How Not to Run Against Vice President Harris
A Former Democratic Political Consultant Offers Urgent Free Advice
All Hell is breaking loose.
The Dow Jones tanked 1000 points, by 2.15 %, and the Japanese stock market is down by 12%. Markets globally are shuddering. The Southern border is open - this is after Vice President Harris went to the nations South of the border to get at the “root causes” of illegal immigration - and 18-30 million people of fighting and reproductive ages, who have had no vetting at all, including hundreds of whom have proven ties to terrorist groups or nations, have poured into the US. American men and women, struggling to pay out-of-control grocery and gas prices, are beginning to understand that these “newcomers” receive free luxury housing, free transportation, free food, and in some cases, room service.
Crime is rampant in cities. Concerns about crime have grown by double digits under the Biden administration, according to the Pew Center for Research: “A growing share of Americans say reducing crime should be a top priority for the president and Congress to address this year. Around six-in-ten U.S. adults (58%) hold that view today, up from 47% at the beginning of Joe Biden’s presidency in 2021.”
Homelessness haunts our nation’s alleys and parks.
We were humiliated by the Biden Administration in withdrawing from Afghanistan, in a way that traumatized many veterans, and now we are humiliated with the politically-motivated reaching of a plea deal with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Mohammed.
In the past three and a half weeks, President Biden has been exposed as being severely demented. (My interview with Dr Kelly Victory revealed that he is likely to have had Parkinson’s since early 2020, which means that Vice President Harris has been committing treason for years by covering up his condition). The Secret Service was revealed as being either hapless or wicked to the point that a President was almost assassinated; no one at the top of our nation’s leadership showed up to welcome Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu; and VP Harris did not seem to know what to say when she was confronted by press, while the Principal wandered off to board an empty plane.
This all, played normally — even the former President’s surviving a would-be deadly attack — would all be greatly beneficial to the Trump campaign and to the RFK Jr campaign.
Every single one of these issues and moments is a gift, indeed, to the two opposition campaigns.
When President Biden stepped aside from campaigning, the RNC should have seen a straight shot to victory. Just a little discipline and a little focus, and President Trump would be re-elected in a landslide too big to allow for the margin of certain cheating. RFK Jr would do well enough to join forces with him in a major cabinet role, and then be well-positioned to be President in 2028.
And yet — and yet. In just the two weeks since this huge opportunity to defeat a lethal globalist regime opened up, President Trump and the RNC seem determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
I am supposed to be nonpartisan, because my company DailyClout, which empowers citizens with access to legislation, is nonpartisan.
However it is so clear that enemies of our country have seized control of Biden/Harris administration, that I feel I need to speak up to help any candidate, President Trump and/or RFK Jr, who can unseat these traitors.
To that end, here are some Clif notes from a former Democratic political consultant to two Presidential campaigns, one of which succeeded and one of which won the popular vote, about How Not to Run Against Vice President Harris.
1/ Know the electoral math. Every single Presidential campaign in modern history has to factor the same math equation in order to attain victory. This math also has some profound philosophical implications. The math — for Left or Right, it does not matter - is:
NO ONE CAN WIN BY APPEALING TO JUST THE BASE.
I cannot say this enough. No matter how effective left or right are at turning out their shock troops — the grassroots true believers on either political extreme — no one can win by appealing just to the base. There are simply not enough of these true-believer voters in the key swing states that ultimately matter. (A swing state is a state that can go either way).
You can have millions of passionate MAGA voters activated and turning out to vote in Alabama and South Dakota and ultimately it won’t matter in attaining victory for President Trump. The same is true of activating the base in just New York or California for VP Harris.
The way our electoral map is set up, any candidate needs the swing voters in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia, the current swing states. So the US Presidential election always comes down to pathetically few swing votes — like, thousands or, sometimes, even hundreds —- in those swing states. In five to seven states, the margin of victory is agonizingly narrow and Trump’s (and Harris’) only route to victory is to swing undecided voters in those states, his or her way. Swing voters tend to be moderate.
What does this mean?
To me, this fact creates a beautiful requirement. This math requires a successful Presidential candidate to speak not just to people who agree with him or her, but also to use compassion and insight and imagination to speak to all of America, about the issues that unite most Americans and that are of concern to most Americans.
Now, given human nature, it is very difficult to achieve this — that is, to give up feeling the ego-gratification of speaking into an approving echo chamber, and rather to choose to use language and identify policies that really unite, really reach out and appeal, to those who do not agree with one about everything.
When I advised Democrats, I was always warning them — as they have the same human temptation to speak to a cheering echo chamber — about how important it was to respect the fact that, for example, not everyone whose vote Democrats needed, supported abortion rights as they themselves did. I would warn Democratic candidates about the tunnel vision that led them to assume that everyone saw identity politics or welfare or the environment or feminism and gender roles, or religion or guns or the military, the way that they did.
When President Clinton spoke to liberals in liberals-only tones, he lost support. But when he had conservative-leaning advisors, such as Dick Morris, he was able to speak in a more universal voice about issues that united people across the political spectrum. He focussed on the economy, and dramatically slashed welfare entitlements; he signed a “welfare-to-work” bill. That gesture sent an effective message: this was not a lockstep liberal pandering only to the base.
Both President Ronald Reagan before him, and President George Bush Jr after, also perfected this dance step. And this quality in their platforms and rhetoric was crucial to the victories of both men.
President Reagan had brilliant speechwriter Peggy Noonan. In her soaring words in President Reagan’s speeches, you will never find an “us versus them” dichotomy, or see evidence of a narrow conservative tunnel vision, or of any pandering to the base. Noonan had the gift of speaking to all of America as if it was one community - which indeed we are at our best — and of appealing to the most inclusive, aspirational instincts in our common American nature.
Because of this unifying, aspirational language in President Reagan’s speeches, you also won’t find gay-baiting, intrusive attacks on opponents’ private lives, personal slurs, nasty jokes, or racial pandering.
Ronald Reagan’s willingness to speak across party lines dates back at least to his speech at the Republican National Convention in 1964, one which launched him as a candidate himself. This is from that famous speech, “A Time for Choosing.”
“I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines. Now, one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has been used, "We've never had it so good."
But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn't something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector's share, and yet our government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in. We haven't balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We've raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the world. We have 15 billion dollars in gold in our treasury; we don't own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are 27.3 billion dollars. And we've just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.
As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it's been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.
Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.
And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man.
This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”
George Bush Jr also had a talented muse helping him in his messaging. This was Karen Hughes, Director of Communications and Counselor to the President. She crafted not only Bush Jr’s message but also many of his policies, such that message and platform seamlessly aligned. She is the most under-recognized political and message genius in modern American history — I hope someday I can tell her this myself — and I can say from personal experience, having served on the opposing, Gore 2000, team, that, due mostly to her talents, it was very difficult and finally impossible to beat her.
The reason it was difficult is that she was herself the voter that both sides need in order to win — a moderate suburban white woman; socially inclusive and fiscally conservative. So George Bush Jr was saved by Karen Hughes from falling into the enduring stereotype of the rich callous kind-of-sexist kind-of-racist older-white-man-narcissist that had bedeviled Conservative male politicians, up to that point. In Karen Hughes’ speeches for Pres Bush Jr, you also find — as you did in Noonan’s for Reagan — unifying language, uplifting storytelling, moderate positions; and you will not find gay-bashing, personal attacks on the opposition, intrusive scrutiny of people’s private lives, or race-baiting. Hughes likely coined the excellent phrase to deal with the eternal conflict over abortion rights, which interestingly I can no longer find online — that was something like, “Good people disagree” on the issue. The shining middle was her middle name.
Here is Karen Hughes in 2015, in an op ed, speaking in her own voice:
“I am deeply concerned about the anger and intolerance in our politics and the lack of respect for different points of view. This is taking place not only between the left and the right, and Republicans and Democrats, but among members of my own party.
I saw this divisiveness recently in my state of Texas when Rep. Joe Straus ran for re-election as state House speaker. Straus, whom I work with as an adviser, is a lifelong Republican who served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Yet this election season, he suffered vicious attacks from a handful of political activists who questioned his conservative credentials. In a particularly offensive reference to his Jewish faith, some critics suggested that he did not have “Christian values.” The overwhelming majority of his fellow Republicans in the House supported him, but were harassed and threatened with political retribution. Since when did intolerance become a Christian value?
Straus did not respond to his misguided critics with similar vitriol but called for greater civility in politics. “Division, threats of retribution, attacks on people’s religious beliefs and distortions of people’s records have no place in this House,” he said, to a standing ovation from his colleagues, after being reelected 132 to 15.
I am a vocal Republican who feels strongly about my conservative principles. But that doesn’t mean I can’t listen to another point of view or give credit when it is due, even to a political leader with whom I largely disagree.”
Listen to Karen Hughes. Listen to Peggy Noonan. George Bush Jr and Ronald Reagan did.
You can only win by appealing past the issues on which your base agrees, and reaching out to champion issues and use language that will unite everyone.
2/ Don’t slur millions of voters.
In just two weeks, the Trump/Vance team has managed to offend millions of potential swing voters, by not engaging in “message discipline” — that demanding form of service to the country in which you don’t just blurt out whatever is on your mind, but you actually stay rigorously within the parameters of saying what you actually should say. People on social media are haranguing me for insisting on the importance of “message discipline” but I will not stop using my own voice to remind the opposition candidates how urgently important it is. It is not self-censorship to be “on message.” It shows maturity, self-control and even self-sacrifice. It is a form of putting the ego aside in service to the community, even to the nation.
I raise all of this because when President Trump attacks VP Harris for identifying as Jamaican as well as as Indian, as he did in speaking with the National Association of Black Journalists, he is taking a swipe that may play well with his base, but that also may well horrify the 33.8 million multiracial voters in the United States. (It took me aback, as the wife of a man who has one grandfather from Africa and another from Ireland).
And why? Why? There was no good reason.
When J D Vance attacks “childless cat ladies”, that may play well with his base, but it will appall the 43.5 million single women in the United States — a demographic growing over time, and exactly the demographic that Trump and Vance require, in order to win. By dismissing “childless” women, cats or no cats, Vance was insulting a majority of American women younger that 30 — and a third of women 30-34, one in 5 women 35-39, and so on. Millions and millions and millions of women. Who vote.
When conservative commentators dug in, trying to help Vance by talking about how having kids changed your perspective, which is no doubt true, they were ignoring the fact that childlessness is growing and that one in 6 Americans over 55, or 15.2 million, has no kids. Instead of simply dropping it and pivoting — a move that in media training is called “hit, bridge, sparkle” — Vance is compounding and compounding the mistake by talking about it. Two weeks in! His wife is talking about it. On NPR! I can promise you, if you even mention “childless cat ladies” to NPR — that will be the headline — as it is.
The phrase, of course - because the DNC is on their game — spawned countless t-shirts, refrigerator magnets, stickers and memes, instantly creating a hip, defiant community out of a prized voting demographic:
So — JD Vance, Mrs Vance — NO! Don’t fall into the trap! For God’s sake drop it — say, “I don’t always express myself perfectly. What’s really important is to leave the country we knew intact for all the children — “ and then move on. To: Economy. Crime. Border. Unity. These questions are just set as traps in order to generate that bad headline, and Republicans, for reasons that mystify me, step into them again and again and again.
These missteps went on and on. J D Vance said, at a Michigan rally: ‘"Kamala Harris said something to the effect that I have no loyalty to this country,"[…].
"Well, I don't know, Kamala. I served in the United States Marine Corps and built a business. What the hell have you done other than collect the check?" Mr Vance added.’
No, and no. By addressing the first female and biracial Vice President of the country as “Kamala”, J D Vance is already showing tremendous disrespect. You don’t have to like the woman to respect the office, and this first-name-basis-dismissal feels insulting to any woman or person of color who has ever been talked down to by a white man. (The obliviousness of the Trump-Vance team about the nuances related to being white men in a multiracial, two-gender world — that is, how to not offend heedlessly — is pretty stunning at times). Imagine VP Harris addressing JD Vance as “Well, I don’t know, JD.” It would be breathtakingly insulting.
By asking a woman of color, “What have you ever done but collect a check”? Vance invokes welfare-queen stereotypes — intentionally or not (but consultants are there to save candidates from unintended horrors). By asking a government employee “What have you ever done but collect a check?” he also may insult the 2.9 million voters employed by the Federal government and the 19.23 million employees of local governments; these include cops, firefighters, teachers in public schools, many nurses, all of our military and so on. He may not like what VP Harris has done in office; but to suggest that the former Attorney General of California, and then the first woman Vice President, has done nothing, just evokes every male boss who ignored every woman’s achievements and then sent her out to get coffee. Better to attack VP Harris — by title — on her achievements: an open border; a crashing economy; war overseas; skyrocketing crime; and the criminal coverup of a demented President.
3/ Stay away from personal attacks.
Lastly there are the personal attacks. These always read as a sign of weakness and should be delegated to surrogates.
VP Harris caught her stride in making remarks to a group of UAW union members in Detroit, Michigan. She sounded credible. Meanwhile, President Trump astonishingly made, at a Mar a Lago press conference, insinuating remarks about a conversation he had with Willie Brown, VP Harris’ former lover. President Trump claimed Brown “said terrible things about her.” This nasty, vague swipe, which referenced a sexist trope well known in conservative circles - -the suggestion that VP Harris “slept her way to the top”, quote unquote — looked terrible for President Trump. Two adulterous men telling nasty stories about someone who had, during her time with Mr Brown, been a much younger, sexually active single woman — all of it looked and sounded like a time capsule of nasty old-guy gossip and unpleasant patriarchy. I am being “ratio’d” on X for pointing this out, but sorry, I am not sorry. Better to course correct 80 days out and two points up, than with a week left in November and ten points down.
And why say it? Why? Why go there?
Border. Crime. Economy. Unity.
Border. Crime. Economy. Unity.
That is all you need to do to win.
5/ Go back to conservative first principles.
I understand that many conservatives feel strongly about trans issues, and about men in dresses, and about gay porn in schools. These are all valid issues to discuss, though I think that many conservatives these days are careless in not separating out adult consensual gay relationships, for instance — which were never targeted by conservatives such as Presidents Reagan or George Bush Jr — and the criminal grooming of children, or pedophilia, which statistically, by the way, is a crime more often committed by heterosexual men targeting girls.
But as strongly as you may care about men in women’s sports, or about “trans issues,” or the ill-defined “gender ideology”, those are issues that right now affect a tiny minority of people; they are not the issues with which most voters are struggling every day.
Those core issues are crime, border, and economy.
Without more careful language, Republicans risk alienating the 7.1 per cent of Americans who are lesbian, gay or even transgender — but who also may be religious, or fiscally conservative, or pro-life, or liberty-oriented.
If contemporary Republicans did not seem at times so fixated on what other consenting adults did in the privacy of their homes, millions of these LGBT Americans might gladly vote Republican.
Many swing voters support many conservative planks but are very wary of how the Conservative movement has seemed increasingly censorious, since the Reagan and Bush Jr years, about consenting adults’ personal lives; and they fear America becoming a version of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
So given that, go back to first Conservative principles, which used to be more inclusive:
Crime. Border. Economy. Unity.
Freedom.
Constitution.
The same theme — that a successful Presidential campaign is not a mirror reflection— should be applied to religious preferences as well. Don’t get mad at me yet — hear me out please.
I know many conservatives feel that they want a Christian America. I respect their deep faith.
But the Founders guaranteed freedom of conscience as the bedrock of our nation; and they insisted on having no established religion. A Christian state can be as tyrannical as an atheist one — see the Inquisition. And Christians, much as I respect them, do not own the idea of America, or of God. America is also Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Atheist.
What I am trying to say here again is that a successful Presidential campaign cannot be a dream wish list, with all of your favorite items on it.
A winning Presidential campaign also cannot be a therapy session.
You won’t get everything you personally want or like, if you are going to actually win.
To win a Presidential campaign, whether you are on the right or the left, you cannot have all your personal preferences be expressed. You won’t have all your dreams come true.
To actually win, you cannot campaign on everything you want.
4/ Use surrogates
At this point, I am looking around for President Trump’s (or RFK Jr’s) surrogates. Where are they? “Surrogates” are campaign shorthand for people from all walks of life who go out to rallies, or onto the airwaves on online, and support their candidate, using the candidate’s talking points and making them their own. These can be actors, musicians, influencers, business leaders, “ordinary” people. Remember “Joe the Plumber”? But they all get a script and talking points; the campaign is supposed to manage them, and out they should go.
I see Megan Thee Stallion, twerking away for VP Harris. I don’t like it, but I see it. It’s there.
I see actors and tech bros and other elected officials speaking up for Harris/Walz. I see the UAW, all getting in line to express their support for Harris/Walz and to promote their campaign. There is VP Harris in navy, looking both slightly worried and unwell, and also somewhat Presidential. The stagecraft is solid.
Where are President Trump’s surrogates? Laura Loomer asked on X why the Trump campaign is pushing away people who want to help. Where are all the conservative commentators’ talking points? You may not think it is “original” or “authentic” to use talking points and surrogates, but a successful Presidential campaign sends daily talking points to sympathetic news outlets and to thousands of surrogates, so that everyone is “on message” with “the message of the day.” This messaging shifts according to news events, focus group reactions and polling.
Where, oh where, is this effort on behalf of MAGA?
The DNC predictably lined up their surrogate effort aggressively because their candidate is — well, just not very likable. So if you surround her with likable supporters, people can hold their noses and vote for her when they are alone in the voting booth.
To many millions of voters, believe it or not, Conservatives, President Trump’s policies are great but they don’t find the man himself very likable. He too urgently needs likable, admirable, diverse groups of people — country singers, athletes, entrepreneurs, tech guys, homemakers, teachers, cops, religious leaders — to stand up for him and to repeat his message.
This effort is so absent on the part of the RNC that it almost feels as if they do not want President Trump to win.
5/ Have a clear message in one place.
My last point is the most important: craft a clear message and put it in one place that is easy to find. A classic Presidential campaign boils down to a slogan or mission statement. “Change vs more of the same.” “Don’t change horses in midstream.” “Hope and change”. Or further back: “Where’s the Beef”? “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” “It’s the Economy, Stupid.”
For this campaign, if I were consulting, I’d propose two:
“MAGA is for Everyone.”
And: “Bring Back Good Times.”
That’s it. Simple.
Repeat and repeat.
Building out from this core DNA of the message, should be a clear, succinct platform. Where is President Trump’s platform? And don’t refer me to a website. The platform should be five or six commitments, and no more than ten, that are easily accessible and that everyone will know by heart by November because they will be constantly repeated.
I had a delightful conversation with Dr Peter Navarro about President Trump’s campaign, but my heart sank a bit when he told me that the campaign had released a book, The New MAGA Deal: The Unofficial; Deplorables’ Guide to Donald Trump’s 2024 Policy Platform” with “a hundred actions in a hundred days.” That effort is much better than no visible platform at all, and I applaud Dr Navarro for putting it together; but respectfully if this is the main guide to the platform, it is way too much for anyone to summarize or quickly to check. (I had the same difficulty early on finding or hearing RFK Jr’s platform succinctly. His summaries have improved.)
If you search “Donald Trump 2024 Platform” a lot of nonsense and legacy media comment comes up on the critical first results page. The closest thing to a “platform” easily found, is “2024 Republican Party Platform” on the website of something called “The American Presidency Project.” It does not even say clearly that it is President Trump’s platform.
It is 20 items (too many). Ten of them are just great. I’d keep those and repeat them everywhere. Some are hard for non-MAGA-media consumers to understand (“End the weaponization of government against the American people”). Some are marginal or vague — what is “radical gender ideology”? I kind of know because I watch “MAGA media” but most of Americans won’t know. And some items are vague: bring the US “record levels of success.”
1. SEAL THE BORDER, AND STOP THE MIGRANT INVASION
CARRY OUT THE LARGEST DEPORTATION OPERATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY
END INFLATION, AND MAKE AMERICA AFFORDABLE AGAIN
MAKE AMERICA THE DOMINANT ENERGY PRODUCER IN THE WORLD, BY FAR!
STOP OUTSOURCING, AND TURN THE UNITED STATES INTO A MANUFACTURING SUPERPOWER
LARGE TAX CUTS FOR WORKERS, AND NO TAX ON TIPS!
DEFEND OUR CONSTITUTION, OUR BILL OF RIGHTS, AND OUR FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS, INCLUDING FREEDOM OF SPEECH, FREEDOM OF RELIGION, AND THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS
PREVENT WORLD WAR THREE, RESTORE PEACE IN EUROPE AND IN THE MIDDLE EAST, AND BUILD A GREAT IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD OVER OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY -- ALL MADE IN AMERICA
END THE WEAPONIZATION OF GOVERNMENT AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
STOP THE MIGRANT CRIME EPIDEMIC, DEMOLISH THE FOREIGN DRUG CARTELS, CRUSH GANG VIOLENCE, AND LOCK UP VIOLENT OFFENDERS
REBUILD OUR CITIES, INCLUDING WASHINGTON DC, MAKING THEM SAFE, CLEAN, AND BEAUTIFUL AGAIN.
STRENGTHEN AND MODERNIZE OUR MILITARY, MAKING IT, WITHOUT QUESTION, THE STRONGEST AND MOST POWERFUL IN THE WORLD
KEEP THE U.S. DOLLAR AS THE WORLD'S RESERVE CURRENCY
FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE
CANCEL THE ELECTRIC VEHICLE MANDATE AND CUT COSTLY AND BURDENSOME REGULATIONS
CUT FEDERAL FUNDING FOR ANY SCHOOL PUSHING CRITICAL RACE THEORY, RADICAL GENDER IDEOLOGY, AND OTHER INAPPROPRIATE RACIAL, SEXUAL, OR POLITICAL CONTENT ON OUR CHILDREN
KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN'S SPORTS
DEPORT PRO-HAMAS RADICALS AND MAKE OUR COLLEGE CAMPUSES SAFE AND PATRIOTIC AGAIN
SECURE OUR ELECTIONS, INCLUDING SAME DAY VOTING, VOTER IDENTIFICATION, PAPER BALLOTS, AND PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP
UNITE OUR COUNTRY BY BRINGING IT TO NEW AND RECORD LEVELS OF SUCCESS
This platform needs to be shortened, taken out of all-caps (please!), repeated everywhere, and communicated in soundbites.
Every speech should have five or six memorable soundbites that advance the message and the platform.
All surrogates should be given, as noted above, talking points that advance the message and the platform.
And that is it.
And then you stay disciplined and “on message”, deviating not to the left nor to the right, til election day.
And you clean up the voting process as much as possible. Emerald Robinson asks why anyone should think 2024 won’t be a repeat of 2020, given that the electronic voting issues and absentee ballot issues have not been resolved. She is right.
I have been appalled that almost no Republican lawmakers — except for two in Wyoming, including State Senator Tim Salazar, and Rep Heidi Sampson in Maine — have tried to pass our excellent Election Integrity Bill, a bill we offered the whole country in draft form to anyone, with our lobbying for it for free.
The other hundreds of Republican state senators and Representatives, did NOT pass or even introduce our free, excellent bill.
Do Republicans want to lose?
Do they want to keep losing?
This passivity, forgive me, is astonishing me.
I hear a lot of Republican commentators these days complaining. They complain to me on interviews and on podcasts, about how unfair the legacy media is and how stupid the media coverage is and about how the DNC lies.
And on and on.
All of that is true. I know well the DNC mafia. I know well, DNC lies. I worked for them.
But I also have little patience for all of this whining, and it makes me miss Steve Bannon, imprisoned, as we see now, for good reason; as he was the general of the liberty effort.
As he would have said, No Whining.
Of course legacy media blacks you out. You have a massive independent media universe where the Right is making almost no effort is to elect their own candidate.
Of course the DNC lies and is cynically on the offense, paying off influencers. I could have told you in my sleep their every move in advance. This is the playbook! How can you complain about this if you can’t stay on message for 48 hours?
Why be your own worst enemy?
Of course coverage is stupid. If you show some message discipline and get lots of surrogates, you don’t need to rely on getting past the stupidities of the coverage because you will be reaching the voters yourselves, directly.
I love MAGA.
I love MAGA in many ways.
I think only the joined forces of Trump and RFK Jr can save this country (and thus, can begin to save the word) from murderous globalism.
So much is at stake.
It’s so, so easy to do the right things.
So why not do them?
This is an opportunity for MAGA and Republican supporters of President Trump (and RFK Jr supporters too separately, and someday, I hope, together) to transcend their private wish lists and their personal echo chambers and to truly unite and heal the country.
It takes some maturity.
It takes some discipline.
Will you do it?
Will you save us?
Or will you, rather, choose to fall prey to frat-boy jokes; to all-or-nothing wish lists; to judgmental sectarianism; to insider nudges; and to snarky gossip —
And thus lose it all?
You are genius and your logic clearly shows how good America could be....if people like you had the position to run it...thank-you.
Oh, how I do hope that the Trump/Vance team sees this! They are truly getting terrible council - or none at all.