I just finished watching "Get Me Roger Stone" on Netflix. If you haven't seen it, and you're wondering what went wrong in the election last year, it's well worth your time to do so. I have to admit, I was blown away (and not in a good way) by who this man is and just how long he's been in politics.
As some of you may know by now, Roger Stone was and probably still is, one of the chief political strategists behind the Trump campaign and now presidency (he's still one of the biggest Trump cheerleaders). After watching the movie, I can say that Roger Stone is one of the most interesting and crafty political strategists I've ever seen. I can't say that he's the most ethical, as one read of his bio on the Wikipedia page on him will tell you he's a bit ethically challenged.
The next day, while reflecting on my experience watching that movie, I had a sort of epiphany. I believe I now understand why Hillary Clinton lost the election last year.
See, Hillary Clinton was depending on being able to run a negative campaign against Trump in order to win the election. What Hillary and just about everyone else around her failed to see was the futility of running a negative campaign against a man who seeks publicity - any publicity. Look at every gaffe, every misstep, even the lack of campaign funding and the kinds of people that Trump associates with. He ran what is quite possibly the most negative campaign I have ever seen. And it seemed that no matter what he did wrong, he still managed to come out ahead.
Now pair that kind of a candidate with Roger Stone. Here is a choice quote from Mr. Stone: "It's better to be infamous than never to be famous at all." Like Trump, Stone will take any publicity he can get. The movie, Get Me Roger Stone, makes it clear that Stone is master of the negative campaign and knows how to use it. More to the point, he thrives on hate. Here is what he said after the election last year: "I revel in your hatred. Because if I weren't effective, you wouldn't hate me."
He said that on camera in footage presented in the movie. It is astonishing to me that anyone would feel or act in this way, especially someone who helped to guide perhaps the worst candidate the Republicans have ever fronted for president. I say this while recalling how nearly every poll showed Trump trailing both Clinton and Bernie Sanders. It wasn't until the very end that Trump started to catch up to and pass Clinton. It seemed that no matter how bad Trump looked, whether it seemed his campaign was falling apart or he seemed to be setting his campaign on fire, he still managed to compete well in the primaries and then in the general election.
As a side note, I have to wonder what Republicans are thinking with this dynamic duo. Do they really want two men who thrive on hate and vitriol running their party, because they're running the GOP show right now. Whatever they say and do will be associated with the GOP for years and years to come. They say you can fight fire with fire, but not with these two.
For the people who have made a small time hobby of creating negative memes of Trump, you're only adding fuel to their fire. If you think that Trump is an idiot, and Roger Stone thinks Trump is a genius, I'm going to go with Stone on this one. I think Trump is in character whenever there is a camera around and he's not going to let on about how smart he is. If you're making memes, hey, you're not making public policy. This is what they want you to be doing.
In the last presidential election, I think there was only one man who had a real shot to win, and a clear understanding of how to win against Trump, and that was Bernie Sanders. Bernie has seen 14 elections of negative campaigns against him and he never went negative against his opponent. He has a long track record of staying positive and on topic. He avoided personal attacks by talking about progressive policies before personalities. This is one of the reasons why I and so many others liked Bernie and voted for him in the primaries.
I can't read his mind, but I consider Bernie Sanders to be quite astute about politics. I have reason to believe that Sanders was well aware of this blind spot in the Clinton campaign and the fire behind the dynamic duo of the Trump campaign. Sanders has the discipline to not go negative on Trump during a campaign, for he must surely know how Roger Stone works.
The odds of Bernie Sanders running again are remote at best. There have been a few opinion pieces out there saying that Sanders is already the front-runner for 2020, but by then he's going to be 4 years older and thinking a lot more about retirement.
If the Democrats really want to win the White House, and begin to start a recovery of the 900 seats they've lost across the country while there was a Democrat in the White House, they would do well to avoid the negative campaigns, stay on point and on policy, and promote progressive policies that most Americans want. You know, like single payer health care, huge investments in public infrastructure, like bridges, roads, waterways and fiber, and fair trade, not free trade.
They need to get their progressive hats on, and I don't just mean personal liberty progressive hats. For more than 30 years, they've been parading around with banners promoting gay rights, worker rights, prisoner rights and women's equality and that's fine. But at the same time, they've been throwing anyone who is not rich under the bus with their "free trade" agreements and Clinton's "we'll take what we can get from the Republicans" brand of leadership.
That kind of change might mean having to doff the wealthy clients they've courted. That might mean having to gauge the response of the voters by the number of small contributions they receive. That might mean having to compare the number of small contributions to to the talking points used by Democrats.
That might be a small price to pay for regaining a majority in both houses of Congress and the White House. Heck, they might even start to win majorities in the statehouses again. But if they keep on with the negative press on Trump, the outcome is fairly predictable.