A Citizen's Guide to Beating Donald Trump

by David Plouffe

  Now, four years later, we encounter yet another escalation. You were hoping that the nation’s president would run a more elevated race than he did as a candidate? Dream on. Didn’t you check your Twitter feed an hour ago and watch the news last night?! We Americans have elected some losers as president, but no sitting president has ever adopted such deceitful tactics as his default, go-to mode. In addition, this president has had at his beck and call the most powerful faux news/entertainment media empire in history, and it’s growing larger all the time. Foreign leaders and governments launch missiles armed not with nuclear warheads but with misinformation designed to weaken American democracy. It is in their interest to have a buffoon leading America.

  The bombardment has been effective. We have finally reached that nirvana of grifters and frauds worldwide: an almost fact-free environment, or as Kellyanne Conway prefers, “alternative facts.” It should be no surprise that we are increasingly sorting ourselves into like-minded tribes speaking separate languages within echo chambers.

  Lord knows it’s tempting for #NeverTrumpers to do nothing but attack the man and his manner, which seem to have no bottom, but I’m not sure anyone can or should try to play his game. Trump is an idiot, but he has mastered politics as World Wrestling Federation art. Our nominee will have an overwhelming advantage in positive values—inspiration, ideas, facts and plans, and character—and they will be critical for energizing tough-to-register-and-turn-out citizens and even persuading the elusive swing voters. But we do have to be smarter on defense.

  How? Let me begin the discussion with a stroll down memory lane, of better times—you know, way back, 2008 or 2007, when the preferred means of spreading lies in campaigns was the email chain. How quaint that must sound today, and at first those in the Obama campaign HQ in Chicago didn’t pay too much attention to them. The first ones sounded ludicrous. Educated in a madrassa in Indonesia; Muslim, not Christian; real father was not a Kenyan with a master’s in economics from Harvard but a homegrown American radical; he’ll impose Sharia law; he refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance; there’s a grainy tape somewhere with Michelle Obama talking about “whitey.” The list goes on and on—and all of it before Donald Trump’s birther crusade. Those of us in the campaign knew all about the infamous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in John Kerry’s ill-fated run against George W. Bush just four years earlier, but those were heavily funded TV ads—legacy campaigning, out there for everyone to see and judge. But this stealth stuff on the internet? Who could take it seriously?

  People on the internet, that’s who. Our field organizers on the ground in the states started fielding questions about these crazy stories from our own supporters who were being recruited as volunteers. They said that they, of course, knew it was all nonsense, but they feared it would hurt us in the primary and even convince potential supporters that Obama would not be electable in the general election. Our press staffers were asked by reporters to comment. Eventually the candidate himself would get asked about some of these lies and smears when out on the trail. He and the rest of us tried our best to either ignore, laugh off, or fight these haphazardly through the primary.

  Our defense left a lot to be desired. We should have taken this poisonous nonsense more seriously and armed our volunteers more effectively. We survived anyway, but once it was clear that Obama was going to be the nominee, we realized that the threat was real and could endanger the entire enterprise in November.

  In June 2008, gearing up to face off against John McCain, we launched the website Fight the Smears. Doing this infuriated us, of course—the investment of time and money and having to acknowledge the sludge could hurt us. It was viewed as a big risk—or just plain stupid—by many in the political chattering class. They were still stuck in the era when the mantra was “Don’t worry about it unless it shows up on the front page of the New York Times or on the evening news.” Everything else, either ignore or deflect without elevating it. Acknowledging and itemizing the nonsense would only help spread it among computers throughout the country. Whatever you do, don’t legitimize the purveyors of fraud by treating them the same way you would an attack on your tax or health care plans!

  Good points, and we certainly had a vigorous internal debate about them. Conclusion: the quaint standards from the era of the legacy media are gone, along with the gatekeepers of ethical, fact-checked media. The new standard—not that there even is one—is much more difficult to police. What matters in the twenty-first century is that any one piece of content or rumor that is shared by even a few people can end up infecting millions of voters’ devices in an instant, a political virus that no security software can catch or stop. The multiplier effect can be exponential. There is an old quip attributed to Winston Churchill and Mark Twain, among others, that a lie is halfway ’round the world before the truth can put its boots on. We can only wish this were still the case.

  If the Obama effort had been a hierarchical campaign, not one fueled by millions of passionate supporters who were living part of their lives every day through and on behalf of Barack Obama, we might have decided against direct action. But we thought we had our own decentralized rapid-response army in the making, many of whom had digital savvy, so why not try to arm them with everything they needed to fight back against the sleaze machine and set them loose?

  On the new website we listed every attack and smear, and then provided rebuttal information: news articles, fact-checking pieces, statements from Republicans condemning these smears, videos, our own talking points, and whatever else we had. Our troops could grab an appropriate link and attach it in a reply to a smear-laden email, share it with a questioning voter, and print out fliers if that’s what it took.

  I don’t know how important that effort was ultimately to our victory in November, which ended up being by a much larger margin than we had thought possible in June, when we were given no better than an even-money chance to win. But I do know that if it had been just our campaign apparatus trying to fight back, it would have been an epically large game of Whack-a-mole, impossible to win. The website gave our millions of volunteers and supporters confidence to jump into the digital muck with their hazmat gear and suffocate the slimy lies bubbling up from the ooze.

  I’m sure there were some voters on the fence who, sadly enough, needed to be reassured that Barack Obama was not a sleeper agent sent by Al Qaeda to do the terrorists’ bidding from their new command post in the White House; and it certainly reassured the candidate and his family we were not going to take these lies and smears lying down.

  And that was before Facebook and Twitter had made any serious penetration into the electorate. Just eight years later, look what they did to Hillary Clinton online: Pizzagate, child-sex rings, fatal health problems. Just about anything you could make up was said by someone, somewhere about her, and then sent out into world.

  In 2020, the contours of what we will be dealing with are already clear. Whether the nominee is Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, or one of the other contenders, Donald Trump, the Russians, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the whole crazy but deadly network of smear peddlers and hate-mongers on the airwaves and the internet will claim that if the Democrat is elected, our borders will be opened to all comers, murder and rape will be daily horrors visited on our neighborhoods, our vets will be forgotten, criminals will be furloughed or paroled, the most ethical and honest administration in the history of the planet will be turned back into the swamp from whence it came, your taxes will go up 100 percent, you’ll have to wait six months to see a doctor and grandma will have to wait six months for the death panel to convene, the economy will tank, and we’ll have a new depression, which would be great for them because what they really want is a socialist America.

  Oh, and for good measure, the Democrats support infanticide.

  There will be nothing fancy about these pitches, no secret spin, no knucklers, curveballs, sinkers, brushback offerings. Ju
st four-seam fastballs aimed directly at the candidate’s head—and their aim is good. But wait a minute! What? Infanticide? Really? Will anyone other than wing nuts be tipped to believe the Democrats want to kill newborns? Anyone who truly is undecided on this race? Yes, there may be some voters who are very lukewarm on Trump, but the infanticide charge they read about in some dark corner of the internet, or maybe not so dark—think Fox & Friends—convinces them the Democratic nominee is too far gone to even consider, around the bend, gone off the deep end.

  This kind of crap may also be the fuel to get more conservatives to donate money, give time, and get more involved in the Trump effort. Stopping infanticide can be quite the motivational rallying cry for those who believe that nonsense charge. It’s a mistake for any of us to assume that a crazy lie bouncing around Facebook will not be believed. Everyday experience amply demonstrates that someone, somewhere, can believe just about anything. A content factory in Moscow can create an “article” stating that our Democratic nominee has been tied to an ongoing investigation into a pedophilia ring operating out of a pizza joint in Washington. And in twenty-four hours more people could see that smear then watch any of the major cable news shows that night.

  It’s tragic. Our presidential campaigns should not have to be fought this way; the stakes are too high and the issues too serious. But the truth is that we can’t fight only the war we want to fight. We also have to play defense in the war that will be fought on Trump’s behalf, and we have to win it. And when I say “we,” I don’t mean the Democratic National Committee. Or the nominee’s campaign infrastructure. Or outside progressive groups. Or the media. Lord knows we need all those entities to get smarter and more effective at handling the Mad Max: Fury Road approach of the Trump campaign and the constellation of weaponry surrounding his approach. But the “we” I mean is us. As in you. As in me. We will become a decentralized, organic rapid-response machine, complementing smart efforts at the top, I hope, but definitely not waiting for them. We have to don those hazmat suits and do everything possible to keep people from drowning in the muck.

  Much of this work will be frustrating, depressing, infuriating, tiring, and headache inducing, but I actually think it can also be fun. I believe there’s a general sense, sadly, that progressives are weak or easily bullied, so when we fight back with gusto and confidence, the smear machine will be surprised and infuriated. I have no doubt that your down-to-earth conversation with a conflicted voter about how our nominee will cut her taxes and actually make our southern border safer with smart policies will outweigh the Siberian bot claiming the opposite. Surround your people with the truth.

  2

  CREATE

  For most of the primary season leading up to the first voting in 2008, Barack Obama trailed Hillary Clinton by large margins in New Hampshire. We began closing the gap in December, and then on January 3 we convincingly won the Iowa caucuses, which was considered a pure three-way toss-up (remember John Edwards, anyone?). The momentum slingshot did the rest.

  We had the big mo, big-time. Our final internal poll prior to the voting on January 8 had us winning New Hampshire by 8 points. The average of the public polls showed an even bigger lead. Everything was pointing up and to the right for the Obama team. The Granite State would wrap up the primary campaign, and Obama would be anointed the nominee by a landslide.

  The punditocracy asked, “How large would Obama’s win be? Will it be more than 10 points? More than 15 points? Will Clinton drop out if she loses that badly?”

  Frankly, these were our only questions too. On Election Day, when the first exit polls showed us up by 5 points, our reaction was “Well, those numbers are clearly screwy; the final margin will be much bigger.”

  Actually, no. We lost by 3½ points.

  Gut punch. Given the prior expectations, the loss in New Hampshire could have been a serious wound to Barack Obama’s candidacy, potentially fatal. I could spend the rest of my life recounting what we—and I—did wrong leading up to the primary and probably not capture the extent of it all. And give Hillary Clinton and her campaign credit—they did a bunch of things right.

  In any event, we were caught completely unprepared to lose in New Hampshire. The victory speech we were certain our candidate would give was pitch perfect, but we hadn’t given a thought to a concession speech. It was our bad, and in the vacuum that swallowed us whole, Obama decided to give the victory speech, just adding a line of congratulations to Hillary Clinton. Was this an inspiring choice, or was he simply stunned by the loss and no one had any better ideas? Probably some of both.

  The speech was based on the refrain “Yes We Can!,” a translation of the call to arms employed by Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers movement during their long struggle for fair pay and better conditions. Obama had used that tagline in his 2004 Senate race in Illinois, and in 2008 we wanted it to play a more prominent role in the presidential race going forward. Such a rallying cry would suggest that history and conventional wisdom were wrong, that the cynics were wrong, that a candidate like Barack Obama could prevail and the country could truly change—but only if millions of Americans made the campaign their cause. Only if it was all about “We.”

  The concession speech gambit was viewed by most of the pros as quite unusual, by some as worse than that: tone-deaf and arrogant, failing to fully capture the magnitude of the defeat and what it meant to our chances. All wrong. Our supporters loved that speech because it underscored their understanding that this would be a long uphill battle, that there would be setbacks, but our candidate and campaign were convinced there was a path forward that relied on our citizen volunteers to make it happen. The day after the devastating loss in New Hampshire was our best online fund-raising day in the campaign up to that point, bigger than the day after the victory in Iowa the preceding week. It was our biggest day for signing up new volunteers, online and off.

  Barack Obama had showed on the night before that even in the face of a stunning defeat he wasn’t going to back down, and the following day his supporters showed they wouldn’t either; they would have his back even when things hit a rough patch. Maybe it was the most successful “concession” speech ever.

  You see where that twelve-year-old election story takes us in our 2020 discussion? This election will also be all about us—not them, not even him or her. The air campaign, the ground campaign; playing offense, playing defense; strategy, tactics—no matter what angle from which we look at this election, it’s going to come down to us, you and me.

  With all the sophistication possessed by the campaigns, and Russia, you may ask how a lone individual can compete on the message and persuasion battlefields. Wouldn’t this amount to David versus Goliath, horse-drawn carriages versus shiny new cars, dial-up versus 5G?

  I understand that you can’t afford to waste time and energy tilting at windmills. Rest assured that you will not be wasting your time. Your engagement with persuadable voters can be incredibly effective and, if joined by enough others, can carry the day. When “me” becomes “we,” suddenly there are millions of us out there fully engaged in this person-to-person effort, making a real difference “at scale,” as we say in the Bay Area. It’s the multiplier effect, where the virtuous circle can take us once it starts spinning.

  As John Lennon once proclaimed, “One and one and one is three. . . .” Keep adding zeros . . . 300 . . . 3,000 . . . 3,000,000 . . . maybe more. Very possible. In both Obama campaigns, we eventually had millions of volunteers.

  I’m certainly not suggesting that the Democratic nominee lay down the latest weapons of political warfare. The campaign, the party, the big outside groups will all be doing their thing, deploying data and analytics, testing a zillion ads on Facebook and other social media and internet sites to try to coax out that all-important click that will suggest where a voter is leaning, and why. Of course the Trump campaign, the Russians, and other unsavory actors will be doing likewise—maybe even more so.

/>   But it’s mandatory that the big institutional weaponry be coupled with a persuasion army working the ground, block by block, house by house, making the difference in moving enough truly torn and swing voters over to our nominee’s column in a close election.

  The candidate’s official campaign and outside actors will have built a profile of millions of potential voters—the same cohort of voters that I hope you will be talking with. These profiles are based on census data, news and internet behavior, consumer data, voting history, and a whole bunch of other information put into the blender to pour out a likelihood-to-support score for each voter and some sense of the most effective messages and mediums to reach him or her. Kind of scary, I know, but that’s where we are today, and it’s only going to become more complicated. But these are demographic models, not real people.

  Real people are better. You can ask them what will decide their vote, what problems and issues they’re struggling with, what concerns they have with both Trump and the Democratic nominee. The best rule of thumb: don’t even think about waiting for the party to do it. At this granular, one-on-one level, campaign talking points won’t get the job done. I’m all for a well-executed and targeted ad from the Democratic National Committee, but I understand that it might not have a chance with the intended recipient. No matter how clever or compelling, it is still a passive experience. Do it yourself. Please. I firmly believe that nothing is as effective as two human beings having an honest, open, and real conversation. Your one-on-one “research” may square with what the data suggests. It may differ. Regardless, it will surely have more context, more specificity, and will provide a better understanding of how this individual can be reached and persuaded.

  Most voters will likely never meet the nominee, so they will need reassurance from someone they know and trust—a neighbor, a family member, a colleague at work, a former schoolmate. You can and will refer to the campaign material as a helpful guide on the ins and outs of policy and issue differences, but if you want voters to open their ears instead of closing them, you want to sound like the neighbor you are, not a smooth-talking head on CNN.