I have a few ideas on strategies to help the eventual Democratic nominee beat Trump. These are mostly things that as far as I know aren’t usually tried, but seem like they would help. What do you all think of these two ideas? Are there other strategies that you can think of that would be helpful?
Have a slate of of people ready to nominate to the various cabinet positions. This is who I would pick to be AG, and they would obviously be better than Barr. Same thing for Secretary of State as a comparison against Mike Pompeo, and so on.
Ask the former candidates to hold rallies in the swing states in the areas that would be best suited to them. Let’s say Bernie is the nominee. I would ask Amy Klobuchar to hold rallies for me in Minnesota, Joe Biden to hold rallies in Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Warren to be visiting college campuses in places like Madison WI and State College PA, etc. I’d also ask the Obamas to be out on the campaign trail as well.
Maybe those rallies are held each election season and I’ve not noticed since Texas isn’t a battleground state. If not, why is not typical to do these things? What other campaign strategies (as opposed to policy positions) might be of benefit?
The first one, I’ve thought for a long time would be a good idea providing you do your vetting really well. Let people know the team they’re voting for and hopefully give someone who might otherwise be undecided to come out and vote to make sure someone becomes SecState or SecDef or whatever.
The second I’d like to see no matter what. If you’re a democrat you should support your candidate. And it can help. Whoever the surrogates are they should be hammering swing states with home town heroes.
I can’t imagine anyone really cares about the cabinet. I think the first Bush mentioned he’d make Jim Baker (not the televangelist) Secretary of State.
And yes, former candidates can be useful along with the Clintons and Obamas. But they all need to be used carefully. Bill Clinton is toxic in parts of the country. But I bet he could be useful in Georgia, Alabama and North Carolina. Biden can be good as an attack dog and doesn’t need to worry about mangling words or record players. And Pete and Chasten will be draws everywhere.
I don’t understand what the upside of pre-nominating Cabinet members would be. Like dalej42 said, most people don’t care. And the people who DO care might very well prefer somebody other than that particular candidate. Plus, there’s too much risk that one of the pre-nominees might turn out to have unexpected skeletons in their closet (it seems like this happens with at least one Cabinet nominee for every president, despite vetting), or that they will prove to be unpopular with some faction within the party.
(Also, you can’t always know who would be available as a nominee before the election, and even if a candidate has a fairly good idea, it might not be prudent to say so. Doug Jones, for example, might make a perfectly fine AG for a Democratic president – but not if he beats the odds and hangs onto his Senate seat in Alabama! And any candidate who pre-nominated him would basically be signaling that they’re not expecting him to win, and / or that if he does win, Alabamians can’t expect him to serve, which would surely depress turnout and torpedo whatever chance he had to win in the first place.)
Part of the idea is my admittedly unstated assumption that there would be that many more people out on the campaign trail stumping for the nominee. I think it would also reassure voters if someone like say, Bernie Sanders indicates he is going to nominate someone more mainstream to be the Secretary of State or Treasury or whatever as opposed to other people who could also be painted as far left socialists. Or if the nominee is someone like Bloomberg he could show he isn’t going to fill his cabinet with a bunch of plutocrats.