Democratic Campaign Strategy

I was going to put this in the Candidate Tracker thread, then thought it might be worthy of its own. If it isn't, mods feel free to merge.

I've been listening to Rick Wilson's latest book, Running Against the Devil. I will also link to an article and video he did with Salon.

His advice is to make the election a referendum on Trump, not policy, and focus on the 15 states most critical in the EC, among other things of course:

Quote:

Let's focus now on the thesis of your book, which is defeating Donald Trump. Let's take everyone through a few of the themes. One is make this election a referendum on Donald Trump. Explain how you do that. First off, every re-election is a referendum on the incumbent. You're asking a simple question, "Do you want this guy, who does these things, for four more years?" When Barack Obama was the incumbent, we had a high hill to climb because most people were pretty content with Barack Obama. In 2004, most people felt pretty safe, relatively speaking, with George W. Bush. That's why they made those election decisions. Bill Clinton, same story. My old boss, George Bush 41, you know what? He did great ending the Cold War. He did great getting Saddam out of Kuwait. On the economy, not so much. And people made a decision, we want a different thing. So all presidential re-elections are a referendum on the incumbent. People have a great opportunity here. You can choose cruelty and corruption or you can choose something else. And something else, it almost doesn't matter what the alternative is, as long as it's not another flavor of evil. If the Democrats don't make it a referendum on Trump, they will try to make it a referendum on policy. And policy in the hands of the Republicans … I helped build this machine. I helped do this a long time. Lord, give me a Democratic policy briefing book because I will make a hundred ads out of it. They will be demagogic. They will be terrifying. They will be lies piled upon lies. But the fundamental thing is that they will scare the crap out of the voters I want to scare the crap out of. When you give a 600-page policy document, like Elizabeth Warren did, on her health care plan, whatever its merits, I will find one of my research nerds, who will go through that book line by line, because I'll never read it. They'll find three or four things so I can go out and say, "Union members, your health care will be taken away from you under Elizabeth Warren's plan." Policy is deadly. Policy is a fallacy.

Quote:

If you're in any community that Donald Trump has demonized or enacted policies that discriminated against, this is very personal. This isn't political. It is a referendum on this guy who's a monster. Last thing, you make a great point to focus on the Electoral College and key swing states. Absolutely. Not national polls. Why is it the key? Stay away from national polls. They are always an illusion. They will always trick you into stupid political behavior. Focus on the key states. As much as progressives hate the Electoral College — and we can argue its flaws all day long — in 2020, the Electoral College is the only game in town. There's not going to be some miracle where it's not the rule book. The winner of the Electoral College is president. Doesn't matter how many popular votes you get. We're talking about maybe 15 states. Realistically, six or seven of those states are going to be competitive, but you want to play a little chess. You can roll up a victory here or there if you offset somewhere else. Those states are the only thing that matters. You've got to be following the polls in those states. And you've got to be rigorous in your approach to polling on this. I mean, look, the polls in '16 were not wrong. On a national level they weren't. They were not wrong, OK, but in the swing states, the Clinton people took their foot off the gas because they were watching the national polls. Donald Trump is an idiot and a moron and just a kook of the first order, but he is surrounded by a bunch of guys like me, who are ride-or-die for him. They don't love him ideologically, but they're stuck. And they're very smart. And they're very determined and they will do anything to win. And they will fight this in the swing states. They're not going to spend a dollar in Mississippi. They know how Mississippi is going to go. In your book, you outline two scenarios for election night in November. The upbeat one and the horrific downtrodden one where many of us are looking at Canada, Mexico, whatever countries to live in. If you're giving one piece of advice to people, regardless of left, right, or center who want Nov. 3 to be a happy night and the defeat of Donald Trump, what's that one piece of advice? Bust your ass in the swing states. That's it. You got to go in the swing states. You've got to spend every dime there. You got to put the boots on the ground there. I don't care if you have one volunteer in California. We know how California is going to vote. Everybody in California wants to support the nominee. Go to Michigan, go to Wisconsin, go to Pennsylvania, go to Ohio, go to Florida, go to North Carolina, go to Arizona. Get to work on the ground. Voter contact still matters more than almost any other thing. A knock on the door, a phone call, a personal outreach on social media. That matters more than almost anything else you can do. And fighting this battle in those swing states is vital.

I find myself agreeing with the referendum part of this. Focus on the swing states would appear to be "No ****", but Clinton did get grief for Wisconsin. Bloomberg has been saying this as well - get to the swing states now, and that's where he's spending all his ad money.

Wilson believes Sanders is a gift for Trump, but that the rest are viable, for the reasons that the Dems in the rural/country areas in said swing states are much more centrist, and that he's central casting for the GOP. "Castro in Vermont" he calls him. This quote is why I thought about putting it in the Tracker thread:

Quote:

So, if it's Joe Biden, a more centrist, you think it's not a problem for turnout for Democrats? I don't think it's a problem for turnout. And here's the thing: Again, if somebody tells you, "I won't turn out versus Donald Trump, because I didn't get who I wanted," **** them. They're not on your team. They're in this for their own narrow interest. This is a country over party thing. And a country over ideological preference thing, or at least it should be in my opinion.

So, asking my fellow ISFers what they think of this. The article and video are pretty long, but worth a look I think.

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/374f33d