A Citizen's Guide to Beating Donald Trump

by David Plouffe

  You and you and you, in short. The sixty-year-old accountant in Pittsburgh who has never gotten involved in politics before this election? Perfect. The eighteen-year-old skateboarding whiz spending late afternoons on the streets, not on Xbox playing Fortnite? Sure! The lifelong Republican, and known as such, now spending weekends at our nominee’s local campaign office? Who could be better?

  I realize that many people who follow politics, even intensely, and care deeply about issues hesitate to get down in the trenches because they’ve never done it, don’t fully understand how, or are perhaps worried about the reaction from certain friends and family members. Maybe that’s you. If so, you are one of those we’ve been waiting for, to quote our forty-fourth president.

  Your impact would be far stronger than mine if we were to have the same conversations and make the same points with the same people. An important aspect of your official work as a volunteer—maybe on a formal basis, perhaps as a precinct leader, whatever—is to find ways to demystify the process and the work for others who may be thinking about their own volunteering but have reservations or are nervous about diving into something so new and different.

  I remember the first doors I knocked on in 1988. I had no idea what I was doing and thought the people who answered them would sniff that out in an instant. But the vast majority of conversations were pleasant, engaging, and interesting (“Why are you out here in the heat? Are you getting paid to do this? Why can’t the Democrats get their act together and win the White House back?”). You just have to get out there, like most things in life, and you’ll be just fine.

  Bobby Kennedy, the best presidential campaign manager of all time, in my view, famously said in a speech in South Africa: “It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

  I draw no direct analogies between apartheid South Africa and America today, although I sometimes fear they may become warranted, especially if we don’t win this election. Nor would I claim that all political campaigns qualify for the ripple-of-hope treatment. But this one certainly does. Sweeping away oppression and striking out against injustice? If that’s not what we are doing here, well, what are we doing? As Obama often said in 2008, one voice can change a room, but that voice being joined by enough others can change our nation and the world. Strength is in numbers.

  Defeating Trump by electing the Democrat is a mighty cause. That’s all there is to it. I don’t retract my early contention that November 3, 2020, will be a pivotal day in the history of our country.

  The 2020 election is right in front of us. Your mission is not to turn every person into a lifelong voter, as much as we hope that will be the case. It is not to encourage everyone to become active in politics. It’s not even to get them to look ahead and vote for Democratic candidates in the 2022 midterms. It’s to get them to cast one vote in one election to get rid of one really horrible and dangerous president. That’s it. Keep it in mind. If you are responsible for persuading just a handful of your fellow citizens who are on the proverbial fence—about voting at all or about voting for the Democrat—to register and then vote for our candidate, if you are joined by thousands and hopefully millions around the country, we will win.

  Yes we can and yes we did in 2008 and 2012—and yes we will again in 2020.

  We need a decentralized, fifty-state, rapid-response persuasion army. We also need a parallel content-creation army. There are a million ways to use your passion and creativity to advance the cause of defeating Donald Trump. If you have an idea you really like that can be put to video, song, paper, the sidewalk, or a sign, full speed ahead. Your overall goal is first to recognize your own skills, talent, and expertise that can be rallied to the cause, and second, to inspire other people to find and recognize the ways in which they can contribute. Numerous case histories follow.

  Potential voters and volunteers might—no, will—respond better to these down-home creations than to official campaign jargon; they may be more inspired or, frankly, better identify with your content than they will with efforts from the campaign. You’re quirky, even amateurish creation will be more effective than any ad created at a Belarusian content farm—or at DNC headquarters or in Trump Tower. Your pitch may not be as polished or as professional, but that’s exactly the point.

  You can reach someone in your community or family with more authenticity and more understanding. Your effort will not be a poor substitute for what the official campaign or progressive groups could have done, would have done, might still do. Just the opposite! Your contribution will be, by definition, more authentic, more organic, more relatable—simply better in all important respects than what would come out through official channels.

  Pertinent proof comes to us from that 2008 Obama campaign in the form of a video mash-up from the New Hampshire speech, created by will.i.am, formerly with the Black Eyed Peas, now of American Idol fame. Other notable musicians and performers, including Common, John Legend, and Scarlett Johansson sang or delivered some of the lines.

  We had absolutely no input on that video. We didn’t even know it was coming when it landed out of the blue on February 2, just days before the crucial set of twenty primaries and caucuses on a Super Tuesday that would be either our Waterloo or our stepping stone to the nomination and presidency. In those ancient days, Facebook and the other social media networks didn’t have much reach. The will.i.am mash-up was one of the first clips to go viral, thanks mainly to young people, garnering more than twenty-five million views and tremendous attention from the press and on YouTube. The phenomenon drove many new donors and volunteers to join our campaign during this crucial window of opportunity, or disappointment, which was still possible.

  What if the official campaign had produced exactly the same content, with the same talent? The impact would have been far more muted. Even to the supporters of a campaign, the officially produced campaign content has the veneer of propaganda. Now, I realize will.i.am is a celebrity, a subject for future discussion, but his video was so powerful because it was produced and disseminated organically. It demonstrated the true passion these artists had for Obama, which made it much more interesting, consumable, and shareable with Obama’s confirmed supporters, and it led to new supporters and activism. Even back in campaign HQ in Chicago, when it started popping up on staffers’ laptops, a new energy bounced around the office.

  Remember the famous Obama Hope poster created by Shepard Fairey, the immensely talented graphic artist, visual designer, and activist? As with will.i.am’s mash-up, Fairey’s terrific piece was not a creation of the campaign or even anything we discussed with him. He created it and started disseminating it in early 2008, and within weeks it had begun to show up everywhere—on telephone poles, in dorm rooms, and in union halls. No, people don’t vote because of signs, but we heard over and over again how much they loved the piece, and it further motivated them to lay it all on the line to elect Barack Obama. Whether it’s a poster, a T-shirt, a hat, a bumper sticker, if you have talent in these spaces, put it to work on behalf of our Democratic nominee.

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  We, Democrats and progressives, have nothing like Fox and the conservatives’ industrial-media-infotainment complex. The reasons are complex and beyond my scope here, but all that doesn’t matter right now. What matters is offsetting that advantage with another of our own. It is absolutely mandatory that we weaponize our own social media and email lists. So, yes, that means you need to make sure you are signed up and active on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. For those of you who are adamantly anti-social media, I understand your feeling; the whole thing can be overwhelming,
often toxic, but understand that your reticence plays right into the Trump playbook.

  To be in the game you have to be in the arena, and social media is the primary arena this race will be fought in. Fact of life. If each of us spends just a couple of minutes a day moving message and content through our channels, thinking about smart ways to work with the local media, and doing some offline distribution, we can aggregate something that is real, authentic, and powerful.

  There is not just strength but also comfort in numbers. When people see a video or any content from someone they construe as very much like themselves, making the same arguments they themselves have been wrestling with, they can be tipped to take action and vote. In 2008, many voters said on their own, unprompted, “I really can’t believe I’m doing this, but I’m voting for Obama. We need a change and he’ll be better for working people like me than McCain, who will just keep doing the same old things Bush did that got us into this mess.” We invited some of these voters to be in ads. This worked. When people see someone making the leap, it creates a “permission structure” for following suit. Fancy term. Sounds suspicious, I know, but I’ve become a believer in it. It’s getting people to do the thing they think they might do, even the thing they ought to do, by creating acceptable models so they’ll feel better about doing it.

  Facebook, the new public square, turbocharges the delivery of permission-structure content. At the same time, I’m all too aware that in terms of disinformation, doctored videos, audio bytes, and downright confusion, the platform presents a serious ongoing challenge to our nominee and our democracy.

  That goes for its sister platform, Instagram, as well as Twitter and YouTube. However, there are some positive features about these platforms as they relate to politics: you can use them to create voter registration drives, remind people about early voting and absentee ballot deadlines on Snapchat and Twitter, and recruit for local Facebook groups that allow supporters of candidates to communicate and recruit others to join in the cause.

  Many young people are opting not to sign up for Facebook accounts, preferring other social media platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok. Because that is where so much of the action is, and the voices of passionate young people are so powerful, if you fall into this cohort, you need to get on the platform. You can delete your account on November 4 if you must.

  Trump ran a Facebook first campaign in 2016. He will do even more this time. As I write this sentence in August 2019, the Trump campaign is spending up the wazoo on Facebook advertising to reach voters in battleground states.

  The big social media sites were weaponized by the Russians and others in 2016, but you can turn these networks into your own personal communications weaponry in 2020. The first step is to take an inventory and make sure you’re in touch with everyone in your life who you think you should be in communication with, so you can stay in touch and you can also see what they’re sending around. Write a list, type into your notes on your phone, think comprehensively.

  Make sure your own personal network does not restrict membership to only the politically like-minded. Now is not the time to prune your uncle John, who is MAGA through and through. His presence allows you to see firsthand and in real time what propaganda he is seeing and spewing on behalf of Trump. Do you have a decidedly nonpolitical but certain-to-vote friend from work? Send a friend request with the intention of expressing sympathy for a true undecided voter trying to negotiate this hellscape of misinformation. Help this friend sort fact from fiction.

  The social media landscape can be a modernized version of the Fight the Smears website in 2008, a one-stop shopping destination of refutation, so millions of supporters around the country and on the internet can fight back with links, videos, and credible independent voices.

  See a Facebook post from your third cousin saying the Democratic nominee hasn’t paid his or her taxes in twenty-five years? Don’t simply get into a frustrating and unsatisfactory exchange voicing your opinion. Respond with something like, “Jennifer, I’m sorry, but that’s just not true. The Democratic nominee has paid an effective tax rate of 28 percent over the last ten years. We know this because he/she has released his/her tax returns. Has Donald Trump? We’ll never know but speculation is that he paid zero or close to it in taxes, despite being the self-proclaimed billionaire, while all the rest of us pay our fair share.”

  Then link to a Fox dispatch or a Wall Street Journal article that covers the topic and makes the points above. Again, the nominee’s campaign should make this research easy for us, but if not, or if you think you can find something better, and quite possibly you can, a few keystrokes will find you what you need.

  Did I say link to Fox and the Wall Street Journal? Absolutely. It’s more effective to post genuine information from what will be seen as credible sources to those voters we have the best chance of reaching. Maybe your cousin Jennifer has zero chance of changing her mind or her vote (especially if you send her an article from The Nation or by Paul Krugman in the New York Times, or a clip from Rachel Maddow), but maybe one or two people in your network will see the exchange and factor it into their decision.

  This principle always applies: look online for compelling, shareable content that makes the best case against Trump and for the Democratic candidates’ leadership and ideas. Then put these arguments in your own words. You have an authentic message to communicate. Don’t be concerned that you may differ from the official talking points, or you are sharing unpolished content. The more real your engagement is, the more it sounds like you, not me, and the more effective it will be. Tell a story, show a picture—that’s what will move people, not vague threats or promises about gross national product or ozone depletion.

  In the introduction I noted this election’s “90 percent problem”: most of us live in a state that isn’t a battleground. But this is where social media becomes very useful: online we are all one big country. Online there are no state lines. Maybe a response you post will have no effect with most people who see it because they already agree (or emphatically disagree) with you. That’s okay. Most of us have connections throughout the country, so a few people in your feed may live in Wisconsin or Florida or another battleground state or have a cousin or college roommate there. They had seen in their feeds some of the same bullshit you responded to in your post, but they’d had no idea how to fight back. Now they have such an idea, and they can then pass along the message in their more embattled communities.

  It’s a long and winding road online. Rest assured, that powerful post will somehow end up in the feeds of people in the battleground states, where they grab that same content and insert it into some of the discussion happening in their own online battleground communities. Welcome to the rapid-response army. From your haven in San Diego or Birmingham, you’re having an impact in all theaters of this war. And for everyone who sees your response in your feed or email chain, hopefully you have shown them the way, and encouraged more people to do just as you did: get into the fight. And the virtuous circle strengthens as their responses reach and encourage others.

  And then there is the advanced social media campaigning, understanding the clever use of hashtags, native content, photos, what gets pulled. Many of you, certainly the digital or almost digital natives, know more about this than I do. For those who don’t, go get an education! I know I need to. These simple techniques can rocket your posts way beyond your own personal universe.

  Intensely personal expressions of the stakes in this election can be extraordinarily compelling. An eighteen-year-old in Ocala, Florida, who will be voting in her first election, creates a series of iPhone videos for YouTube capturing the stakes this year. One video might be about the impending doom from climate change, especially pronounced in Florida. A disproportionate percentage of Trump’s supporters will not have to bear the weight of their collective failure on this threat, which is exacerbated by their ignorance and selfishness, but Gen Z will actually be alive and l
iving through the worst of the predictions if the curve is not bent drastically enough on emissions.

  The video captures the urgency of the moment—the cataclysmic fallout of famine, floods, unlivable heat, and historic migration. Gen Z wants a chance to thrive, not merely to cope with this apocalypse. Perhaps this young voter says the Democratic nominee is not perfect, but where the future of the planet is at stake, the nominee will get us back into the Paris climate accords, reverse all of Trump’s reversals of President Obama’s environmental executive orders, and try to enact a version of the Green New Deal or key parts of it.

  Our nominee, no matter how skilled and persuasive, could give fifty speeches on the urgency of the climate threat and the plans to tackle it, but their collective impact on eighteen-year-old voters throughout the country will be insignificant compared with the power released by this video from the young voter in Ocala. It will be more interesting. More accessible. More relatable. More believable. More actionable. Young voters can identify with it. Maybe it gets them to decide to do more personally, to volunteer in addition to voting. And they will likely share it, perhaps with comments, or send a like. More ripples will spread throughout that cohort and the country.

  Or our young voter in Ocala may post another video on student loans because she’s already scared to death about what will happen as she begins her own debt-laden college experience, having seen older siblings coming out of college with crushing debt. Trump is in the tank with the lenders and the for-profit university sharks. The Democrat wants to make community college free for all and likely will have a plan for all other colleges—perhaps middle-class students or below will have free college tuition, maybe with some interesting service- and income-based repayment models.