What Trump Needs to Do to Win

By any measure, Donald Trump has had a tough couple of weeks. You can measure it in the polls. He went from being essentially even with Hillary in the national polls, to being down by anywhere from 6 to 12 points, depending on the poll.

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What happened? Well, his fight with a federal judge over the judge’s Mexican heritage wasn’t particularly productive. And then when jihadist terrorism once again visited our shores, this time in Orlando, Florida, Donald’s first instinct was to congratulate himself on his prescient skills, tweeting “appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism…” And then for good measure, he added that Obama might just be in league with the terrorists, saying “look, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind…there’s something going on.”

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Trump’s inartful tweets and comments gave the Clinton political machine, the mainstream press (some would say that’s essentially the same thing), and even many fellow Republicans, the opportunity to take Trump to task, yet again. Rahm Emanuel, former head of the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), and current mayor of Chicago (talk about violence), once famously said “you never let a serious crisis go to waste.” He was referring to the energy crisis at the time, but there are also similarities to the Orlando tragedy. There are events which occur during a presidential election, which are independent of the campaigns, but which can have a major impact on the outcome. The economic meltdown of 2008, and how it was handled at the time by John McCain and Barack Obama is an example. The Orlando shooting, I believe, was one of those events.

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Much as I hate to admit it, the Clinton people handled the aftermath fairly skillfully. And that’s from someone who completely disagrees with their ultimate conclusion – that the answer is more gun control. She had the good sense to (finally) separate herself from Barack Obama’s total refusal to acknowledge that the enemy isn’t merely some kind of unknown “violence”, but radical Islamic terror, saying “… whether you call it radical jihadism, or radical Islamism, I’m happy to say either.”

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Trump kicked away an opportunity to show the American people that he’s thought deeply about how to keep this country safe from the terror threat we face and here’s what he’d do about it. As I’ve been saying, he needs to get better. Or he won’t win.

So where does he go from here, if he wants to win? And I want him to win. (Hillary would be a disaster for the country.) He took a first step two days ago. He fired his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. Now I’ve got nothing against Mr. Lewandowski. After all, Lewandowski managed to defeat 16 other Republican campaigns to win the nomination for his candidate. But the campaign seems stalled; Trump’s poll numbers are dropping; change was necessary. I commend Trump for recognizing that a major shakeup in the campaign was necessary. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for Trump to let go someone who has been so loyal to him. But as they say, politics ain’t beanball. It’s hardball.

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Okay, what else does Trump need to do to win this thing? He needs a much stronger campaign organization. The Clinton campaign is a well-oiled machine. They’ve got staff, campaign headquarters, and political operatives in all the key states, especially in swing states which they’ve identified through sophisticated polling. My understanding is that Trump’s operation is largely dysfunctional, amateurish, or absent. Hillary Clinton has $42 million in her campaign coffers, and $51 million in her superPAC. The Trump campaign has a little over $1 million. So he’s got to raise money, and a lot of it. But it’s going to be tough for a number of reasons. Hillary has a large number of so-called bundlers – people who can tap friends and associates to contribute big money. Each bundler typically can raise $100,000 to a million dollars or more. Trump has very few bundlers – one reason being he targeted them with particular scorn during the Republican primary process. Now he needs them, but they remember what he said about them, and their response has been in many cases, forget it. Trump claims to be worth about $10 billion, and could therefore self-fund if he chose to do so, as he largely did in the primary. But for whatever reason, he’s chosen not to do so. Maybe he should reconsider.

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Trump needs to step up his media campaign. The Clinton campaign is already up on TV in key swing states, brutalizing Trump with hard-hitting negative ads, just as Obama did with Mitt Romney four years ago. During the three months between Romney winning the Republican nomination in the spring, and the Republican convention in late summer, Obama bombarded Romney with millions of dollars in attack ads, and many political pundits believe that the Romney campaign actually lost the race during that period. I tend to agree. Trump needs to be up on the air attacking Hillary on her many vulnerabilities, and defending himself from her onslaught – NOW. He can’t wait. And needs money to pay for those ads – now. The Trump campaign needs to deal with this, immediately.

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I’m concerned that Trump believes he can handle much of the media campaign by tweeting and responding to questions asked by the media. He’d done this very skillfully in the Republican primary process. But a presidential general election is a whole different animal. And the media is no longer his friend. They are every bit the opposition that the Clinton campaign is. He needs to realize this. And merely barring media outlets from the Trump campaign, as he did recently with the Washington Post, isn’t enough.

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The Trump campaign also needs to focus the bulk of the candidate’s time and campaign resources, on the dozen or so swing states which will determine who wins this election. Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Iowa, and New Hampshire are a few examples. Trump just did a big rally in Texas. Yeah, it feels good to be in front of thousands of people who love you, but if Texas is in play, we Republicans don’t stand a chance. It’s fine to go to Dallas, or Houston, for a fundraiser, but a rally is a waste of valuable time, that you can’t get back. Time, is the one thing you can’t get more of. Trump hasn’t been in Ohio since March, when the Ohio primary was held. Clinton’s been to Ohio eight times since then. The campaign has to get its priorities in order.

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Anyway, those are some suggestions from someone who very much wants Donald Trump to win, and Hillary Clinton to lose. We’ll see if anyone’s listening.

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