The road map to beating Donald Trump
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” As a Catholic, how many times I’ve said that when going to confession? And now I say it again while confessing to perhaps the greatest sin of all. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned: I’m praising a book written by a right-wing Republican.”
Democrats are notorious bedwetters. It’s in their genes. Every Democrat I’ve talked to lately has told me they’re worried that Democrats will blow this election and saddle the country with another four miserable years of Donald Trump. He’s tough, they moan. He’s ruthless. He’ll stop at nothing. How can we possibly beat him?
Well, here’s how. It’s spelled out in a rollicking new political playbook called “Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump — and Democrats from Themselves.” But here’s the catch. It’s not written by a dyed-inthe-wool Democrat. It’s written by one of the Republican Party’s (former) top political strategists: a man who beat our butts in several elections, but who’s eager to help Democrats beat Trump’s butt in this one.
Rick Wilson got his start as Florida field director for the George H.W. Bush campaign for president in 1988. Since then he’s helped elect, and made negative ads for, Republican candidates for mayor, governor, Senate, and president. But he refused to follow his fellow Republicans down the dark hole of the Republican Party created in 2016 by Donald Trump.
First in his 2018 bestseller, “Everything Trump Touches Dies,” and now in this book, Wilson makes no bones about his dislike for Trump. And he does so in the most colorful language possible. Most of it, in fact, (like many of Trump’s tweets) too “off-color” to print in this newspaper. But not this quote: “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.” Or simply he’s “the worst president in history.” But, again, how to beat him? Wilson lays out five major rules.
Rule #1. Remember: It’s the Electoral College that counts. It may feel good for the Democratic candidate to get huge crowds in New York or California, but it’s a total waste of time. Focus on the swing states needed to win, instead. By Wilson’s count, the election’s already over in 35 states. It’ll be won or lost in 15 swing states, which Democrats should zero in on: Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia, Arizona, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and New Hampshire.
Rule #2. It’s not about policy papers. This is a hard one for most Democrats, including me, to accept, but he’s right. We’re policy wonks. We get all excited about position papers on everything from carried-over interest to driver-less cars to lowflush toilets. Forget about it. Which is not to say that Democrats should not have good, strong, progressive stands on issues most Americans care about, like health care, climate change, and national security. It’s just a reminder that, in the end, what matters most is how likeable your candidate is. Which gets to Wilson’s main point.
Rule #3. The 2020 election must be, start to finish, nothing more than a REFERENDUM ON DONALD TRUMP. That’s the leitmotif of Wilson’s book: It all boils down to what people think of Trump. As Wilson reminds us: “All re-election campaigns are a referendum on the incumbent. All of them.” So, the mission is clear: “Democrats don’t need to sell the progressive base on opposition to Trump . ... 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.” And again: Democrats “can’t afford to make this election anything other than a brutal referendum on Donald Trump.”
Rule #4. Another difficult one for Democrats: Be willing to hit back hard. Trump will play dirty. So should Democrats. Wilson believes Michelle Obama was wrong to say, “When they go low, we go high.” No, he argues. When he goes low, we go even lower.
Rule #5. Very simply: Don’t wait. Start now. Hit him hard and don’t let up. Wilson concludes with one plea. Reminding Democrats that they have a golden opportunity to get rid of Trump and save the republic, he begs: “Don’t screw this up.”