Michael Tomasky of The New Republic offers good advice about defeating Donald Trump. It’s about shaping a narrative, constantly reminding people that he is a convicted felon.
It might also be helpful to reiterate that he had sex with a porn star while his wife Melanie was recuperating from childbirth; that a jury decided that he sexually assaulted and defamed journalist E. Jean Carroll and owes her nearly $100 million dollars; that the State of New York successfully sued him for fraudulently reporting the value of his properties to reduce his taxes and was ordered to pay more than $400 million.
Tomasky writes:
If there is such a thing as one infamous quote that defines an era, then during the George W. Bush presidency it was an on-background remark made by a Bush aide to the journalist Ron Suskind in 2002 that appeared two years later in The New York Times Magazine. A “senior adviser” who was unhappy about an earlier article by Suskind had called him on the carpet and then went on to explain the broader world view that Suskind failed to comprehend:
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”
The passage was instantly incendiary (everyone thinks it was Karl Rove; Rove has never confirmed this, and Suskind has never revealed his source). The arrogance of it, at a time when the Iraq War was hardly going to plan, was staggering. Some Democrats took the jibe as a badge of honor and began sporting “Reality-Based Community” buttons.
Republicans have a long track record of disastrous results. The Iraq War, which we were told in early 2003 would take a couple months, lasted years, killed hundreds of thousands, and cost trillions (and by the way, Iraq is still not close to being a free country). Bush also would go on to let a major American city drown (New Orleans) and nearly destroy the global economic order.
But we have to say this: None of that ever dims their confidence that they can create their own reality. And today, by which I mean right now, this week, Democrats can and must learn a thing or two from Republicans.
While Donald Trump was on trial, the conventional wisdom was that the outcome would have no effect on the election. The only people who disagreed were some conservatives—because they were sure it would actually help him.
But now we have a couple polls telling us something different. The conviction has the potential to hurt Trump. But emphasis on “potential.” It depends entirely on what the Democrats do with it. So this is the key question: Are the Democrats capable of creating their own reality? Do they have the imagination and courage to do it?
First, the polls. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken after Trump’s conviction, 10 percent of Republicans and 25 percent of independents said the conviction made them less likely to vote for Trump. To be sure, majorities of both said it would have no effect, and 35 percent of Republicans said a conviction made them more likely to back Trump.
But the important number is that 10 percent. That is a huge number. Think it through with me. In 2020, 158 million people voted. According to the CNN exit polls, 36 percent were Republicans. That’s 57 million voters. If Trump were to lose 5.7 million Republicans, he would not only lose but probably lose convincingly. Even if half of that 10 percent comes back to him, he’d lose 2.85 million. That’s still a huge number.
Let’s do a little more math. In the key swing state of Arizona, the vote total was about 3.3 million. If we follow the CNN exit polls that put the GOP vote nationwide at 36 percent, then just shy of 1.2 million Arizona voters were Republican. If Trump were to lose 5 percent of them, that would amount to about 59,000 votes. And Arizona was decided, of course, by about 12,000 votes in 2020. In Georgia, which again was decided by roughly 12,000 votes, Trump would lose around 88,000 votes. In Michigan, it would be 99,000 votes lost if just 5 percent of Republicans desert him. In Pennsylvania, it would be close to 124,000 votes. And remember, I’m lowballing Republican defections from the poll’s 10 percent to half that, and I’m not even counting independents.
I trust you see the importance here.
Second post-conviction poll: Morning Consult found that 15 percent of Republicans believe Trump should end his candidacy. Now, there are no numbers to crunch here, and Trump is obviously not going to do that. But if roughly every seventh Republican really thinks Trump should end his candidacy, that is a staggering number, and again a potentially devastating one for him.
And again—emphasis on “potentially.”
Democrats, the ball is in your court. You can make your usual “judicious study of discernible reality” and buy into the lazy—and apparently wrong—conventional wisdom that says the verdict will make no difference.
Or you can create a new reality in which the verdict makes a big difference—maybe the difference between Joe Biden being reelected and Donald Trump destroying our democracy.
How to do it? There are lots of ways. But let’s start with this. “Convicted felon Donald Trump.” Not once. Not 10 times. Not 10,000 times. More like 500,000 times.
Seriously: No federal Democratic officeholder should, for the foreseeable future, say the name “Donald Trump” without putting the words “convicted felon” before it. We might give Biden himself a partial exemption here, because for a president, that kind of blunt, partisan repetition may be a little undignified. But no one else. Chuck Schumer. Hakeem Jeffries. Cori Bush on the left. Jared Golden on the right. Every. Single. One of them.
Blunt repetition may be boring. Democrats and liberals are intellectually averse to it, because it’s intellectually dull, and we’re supposed to be the smart side, always finding clever new arguments. But it works. People need to hear things over and over and over for it to lodge in their long-term memory.
Think of how many times you heard “Crooked Hillary” in 2016. Did they sound like mentally dull robots? Yes. But did it sink in, for millions of swing voters? Well, we do know this: As many as 40 percent of voters in 2016 polls said they thought she was corrupt. And when James Comey reopened that email investigation in late October, many of those voters thought: Aha. Crooked Hillary. Just what the Republicans have been saying.
This is how people’s brains work. Don’t take it from me. Take it from Gretchen Smelzer, a psychologist whom I admit I just found on Google on Sunday morning but who appears to be legit and whose 2018 book Journey Through Traumaearned a brief but respectful write-up in The New York Times. On her website, Smelzer writes:
There are only three ways that information can move from short-term memory to long term memory: urgency, repetition, or association.…
Repetition is the most familiar learning tool—everyone has memorized facts or vocabulary words by repeating them, and some have improved basketball free-throw shooting or playing piano scales through practice. Repetition creates long term memory by eliciting or enacting strong chemical interactions at the synapse of your neuron (where neurons connect to other neurons). Repetition creates the strongest learning.…
So Democrats. Here’s your situation. You can let this drop, thus ensuring that by November 5, Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts by a jury that deliberated for less than 10 hours will be totally forgotten, and no one will carry the thought of it into the voting booth. Or you can hammer away at it, never letting voters forget it—and by the way, driving Trump crazy the whole time, making it likely that he’ll say nuttier and nuttier things about it—and do all you can to swing those 59,000 votes in Arizona and all the rest.
It’s up to you. Do you want to wake up on Wednesday, November 6, with Trump having won, and with exit polls showing that his conviction made no difference? If not, well … as Malone (Sean Connery) said to Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) about stopping another mobster: “What are you prepared to do?”
It is so hilarious that Trump called his own wife Melanie!
He might have said “Melaria.”
HAAAAA!!!
Everything hinges on whether blacks, young people, and independents, and undecided voters actually come out and vote for Biden.
I think that the abortion issue has greater legs. The DNC should be running nonstop ads featuring Trump telling the reporter that women should face jail time for having abortions and Trump bragging about putting Just Asses on the Extreme Court who would overturn Roe.
Biden has some problems with these key demographic groups. Who can forget the amazing support for Biden from the Black community in Georgia in 2020? If young folks or people of color believe Trump will do more for them, they are delusional. Trump’s main interest is himself and the billionaires that fund his lies.
But they have to know that. The recent fall-off of support for Biden among black people is truly disturbing. Blacks were essential to Biden’s win in 2020.
A Thank You to the People of Color of These Disunited States | Bob Shepherd | Praxis (wordpress.com)
I’m really worried. If one digs into the numbers, the pictures is truly disturbing. I’m afraid that a lot of Democrats are in lala land. WHAT IS GOING TO BRING THESE VOTERS OUT?
We need some targeted ad campaigns. Youth. Blacks. Undecideds. Independents.
I haven’t heard young people falling for the false narrative that Biden is cognitively unfit to be president. What I have heard them saying is that they are angry at Israel’s bombing of Gaza and they are angry that there isn’t more progressive legislation and blame Biden.
But I am sure in a couple weeks the non-stop amplification and legitimizing of the “Don’t vote for Biden because he is cognitively unfit” narrative will make more young people turn away.
I agree that messaging matters. Democrats need to step up their support for Biden, show some enthusiasm and repeat the tropes that will solidify their message. Keep it simple, Democrats, and do not overthink it as they have a tendency to do. “Convicted felon, Russian sympathizer, disaster economics” are all a good place to start. Democrats need to flood the media with these types of simple messages, IMO.
Absolutely! It is so appalling that the Democrats have not engaged in a full scale assault against the grift of the Republican Party and what it continues to do to our country. Although Biden’s debate result was bad, the worse news was the Supreme Court Rulings Friday and the looming ruling on Presidential immunity Monday. We should be full throated that Republicans want to leave our country in a heap. It has become a syndicate that backs a convicted felon. Rinse and repeat!
Dimocrats will “high road” themselves to a loss.
It’s time to take off the gloves. Run a lot of tell it as it is ads. Feature Trump talking against himself. Feature split screens of Trump saying one thing, the actual fact on the other.
Ads of TRUMP STAFFERS, quoting what they have said of him. A moron. An idiot. The cognitive capacity of a fifth grader.
Followed by “To know him is to _____ him.” Fill in the blank.
Democrats do not need to lie or take the low road. They simply need to exploit Trump’s vulnerabilities and his crappy record.
They need to take the freaking gloves off and tell the unvarnished truth in the most stark terms. They have to capture the attention of the young and undecideds and independents with some headline-grabbing comments. They don’t have to lie to do this. BUT THEY DO HAVE TO TAKE THE GLOVES OFF AND SAY IT AS IT IS.
Trump is a Russian asset.
The judge in Trump’s case said that they found that he was a rapist. A rapist is running for president.
That kind of thing. NO MORE MR. NICE ABOUT THIS VILE, DANGEROUS CRETIN.
Democrats are always too nice nice. And when they are, they lose.
Trump HIMSELF has provided more than ample material to sink his candidacy. That Dimocrats have not exploited this properly demonstrates a breathtaking level of incompetence among campaign strategists.
This extremist court is rewriting the fundamental rules by which our country runs. And no one is paying any attention to that.
Trump is a LIAR. Trump is a GRIFTER. Trump is a FASCIST. Trump works for Putin. Trump is the worse person ever to be potus. He has got to GO. Trump has no allegiance to Democracy and the free world.
None. Trump’s ONLY allegiance is to himself.
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Title:
How to Defeat a Convicted Felon and Rapist
I remember when I was a kid, and the fact that Nelson Rockefeller had had a divorce was enough to keep him from getting the nod. Now Repugnicans are fine with having a rapist and a Russian asset at the top of their ticket.
How to Defeat a Convicted Felon and Rapist Who Is Also a Russian Asset
It drove me nuts that the moderators of the debate kept calling tRump “President Trump.” It probably fed into his already bloated ego and energized him. No wonder the other day he said that CNN treated him “very fairly.” They were not about to call him “convicted felon tRrump” but Biden was THE president up there so he should have been the only one called “President.”
Someone who sent fake electors from several states and a huge mob to the Capitol to claw back the title for him after losing –and who still refuses to admit publicly that he lost the election 4 years later– deserves to be called just plain old “Mr. tRump” in my book.
Though it doesn’t say why here, I think that calling tRump “President Trump” repeatedly, as well as not fact checking him so he was able to get away with telling lie after lie unchecked, both probably contributed to his seeing the CNN moderators of the debate as treating him “very fairly”: https://www.rawstory.com/trump-treated-fairly-by-cnn/
This, precisely.
That this thread is even a conversation points to the nadir of political discourse in this country. Well, hope it is the nadir.
Trump has 35% of the electorate locked up. Add 10% fear vote for Trump who accept the absurdity that Biden is a dangerous communist. Democrats have to not only win the 55%, they have to motivate them to vote in places where voting is discouraged.
100 % in agreement. Democrats have learn how to leave the pillows at home and bring out the bats. For 2 years now given the economic of the Country Republicans would have been screaming this is the best economy ever with Trump conducting the chorus. It was morning in America with 7.8% unemployment and 4.3% inflation. And Reagan won in a landslide.
Most if not everything that comes out of Traitor Trump’s mouth or through his thumbs to “X” or his Lying Truth Social, are lies. If the Traitor says something factual, it’s probably an accident and he doesn’t even know he did it.
So, as I understand it, Democrats and Biden also have to do the “Gish Gallop”.
Traitor Trump is asked a question by a moderator or reporter. The traitor ignores the question and goes into a “Gish Gallup,” repeating his lies.
The moderator or reporter doesn’t stop him and surrenders, letting the Traitor repeat his often repeated lies as he gallops along.
Then it’s Biden’s turn (or another Democrat in a similar situation). The moderator asks Biden a question, Biden ignores it and reverts to the “Gish Gallop” but he repeats the facts that Traitor Trump is a convicted rapist and fraud and keeps going until time runs out, spewing all the other fact-based truth about the traitor’s failures and crimes and alleged crimes.
There are a lot of failures and crimes Traitor Trump is guilty of. Still The democrats have to focus on the few that get the most traction with voters.
Convicted felon.
Guilty of rape and fraud.
Trump lost more than 60 court cases over the election because there is no evidence of fraud during the 2020 election.
When the Traitor was having sex with a porn star, his third wife who was his second mistress, is pregnant with their son Baron. Don’t go into a lot of detail about all the other women who claimed the Traitor molested them. Select the one that shocks the most and keep repeating it.
Trump had sex with a porn star while his wife was pregnant.
Traitor Trump is on his “Gish Gallup” repeating the same lies.
Biden or another Democrat is on their “Gish Gallup” repeating the same fact-based truths from a short list.
If the moderators or reporters attempt to stop Biden or other Democrats, they reply, “When you get them (the traitor or other MAGA cultists) to answer your questions, then I will be more than happy to answer them too. Until then, ask your question and then keep your mouth shut like you do with them, while I counter this traitor and convicted felon’s lies with fact-based truth.”
It was one bad night.
Donald Trump was just convicted of felonies for trying to keep a porn star quiet.
And I should be worried…why?
(And where was Trump’s…promised? I know, absurd…announcement of his running mate? Hmmm?}
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