Yes, yes, I know. You’re holding out for a win in the courts. Okay fine. There’s a glimmer of a shot there, even though the president has basically thrown in the towel. But we’re not talking about the courts in this article. We’re talking about the election. Remember that dog’s breakfast, that presidential race debacle?
Now granted, if Covid-19 had never happened the president would have been reelected by a solid margin. So, boo China. But it happened and we can now look back on it with a bit of dispassion and try to figure out what went wrong aside from the virus. Three things stand out: leadership, fundraising, and legal.
Who put Brad Parscale in charge of the campaign? The guy, starting with his dalliance with Hope Hicks and ending with his bizarre Fort Lauderdale meltdown, was never fit for the slot. He was a data guy, a slide rule jockey. Not a leader. It was sending a drone pilot to lead SEAL Team 6. Data people are like air support. They’re vital to have around and you can’t win without them. But they themselves don’t win. They’re a support unit. Also, well, Parscale himself. The wacky facial hair and the sudden love of the limelight should have been a dead giveaway. They finally bounced him and put a sharp pro like Bill Stepien in command. But it was too late. They wasted vital time on Parscale and they paid for it.
The Trump campaign got outraised bigly by the Biden campaign. That very possibly proved the margin of difference, that and major Democrat corruption, in a number of states. And why did this happen? Because they tried to sell the president’s campaign like a used car with high pressure sales scams and annoying repetition. No doubt you, or somebody you know, received many, sometimes a dozen a day, emails or texts from Republicans asking for money. It’s still going on because of Georgia, campaign debt, and legal costs and they’re still doing a bad job of it.
Now we come to the worst pratfall the campaign took, legal. The Democrats telegraphed their punch in 2018 when it came to ballot harvesting and other nefarious activities. But apparently the Trump campaign wasn’t paying attention because they deployed their lawyers after, not before to deter the corruption, the election and have been always reacting to events. The should have been proactive. They weren’t and an election was stolen from them and from us.