Except that a fair amount of supporters in interviews will paint a picture of him completely at odds with what he says and does. Yes, a solid % are fully aware, but there are still plenty who are selectively naive’. If you pop the bubble on them somehow, another level of support will drain away. You’d think…
Not sure how you run against him in the general election, except that “Aren’t you tired of this outrageous stuff? Time for a normal, quiet, calm presidency for a change, don’t you think?”
In the primary, though, it would be easy: “Trump would say anything to get elected, yet he immediately compromised once he won. I on the other will be a *real *conservative. I say what I mean and mean what I say. I say I will build the wall, deport the illegals, and if I am elected I WILL DO JUST THAT.”
I don’t know. Trump, his rise and his supporters is something psychologists, sociologists and political scientists will be studying for decades.
Even now, Trump has ratings of about 80% approval among Republicans. Nothing sticks to him, he is Teflon.
What may work? Really the only thing that seems like it would is if Trump stops representing a white nationalist resistance to multiculturalism. That or if he starts doing things that earn approval from progressives. As long as Trump pisses off liberals and represents white nationalist resistance to multiculturalism he will probably have 80% support from the gop no matter what else he does. Liberal tears and protecting white western culture from non whites, foreigners, gays, non Christians, seem to be his main appeals.
Trump negotiating with democrats about DACA resulted in a bunch of his supporters burning their red hats. But who knows if that will last or if they’ll forget.
If someone can get Trump to give a speech in favor of black lives matter, with Hillary Clinton giving his full support that may cost him votes. But I don’t see that happening.
Photoshop him shaking Colin Kapernicks hand. That’ll have a response.
I don’t know about the BLM stuff. I suspect that if he turned to the left that he’d increase his support. His supporters are with him no matter what I figure.
I don’t really think he’s teflon though. It doesn’t look like anything can do him FURTHER damage, but he is standing at 40% approval, which is really bad.
When a suggestion for pulling a leader down involves photoshopping him doing something he didn’t, you have a problem.
Political Campaigning May Be Mostly Pointless
TL;DR - political campaigns (at least in not-very-local elections) do not seem to change political leanings or beliefs. But they can GOTV. And that seems to be the only effect they have.
And I’m not voting for Oprah Winfrey. If I have to choose between Republican reality show celebrity and Democratic reality show celebrity I’m voting Republican.
Always so entertaining to see conservative board members offering such helpful advice about what the Democrats should do. “Democrats should be completely honest and open and never say anything bad at all about their opponent or his base. And also they should wear silly hats and clown noses at all times, and offer every voter a free baby bunny. That’s sure to appeal to the electorate.”
And in the meantime, the Republicans will continue their successful ratfucking approach for the third decade running.
I think open contempt for Trump will not work. If I had a nickel for every time I heard/read someone say that they voted for not-democrat because they didn’t like being lectured by democrat (with no mention of actual stances or policy) I’d have… well, a few nickels, but I don’t think this can be discounted. As sad as it is, I believe a lot of people vote on how messages are delivered, rather than the content of the message.
I don’t exactly know the “how”, but Trumps opponents need to tactfully put on display that he has delivered nothing but chaos, and we need to stop the bleeding before we get four more years of chaos. (I mean chaos in the legislative arena, but I worry that if he can’t stop tweeting about foreign leaders it could lead to real, actual chaos)
Some variation on
“Trump promised you X…he failed,
Trump promised you Y…he failed,
Trump promised you Z…he failed,
Trump promised you a different white house…he failed.
Many of you trusted him to deliver and he let you down”
I suspect that getting a list together of his failures, inaction and lies will be easy. Whoever runs against him then just needs to point those out clearly and make it easy and face-saving for those who swung to Trump to swing back…i.e. it wasn’t your bad judgement but *his *mendacity.
Having said that, it would not surprise me if he ducked the challenge altogether and resign after one term. He could claim undefeated victory and it would give him four extra years of cashing in on whatever back door deals he is currently setting up in his favour.
I am completely sure Trump will not run for re-election - was sure of that the moment he was elected. He will be 74, running again is a huge hassle, and it doesn’t achieve anything for Trump - he has already been elected President, that achievement has been reached, he’s done it, why do it again?
Spoken like his only goal was to ‘win’ the presidency and not to serve the people of the country.
By some accounts his only goal was to run for president and reap the attention and publicity. Winning wasn’t even on the table at first.
Exactly.
Plus leaving them wanting more will be a sure-fire way to have the Trump administration regarded as a second Camelot.
The Democrats need a candidate who can resonate with the bible thumpers and working class people of Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida. The margins were (I think) so slim in these states and many people felt ignored and forgotten by HRC. If someone came to those places and said something to the effect of, “I hear you. I know you exist. We haven’t forgotten about you. We’ll work for you. You aren’t deplorable.”, I think many of those voters could swing the other way and we’re looking at a different situation in 2020. At the end of the day, Trump reached out and touched those people. Just recognition I think was enough to swing many of them to vote red.
Plus, if Pence wins as Trump’s hand-picked successor – well, Trump could brag about that, right? And he’s a guy who sure loves to brag, as we’ve all seen since he won the election. But if Pence loses, then Trump can shrug and say “Hey, if I’d run again, then I would’ve won again.” But if Trump loses, then – what?
“Hope and change” was not the policy that Obama campaigned on. It was the slogan. When you got to his actual policies, he provided plenty of detail.
You don’t campaign against Donald Trump, you inoculate against him - with things like teaching critical-thinking skills and the development of emotional resilience for society as a whole. Once it’s reached the point where he’s taken seriously as a candidate, it’s too late for predictable or reliable measures.
He wasn’t “taken seriously as a candidate”. You (plural - all the pundits, press, Hollywood, all the liberal comedians/talk show hosts, and the liberals in general) laughed uproariously as he was preparing to and when he announced his candidacy. That did a lot of good.
The problem wasn’t that he wasn’t taken seriously. The problem was that the people who did take him seriously weren’t taken seriously.
The joke’s on everyone now.