Handicapping the Democrats 18 Months Out

[Correction included]. Even if his name is not mentioned directly, every Democratic candidate entering the 2020 race is being measured and labeled on how much of a response they are to Donald Trump, or “Trumpism”. Which is to say, what degree of repudiation are they offering? Total? A bit here and there? Whatever they can get from “across the aisle”?

As of this morning Bernie Sanders, now 77 years old and grumpy as ever, is back in the hunt. Say what you will about The Bern, he isn’t shy about calling it as he (and most of us see it). Trump is a career low-life and criminal (laundering money for Russian gangsters to sustain his “brand” being the least of it), and establishment Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are guilty as sin for greasing the skids for every absurd-to-vile thing Trump has promoted.

Personally, I don’t feel the need to throw myself on any bandwagon (or funeral pyre) this early in the circus performance. But I am telling myself to keep the radar up for what people like Yuval Harari think of as a fundamental breakdown of traditional politics. In other words, we could be seeing a large-scale disruption on the left in response to the disruption of the chaos and criminality of Trump and enabling Republicans on the right.

Put another way, it may be a feeling among comparatively well-informed and rational people who believe “the old way” is too timid and under-powered for the threats against decency and logic presented by Trumpism.

I can’t say how real it all is at the moment. But to mangle Gertrude Stein, there’s definitely some kind of there … there.

The wag-nerds on Nate Silver’s 538 podcast have broken down the Democratic field (as of last week) into a small handful of “lanes”. For example, our gal, Amy Klobuchar, and Kirsten Gillibrand are described as running in “the beer lane”, trumpeting mostly unexciting, traditional values that have satisfied collegial Democrats for decades. By contrast, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, are described as contenders in “the wine lane”, riling up the passions of mostly well-educated (and female) voters. That crowd can also be described as upscale, (in terms of smarts if not money) and extraordinarily upset with the numbskull, mysogynistic antics of the right as any specific policy position.

But then, by way of fine-parsing, 538 suggests a possible candidate like Beto O’Rourke, defies both of those appeals by splitting the difference with a “craft beer lane”. You know, lots of traditional stuff — blue jeans, rock’ n roll, drive through hamburgers, rural Texas, pickup trucks — all whipped together with a thick, rich hipster sauce of “stop the [bleeping] madness!”

As I say, I have no specific favorite in the hunt here 18 months or whatever before the next election. But I’ll do a bit of my own lane handicapping anyway.

In the “Forget About It” lane. Tulsi Gabbard. Too much conspicuous opportunism. Do four years of serious reading and get back to us.

The “Been There, Done That” lane. Joe Biden and Bernie. The Bud Light crowd loves you in Scranton, Joe. I get that. But the game has changed since you were in your prime, and that was 20 years ago. And Bernie: love ya too, man. But 77 is way past the “serve by” date in modern politics. Your job this time around is to keep goosing the actual contenders to keep the fire and faith.

The “A Little Too Cool for School” lane. Cory Booker. Kind of like what I say about people who want to be cops; the fact they want it so bad is the main reason to disqualify them. No human, much less any successful politician from New Jersey, can possibly be as immaculate as Booker purports to be.

The “No, Just No” lane. Kirsten Gillibrand. The creepy bane of the #MeToo movement. Way too many of the obnoxious “beliefs” she needed to play upstate have done a miraculously 180 since elevating to the Senate. Also, for so many reasons too obvious to mention: Michael Bloomberg.

The “If This Was 1956, Then Maybe” lane. Klobuchar. Being a darling of George Will, Republican colleagues and the Wall Street Journal editorial page doesn’t make my pissed-off little heart go pitter-patter. When you can’t quite say you’re in full favor of a medicare access for all on Obamacare I get an even worse case of morbid eye-roll. [*]

The “I Like What Yer Sayin’, Dude. But Yer Style Needs Some Work” lane. Sherrod Brown. Otherwise known as The Most Rumpled Man in the Senate. Unlike Amy delivering Minnesota’s 10 whopping electoral votes, Brown pulling in Ohio would be serious numbers in 2020. Wonk liberals know the guy and like what they hear. But it’s very hard to imagine any dispassionate independent spending 90 seconds listening to him.

The “You’re Checking My Boxes, Now Sell It” lane. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke. Harris has the feel of the front-runner, based on a near perfectly staged roll-out, and she’s got an interesting mix of prosecutorial dagger and pop-culture crede. Warren, while on the cusp of aging-out at 69, has demonstrated the mix of righteous indignation and legislative bona fides that play like sweet music to liberal ears. And O’Rourke has demonstrated a level of energy and charisma above and beyond anyone else out there.

But he’s got to, A: Decide, and B: Convince a whole lot of women like my friend at a dinner party the other night who announced to the crowd, “I’m never voting for another man!”

[*] The early version of this post suggested Klobuchar wasn’t on board with at least a public option into Obamacare, which she is. My mistake. (To many minds “public option” and “medicare access for all” are very nearly the same thing. But she’s being very careful here.)

 

 

 

 

Hillary Needs A Singular Trump Critique, Not Dozens

One of the problems with running against a historically bizarre opponent like Donald Trump is that there are so many different juicy ways to run against him.  Most activists and pundits think of that as an opportunity, but it also poses a very real problem – focus.

Because Trump is such an outrageous cartoon character of a candidate, Secretary Clinton could be tempted to use her campaign platform and resources to frame up Mr. Trump in a myriad of different ways.  But that would be the biggest mistake she could make.

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Trump the bigot.  Trump the philanderer. Trump the misogynist. Trump the bully.  Trump the trigger happy. Trump the uncouth.  Trump the simpleton.  Trump the liar.  Trump the inciter.  Trump the right winger.  Trump the failure.  Trump the blunderer.  Trump the neo-facist.  Trump the war criminal.  Trump the con artist.  Trump the demagogue.  Trump the hypocrite.  Trump the rejected.  Trump the authoritarian.  Trump the unstable.  Trump the novice.  Trump the flip-flopper.  Trump the all-of-the-above.

It’s dizzying.  One of the worst possible strategies is the last one — to throw everything at Trump in roughly equal measure, which is de facto what is happening at the moment.  And that is what happens when you don’t have a disciplined communications strategy.

Singular Key Message Needed

The essence of communications strategy is sacrifice.  You have to walk past some tempting messages in order to have a focused strategy.  If you say everything you possibly could say about an opponent, you effectively are saying nothing.  All of those very valid Trump critiques piled one upon the other becomes a cacophony to voters.  Subsequently, eyes roll and ears shut.

The_Key_to_the_Key_cg-50_jpg__320×247_So communications strategists typically identify a small number of messages or themes that they strive to repeat and stress above all the others. They’re often called “key messages,” or “frames.”

The key message is the one idea that you need to stick in your target audience’s mind in order to achieve your goal, which in this case is persuading swing voters to reject Trump and get more comfortable with Clinton.

Therefore, the Clinton campaign needs to stick to a small number of lines of attack, even as the Trump vaudeville act continually tosses out new bait to lead the Clinton campaign down dozens of different messaging paths.  Trump is clearly incapable of message discipline, but Clinton can’t allow his lack of discipline to destrory hers.

Trump The Economy Rigger

So which crystallizing key message should Clinton stress?

Swing voters are disgusted by establishment figures like Hillary and Congress, because they see them as part of a corrupt Washington culture that has rigged the economy for the wealthy few to the exclusion of the non-wealthy many.  That is the central concern of many Trumpeters and Bern Feelers, and so that issue is the most important messaging ground for Clinton.

Therefore, Secretary Clinton should align a disciplined campaign messaging machine – ads, speech soundbites, policy announcements, surrogate messaging, etc. — around framing Mr. Trump as:

Trump the self-serving economy rigger.

As Clintonista James Carville might say, “it’s the economy rigging, stupid.”  That is, Trump the privileged billionaire selfishly seeking to win control the Washington levers of power in order further rig the economy to benefit himself and his privileged class at the expense of everyone else.  If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s precisely the strategy that Team Obama used to defeat billionaire Mitt Romney in 2012.

Why choose this framing over all of the other delicious options?  First, it was proven effective against a billionaire candidate in 2016.  There is message equity there.  Why reinvent the wheel?  Second, it goes to the core of what is bugging swing voters the most in 2016.

With this kind of framing, the Clinton-Warren or Clinton-Sherrod Brown team would focus like a laser on Trump’s tax giveaways to the rich. It would highlight his proposals to weaken Wall Street protections. It would stress Trump’s opposition to Clinton proposals to  increase the minimum wage hikes and taxes on the wealthy. It would hammer relentlessly on Trump’s refusal to reveal his taxes, and stress that he doesn’t want ordinary Americans to know that the billionaire pays a much smaller percentage of his taxes than they do. It would focus on his history of lobbying to create and perpetuate the wealth-protection measures to rig the economy in his favor, while harming the rest of us.

Executing that kind of messaging strategy would require the Clinton campaign to largely take a pass on the other juicy lines of attack against Trump, all of which will be magnified during daily news coverage, but are unhelpful diversions of public mind space compared to this framing.  It would require her to be saying things like this:

“You know, I care much less about today’s latest sideshow than the fact that Mr. Trump’s plan to cut taxes for the rich and oppose a minimum wage hike will further rig the economy for the ultra-wealthy. His outrageous giveaway to  his fellow billionaires is much more offensive to me than his latest round of crudeness.”

Focusing on “Trump the self-serving economy rigger” would make Clinton look a bit more like a change-agent, and less like a defender of the despised Washington status quo.  It also would help erode the silly notion of among some swing voters that Trump is somehow the champion of the common man.

This won’t come naturally for Secretary Clinton.  Her establishment instincts will continually tempt her to focus her critique of Trump through a Washington lens.  She’ll instinctively want to crow about the fact that she knows more about policy details, and that the smarty pants Washingtonian centrists, and even some conservatives, are embracing her and rejecting Trump. She’ll want to scold Trump about saying things that, well, refined Washingtonians simply do not say.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.  When Clinton does that, many swing voters hear her as “Washington insider looking down her nose at Washington outsider,” and in the current political climate the instincts of many will be to side with the outsider. Hillary needs to fight her instincts and frame Trump as the ultimate nest-feathering insider masquerading as an outsider.  She doesn’t need to feel her inner Bubba and triangulate the center right, or jump on each of Trump’s outrage du jour.  As much as she may want to resist it, Hillary needs to feel the Bern.

 

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Note:  This post also was published as part of MinnPost’s weekly Blog Cabin feature.

Note:  Collage portrait by Conor Collins.