365 days Anniversary of Trump and Why He is Here
On this one year anniversary of Trump it was going to be on what Hillary Clinton had to say about him or the Washington Post which He hates slightly less but only slightly. The Washington Post with 5 memorable points it learned about The Donald in this 365 days since he came down the grand golden elevator of the Towers to be with the people like you and me won hands down.
Three hundred and sixty-five days ago, Donald Trump announced that he was running for president.
I can't remember a less predictable, more watchable, less policy-focused, more humbling candidacy than his. When he rode down that beautiful, classy elevator at Trump Tower on June 16, 2015, there was no one — up to and including Trump — who thought, a year later, he would be the party's presumptive presidential nominee.
How he got here — and where he is going — will be the subject of political science classes for years. I don't claim to that level of academic excellence, but I have spent a lot — and I do mean A LOT — of time thinking about the lesson Trump has already taught me. (NOTE: These lessons apply only to the Republican primary. Trump's struggles in the six weeks since he's been the party's presumptive general election nominee suggest how he won the primary is not transferable to the general election.)
1. Assume nothing
When Trump got into the race, he was greeted with eye rolls by, well, almost everyone. He was treated as a circus sideshow, someone who would give the late-night TV hosts fodder for the summer and then would disappear back into the world of reality TV.
Why? The assumption was that someone with Trump's profile generally (an egotistical self-promoter) and within the GOP more specifically (two-thirds of Republicans had an unfavorable opinion of him) could never be a serious challenger for the highest office in the country. People like Trump, the saying went, don't get elected president or even the Republican nominee.
Nope. Basically every assumption made about Trump by me and others — he wouldn't run, he wouldn't file his financial paperwork, he couldn't win a primary, his controversial statements would catch up with him, he could never win a one-on-one race — were proven wrong over the last year.
So, stop assuming. What has always been true is true only until it stops being true. And that is now.
2. Money is overrated
Remember how the 2016 election was going to the super PAC election? If that were true, Jeb Bush would have cruised to the nomination. He didn't. Trump did — and, yes, "cruised" is the right word for how Trump won — by spending the least money of almost any candidate running for either party's nomination.
Yes, Trump bragged repeatedly about how he was self-funding his campaign — not accurate — but he was remarkably thrifty when it came to spending money (his own or other people's) in this race. Trump LIVED on free media, regularly having his rallies broadcast in full on cable television and calling in at will to virtually every show across the networks.
That flood-the-zone media presence coupled with Trump's celebrity (and social media presence) made traditional TV ads like the ones Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida were running almost totally useless.
Not only that, but “big money” candidates became symbols, in Trump's worldview, of the problem with politics — beholden to major donors and their whims.
3. Organization is overrated
Trump made only the thinnest of attempts at building anything like the organization his rivals were spending millions of dollars on. A real organization in a state like Iowa, for example, might have made the difference for Trump. But it wound up not mattering anyway.
When Trump went to a state set to hold a primary, he drew wall-to-wall coverage that drowned out all of his rivals. People were excited to see him, they felt like they were up close to true fame. Precinct captains and GOTV lists felt small and inadequate next to the rollicking Trump tour.
Had Trump done any significant organizing, he would have likely won the nomination even more easily than he did. But he won without any real organization — the one sine qua non of primary politics. Stunning.
4. All press is good press
There was an assumption — see Point No. 1 above — that sure, Trump got lots of press, but lots and lots of it was bad press over the many controversial things he said. So it didn't do him any good and might actually hurt him.
Turns out that there were two things wrong with that idea. The first was that Trump didn't get all the negative press we thought he got. (The chart below comes from a Shorenstein Center study of coverage from 2015.)
The second was that all press related to Trump wound up being good press. In some cases, more people than anyone thought agreed with Trump's proposals (the wall, banning Muslims). In others in which people didn't agree, they didn't really hold Trump accountable for any one thing he said. That's just Trump being Trump, they thought. And, more importantly, Trump was on their mind — which netted out to a win for him.
5. You can't go too far in bashing your party
Pre-Trump ("PT") there was a belief that even if you were running as an outsider for president, generally speaking, you played nice with the party elders for fear that they would seek retribution against you.
What Trump proves is that the emperor had no clothes when it came to any alleged "retribution" that the party leaders could or would seek against him for attacking them. He laid waste to the Republican National Committee, along with Mitt Romney, George W. Bush and virtually every other major figure within the party over the past few decades.
And while some of those Ă©minence grise — like Bob Dole — pushed back against Trump, the real estate mogul understood that Republican primary voters were much more on his side than Dole's. They felt sold out by the GOP leaders too — and they liked someone who was willing to tell those elders exactly what they did wrong and why they were dumb.
There were no lines that GOP voters didn't want crossed. Trump got that. And here he is
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