by Rick Wilson
“No, ■■■■■■■ U.S. OFFICEHOLDER. I know you like to fuck highly specialized prostitutes who charge more per hour than my mortgage, but you may not and here’s what we’re going to do to rehab your shitty reputation” is not a recipe for making them love you, but it is a recipe for saving their political career.
Some of the Democrats reading this will be in that first category. You’ll admit the problems in your policies and party, particularly in re Donald Trump. You won’t like much of this book, or me, but you’ll understand I’m not here to mock or judge your politics. Rather, like a political oncologist, I’m going to give you a way to treat the cancerous orange tumor consuming our nation.
The other kind of terrible client denies there’s a problem. They pretend the brutal articles about their financial sleaze or their taste for strip bars or doll porn (honestly, I’ll take this one to my grave) don’t exist. I once had a client look at me in complete sincerity and say, “No one is going to see a mug shot from a town that small.”
Sure, pal. No one is going to find the dick pics you sent to some rando on Chaturbate or see your Bumble profile? No one is going to find the recordings of your phone-sex sessions? (True story: In one of my most evil campaigns, I didn’t use six hours of phone-sex recordings by a U.S. Senate candidate we were up against. I did make a traumatized intern listen, and when I asked for a summary of the opponent’s phone-sex interests, he replied: “Anal. So much anal.” I didn’t use them, because I had something that polled better.)
Many of our Democratic friends exist in a beautiful fantasy bubble, as though the GOP’s twenty-year march through their electoral numbers across the nation had never happened. For them, history began in 2018.
They ascribe all their losses to imagined bogeymen like gerrymandering or the Koch brothers or Citizens United, because the deeper causes are too painful to examine honestly: policy and cultural disconnects, reliance on generational superstar candidates, and crappy campaigns run for the base alone while scorning and insulting the middle. “But we won X!” is a sad cover for the systematic, slow trend line of their loss of power in both Congress and state governments, particularly in the South and Midwest. We Republicans weren’t geniuses. You made it easy for us.
Some of the Democrats reading this will be in that second category. This book will piss you off, and you’ll rationalize hating it because you think it’s just some asshole Republican telling you to be more like Republicans. Honestly, I’m not.
This book is not a value judgment on any particular political philosophy. I’m not telling Democrats that they’re wrong on any single economic, social, environmental, or foreign policy question. I mean, they are but that’s not the point.
I’m going to tell the truth about how Democrats’ feel-good intentions end up as political branding disasters. My job is to show you the real rules of the 2020 election game, and to explain how Democrats’ policies are frequently box-office poison in red and purple states.
I’m telling you this because Democrats are very prone to shooting themselves in the foot, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and blowing the simplest political tasks out their rectums.
Hillary didn’t win, and she had a billion fucking dollars of advertising and organizing behind her. Hillary didn’t win because the Democratic Party is systemically bad at elections, misread the populist appeal of Trump, underestimated how well his racial appeal worked, and didn’t drive to the damn net every minute of every day (oh hai, Wisconsin). They stubbornly refused to understand that many of their boutique policies repel the Walmart voters they must absolutely win in states that aren’t deep blue. In 2016, they came across as entitled to the office, instead of wanting to earn votes with hustle and humility. They can’t make that mistake twice.
Donald Trump is a terrible, horrible, no-good president. He’ll go down in history with asterisks next to his name for endemic corruption, outrageous stupidity, egregious cruelty, and inhumanity, for diminishing the presidency and the nation, and for being a lout with a terrible wig. But he’s trapped, desperate, and will do anything—and I mean anything—to win.
So, yeah. I’m going to treat Democrats like a client, with tough love, real talk, and a commitment to a shared victory. You won’t always like it, but for the good of the republic, and for your own good, I hope you’ll listen. I won’t like a lot of the outcomes, but Donald Trump is a bigger threat to America and its future than a Democratic president.
No policy victory is worth the damage he has wrought. No slate of judges can offset the destruction he has done to our institutions and our values. There is no moral accommodation with Trump, no safe path away from his authoritarian statism. As with nuclear weapons, only deterrence works. Only strong institutions and strong leaders can offset the chaos and dissension that follows Trump.
He can scream “no collusion, no obstruction” from the grave, and it won’t change the fact that he owes his election to the Russians and obstructed justice in trying to cover it up. He’ll be remembered for a spectacularly failed record in foreign policy. Despite his tough talk about being the world’s toughest negotiator, he has been routinely rolled by foreign adversaries, leaving America less safe and less respected in the world. His deficit spending puts drunken sailors to shame and makes the eyes of the few remaining fiscal conservatives pop out.
His overtly racial appeal is beyond shame. His ongoing flirtation with xenophobic arsonists over immigration and his long game of footsie with the racist virgins of the alt-right (but I repeat myself) have left the country more divided than anyone could have imagined in the post-Obama era.
He has done more damage to the institution of the presidency than Nixon and given the country a White House clown show with a cast of the least competent, least ethical, least sympathetic, and least appealing supporting players in any administration in memory.
There’s only one thing that can save him, and that’s a Democratic Party too stubborn, undisciplined, and foolish to get out of its own way.
The Democratic Party is on the verge of doing the impossible—handing Donald Trump the 2020 election. Even with the table set to eat the Republicans’ lunch in 2020, the Fyre Festival of political parties is on the verge of fucking it up once again, and it’s time someone gave them the tough love they so obviously need.
My Democratic friends will have one of two reactions to this book. Some will stomp off, huffing, “Thanks, but we don’t need you to pick our nominee. SANDERS FOREVER, BRAH!” Some will distrust any Republican, even one who sacrificed his career, lifelong friendships, and arguably his sanity to do the right thing. (Fuck me, right?)
The smart ones will realize that, though my tough-love approach isn’t what they want, it’s what they desperately need.
Think of it this way: When a senior KGB officer who decided he’d had enough of throwing people into the gulag or supporting a corrupt kleptocracy walked into an American embassy during the Cold War, the right response wasn’t “Fuck you.” The correct response was “Hey, we’d LOVE to check out this boatload of intel, plans, strategies, and data you’ve collected while you’ve been kicking our asses.” It was “Oh, so that’s how you did it.”
I’m coming in from the cold, whether you like it or not. I have a low tolerance for stupidity, and by God, I will overcome your stubborn resistance to the truth. This will not be over soon. You will not always enjoy this.
* * *
—
First, a confession. Yes, I would prefer that a conservative hold the presidency. Not a Trumpian, new-era conservative of this currently hot flavor of nationalist authoritarian dickishness, but one of the old, vanished era when we governed like adults, behaved like civilized people, and held on to both our principles and our humanity. I also want my own fighter aircraft and a volcano lair, but that’s not happening, at least this election cycle.
The Republican challengers (as of this writing,
at least) look like a field of also-rans, and the independents look like spoilers, so I’m stuck telling the Democrats how to avoid their usual mistakes, run the right campaign, and defeat Donald Trump.
Why the hell would I do this? Am I a suddenly far-left, woke social justice warrior who’s gone all pro-abortion, pro–gun control, big-tax socialist? Am I a RINO sellout? Am I trying to please my masters in big media? Is this a guidebook from the vengeful deep state? My Trump Republican critics will call this making common cause with the enemy. I know it sounds pious, but I really do put country over party, particularly when the party I served for a generation is on a headlong path toward becoming a collection of mere votaries to a maniacal cult leader.
It’s a common trope that every election is the most crucial election in history. This time, that cliché has both the danger and the benefit of being true. Unless there is a viable challenge to Trump and—just as important—to Trumpism in 2020, America is poised to transform into a different, darker, and more dangerous country. His embrace of nationalist populism may be accidental or incidental, but it’s spreading fast and it’s dangerous as hell.
I’m going to tell you these things not merely because I loathe the damage Trump is doing to our nation, or because I think your policies are good for America. If Democrats win, I’m going to hate it rather a lot.
But there’s more at stake than political and ideological preference now.
I’m doing this because the party I worked for, fought for, and sweated over for thirty years didn’t just abandon people like me who couldn’t stomach Trump; they’re putting the entire American experiment at risk. I’m telling you this because Trump and his enablers shredded every ideological predicate that drew me to conservatism and the Republican Party—the old-fashioned stuff like following the Constitution and the rule of law, limits on state power, tradition, honesty, decency, and sanity.
I’m doing it because I’m sick of the moral and political contagion he’s spread across the country, and sick over the collapse of a once-great party. I’m doing it because I’m repulsed by how Republicans have abandoned even the paper-thin excuses that let them make the switch to Trump in the first place.
I’m on this journey as a man without a party, a rebel in the Trump era, because the man covering the Oval Office with his ichor is an existential threat to American values, institutions, the Constitution, our system of government, our security in the world, the rule of law, and, you know, the little stuff like the future of humanity.
I’m willing to burn down the village to save it.
Here’s my promise to Democrats: I’m going to walk you through this as someone who has run the exact same playbook against your candidates that you’re about to face. I’m going to show you the flaws in your operating system that Republican consultants and candidates have hacked time and time again. This book is a road map for defeating Trump in 2020 for the Democrats, written by a Republican who knows how and why the Democrats often lose big elections they should win.
Why listen to me?
Why listen to a man who believes in a set of principles and philosophies many of you find anathema? I hope you’ll read and implement the ideas in this book with the understanding that there really are things more important than a transient political outcome. I hope that, like me, you’ll put country before ideology and the survival of the idea and ideals of America before the resentments over how many times I kicked your ass down the block.
We’re on the same side now, and that side is America.
PART 1
THE CASE AGAINST TRUMP, OR FOUR MORE YEARS IN HELL
Tweets from Donald Trump’s Second Term
@realDonaldTrump: The TRADE WAR has made AMERICA SO GREAT. Don’t believe the lying FAKE NEWS about record farm and manufacturing bankruptcies. This tiny, 50% correction in the market is a FAKE NEWS LIE. This trade war was so easy to win! I sent Chinaman Xi a MESSAGE.
@WSJ: As Depression Looms, Trump’s Trade War Rages
@Bloombergbusiness: Markets down 50% after Trump sends “dick pic” to Chinese premier Xi in latest trade war skirmish.
@BreitbartNews: Trump’s manhood wows globe. Women beg for his seed.
FOUR MORE YEARS IN HELL
Words fail to describe how bad four more years of Donald Trump would be for America and the world, to say nothing of the Democratic Party. In the beginning, I joked about the Mad Max hellscape that awaits us in the Trump era, but it’s gotten much less funny over time.
Why am I telling you this? You know this, right?
I’m telling you this because at some level Democrats still seem to believe that this is a mere political contest, with traditional limits and boundaries. They still think this is an election like any other, where they will turn out the base and scrap over the remaining voters in the center, trying to get back to the Oval Office along the paths laid out through the long, sprawling history of American politics.
But this isn’t just any election; it is an existential moment for America. This is either the last election of the nation we understood and loved, or the first of a long reset where we restore our honor and image after Trump’s term.
Campaigns often claim that the present election will decide what the America we leave our children and grandchildren will look like. This is rarely true; most elections aren’t epochal choices between light and darkness, liberty and servitude, good and evil.
This election? Yeah. It’s the real, apocalyptic deal.
Pick one: our messy, flawed, wonderfully sloppy democratic republic stumbling toward the shining city on the hill, or a kingdom of cruelty and utter corruption led by a family of authoritarian kleptocrats in thrall to foreign powers.
In those terms, you’d do anything to win, right?
Right?
Watching the 2020 Democrats, that answer isn’t clear. Some seem willing to chase their ideological fantasies instead of a decisive victory; others are unable to focus on a single, strategic truth—that this election will be fought in fifteen or so swing states and will be entirely a referendum on Donald Trump.
So what’s it going to be? A real campaign, or a purity contest for the edges of the Democratic Party?
Choose now and choose fast, because the clock on the 2020 election is running. The only thing you can never get back in an election is time. You can raise more money. You can do more ads. You can change your speeches and messages. You can do more calls, interviews, and town meetings until you collapse from campaign exhaustion. But you can’t get back a single week, day, or hour. Time, tide, and the battle of 2020 wait for no one.
All reelection campaigns are a referendum on the incumbent. All of them.
This presidential race is the ultimate referendum on the politics, character, persona, and actions of a man who has proven himself to us in a thousand awful ways. His enablers and ball-washers spend their lives in a state of constant revisionist panic, lunging from “He didn’t say that” to “He didn’t mean that” to googling “How can I enter the witness protection program?”
Trump cannot be shamed. He cannot be embarrassed. He cannot be controlled, and he cannot resist his impulses. Turning this election into a referendum on Trump is a gift for Democrats, not a burden.
Democrats don’t need to sell the progressive base on opposition to Trump. They don’t need to sell the rank and file. They don’t need to sell African Americans. They don’t need to sell most Hispanics. They do need to make the case that Trump is a mentally and morally unwell man, and that he sold a pack of lies to the voters in the fifteen or so swing states that matter in 2020. Democratic base voters gave us a preview in 2018, and they’re ready to rock again in 2020.
The following chapters outline the case to be made against Trump in this referendum. They look at how deeply Trump’s next four years will damage the American system, and the American people. If the stakes are outlined more starkly a
nd more directly, Democrats might—in spite of themselves—understand how vital it is they fight this fight as it is, not as they wish it to be.
Tweets from Donald Trump’s Second Term
@realDonaldTrump: As you know, Israel considers me King of the Jews. You might not know due to the lying media that I am also considered by many to be the next incarnation of the Dali Lama! THANK YOU FOR THIS HONER! Do you think I should also be POPE?
@YaleDivSchool: Wait, what?
@TheHolySee:
@DalaiLama: New phone. Who dis?
AMERICAN SWAMP
The Trump White House is lavishly and obviously corrupt to a degree unprecedented in modern American political history. Yes, we can drag back to Warren Harding and Teapot Dome, or Ulysses Grant’s multifarious scandals, or Andrew Johnson and the spoils system’s corrupt and corrupting influence, and yes, all presidential administrations are touched by corruption, though generally in trivial, marginal ways. In the modern era, we’ve had only one real standout: Richard Nixon.
Until now.
Trump makes Nixon look like a rookie, a small-ball piker. He makes the nontroversies of Obama, the Bushes, Clinton, and Reagan feel utterly trivial by comparison. Carter, the most reviled Democratic president of my youth, was practically a Sunday school teacher. Oh, wait. He was a Sunday school teacher.
Richard Nixon’s corruption sprang from a raw desire to protect his political power and position. He wasn’t in it for money or even adulation. Can you imagine Nixon with Trump’s neediness for love? Yuck. Lyndon Baines Johnson really just cared about the game; everything else was gravy. Clinton enjoyed the game, and certainly cashed in after office, but he was much more about chasing interns than dollars while in the White House.