If you’re curious how Donald Trump could win the election, just game out what the Democrats should do in Philadelphia next week versus what they probably will do.
Here’s how Hillary Clinton should run the Democratic convention: She is the status quo candidate in a change election, which means that she has to disqualify her opponent. She’s running as George W. Bush in 2004. That much, I think, she understands.
The problem is how to disqualify Trump. The easy answer is that you disqualify him as being an unstable lunatic who cannot be trusted with the power of the presidency. Talk about his conspiracy theories, highlighting his obsession with the idea that Ted Cruz’s father helped kill JFK.
Talk about his tax returns in the context of asking how deep his connections are to Vladimir Putin. Point out that Trump already softened the GOP platform for Putin. Emphasize that he’s already doing Putin’s bidding in trying to destabilize NATO, which is a position no Democrat or Republican has ever taken before because the only national interest it serves is Russia’s. Point to his embrace of Recep Erdogan, in which was so eager to talk about “how bad the United States is.”
The Democrats could then talk about Trump’s draft dodging and link it to his claim that he is willing to order American soldiers to violate the law and then force them to comply to his wishes.
After all of that, Democrats could point to the fact that Trump is supported by actual, no-fooling white supremacists. Like David Duke—who helpfully announced a Trump-inspired Senate campaign, using Trump’s “America First” slogan, the day after Trump gave his acceptance speech in Cleveland. If the Democrats were canny, they’d ignore Mike Pence and turn Duke into Trump’s running mate.
And then, they could garnish the dish by talking about Trump’s incessant lying. Find a Trump lie they really like and make it stick, the way Bush did with Kerry’s I-was-for-the-Iraq-war-before-I-was-against-it. And then, as the chaser, hit Trump for his bullying. A variation of this ad could run over and over.
That’s how you take a convention and go after Trump, hammer and tongs, and disqualify him.
The problem is, while most Democratic elites might find the above indictment damning, that’s not the stuff they really care about. They’re intent on fighting the culture war, not only because it’s the subject that matters most to them, but because it’s a form of their favorite pastime: virtue signaling.
So instead, expect the DNC to be heavy on Shout Your Abortion, as though Trump, a guy who once suggested his mistress get an abortion, has any interest in the subject beyond supporting Planned Parenthood. They’ll talk about how Trump and the Republicans want to take away contraceptives—as though anyone, anywhere in America believes either that Trump would ever, under any circumstances, touch the subject.
They’ll roll out Black Lives Matter, unaware that the juxtaposition it creates puts Trump on the side of the police and Clinton on the side of Michael Brown.
They’ll harp on Trump’s Muslim ban, which creates another unhelpful juxtaposition. (And, as a bonus, reminds voters that the Democrats care only about identity politics, not religious freedom.) They’ll try to paint Trump as an enemy of the LGBT agenda and they’ll talk, over and over, about Trump’s “Mexican rapists” line and his opposition to illegal immigration. Democrats have consistently misunderstood where most Americans are on these two subjects.
In short, Clinton is likely to act as though she’s running against Rick Santorum.
Why? The charitable explanation is because the Clinton team understands that the race is 2004, but thinks they can win it like it’s 2012, when Obama turned ultra-moderate Mitt Romney into the second coming of Barry Goldwater in a base-turnout election. After all, that worked out okay for the Dems. But the more likely possibility is because Hillary Clinton is a terrible candidate with horrible political instincts that tend toward last-in, first-out thinking.
They do not understand that the world around them has changed and that they are not running against an actual Republican. They’re running against a nationalist authoritarian whose personal politics, to the extent he thinks about such things, tend to align very closely with their own. Want proof? Go read Ivanka Trump’s speech from the RNC. It could have been delivered, almost word-for-word, by any of the Democrats in Philadelphia next week.
The standard Democratic playbook is likely to be of little use against Donald Trump. A smart campaign would understand this and would have spent the last five months testing messages and gaming out new angles so that they don’t get trapped in an asymmetric conflict.
But maybe it won’t matter. After all, Trump did decide to spend the morning after his big speech going after Ted Cruz’s father for being in league with Lee Harvey Oswald. Again. He might well disqualify himself, regardless of what Clinton does.
One of the many paradoxes of 2016 is that if anyone could lose to Clinton, it’s Trump. And vice versa.
