The Trump Playbook Lacks a Ground Game
In 2014 Matt Taibbi wrote a piece titled, Tea Partiers Are Right: Jeb Is a RINO, he speculated what a Jeb Bush presidential run and subsequent match-up against Hillary Clinton would mean for the country. In it, he writes, “Vote 2016! Nothing Ever Changes!”. That cynicism was shared. Whether you were a Tea Party conservative or a left-wing progressive Clinton vs. Bush symbolized the apex of apathetic Presidential choices.
The 2016 election was coming on the heels of Barack Obama. Obama was intelligent, confident, and a great communicator. But he was also a moderate. He was not the Marxist, Islamic, extremist Fox News would have you believe, despite the terrorist fist bumps and tan suits. He was a politician who worked the margins, putting forth measured policies, taking the inches where he could find them. The Obama administration’s game plan; run the ball, don’t turn it over, win the game. The administration's failure to include a public option in the Affordable Care Act early in his presidency encapsulated this thinking. They were using the same playbook as every president in modern history. By 2014, Hope and Change shifted to Acceptance and Modulation.
Enter Donald Trump, stage right. Trump was, (and is) a cartoonish figure. A guy who, in most election cycles would have flamed out after saying, “I like people who weren’t captured,” referring to John McCain, the former senator and Navy pilot who spent five and a half years in a prisoner of war camp after being shot down over Vietnam. Trump was a narcissistic grifter who bullied his way through the Republican primary and ultimately the presidency. It was as if he had invented the forward pass and none of these seasoned political operatives could figure out how to stop it. The slogan went from, “Vote 2016! Nothing Ever Changes!” to “Vote 2016! Burn This Bitch Down!”, a message that resonated with a jaded electorate.
What followed was an exhausting Trump presidency. Burn this bitch down is a great attitude for campaigning, not great for running a country. To be fair, Presidents are often at the mercy of the world around them. Taking the credit or blame for whatever happens on their watch. Every president would have struggled with COVID-19 but Trump was particularly ill-suited. He suggested injecting disinfectants as a possible solution because it, “knocks it out in one minute,” a statement that prompted a dramatic increase in calls to poison control in several states. The country survived, somehow.
Leading to “Vote 2020! Make American Boring Again!”. The Trump playbook wasn’t designed for governance. It was designed to run and Trump gained momentum in the role of armchair quarterback after losing in 2020. He positioned himself as the white knight who could triumph against the immoral democrats if given another chance. Let’s Go Brandon!
That changed the day his arch-nemesis Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Trump’s playbook was so good that he was winning games before they even started, so it would seem.
Incredibly Trump now finds himself in a game he was unprepared for, against a team he can’t figure out. The democrats came out of halftime wearing the white shoes, determined to exercise old demons once and for all. The old, four verts all-go isn’t working anymore. What Trump needs is a ground game. But he doesn’t have one, literally or figuratively. A choice that could be something political historians point to for decades to come.
It's not hard to imagine a world where Trump stays on TV, a job he was much more qualified for, and Jeb Bush narrowly defeats Hilary Clinton in 2016. Leaving an extremist itch lingering among those of us who longed for something different. That’s not what we got though and for those of us who fall into that camp, it’s a reminder that sometimes, normal is good. “Vote 2024! Normalcy Rules!”.
