I was reading in the NYTimes this morning that world leaders are of the opinion that Trump will be reelected and they are wondering how to prepare for this eventuality. What could possibly lead them to feel this way? Could it be that nothing has stuck against Trump, that he has brushed aside every effort to stop him and the Republican Party that is now his army?
So what to do? One clue comes from the Republicans themselves. When they come at you they don’t fuck around, they come straight at your perceived greatest strength with their entire propaganda machine, their dirty tricks teams, and they are relentless. They do what military strategists call placing their opponent in a kill box and then unload everything they have at you, making it feel like you got caught in a buzz saw. Truth? Doesn’t matter. Credibility? Irrelevant. Craven? The more so the better.
That is not to say that we need to replicate that in all respects. Our strength is in fact all of the things they shun, so we have to not be shy about trading on our strengths or we do their work for them.
But that is not the end of the comparison. This idea of putting it all out there in a coordinated, no holds barred, relentless attack with the goal of utterly destroying them is what our side has not been able to duplicate. Republicans view this as out and out warfare and will stop at nothing to win. That makes them extremely dangerous, even in situations where we should be confident of winning. Nothing is safe when the other side will stop at nothing to win.
And this is patently clear from looking at how Republican cheating has unfolded in the past. It gives them wins they did not earn. It leaves us wondering what the hell just happened, standing there with our mouth hanging open thinking how unfair it all is. Years later we push back against those efforts in court only to look around and discover they have undermined us in a dozen different ways since then, none legal or ethical, and here we go again.
Our challenge is that we are constantly on the defensive while their offense is continually on the field scoring points. It doesn’t matter that they play dirty. Fans love bullies. That isn’t going to stop the pain. The only thing that will stop them is running straight into them and knocking them on their ass. Make them own everything they say. Hold the media accountable for every lie they tell.
And that gets back to the other key point here. You don’t try to pull hit and run plays, or try to argue your way out of a fight, which is our go-to play. That isn’t going to work against a bully with a gang as strong as the Republican Party. How many times have you seen the movie where the hero faces off against a gang and picks the strongest guy and goes straight at him and then asks who’s next? That’s what we need to do here. We need to go straight at Trump’s perceived strength — the economy, because we know that is what he is counting on to win this. Don’t give it to him. Take that from him by putting that argument in a kill box and then dumping everything you have on it. Make that subject toxic for him — “economy, whose economy are you talking about?” That is our argument. After that what does he have? Kim Jong-un? Putin?
People have lost faith in us for many reasons over the years. We are getting our head around the idea that we need to stand for something. We need people to trust us. Now we need to get our head around this idea that these are not normal times and this will not be a normal election. The win goes to the team that wants it the most. It’s that simple.