Trump’s All-of-the-Above Campaign Strategy
With ninety days to go, the polls say President Trump is headed for an ass whipping come November. My personal fav poll-crunching electoral college vote tracker says it’s 340 for Biden and 186 for The Donald.
And just about every activist I know responds to this kind of news by saying “that’s not enough” of a margin.
They’re right for two reasons.
One, the next president and congress need a very clear mandate to get things done, including treating the cancer infecting our government. We’ve had an almost uncountable number of grifters and flat-earthers installed in both appointed and civil service positions. We’ll be left with economic chaos, a right-wing uprising, a climate headed for disaster, and a half dozen other bad things I haven’t thought of...
Secondly, any lead in the polls is only a snapshot of what surveys indicate is happening now with the electorate. It’s a lot less “scientific” than the purveyors of this form of fortune telling would have us believe.
And polling doesn’t take into account the absolute desperation of those institutions and individuals invested in the federal government and Wall Street’s status quo.
So this column is about sh*t we should be worrying about as the general election nears.
From what I can see, the Trumpies are going for an all-of-the-above campaign strategy. It’s the only way they can keep abreast of the Dear Leader’s daily obsessions.
Let’s survey the scene, and I’ll bring some evidence to light.:
October surprise: check
COVID-19 miracle: check
Third party candidate: check
Claims of voter fraud: check
Total smear campaign: check
Foreign assistance: check, check
Voter suppression: check
Refusing to recognize the results: they’re working on it.
Trick or Treat! Attorney General Bill Barr made it clear to the House Judiciary Committee last week that he’s going all-in with a Obama/Russia/QAnon report in response to Donald Trump’s wishes to pursue conspiracy theories related to the Russia investigation.
Here’s Mark Sumner’s analysis from last week:
Barr is making it clear that sometime in the remaining 98 days before the election, he intends to drop a sheaf of documents that builds every molehill of wild speculation into a mountain of even wilder accusations. At this point, more pretense around Ukraine or servers or commas in the warrant for Carter Page may seem picayune, especially as the tide of coronavirus deaths rolls on toward 200,000. On the other hand, Barr could even include manufactured indictments against Clinton, or Obama, or even Biden. That would get attention. After all, Barr has made it absolutely clear that there are no lines.
And both Barr and Trump are counting on the media to be every bit as cooperative in trumpeting whatever is in this report as they were in making Clinton’s emails the number one story in 2016.
Voila! Pandemic Gone! The President announced just this morning that he expects a vaccine to be available before --drum roll-- November 3rd. Operation “Warp Speed” as the administration likes to call its vaccine stimulus efforts, will produce something come hell or high water.
Russian health authorities have already announced plans to start with their own program of mass inoculations in October, so maybe his buddy Putin will do Trump a favor.
It doesn’t seem as though the Russians are too sure about their vaccine, because last month the UK, US and Canada security services said a Russian hacking group had targeted various organizations involved in Covid-19 vaccine development, with the likely intention of stealing information.
https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1291379401280503809?s=20
Kanye, Kanye, Kanye. The New York Times is reporting on the nascent campaign, noting that an amazing amount (ok, just about all) of the people gathering ballot petitions seem to be affiliated with the Republican Party.
The effort to get Kanye West on the ballot as a third-party candidate in several states is increasingly looking like an operation run by President Trump’s allies and Republican activists that is aimed at diverting votes from Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The move, which comes as Mr. West’s wife, Kim Kardashian West, has said her husband is struggling with mental illness, underscores that this will be an unusual, and unusually bare-knuckled, presidential election.
I love this bit from Hunter at Daily Kos:
Now, there's an assumption here that seems logical to Trump and Extremely White Republicans that I am not sure is on the square, which is that Kanye West, being a Famous Black Person, will of course get the votes of Democratic-leaning Black Americans, a group that overwhelmingly backed Joe Biden in the primaries and, according to polls, collectively would not put Donald Trump out if he were on fire.
Quick, call 911! The Trump administration’s claims about voter fraud connected with mail in ballots have not resonated within the GOP, which for years has been dependent on absentee ballots from older voters.
From CNN:
"Mail-in voting has been used in a lot of places for a long time," Senate Majority Whip John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said in the Capitol. "And honestly, we got a lot of folks, as you know, who are investing heavily to try to win that war, it's always a war too for mail-in ballots. Both sides compete and it's always an area where I think our side -- at least in my experience -- has done pretty well."
The South Dakota Republican added, "I don't want to discourage -- I think we want to assure people it's going to work. It's secure and if they vote that way, it's going to count."
The comments come as a range of Republican officials throughout the country have reacted with growing alarm to the President's attacks on mail-in ballots, saying his unsubstantiated claims of mass voting fraud are already corroding the views of GOP voters, who may ultimately choose not to vote at all if they can't make it to the polls come November.
The President may have adjusted his tone on the subject of mail-in votes, as he declared this week that GOP run states like Florida and Arizona were trustworthy.
I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Apparently Biden’s strategy of laying a little low and letting the President’s words speak for themselves is interfering with the Trump campaign's plans for imagery in its advertising.
https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1291027685590863873?s=20
We’ve all come to expect less-than-truthful claims in political advertising. The fake photography business is just something we’ll have to get used to, and they’re using it everywhere. Ads in South Carolina feature skin-darkened photos of Sen. Lynsay Graham’s opponent. Georgia Senator David Perdue’s campaigns took down ads after complaints that photos of opponent John Ossoff depicted him with a longer nose, implying anti-semitism.
The Russians/Chinese/Saudis are coming! Building on the Russian’s psychological warfare successes from 2016, it would appear as though more countries are playing the disinformation game.
There’s this, from a credible Senator not known for hyperbole:
https://twitter.com/SenBlumenthal/status/1290801645404794881?s=20
And this, from Never-Trumper/ political consultant Demitri Melhorn at the Bulwark:
“Recent evidence collected by the Brennan Center suggests that Russian interference has become more brazen in the run-up to 2020. We don’t know precisely how the Russians will intervene, but possibilities range from social media amplification of anti-Biden misinformation; to laundering money into the Trump campaign coffers via small dollar contributions from fake social media accounts or other proxy groups; to hacking voter rolls or voter tabulation software to scramble Election-Day logistics still further.”
“We have arrived at a place where thinking through doomsday scenarios is not only prudent, but necessary,” concluded Mehlhorn. “The president’s party has demonstrated over the course of four years that it has abdicated any respect for laws, rules, or norms, and is merely a vassal for this aspiring authoritarian.”
Most of what is publicly known about recent meddling by other foreign powers in U.S. elections has its origins with intercepts of communications that will never see the light of day in the interests of “protecting sources and methods.”
Various social media platforms have been disabling thousands of accounts in recent months from a variety of countries; influencing elections is just part of the mix of propaganda and misinformation.
What these campaigns are able to do successfully goes way beyond elections; the goals are chaos and destroying credibility.
Your Vote Won’t Count, Maybe? The array of tactics being used to discourage the “wrong” kind of voters is astonishing. Pick a state with the GOP in any kind of power, and you’ll find unnecessary purges, less polling places, and for this election the Trumpers are hoping to organize the ranks of their “fine people” to lurk near critical voting locations.
And then there’s the deliberate sabotage in progress of the U.S. Postal Service.
https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/1291117880428212229?s=20
Trump refuses to vacate the White House. We should have learned two things by now:
With Trump anything (evil) is possible
It won’t be what you expect
While the media has played with various fantasies about Trump simply refusing to leave the White House, there are other equally horrible paths to the same end.
Today’s rumor/leak has Jared Kushner in charge of planning a last ditch try at disqualifying Biden ballots on election night, urging Republican state legislatures to "send competing slates of electors," and then seeking a Supreme Court ruling in Trump's favor.
I say all of this to re-enforce the first point made in this post. Defeating Republicans at every level by an indisputable margin is an absolute necessity.
***
Good News and a Smile...
https://twitter.com/KenStoneMedia/status/1291411420492345344?s=20
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