The President's Not Surprising 2020 Campaign Strategy

An article in the New York Times analyzes the president’s campaign strategy for 2020. The assessment so far indicates that the campaign is likely to be much like that used for the 2016 election. That election consisted of an endless barrage of false and misleading assertions of facts and unfounded attacks on the president’s political rivals. His tactics included touting false conspiracy theories and playing on social divisions to foment unwarranted distrust in both political opposition and government itself.

The NYT writes:

“Even by President Trump’s standards, it was a rampage: He attacked a government whistle-blower who was telling Congress that the coronavirus pandemic had been mismanaged. He criticized the governor of Pennsylvania, who has resisted reopening businesses. He railed against former President Barack Obama, linking him to a conspiracy theory and demanding he answer questions before the Senate about the federal investigation of Michael T. Flynn. 

And Mr. Trump lashed out at Joseph R. Biden Jr., his Democratic challenger. In an interview with a sympathetic columnist, Mr. Trump smeared him as a doddering candidate who “doesn’t know he’s alive.” The caustic attack coincided with a barrage of digital ads from Mr. Trump’s campaign mocking Mr. Biden for verbal miscues and implying that he is in mental decline. 

That was all on Thursday. 

Far from a one-day onslaught, it was a climactic moment in a weeklong lurch by Mr. Trump back to ​​the darkest tactics that defined his rise to political power. 

His attacks over the last week on Mr. Obama have showcased Mr. Trump’s persistent determination to weaponize those tools to bolster a favorite political narrative, one that distorts the facts about Mr. Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser, in order to spin sinister implications about the previous administration. 

But Mr. Trump also appears to genuinely believe many of the conspiratorial claims he makes, people close to him say, and his anger at Mr. Obama is informed less by political strategy than by an unbending — and unsubstantiated — belief that the former president was personally involved in a plot against him. 

Over the last week, the Trump campaign has spent at least $880,000 on Facebook ads attacking Mr. Biden. 

Mr. Trump has also been warned by Republican veterans that his efforts to define Mr. Biden in negative terms so far have been slow or ineffective. At a meeting with political advisers this week that included Karl Rove, the top strategist for former President George W. Bush, Mr. Rove warned Mr. Trump that he had fallen behind in the task of damaging Mr. Biden, people familiar with the meeting said.”

Apparently, the top campaign priority is damaging Biden with a massive barrage of lies, smears and fabricated conspiracy theories. Another priority is fabricating baeless conspiracy theories about President Obama in an effort to discredit (i) the Mueller investigation, and (ii) the role that Russia played in getting the president to win the electoral college.

Facebook is not innocent

Lies and crackpot conspiracies will flow copiously from Facebook in the coming months. One can see why Facebook refuses to block lies and unfounded conspiracies in political ads that politicians buy. There is just too much money to pass up. Maybe as importantly, blocking the president’s political lies runs the risk of crossing a viciously vindictive, thin-skinned president. Facebook’s lack of moral courage in defense of profits will help the president further disinform, confuse, distract and polarize Americans. That damage is on Zuckerberg.