TRUMP’S BAN FROM SOCIAL MEDIA HASN’T STOPPED HIM FROM RAISING MONEY

 

       …Donald Trump has raised $250 million in the 8 weeks after the 2020 election.

 

Glenn Youngkin’s win as the Virginia governor will come back to haunt the Democrats

 

If you are confused by the latest governor’s race in Virginia, it’s mostly because the Republican candidate  Glenn Youngkin and Trump spoke many times by phone over the course of that campaign.  This action, without any exposure to the public, allowed the two men to avoid saying any negative things about each other or their clashing on politics or strategy.

It was very evident that even though Youngkin had early on said he was a Trump supporter, he obviously realized that his competition was going to try to attach Trump to Youngkin directly, which is what happened.

Youngkin and Trump therefore, came up with a workable strategy that allowed Youngkin to cast himself as his own man, even though he was in daily contact with the man that is known for his demands of personal loyalty.

The strategy became that the former president stayed focused on turning out his own supporters by deploying his email and text message lists to coax his voters to the polls.  All this while refusing to acknowledge that there was any connection between Youngkin and Trump.  Whenever Trump spoke about the Virginia race, he would focus on core issues such as education and taxes, not his false claims about the 2020 election which would more likely alienate the moderate Virginia voters.

This strategy lacked the scorched-earth appeal that Trump has used in the past to heighten voter enthusiasm.  But this approach made a clear path for the Republican success in a blue-leaning state where Democrats have won every statewide contest since 2013.

Trump said of Youngkin: “I’ve gotten to know him so well and our relationship is so great”.  This was of course, said in a closed, tele-town hall with Trump supporters.  A town hall that was obviously closed to the news media and the public on the Monday before the election.  Trump stated: “The fake news media would like to say something else because they want our big, giant, beautiful base like there has never been before to not vote as much as they are going to do.”

This strategy is the approach Republicans say they hope to repeat in 2022, as they seek to reclaim any ground among college-educated and female voters that Trump abandoned in his two presidential bids.

“For the midterm, I think in each state you are going to see a different approach coming from Donald Trump,” said Mercedes Schlapp, a former Trump campaign adviser who introduced Trump on a phone call.

The dominant theory among House and Senate Republican strategists is that the party needs to do two things to win back control of the chambers next year.  First, they must maintain the support of Trump’s most loyal voters without him on the ballot while they grow the suburban vote.  It’s a strategy that only works if Trump stays engaged, but also pulls back on the demands that fellow Republicans pay constant homage to him and his more extreme positions.  This could be a problem for some one like Donald J. Trump.

“You want to hold the people that Trump brought into the party, but then move into the suburbs,” said former congressman Tom Davis (R-Va.), who previously represented parts of Fairfax County, Va. “You don’t embrace him but you don’t dump him, because he is still the heart and soul of the party.”

The Democrats have tried to counter the strategy by broadcasting plans to follow the playbook of Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Terry McAuliffe, to keep those suburban voters afraid of voting Republican.  The approach is to use voter concern about Trump, and his divisive approach to politics and his role in an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.  The hope is that this will drive Democratic turnout. 

However, this approach didn’t work in the Virginia Gubernatorial race.

Virginia was the first major testing ground of these competing theories.  Trump as an issue did not appear to be enough to stop the commonwealth from reverting to historical political patterns as early returns were counted.  In every gubernatorial election for decades, with the exception of McAuliffe’s win in 2013, Virginia has voted for a governor from the party that was not at the time, holding the White House.

“It is looking like Terry McAuliffe’s campaign against a certain person named ‘Trump’ has very much helped Glenn Youngkin,” Trump said this in a statement predicting a Youngkin win. “All McAuliffe did was talk Trump, Trump, Trump and he lost!  What does that tell you, Fake News?  I guess people running for office as Democrats won’t be doing that too much longer. I didn’t even have to go rally for Youngkin, because McAuliffe did it for me. Thank you to the MAGA voters for turning out big!”

Political advisers, from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to Florida GOP consultant Susie Wiles, who has taken over running Trump’s political operation, have told the former president that setting himself up as a strong candidate in 2024 includes helping the Republican Party win back Congress in 2022 and any governors’ mansions.

Youngkin was aiming to distinguish himself from Trump without alienating Trump voters.  He worked early in the campaign to win Trump’s favor, and he received Trump’s endorsement immediately after his nomination. However, the calls between the two of them were never disclosed publicly.

“The entire Youngkin campaign was built around ‘America first’ policies so it meant he didn’t have a lot to prove,” said a person familiar with the conversations who requested anonymity because of course, they were not authorized to speak publicly.  They added: “If you are someone who believes Trump always has to be scorching the earth then you are going to be disappointed. If you are someone who believes that winning is important then you are going to be happy.”

That didn’t mean the campaign passed without some Trump surprises.  At several points, McAuliffe was able to latch on to Trump taking unexpected steps to involve himself in the race.  McAuliffe advisers said donations to the campaign nearly doubled to $635,000 in one day after Trump hinted in late October that he might travel to Virginia.  This was a feint Trump intended to drum up interest among his core supporters.

Trump was annoyed, one adviser said, at the coverage of Democrats trying to goad him into going to Virginia.  But he was never serious about going, multiple advisers said. Youngkin’s advisers, were initially caught off guard by Trump’s promise to come to Virginia.  Youngkin did not want Trump to visit the state, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.

McAluliffe made some big mistakes.  Such as this quote from him: “Guess how Glenn Youngkin is finishing his campaign?” asked McAuliffe at his final rally of the cycle in Fairfax. “He is doing an event with Donald Trump here in Virginia.”  That was not true. There was only a Trump phone call from out of state to his supporters, and it did not involve the Youngkin campaign.

On Monday, an anti-Trump group, began buying cable ads in the market where Trump lives that said Youngkin was “ashamed” of the former president. Trump’s advisers told him that the ads were intended to provoke him, but Trump reacted anyway, blasting the group in a news release.

“If Terry McAuliffe had been litigating Glenn Youngkin as Donald Trump’s guy from the very beginning, this would have been a very different race,” the GOP strategist Rick Wilson has said. “Democrats must make the midterms about Donald Trump. It is the only issue out there that is going to drive their base forward.”

“Republicans ran an issue-centric campaign, while Democrats ran a personality-centric campaign,” said one senior Republican political operative who was not authorized to speak publicly. “Simply put, Glenn Youngkin won with President Trump’s endorsement and a forward-looking message. Terry McAuliffe lost with President Biden’s endorsement and a backward-looking message.”

“Youngkin threaded the needle perfectly, being respectful to the former president but making clear he was his own man and running on a policy agenda about Virginia,” said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, which knocked on doors for Youngkin.

Trump lost Virginia by five points in 2016 against Democrat Hillary Clinton and 10 points in 2020 against Biden. But Biden’s support in the state has since collapsed, dragged down by concern over a summer Covid-19 surge, rising inflation, a messy withdrawal from Afghanistan and today’s congressional gridlock. A late October Washington Post-Schar School poll found that 53% of Virginians disapproved of Biden’s performance, while only 46% approved.

Exit polls in the state found about 4 in 10 Virginia voters had a favorable view of Trump, while a slight majority saw him unfavorably.

Copyright G. Ater 2021