The most important thing that happened yesterday was NOT the New Hampshire primary. It was the unconscionable meddling by Bill Barr and his thugs on the Roger Stone and Mike Flynn legal cases. However, that has great impact on what we must do to insure that we win in November. Because every time you think they can’t go lower and more dangerous, they find a way. It’s what they excel at. And our only hope is to win back the Presidency….and a few other things.
There’s a lot of pain coming out of New Hampshire as people’s pick fave candidates drop out, or are on the verge of dropping out….as establishment Democrats and Movement people consider their options and our party schisms further.
So here’s my simple solution: as I see it, there are only two candidates who have a believable path to victory against the Orange Menace – we should all pick one, and get on that train, but commit to supporting the other if our pick isn’t successful — because we eat our young, and we will lose in November if we don’t.
To win, a candidate needs a few things:
- Massive Amounts of Money
- National Organization and Infrastructure
- Data-Driven Campaign
Without those things, he/she cannot win. Not in 2020. This is not the time to talk about how we need to refine campaign finance reform, nor fall in love with a message. This is the time to be strategic.
1. Massive Amounts of Money
The Orange Menace and his minions have unlimited funds. They can easily spend $3 billion (with a b) on this campaign. If we can’t match the money for ads, offices, lit, staff, swag and infrastructure, we will lose. Period, end of sentence. There are only two candidates with the ability to raise an equal amount of money, albeit by coming at it two completely different ways.
2. National Organization and Infrastructure
While people are talking about Nevada and South Carolina, that’s a total of 90 delegates. In March, however, 2,448 delegates will be accorded, starting with 1,357 in 16 states on Super Tuesday. There are some candidates with organization in some of those states, but only two candidates with infrastructure in all of those states. And you must have that because with the end of the “early states” retail politics is over. No more picnics, house parties and meet and greets — it’s hours of sitting in one room as TV station after radio station after podcast spend10 minutes with the candidate, generally asking the same questions.
Candidates need to get their message out to voters and potential voters via their organization and their ad buys. You may not like it, but that’s what it is in a country of over 350 million people.
3. Data-Driven Campaign
We suck at messaging, and we suck at data. Even with a good message, a campaign can’t get it out without a data set which defines who gets which message, when and how. This is not saying that there are conflicting messages, but rather that a message on saving social security is targeted to people over 50, while a message related to paying for college goes to people under 50. Also, a data-driven campaign is very helpful for targeting people for fund-raising. Here’s an example: I’ve given money to a number of campaigns and I get form emails everyday from campaigns telling me they’re desperate and they need me to give more. But there is ONE campaign that sends me a letter starting with “Dear Jessica. First, I want to thank you. You’ve given our campaign X number of dollars in Y contributions, making you in the upper 20% of donors in your area. We are coming back to you to ask for more because….” Data driven makes a difference.
Data-driven campaigns know a lot about me. (And you, and even people who have never interacted with the campaign). They are able to target, enervate and drive engagement.
Brad Parscale is the evil genius behind Trump2020. His is a data-driven organization. While I detest him and what he does, I cannot fault HOW he does it. There are only two Democratic campaigns who are in that league. And circling back, this is an expensive undertaking, and then you need the organizational infrastructure to follow up on it.
And so…
The only campaigns with money, organizational infrastructure and data are the Sanders and Bloomberg campaigns. Are both candidates problematic? For sure. Are there members of the Democratic Party who will actually vote for Trump over one or the other? Yup. But we don’t have a perfect candidate this year.
I hear you – you LOVE Pete, or Amy, or Elizabeth or Joe. They’re better people. Their message is better….yada yada yada…they do not have the money nor the infrastructure to compete with Brad Parscale. In addition, Pete and Amy have done really well with the well-educated white folks. They do not have messages that will sell to the rest of the country (and we’re majority-minority in certain places already.) Black women voters, especially, are strategic and not emotional. They want to beat the Orange Menace and they don’t care who does it. They recognize, as a group, that in certain ways it doesn’t matter which Democrat gets elected because things come out of legislation in the sausage making, and that as soon as the thugs are gone, we will go back to being a country of law, with checks and balances. The important thing to them is, and to you should be, the strongest candidate.
While both Pete and Amy did really well yesterday, to be able to compete going forward, they will need to scale up. Neither has the money, nor the on-the-ground infrastructure. Elizabeth has pulled most of her ads, but left her ground game in place in some Super Tuesday states. If she drops out, she may turn that over to either Pete or Amy.
A note about Tom – his message is good (and actually rational), and he’s got history building out infrastructure dating back to 2013 and NextGen. What he seems to lack is traction.
So let’s look at Bernie and Mike and their paths to victory.
Bernie Sanders
Bernie has a plan to raise $27 from 50 million people. He’s already closing in on 2 million donors. Add in the PAC money from Our Revolution, as well as the supportive PACs (trust me, no matter who the candidate is, groups like Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, etc., are all going to pay for anti-GOP ads no matter who our candidate turns out to be) and you’re at $3 billion.
Bernie has infrastructure in 50 states. While some states are more engaged than others, he’s done this before, he’s still got people who love him and support him. And as an aside, one of the reasons his win last night was lower than expected is that the youth turnout was depressed thanks to two voter suppression laws passed by the state of New Hampshire precluding a lot of college students from voting. He’s got a problem in Nevada because the unions are cheating, as they did in 2016, but that won’t stop him from great inroads on Super Tuesday.
His is a data-driven campaign: and they have practice with their programs, and their newest app works incredibly well and will help fill in local gaps for “unfound” and “newly-found” potential supporters.
His path to victory is as follows: ANY Democratic candidate starts with 200 Electoral College (EC) votes. For example, it’s very hard to imagine any Democrat losing New York or California. He’ll need 70 more and he can get that from the purple states that went rogue in 2016 because his populist message will resonate with a lot of people who are still hurting. He will be able to pick up (at a minimum) Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and Virginia, and that’s the ball game. He can’t win Florida, but in my models, he won’t need it. It doesn’t mean he won’t win more – I’m just concerned with getting to 270.
I’ve heard from a lot of Democrats who have never voted for anything but a Democrat who say they will not vote for Bernie. I believe them. But there are not enough of them to undo the 200 base EC votes, and their votes will be overcome in the states I listed above.
His one problem is the word “Socialist” — but overcoming that is a messaging problem, and with a good enough team, and enough of us messaging our friends and neighbors (we win house by house, person by person, block by block) we can overcome that.
The other thing that needs to be mentioned is that establishment Democrats hate Bernie. Many of these people have a vested interest in the status quo. If he comes into Milwaukee with a plurality, say 40%, and they take the nomination away from him, we lose the ability to win anything for at least a generation, so I hope they’ll think party and country over personal prejudice.
Mike Bloomberg
I hear you – you don’t want a billionaire. He’s got a stop-and-frisk problem. Again, yada yada yada.
First, Bloomberg has unlimited funds. UNLIMITED. And if you think that doesn’t matter, you are very, very wrong. Second, he has built out an infrastructure with offices and people on the ground in all the Super Tuesday states and all the swing states, with more on the way. And the people he employs are paid more than at any other campaign, and they get the same health insurance he gives to his employees at his business. The people hired for the data part of his campaign (as opposed to field staff) are paid incredible amounts of money, and they come from top firms and were/are recruited, not chosen because ads were placed on LinkedIn. Further, unlike the rest of us Democrats, his people know how to message, and how to respond to things.
Yesterday, when the stop and frisk video came out, the Orange Menace tweeted. In less than an hour, his people had a response out, and it cowed the menace to the point that he pulled his tweet. Read that again. He can compete on THAT field.
In addition, for all the people who hate billionaires, there is a large contingent of voters who care about money. They own small businesses, they have money in the market, and they are terrified of losing it all if the progressives win. For them, they see in Mike someone who will do great for the economy (and a lot of these folks think the economy is good right now) AND they’ll be able to give up the menace. And a lot of these folks are Republicans.
The argument against Mike (in addition to his money) is that he hasn’t been vetted on the national stage. People who hate him think that he’ll be dinged for crime and women’s issues. But my gut says that once he’s in a debate, he’ll be able to portray himself as someone with serious cred. First, he ran New York City, which is larger than 38 states. That’s experience. He started out poor and is a self-made rich guy, and if you’ve heard him speak, when he talks economics he says that part of his success is due to geography, but there are ways of improving economies in other places. Further, he says, that taxes are unfair, the rich should pay more “Starting with me.” His positions on guns and the environment are not only solid, but he’s got a track record of action in these areas.
Mike’s path to victory is the same 200 EC base votes, and then Florida, Arizona, Colorado and Texas, for 87. Yes, Texas. Again, as with Bernie, it doesn’t mean he won’t win more, but those states put him over 270,
A note about Congress
The Democratic establishment contends that we must have Joe, or another moderate, to be able to save the House and retake the Senate. I don’t believe that’s true. The Senate races, especially, will hinge on what the morally bankrupt incumbents have done. At the House level, we learned in 2018 to stick to bread and butter issues, and that won’t change. And let’s not forget that Mike Bloomberg poured $41 million into 25 Democratic House races and won 21. He’s already given $10 million (as of Q4 2019) and that won’t stop no matter who runs for president.
Wrapping up
Those are my thoughts. Feel free to pile on. But think about this….can we win without the money, organizational infrastructure and data shop? Is this really the year to lead with our hearts because we like what someone said in a debate? Or is this the year to say that the United States of America is under attack from the people ostensibly in charge and we must vanquish them, and everyone else in what’s left of their party and worry about tomorrow when tomorrow comes.
For some of you, you want the joy and hope of Obama. For some of you (my contemporaries) we still mourn that Gene couldn’t get it done so we could have left Vietnam years earlier….we all have our longings. But pick a train, commit to both for whomever gets the highest number of pledged delegates coming into Milwaukee and vote smart not heart. Not this year.
Okay — pile on.
