From time to time in my practice (divorce lawyer), a client comes to me near the time of his/her divorce trial and asks me to help with the trial scheduled for a short time away (almost inevitably a pretty poor case). With only what I am given from the prior lawyer, or unrepresented client, I need to decide whether to advise the client to roll the dice and hope for the win, or just try to limit how truly terrible the outcome of the trial will be.
If you were appointed the campaign manager of the Trump 2020 team today, with 11 days to go and 50 million votes already cast, what would your strategy be? With the time and money left to him, would you try for a last minute turn around (538 says 12%, though admittedly similar to the situation in 2016) or just try to limit the loss of the most Trump friendly states?
The problem is that for Trump there is no option but winning. There is no way in hell he’d accept a “limit your loss” strategy.
I just wouldn’t take the case.
“Trump, you’ve got ten days remaining to suddenly show the maturity you’ve been sorely lacking the past 4 years. Get it done. It will be tough, but the good news is you get graded on a softer curve than any other presidential candidate. So try to be mature for ten days.”
It seems that the campaign staff has told him to pretend to be a decent human being with no effect.
So they need a Hail Mary pass. The one I can think of is to tell Congressional Republicans that he is going to take money from their states unless they pass a $2 billion, or more, stimulus bill (more to upstage the Dems) and then take personal credit for it. At least some of the voters on the verge of big economic problems would vote for him.
Just a quibble, but if they told him that, he has only shown it last night at the debate. Prior to that, walking out the 60 minutes interview doesn’t qualify as being a decent human being to my mind. It certainly doesn’t seem like the debate will have much of an effect, but its probably still too early to tell.
Your stimulus idea is better than anything I could come up with.
@Broomstick nailed it in one. This is a game you, the manager, can win only by refusing to play.
IMO the only way Trump wins the actual honest EC vote is if something miraculous changes by Election day. If he could arrange for Putin to stage a second 9/11-scale event that might do it. Have Lil Kim invade SK. But that’s about the size of the diversion he’ll need.
His other major route to winning is through the courts. We can already assume they have fully written-up legal challenges to each of the 50 states’ vote counting processes. Not all 50 will be filed, but at least some will. Anything that can tune those up will help. It’s behind the scenes, but it affects the election and so is fair game for the campaign manager.
Getting ACB on the SCOTUS would be a big help. As would Putin announcing the day before the election that he’d injected umpteen million votes into the computers already and all the early voting work of the last 2 months is massively untrustworthy. Bonus points to him if it’s at least a little bit true.
The best thing Trump can do to keep the White House is foment as much distrust in the election as possible. The more the MAGAs believe the Dem Deep State is stealing it all, the better the next 4 months look for DJT. They should be running ads all day every day that the election is totally rigged. Plus of course all the usual RW propaganda outlets should be shouting the same. That’s the play the campaign manager should get behind.
The job of a campaign manager is to try to win the election, not lose it less badly.
If anybody can say this tersely and yet tactfully, tactfully enough so as not to anger a narcissist. If they can say this:
“The votes from the Maghats/your base are in the bag, always have been, but they’re not enough numerically. Heretofore, your boorishness is a big turn-off to those who may vote for you but currently do not.”
I would tell him to try something he has never done in his life - be radically and unequivocally honest. He should admit his faults and weaknesses; fess up to his violations of the law; admit to the times he has sold out U.S. interests for his own personal interests; state his true feelings about members of the military, teachers, immigrants, and the poor. Admit that he cheated on his taxes but say that the system is so broken that wealthy people mostly cheat on their taxes unless they haven’t figured out how. He should tell America about exactly how he picked all his political appointees, the promises he extracted from them, and what they told or promised him in return. He should admit that he lets his cabinet get away with abusing government authority (like flying private) because it helps him to make sure that they stay loyal to him. He should own up to all the promises he made foreign envoys so that he could get things he wanted. He should admit exactly how much money his businesses have taken from the government sources, from foreign governments, and from lobbyists. He should provide all the supporting documentation immediately upon request to anyone who asks and order the executive agencies to release documents in the same way. He should order (for real this time) that his agencies release all the documents that support this narrative. He should release anyone bound by a confidentiality agreement from it immediately. Convince him that what the people really want is a truly honest politician and that it’s his lack of credibility that has hurt him in the polls.
Of course, I want him to lose.
All of that is 100% true… but it doesn’t provide a path forward to gain any additional votes.
I don’t agree. For a “normal” Republican, once winning the presidency is clearly not going to happen, trying to save (or at least not damage) down ballot races would typically be part of the calculation. Also for most people, finding a way to save face, even in loss, has value. The difference between your opponent winning 290 electoral votes and 400 votes would matter.
All the stuff you said after this doesn’t really apply to Trump, though. He doesn’t care about other Republicans, and a 12% chance of victory is way to big a chance at actual victory to throw away in service of saving face since he’ll just make shit up to explain a loss.
Incentives to the hypothetical campaign manager are similar. If you’re coming in now, it’s clearly a Hail Mary play. Everyone expects you to fail, so going for the win and failing won’t really affect your future prospects. And if you win?! Gravy train here on out.
I’d tell him not to do shit like this.
If I were given the job of Trump campaign manager, I’d say
“Donald, you’ve been looking weak. You need to show the world that no one is bigger and better than you. At your next rally, you need to show the world your magnificent manhood - no more keeping that thing in your pants, big guy. You need to stroke it a bit after you whip it out so the nation can see you in your full glory. Oh, yeah —- put a mask over your asshole when you do this — that’ll show the libs! Make sure you make fun of Biden for his small dick and challenge him to show his stuff — that’ll really box him up. Oh, and send a dick pic to every single one of your text followers with the following message “Ladies, donate $20 now and win a chance to SUCK THIS!. You should also consider crapping into your hands and flinging it at your supporters like it was a roll of paper towels. Here’s a big canister of fiber, eat it before your next rally so you can crap big! Your supporters all love souvenirs and you can show off your magnificent throwing arm - make a snide reference to Fauci’s baseball pitch as you fling your poo and yell “Take that, Covid” in order to demonstrate the US Covid response in its entirety.
Which is why I would never be hired as Trump’s campaign manager. Hey, you asked.
Well, that was deeply disturbing.
Which, obviously, I meant as a compliment.
Can I hire you to consult for my next performance review?
It would be a longshot but the only way I can see Trump actually winning the election would be for him to go on the air and acknowledge he’s made some big mistakes. He’d have to say that he entered politics because he wanted to help the country he loved but he now sees that he got caught up in the process and let his ego get in the way of doing his job. And now he’s humbly asking the American people to give him another chance and he’s pledging to change his ways; if he is given a second term he will be a uniter and a builder.
He’d probably be lying. But it’s an act he might be able to carry off for a couple of weeks. And Americans love a redemption story so it might swing enough votes his way for him to win.
But I don’t think I could convince Trump to try it.
Whatever happens in the election, I think DJT has painted himself royally into a corner – a dark one that doesn’t put a lot of emphasis on basic hygiene.
I doubt he’s changed any Democrat or ‘undecided’ minds (to speak of) in the last few months, and/but I think any move he makes toward decency, sanity, or normalcy immediately starts costing him huge chunks of his well-documented and resolute base.
What ‘we’ hate about him is what they love about him. I think they’d turn on him in a nanosecond if he had a real epiphany and truly pivoted or showed what his constituents disparagingly call ‘weakness.’
ETA: and if my hypothesis held, write large, he could – in an epic example of poetic justice – win the popular vote but lose the EC 
I would give him a list of countries that don’t have extradition treaties with the US and ask him to pick one so I could book his flight.
Go see a play.