Friend,
This week, I wrote an op-ed in The New York Times about Trump running his campaign from a courtroom. Even though it sounds bad on paper, I think this is just what he needed. Sure, he’s not touring the country screaming into a microphone, but who needs that when you have 24/7 news coverage?
The king of playing the victim is certainly defending his title from New York. He’s very easily convinced his base, with zero evidence, that this is a “witch hunt” carried out by the “deep state”. Luckily, those aren’t the votes we’re trying to flip.
We’re going after the few voters who haven’t picked their horse for November. I know it sounds crazy, but they’re still out there. And they’re unbelievably important. So let’s go get them. Let’s show them why somebody who can’t pass a background check to be a Walmart greeter shouldn’t be President of the United States. Because when it’s simplified, it’s really an easy choice.
I’ve studied a lot of presidential races, and I can tell you that this one is going to be razor thin. Every last vote is going to count. That’s why we need to keep pushing. Now is not the time for letting up, it’s the time to realize what we’re up against. Donald Trump can win in November, and it’s up to us to stop him.
Let’s make sure that when November rolls around, we finish what we started in 2020 >> <[link removed]>
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-Stuart
My recent op-ed from The New York Times: For the next six weeks, the Republican nominee for President will be spending his days in a New York City courthouse. By any normal campaign standard, taking your candidate off the road for six weeks in April and May of a presidential year would be devastating. But “normal” and Trump live in different countries. The trial will afford Trump the opportunity to define the essence of his candidacy: I am a victim.
The very competent operatives running the Trump campaign didn’t draw this up as their ideal campaign plan, but they will appreciate its potential. The Manhattan courtroom will be the setting for Donald Trump to play the role of a familiar American archetype: the wronged man seeking justice from corrupt, powerful forces. Trump is good in this role, and that’s no small thing.
There is invariably a great deal of attention paid to the when and where of presidential campaign scheduling - how many events in what market. But lost in this is the most important element: putting a candidate in the setting that gives them a chance to excel. In the 2000 Bush campaign, our default event was Governor Bush at a school, preferably one not in a wealthy zip code. Education was his signature issue as governor. He knew a lot about it, cared about it passionately and odds were stacked it would be a successful event. It is not surprising when planes struck the Twin Towers, President Bush was in an elementary school reading to students.
Trump loves big rallies. He feeds off the crowd like a vampire at a blood bank. But his act is getting a little old. Cable news no longer carries them live as if the invariably repetitive events were the landing of aliens on the Washington Mall. The trial gives Trump the benefits of renewed interest from the news media with no burden on the campaign to produce a newsworthy event.
I feel like I have spent half my life in campaign headquarters, staring at a map and a calendar. The map is always too large, and the calendar too short. Time is the one resource allocated to campaigns in exactly the same amounts. But there’s a dirty little secret to presidential campaigns: where you campaign may be of little consequence.
When Joe Biden received more votes than any presidential candidate in history while largely campaigning from his basement, MAGA world saw it as proof the campaign was stolen. But I wasn’t surprised. Struck by how much time and energy was spent in racing to campaign events, I asked a basic question in the 2012 Romney campaign: does it matter? We started polling in markets a few days before and after an event, and the results were consistent. There was a three to four point bump immediately after a big rally but it quickly evaporated. A week after the event, the market had reset to where it was before. It was depressing but not particularly useful information. Any slowing of a campaign's pace would have been perceived as weakness or surrender. Covid gave Biden a chance to opt out without penalty. The New York trial is doing the same for Trump.
The Trump campaign is not about persuasion. It’s about stirring up anger inside every possible Trump supporter so that voting is a righteous act of fury, not a mere civic duty. If you believe the Deep State stole the last election, Trump’s legal persecution is further proof of the State’s desperation to keep Trump from re-assuming his rightful place in the Oval Office. Combine that with a less-than-inspiring Biden coalition, and it’s a blueprint for a Trump electoral college victory.
Relying on turning out an existing base of supporters rather than broadening that base is not new to the Trump campaign. In 2004, we found it difficult to persuade new voters in the Bush campaign. I remember sitting in focus groups and showing ads about women voting in Afghanistan that would bring the room to tears. Followed by, “But you know I’m not voting for the guy.” Out of that reality came the plan known as “fortress precincts.” The focus became increasing the turnout percentage of Bush supporters and how to get a precinct that went 60% for Bush in 2000 to increase to 64%.
It worked, if barely. Had less than the home game crowd at an Ohio State football game changed their votes, Ohio would have made John Kerry the 44th president. What’s different about Trump's approach is that polarization is the key to Trump’s turnout strategy, which creates energy for Trump by enraging non-Trump voters. Everything about the Trump campaign is about driving Americans apart. He opens his rallies with the anthem of those convicted in the January 6th insurrection, not the national anthem. “I am your retribution” is a long way from “I am a uniter, not a divider” or “Hope and Change.”
In this strategic paradigm, indictments and subsequent trials are a gift from the political gods. Trump is a candidate of anger and grievance, which has always had a strange quality for someone who was a millionaire in high school. How can the man with a golden toilet be a victim? White grievance was Trump’s on-ramp to the victim podium in his previous runs. That's still essential to the Trump candidacy, but now he can add the burden of persecution by corrupt (mostly non-white) prosecutors to the cross he carries to that Calvary hill called the White House.
Six weeks is a long run for a 77 year old performer in a one person show with no understudy. The judge has correctly made it clear he will not allow the looming election to impact the proceedings. The energy of the opening days will fade in the long grind of a trial. Trump’s defense is that he was the first person to pay $130,000 to a porn star not to have sex and that absurdity may begin to sink in with the few voters still in play. But we should not normalize how extraordinary it is that Trump is still a viable candidate for president. The Biden campaign will watch the spectacle unfold, asking, “How is this guy still in the race?”
It’s a good question. But he is. And he can win.
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The Lincoln Project - 600 Pennsylvania Ave SE, #15180, Washington, DC 20003, United States
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