Donald Trump put out a tweet yesterday that pretty much explains the operational problem with his campaign. “My rallies are not covered properly by the media. They never discuss the real message and never show crowd size or enthusiasm.”
As usual, he’s blaming the media and breaking the rule, “Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.” He also doesn’t seem to realize that he keeps stepping on his own message with outlandish statements like the election is being rigged, a much bigger story than an economic plan. Those problems might cost him the election but his focus on crowd size and enthusiasm is what will cost the Republicans down-ballot contests.
Trump thinks about the election like he does a TV show. Crowd size is his rating system. The more people that show up at his rallies, the better he’s doing. He believes their enthusiasm translates into votes. If he can just keep firing them up, they’ll flock to the polls in droves.
Unfortunately for him and the Republican candidates running with him, that’s not how elections work. He’s sacrificing a traditional ground game for crowds. He probably doesn’t understand field operations and he’s probably not too interested in learning about something that doesn’t focus media attention on him.
In presidential years, field operations are key to victory in competitive states and they can also drag close down-ballot races across the finish line. Obama’s victory in 2008 taught Democrats in North Carolina that putting people in the polls can make a difference. Their ground game probably helped elect Bev Perdue Governor and Kay Hagan Senator. A strong operation can increase turnout by up to a five percent or so.
In North Carolina, the Clinton Campaign is opening offices across the state and paid staffers have been here since long before the convention. They are preparing for a robust field operation that could make the difference in races up and down the ballot. In contrast, Buzzfeed News writes that “it’s unclear where exactly the [Trump] is based.” The reporter couldn’t find an office anywhere in the state.
It’s not too late to organize a field campaign, but it’s getting there fast. Trump has failed to put together traditional campaign operations and is not running any ads, though a SuperPAC or two are. Clinton, in contrast, is leaving nothing to chance. She’s spending heavily on television and has offices across the state.
Clinton is leading the polls in North Carolina. If the race tightens this fall, her operation may make the difference. If she continues to open up a lead, her operation may create a wave.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Trump; the consummate businessman.
It would seem that the only rebuttal for the Republicans is they are going to use their powers of investigation in Congress (on our dime) to investigate once again, whether or not Hillary perjured herself in her testimony since the FBI is going to release the transcripts of her testimony. It’s almost as if they are saying, “Yeah, our guy is horrible, but, look at this.” It’s all they have. They have been out-politicked at every turn and their only recourse is a bunch of e-mails that really didn’t amount to a grain of sand to begin with.
It’s getting really old in a hurry.
I heard you weren’t a fan of field?
Karl “Rove told associates he was stunned by Mr. Trump’s poor grasp of campaign basics, including how to map out a schedule and use data to reach voters.”
During the primary season, Trump insulted his way to the nomination. None of the other 16 candidates had much to offer the American people other than piling more hatred on Hillary Clinton. The Republican narrative is a mixture of tax cuts and deregulation of businesses and every hopeful sang the same chorus. In the general election, he is stumbling toward disaster. His message is incoherent. There are no policies to discuss. He continues his stand-up routine, but he gets no laughs. We only find out that he is joking when he disavows yesterday’s rhetoric. His constituency is reduced to people who hate gays, Mexicans, minorities, women, Arabs, and Muslims along with the gun-obsessed, high school dropouts and Evangelicals (for some reason.)
Americans need jobs, but Republicans aren’t going to do anything about that. Republicans business owners, like Trump, want workers who do not demand health insurance or other benefits and who will work for a fraction of what Americans need to earn. Republicans resent the few rights the working class possess. Republicans continue to move plants overseas and to employ cheap labor in Malaysia, China, Mexico and India. They will talk about jobs, but they will do nothing to make it happen. Trump has foreign workers in Bangladesh, India and China making his private label garments. What can the Republicans honestly say about it?
Every jobs bills put forth in Congress over the past seven and half years has died under Republican obstruction. But Republicans cannot run on a “no new jobs” platform so you hear contorted economic logic about long-discredited economic theories like “trickle-down.”
Trump talks about creating jobs, but he talks about a lot of things. He’s going to build a wall. He’s going to end ISIS and bring back torture and use nukes.
The next day he says he was being sarcastic about what he said the day before. Trump sounds like a man who believes he can step into the phone booth and emerge in a costume and fly to the rescue. He’s too old and fat to believe such nonsense.
The Republican Party is in disarray.
The party does not stand for anything anymore. It was once the party of fiscal restraint, until they blew massive holes in the deficit. They were once the party opposed to Communism in any form until they poured trillions of dollars into Red China to build their massive industrial infrastructure. After World War II, Russia was the mortal enemy of the United States. We stood on opposite sides of the global building thermonuclear devices which would assure complete destruction of most the habitable world. The world divided into two camps.
Now Trump’s business connections to Russian money and his flirtation with Putin represent a potential abrupt change in foreign policy. We would turn our back on our allies and embrace our former enemies. From Nixon through Bush, no Republican has ever run on a pro-Russia platform.
When Reagan charmed Russia into disarming, he did so for the mutual benefit of reducing world tension. Now, we have Trump who wants to use nukes, wants to expand the number of nations who have nukes and wants to encourage Russia to continue its growth by recognizing the capture of Crimea two years ago. The check on Russia was NATO, which he wants to undermine. If the Republicans now stand for Russian expansion, spread of nuclear weapons and closer ties to China, who are they?
They firmly oppose certain sex acts, gay marriage, unauthorized peeing in restrooms. They oppose abortion and favor prayer in public schools., but they do not favor funding public schools. They favor the ambiguous concept of “family values” except that they get divorced quite a lot.
The Republicans have become the silly party. How do you campaign on that?