Posted on 03/18/2020 5:04:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
With nearly every sporting event canceled during the COVID19 outbreak, I went back to one of my favorite pastimes: reading. One of the books I read was: Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House.
Former Chairwoman of the Democrat National Committee Donna Brazile candidly gives readers a close-up view of how Hilary Clinton and her campaign team were active participants in their demise. This book should serve as a blueprint to the re-elect Donald Trump 2020 campaign and the Republican National Committee. Better to learn from other’s mistakes than making the same ones. It should be mandatory reading for every top-level campaign staffer down to the 50 state party chairs. What happened to Clinton was not an anomaly, it infects every campaign, and if it is not managed effectively, it can turn what should be certain victory into a crushing defeat. Arrogance and complacency were fatal here.
Brazile’s work serves as a reminder that no election win is guaranteed. One of the first lessons learned was to avoid the curse of inevitability. Everybody in the Clinton campaign had an attitude that she was destined to be president of the United States. The problem is that someone forgot to notify black voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, states Clinton and her staff ignored. I currently sense this attitude from some Trump supporters who believe it is impossible Joe Biden can win in November. They claim Biden is too old and losing it mentally. They say if Trump runs on the economy, he’s a shoo-in. I guess they weren’t expecting that COVID19 would wipe out three years of economic gains in a week. Also, the chatter of Trump getting 20 to 30% of the black vote in 2020 based on a survey is complacency. The black vote for Trump has to be cultivated at ground level, not from a survey-taker.
Brazile’s book also reminds us that because people say they support the job you are doing does not automatically transfer into them voting for you. The Clinton camp had that arrogant attitude too. They thought that there was no way a businessman from Queens with no political experience could beat Hilary, who former President Obama called the smartest and most qualified candidate who had ever run for president. Really?
Another issue that plagued the Clinton camp was ignoring what Brazile called the storm clouds on the horizon. People at the top-level of a campaign rarely go below deck to get a different perspective. People below deck are oftentimes blown off as not important enough because they don’t have a fancy title or a spacious office with a big desk and great view. They couldn’t possibly know anything. However, below deck are the state party chairmen and chairwomen, the volunteers, and the base voters. Their perspective can inform the top that there is an iceberg up ahead and that the ship is headed right for it unless they correct course.
Even though Brazile was high up on the food chain, she was pushed aside by millennial snotty-nosed staffers who had no real campaign experiences. Brazile, with her 40 years of campaign experience at the presidential level, had a gut feeling that the operation was not hitting on all cylinders. There was a lack of urgency and enthusiasm. She heard complaints from volunteers, from people who didn’t have a fancy enough title and from state party people who told her that the top of the campaign was disconnected from the rest of them. Not much of the nearly billion dollars that Clinton raised was filtering down. Even yard signs, brochures, and local office spaces were hard to come by. The top brass arrogantly told her that yard signs do not win campaigns. Brazile reminded them that they show the enthusiasm and energy among the base voters and that it could be contagious. She reminded them that in the black community, brochures and radio ads are how they get engaged and enthused. She said it was essential to get out and meet new people to register. However, Hilary stuck to appearing at fundraisers with wealthy donors because she believed she was destined.
The “smart” people thought they could win the election solely on data and analytics. A ground game was old school, and no longer relevant Brazile was told. I also hear about data and analytics from the Trump campaign. Let me remind them that data and analytics do not win elections; they are a tool, a force multiplier.
The other disease that plagued Clinton’s campaign was an over-reliance on consultants, who are nothing more than a snake-oil salesman. Consultants do little more than bleed campaigns of cash while adding little in return. Most do not know how elections are run, most have never worked in a campaign or have been a candidate, but the belief is that if you don’t have consultants on staff, you’re not a viable campaign. In fact, the opposite is true. The money not spent on consultants can be better spent at the state Party local level where, unlike consultants, the people know how to get out the vote. In the end, everything done in a campaign has to contribute to increasing voter turnout. If it doesn’t, get rid of it.
Finally, Brazile talked about not forgetting the people who got you there in the first place. Trump’s campaign cannot dismiss most of the people who in 2016 helped him win. Clinton got rid of most of Obama’s campaign staff. Yeah, the guy who came out of nowhere and beat the “smartest” woman ever to run for president. So, during the unpredictable COVID-19 flu outbreak, we should also stay focused on the 2020 election.
And the businesses will have assets that they will sell off to settle their debts, and store fronts and factory floors will lie vacant, and new entrepreneurs will arise, and start new businesses, using the sold-off assets they purchased cheap, and negotiating terms for the stores and factory floors favorable to them, because the landlords, whether the original or the receivers, don’t want their real estate to sit around generating no income. And they’ll get financing from the banks and speculators that have capital to invest. This is the natural cycle of things, as surely as autumns leaves litter the forest floor and turn into mulch and eventually dirt to nourish new growth. It’s happened before, and it’ll happen again.
And as far as Trump’s reelection prospects go, I wouldn’t worry. So long as he is actively engaged in mitigating the damage caused by this epidemic, and helping the country cope with all means at his disposal, he’s a shoe-in. Not least because one of the two grumpy old men is going to be his opposition. Which one? At this point, what difference does it make.
Or it could be Tulsi. Trump doesn’t have cleavage and is not a combat veteran, but so long as he doesn’t make a grab for the former, or make a nasty crack about the latter, he’ll be more than a match for her, because she really doesn’t have the intellectual prowess necessary to beat him. Her main agenda, stopping endless wars, actually dovetails with what he’s doing.
But the main thing is, he’s got to be out, proactively trying to right the ship of state. Nixon did something similar in 1969, and he did some really asinine things, such as imposing price controls and implementing affirmative action in civil service, but the public loved it, and he won reelection in a landslide in ‘72 against a pathetic pinko. That’s when things went sideways.
So the thing for him to do is be very hands-on and on top of things, listen to healthcare experts and follow their advice, and “by his fruits shall ye know him.” And also campaign like a mother-f@#$er as soon as the pandemic ends.
40 years of corrupt, soulless race-baiting and dirty tricks. She's a cancer on the body politic and ousting people like her was a principle motivating factor in the rise of an outsider like Trump.
Thanks for summarizing her book, sure beats buying it and putting money in her pocket.
Don’t tell me you had thought about buying her book?
No matter how bad this pandemic gets, I don't see anybody looking at the challenges we'll face as we emerge from it and decide that an utter moron like Biden is the man to right the ship. He's added dementia to his stupidity and corruption - he's a mess on every level.
Biden's Gettysdog Burger You Know the Thing the Lady Address
So will I, and those that won’t are traitors
No, never. But it’s nice to know what she had to say about the collapse of Hillary. Donna dindu nothin.
I also had my doubts about him when he first ran, but at the end I voted for him, and will do so again on November 3rd.
It takes a few months to open a brand new restaurant and hire workers. Meanwhile you are hiring workers to do the renovations. The recovery will start right away, after the panic is over.
Yeah, she’s corrupt, dishonest, could take Machiavelli back to school. So’s Dick Morris. But they both have insights that can be valuable.
But don’t ever buy their books. Buy second hand. In NYC, when I was there, there was a fellow on the corner of Fulton and Broadway I knew as “Frenchy” who operated a stand of used books that was second to none. These dealers are all over the place, and if you get to be a regular, and are patient, you’ll never have to buy an evil left-wing f@#$’s book at cover price again.
You forgot 1 million or more in liquid capital AND the will to risk all of it.
If this continues much longer we are NOT going to bounce right back in a few months.
The Corporate media will edit every word that comes out of his mouth. You can do amazing things with the right software.
Biden won’t be doing any live appearances now that he’s got the Corona virus at his back. He’ll be too worried about the safety of the ‘folks.’
It will be just like Obama—a media projection of all the wants of his peeps, a benevolent grand-dad smiling down on the masses. Like Roosevelt, like Santa Clause.
At least that seems the smart way to play it, and those people are evil, not stupid.
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