DOUGLAS KLEVEN
How To Lose An Election In 3 Easy Steps
Step 1. Rig The System Against Bernie Sanders, Again
On January 14 the Democrats launched Phase 1 of Operation Lose To A Guy With 4 Years Of Sub 50% Approval Ratings when CNN moderator Abby Phillip helped us see that Bernie Sanders is not only sexist, but his pants are on fire.
Abby Phillip: “Senator Sanders, I do want to be clear here. You’re saying that you never told Senator Warren that a woman could not win the election?”
Sen. Sanders: “That is correct.”
Abby Phillip: “Senator Warren, what did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?”
Sen. Warren: “I disagreed.”
I’d like to compare this moment to the scene in the Wizard of Oz where the curtain was pulled back and everyone found out that the Wiz wasn’t who he claimed he was, but the analogy doesn’t work because old man Oz was embarrassed when his fraud was discovered. Mrs. Phillip on the other hand seems quite pleased with her work.
Initially I lamented the death of the pretense of objective journalism, but 19th Century journalism was blatantly propagandistic and somehow we survived, so… whatever. Although, anyone who wants to unseat Donald J. Trump in November should not treat the incident so blithely. Because there’s an old saying in politics …
You can blatantly tilt the 2016 nomination process in favor of Hillary Clinton once and retain the vote of most of Bernie’s Bros, but do it a second time for a lady who’s poached all of his plans for that, and you’ll lose the election because a good chunk of those dudes aren’t going to be done dirty twice.
Comrades, do you really think that you can beat the President without every single vote from the Bernardos? If so, I don’t think you’re taking the current economic data seriously enough:
Anyways, moving on.
Step 2. Overstate Your Case Against the President
If you want to convince swing voters that they don’t like the President, all you have to do is report accurately on the things he says and tweets. That’s all. It really is that simple. The man will hand deliver you all the material any oppo-researcher could ever hope for, and then some. Check him out:
On January 14 the Democrats launched Phase 1 of Operation Lose To A Guy With 4 Years Of Sub 50% Approval Ratings when CNN moderator Abby Phillip helped us see that Bernie Sanders is not only sexist, but his pants are on fire.
Abby Phillip: “Senator Sanders, I do want to be clear here. You’re saying that you never told Senator Warren that a woman could not win the election?”
Sen. Sanders: “That is correct.”
Abby Phillip: “Senator Warren, what did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?”
Sen. Warren: “I disagreed.”
I’d like to compare this moment to the scene in the Wizard of Oz where the curtain was pulled back and everyone found out that the Wiz wasn’t who he claimed he was, but the analogy doesn’t work because old man Oz was embarrassed when his fraud was discovered. Mrs. Phillip on the other hand seems quite pleased with her work.
Initially I lamented the death of the pretense of objective journalism, but 19th Century journalism was blatantly propagandistic and somehow we survived, so… whatever. Although, anyone who wants to unseat Donald J. Trump in November should not treat the incident so blithely. Because there’s an old saying in politics …
You can blatantly tilt the 2016 nomination process in favor of Hillary Clinton once and retain the vote of most of Bernie’s Bros, but do it a second time for a lady who’s poached all of his plans for that, and you’ll lose the election because a good chunk of those dudes aren’t going to be done dirty twice.
Comrades, do you really think that you can beat the President without every single vote from the Bernardos? If so, I don’t think you’re taking the current economic data seriously enough:
- Right now we’re facing the lowest unemployment rates in half a century (including among Blacks, Hispanics and Asians.)
- According to the NY Times “recent growth for workers with low wages has outpaced that for high-wage workers by the widest margin in at least 20 years.”
- And the female unemployment rate is at a 66 year low
Anyways, moving on.
Step 2. Overstate Your Case Against the President
If you want to convince swing voters that they don’t like the President, all you have to do is report accurately on the things he says and tweets. That’s all. It really is that simple. The man will hand deliver you all the material any oppo-researcher could ever hope for, and then some. Check him out:
Exhibit B: Every now and then he’ll praise evil dictators, in public
Exhibit C: He’s open about his unique superpowers, e.g. Wine Point of Origin Detection
Exibit D: He‘s not courting the fastest growing voting block in America
He will unapologetically say and do things that would sink any other candidate (the most obvious of which I didn’t reproduce because heaven knows you haven’t forgotten it) but instead of faithfully and methodically reporting on his statements and policies, the opposition over plays its hand… over and over again. Former CBS reporter and investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson has compiled a list of 111 negative media reports about the President that were later retracted or amended because they were erroneous. Can anyone produce a list a tenth as long, from the same organizations, of stories that were later retracted or amended because they were… too positive? Along that same vein, a 2017 analysis of the media’s coverage of the President revealed that 91% of it was negative. Today that number sits at 96%. Given that the errors in reportage overwhelmingly cut against the President, it’s hard to not conclude that there’s a trigger finger in nearly every editor-in-chief’s office that’s just dying to bury the President. The media is so obsessed with proving that he’s evil that a year ago when he claimed that the hamburgers at the celebration of Clemson’s National Championship were “piled a mile high,” journalists at the Washington Post actually published this exposé:
Fact Check: At two inches each, a thousand burgers would not reach one mile high.
So congratulations to the Resistance, you lose. His claims of phony news and witch hunts and enemies of the people could not be taken seriously by a significant subsection of his supporters, without you.
Step 3. Don’t Provide The Voters With An Answer To These Questions
Fact Check: At two inches each, a thousand burgers would not reach one mile high.
So congratulations to the Resistance, you lose. His claims of phony news and witch hunts and enemies of the people could not be taken seriously by a significant subsection of his supporters, without you.
Step 3. Don’t Provide The Voters With An Answer To These Questions
- How do the economic policies of the Democratic Party square with the economic policies of the Democratic Socialists?
The opening line of Article II of the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA’s) constitution contains this shot across the free market’s bow:
We are socialists because we reject an economic order based on private profit, alienated labor, gross inequalities of wealth and power etc. etc.
Now just to make sure we understand how economic orders based on private profit differ from those that reject the profit motive, here’s a short list of a very few of the many market-based economic orders:
“I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”
In contrast, here’s a list of the economies that explicitly reject (to the best of their ability) both private profit and alienated labor:
But what about alienated labor? Why does the DSA reject the “alienation” of labor? It’s because they assume that the lonely individual, if left to negotiate the terms of his own employment, will be universally oppressed and exploited by his capitalist overlords. Therefore the only way to guarantee that the individual isn’t ground under the boot of profit seekers is to bring that worker into the collective, where terms can be negotiated en mass and individual rights protected. Please note though that in America, where one’s labor can be alienated, the individual is still free to form a union and bargain collectively. In actual socialist societies though, ones that have banned the profit motive and made labor inalienable, there’s no need to form a union; you are born into a union. To see how default bans on wage alienation play out in practice, please visit any of the following countries:
2. Also, when are the Democrats going to put their immigration legislation where their mouths are?
Question: Who was the last President to push for comprehensive immigration legislation?
Answer: Not Barack Obama.
If that doesn’t sound quite right it’s because in June of 2012 (suspiciously close to election day) President Obama issued an executive order that deferred deportation proceedings against certain undocumented immigrants, but that is nowhere near the same thing as passing comprehensive immigration legislation. In fact, of his ability to issue that Article I-defying executive order, in 2010 he said “I’m president, I’m not king… there’s a limit to the discretion that I can show because I’m obliged to execute the law. I can’t just make the laws up myself.”
Now if you wanted to know which President last proposed comprehensive immigration legislation, that man’s name is George W. Bush. And if you’re wondering why the 110th Congress failed to pass his proposed legislation, that’s a question for the Democratic leadership of the 110th Congress (Democrats controlled both houses.) In fact they maintained control of Congress through 2010, picked up the White House in 2008 and despite promises to pass a reform bill in the first year of the Obama administration, they didn’t so much as propose a plan to issue work permits to the millions of immigrants for whom their hearts supposedly bleed.
For the record, the last President to actually flip the switch on the status of millions of immigrants from “illegal” to “legal” is not Bill Clinton the Democrat, it was Ronald Reagan the Republican, back in 1986.
Weird huh? In the last 11 years two golden opportunities presented themselves to Democrats to make good on their many promises to the huddled masses and… … … nothing.
If for the last 11 years I had claimed to be the champion of cats stranded in trees. If I had talked constantly of the need to climb elms and oaks and rescue scared kittens from the elements while scolding others who didn’t take kitten rescuing seriously, wouldn’t you expect to see some footage of me in an elm or an oak with a kitty in tow? And if the only available footage of my exploits showed me preventing my friend from using his ladder to rescue a cat and then ignoring the meows of stranded kitties because me and my buddies were playing hospital, wouldn’t a rational human wonder if I was really RescueKittens Man?
I raise that question because it’s indirectly related to my final inquiry…
3. Why are recent Emerson and Rasmussen polls registering Presidential approval ratings among Blacks at 35% and 34% respectively? Even CNN’s poll puts his non-white approval rating at 26%.
Now this one just doesn’t make sense. If I’ve learned anything from perusing the headlines for the last 3 ½ years it’s that Donald J. Trump is a brutal racist. And yet over that same stretch his approval ratings among minorities have increased instead of decreasing (among Hispanics they’re approaching 50%.) Do minorities in America not know how to act in their own self-interest? Are they developing some sort of Stockholm syndrome? Or is the white supremacist narrative backfiring? I think the answer leaps out at you if you contrast descriptions of Trump’s anti-Semitism with his policies regarding Israel.
If Donald Trump hates Jews then he’s the first Jew-hater to move our embassy to Jerusalem, recognize Israel’s claim to the Golan Heights, come out in favor of the West Bank settlements, re-impose sanctions on Iran, oppose the BDS movement, withhold funding for the PLO and let his kids marry a bunch of Hebrews (and on that last point, isn’t the first rule of White Supremacy, Don’t make more Jews?) Anyways, given that stretch of pro-Israel behavior, I feel like even if Trump were an avowed Nazi his party could still win a grip of seats in the Knesset.
And therein lies the key to the mystery of the rising approval rating among the very people against whom Donald Trump is supposedly discriminating. If you publish a Trump-is-an-anti-Semite article you are likely to get a lot of clicks from people who hate the President; but unfortunately for anyone looking to turn voters against Donald Trump, people-who-already-hate-Donald-Trump is not the target audience. The target audience is made up of people-who-often-don’t-like-things-the-President-does. And when those people (who aren’t Trump fans) read a Trump-is-an-anti-Semite article, but then see a picture of the President and Benjamin Netanyahu shaking hands and read that Netanyahu reffered to Trump as “a true friend of the State of Israel,”
We are socialists because we reject an economic order based on private profit, alienated labor, gross inequalities of wealth and power etc. etc.
Now just to make sure we understand how economic orders based on private profit differ from those that reject the profit motive, here’s a short list of a very few of the many market-based economic orders:
- Sweden
- Norway
- Finland
- Denmark
- France
- Britain
- Australia
- Nigeria
- Egypt
- Japan
- South Korea
- Brazil
- Mexico
- Canada
- United States of America
“I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”
In contrast, here’s a list of the economies that explicitly reject (to the best of their ability) both private profit and alienated labor:
- North Korea
- Cuba
- Laos
- Vietnam
But what about alienated labor? Why does the DSA reject the “alienation” of labor? It’s because they assume that the lonely individual, if left to negotiate the terms of his own employment, will be universally oppressed and exploited by his capitalist overlords. Therefore the only way to guarantee that the individual isn’t ground under the boot of profit seekers is to bring that worker into the collective, where terms can be negotiated en mass and individual rights protected. Please note though that in America, where one’s labor can be alienated, the individual is still free to form a union and bargain collectively. In actual socialist societies though, ones that have banned the profit motive and made labor inalienable, there’s no need to form a union; you are born into a union. To see how default bans on wage alienation play out in practice, please visit any of the following countries:
- North Korea
- Cuba
- Laos
- Vietnam
- Venezuela (consider this a study of early-stage-wage-alienation banishment)
2. Also, when are the Democrats going to put their immigration legislation where their mouths are?
Question: Who was the last President to push for comprehensive immigration legislation?
Answer: Not Barack Obama.
If that doesn’t sound quite right it’s because in June of 2012 (suspiciously close to election day) President Obama issued an executive order that deferred deportation proceedings against certain undocumented immigrants, but that is nowhere near the same thing as passing comprehensive immigration legislation. In fact, of his ability to issue that Article I-defying executive order, in 2010 he said “I’m president, I’m not king… there’s a limit to the discretion that I can show because I’m obliged to execute the law. I can’t just make the laws up myself.”
Now if you wanted to know which President last proposed comprehensive immigration legislation, that man’s name is George W. Bush. And if you’re wondering why the 110th Congress failed to pass his proposed legislation, that’s a question for the Democratic leadership of the 110th Congress (Democrats controlled both houses.) In fact they maintained control of Congress through 2010, picked up the White House in 2008 and despite promises to pass a reform bill in the first year of the Obama administration, they didn’t so much as propose a plan to issue work permits to the millions of immigrants for whom their hearts supposedly bleed.
For the record, the last President to actually flip the switch on the status of millions of immigrants from “illegal” to “legal” is not Bill Clinton the Democrat, it was Ronald Reagan the Republican, back in 1986.
Weird huh? In the last 11 years two golden opportunities presented themselves to Democrats to make good on their many promises to the huddled masses and… … … nothing.
If for the last 11 years I had claimed to be the champion of cats stranded in trees. If I had talked constantly of the need to climb elms and oaks and rescue scared kittens from the elements while scolding others who didn’t take kitten rescuing seriously, wouldn’t you expect to see some footage of me in an elm or an oak with a kitty in tow? And if the only available footage of my exploits showed me preventing my friend from using his ladder to rescue a cat and then ignoring the meows of stranded kitties because me and my buddies were playing hospital, wouldn’t a rational human wonder if I was really RescueKittens Man?
I raise that question because it’s indirectly related to my final inquiry…
3. Why are recent Emerson and Rasmussen polls registering Presidential approval ratings among Blacks at 35% and 34% respectively? Even CNN’s poll puts his non-white approval rating at 26%.
Now this one just doesn’t make sense. If I’ve learned anything from perusing the headlines for the last 3 ½ years it’s that Donald J. Trump is a brutal racist. And yet over that same stretch his approval ratings among minorities have increased instead of decreasing (among Hispanics they’re approaching 50%.) Do minorities in America not know how to act in their own self-interest? Are they developing some sort of Stockholm syndrome? Or is the white supremacist narrative backfiring? I think the answer leaps out at you if you contrast descriptions of Trump’s anti-Semitism with his policies regarding Israel.
If Donald Trump hates Jews then he’s the first Jew-hater to move our embassy to Jerusalem, recognize Israel’s claim to the Golan Heights, come out in favor of the West Bank settlements, re-impose sanctions on Iran, oppose the BDS movement, withhold funding for the PLO and let his kids marry a bunch of Hebrews (and on that last point, isn’t the first rule of White Supremacy, Don’t make more Jews?) Anyways, given that stretch of pro-Israel behavior, I feel like even if Trump were an avowed Nazi his party could still win a grip of seats in the Knesset.
And therein lies the key to the mystery of the rising approval rating among the very people against whom Donald Trump is supposedly discriminating. If you publish a Trump-is-an-anti-Semite article you are likely to get a lot of clicks from people who hate the President; but unfortunately for anyone looking to turn voters against Donald Trump, people-who-already-hate-Donald-Trump is not the target audience. The target audience is made up of people-who-often-don’t-like-things-the-President-does. And when those people (who aren’t Trump fans) read a Trump-is-an-anti-Semite article, but then see a picture of the President and Benjamin Netanyahu shaking hands and read that Netanyahu reffered to Trump as “a true friend of the State of Israel,”
then that swing voter (who again, is not intuitively pro-Trump) might start to question the validity of the anti-Semite allegation. Especially if he or she sees that same Prime Minister at a naming ceremony for a Golan Heights settlement called...
So here’s the deal resistance fighters, unless the evidence against the President is unassailable, keep your insults to yourself. You are undermining your own cause. When your charges against the President rest on shaky ground, you end up engendering sympathy for him among the very class of voters you are trying to win over.
Yes, in a standard election facing a regular candidate, the clearest path to victory is in a tank driven right over the opposition’s good name. And under normal conditions, as election day approaches, all roads lead to character assassination. But unfortunately for Democrats, no one on planet earth can assassinate Donald J. Trump’s character. His character committed suicide decades ago. Call him a sexist, racist, bigoted, transphobic homophobe all you want, dig up tapes, interview prostitutes… who cares? It won’t do a thing for your cause. The man once bragged that avoiding STD’s during the 70’s was “my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave solider.” What dirt can you fling at that that won’t blend right in and disappear?
This leaves Democrats with only one path to victory: a recession. But since you can’t schedule those, the only other option they have is to fight him on the field of public policy. Lambaste his ballooning deficits (but only if your own proposals wouldn’t increase that deficit by a factor of six.) Bring articles of impeachment against him (but for the love, make sure that at least one of those articles contains an actual criminal offense.) Show in boring detail how your health care plans reduce cost and expand coverage (but probably drop the claims that we can cover the globe’s huddled masses yearning for free health care.) Whatever you do, stop pointing out that he’s a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad man. Everyone knows that already. For your information the public litigation of the case against naughty Presidents that began in the late 90’s concluded at the onset of the Trump Administration. The jury’s verdict?
Meh.
Sorry, but the only way to defeat the lowest brow President in the history of Presidents is to articulate the highest brow arguments in the history of arguments.
Good luck with that.
Yes, in a standard election facing a regular candidate, the clearest path to victory is in a tank driven right over the opposition’s good name. And under normal conditions, as election day approaches, all roads lead to character assassination. But unfortunately for Democrats, no one on planet earth can assassinate Donald J. Trump’s character. His character committed suicide decades ago. Call him a sexist, racist, bigoted, transphobic homophobe all you want, dig up tapes, interview prostitutes… who cares? It won’t do a thing for your cause. The man once bragged that avoiding STD’s during the 70’s was “my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave solider.” What dirt can you fling at that that won’t blend right in and disappear?
This leaves Democrats with only one path to victory: a recession. But since you can’t schedule those, the only other option they have is to fight him on the field of public policy. Lambaste his ballooning deficits (but only if your own proposals wouldn’t increase that deficit by a factor of six.) Bring articles of impeachment against him (but for the love, make sure that at least one of those articles contains an actual criminal offense.) Show in boring detail how your health care plans reduce cost and expand coverage (but probably drop the claims that we can cover the globe’s huddled masses yearning for free health care.) Whatever you do, stop pointing out that he’s a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad man. Everyone knows that already. For your information the public litigation of the case against naughty Presidents that began in the late 90’s concluded at the onset of the Trump Administration. The jury’s verdict?
Meh.
Sorry, but the only way to defeat the lowest brow President in the history of Presidents is to articulate the highest brow arguments in the history of arguments.
Good luck with that.