool; centrists were equally convinced she was a crypto-Marxist. Many minorities went to the ballot box thinking that Hillary was a racist, and many whites were convinced she was a “social justice warrior” who if elected, would be launching all sorts of revenge-pogroms against whitey. Expect this to be repeated.
But don’t be fooled by the timing of this tweet:
- For Trump, the campaign started on Inauguration Day of 2017
- The “traditional” campaign activities—rallies, ads, phone banking, and whatnot—will be important, but this is the GOP we’re talking about, and Trump in particular.
No, it’s ratfucking season. And it’s been going on for a while now.
The Tara Reade thing, which might have originated on the left, but is being eagerly embraced by the Trumpers (both as an attack against Biden himself, and as an attack against the whole #MeToo environment). And it’s not hard to see some of Putin’s fingerprints on this.
Burisma. Trump has already been impeached for trying to ratfuck Biden once. The whole debacle may have taken the Ukraine nonsense off the table, but given that the GOP Senate punted on the matter (not arguing that he was innocent of the charges, but arguing that they didn’t care and it didn’t matter), almost certainly has given Trump the courage to try again.
The whole “FBI was trying to hurt me in 2016” business, which many on the right are insisting is ample justification for the Trump DOJ to openly attack Democrats.
I expect it to get worse before November.
And lest anyone interpret this diary as an attack on our nominee—it’s not. I expect ANYONE who leads the ticket to be facing the onslaught. If it were Bernie, we’d be hearing nonstop about whatever scandals from Sanders’ past they can drag out. (Or fabricate). Likewise with Warren. Likewise with Harris. Likewise with Andrew Cuomo, should he manage to somehow be nominated in a brokered convention. Biden knows what he’s up against, and he should be commended for his courage. This isn’t an ordinary Presidential campaign.
I’m expecting, sometime in the next six months (probably closer to the election), that some Senate committee, or the DOJ, will announce an investigation into Biden. (Or if Biden is replaced as the nominee, whoever else replaces him will be investigated). Heck, they might take it further and try a perp walk.
Trump, and the GOP, are assuming and depending on a “shame gap”—that the Dems, like some cartoon superhero, can be defeated by binding them with their own code of ethics. They’re depending on a frontrunning media that has largely given up on trying to bring down Trump (because their one tool—shame and public scorn—simply doesn’t work on a guy who boasts of being able to grab pussies on Fifth Avenue, or whatever it was) and laughs at anything other than pure naked force; but expect that Dems will cower in the corner like a dog caught pooping on the rug whenever a reporter wags a finger at them, and thus are still available as trophies. Heck—recently GOP operatives were caught trying to fabricate sexual assault allegations against a member of Trump’s own administration (one Dr. Fauci), whose own public reputation and profile has made him as close to untouchable as one can be in Trump’s employ.
And yet—it seems that this is never pointed out.
I generally don’t like criticisms of the sort “Dems are bad at messaging”, as a) usually the maker of such allegations is trying to grind an axe of some sort, and b) a lot of “messaging” is getting people to pay attention to you. We don’t have a friendly media network, always willing and able to recycle the week’s talking points. Pelosi or Schumer or Biden or Bernie or AOC can give the most eloquent speeches possible, and if nobody covers them, it’s as though they didn’t happen.
But one big area of asymmetry: The GOP likes to cheat… and routinely accuses the Democrats of cheating. Dems seem to be afraid to go there, even with the facts in their favor.
But here is some messaging advice:
* “Trump was impeached for fabricating charges against Joe Biden. Caught red-handed, and impeached. Why should we believe something as flimsy as this?” (Applies to Tara Reade, given the current state of evidence in that scandal).
* “Trump is corrupt.” Repeat. Over and over again. Corrupt. “Trump didn’t drain the swamp. He instead filled it with bootlickers and hacks”.
* “Trump will do anything to stay in power”.
* “They lied about Kerry. They lied about Obama. They lie. They lie. They lie”.
We won’t reach the 40% of diehard Trumpers with that—but we will reach those on the fence. And if anything will save our nominee (whether Biden, or someone else) from the giant mound of crap that will be dumped on their head—it’s the belief, among the voters, that it is crap.
After all, this has been the GOP playbook to defend against such allegations—“it’s all a conspiracy”—and it seems to work. We’ll have the advantage, at least, of the truth and a clear conscience.
Remember—close to a good solid majority of the country currently despise the President, and want him out of office. About 40% love him and would embrace him as dictator (even though he would screw them the minute he could get away with it and it would benefit them). His hopes for re-election depend either on a) cheating, or b) dragging the Democratic nominee to his level of unpopularity, or worse, and getting enough swing-state voters to stay home. Or both.
He is scared, but that makes him most dangerous. And the GOP, for better or worse, is now lashed to his mast; if he goes down they go down with them.
It’s up to us to make sure that happens.