Almost all the political commentators (with the notable exception of Kurt Schlichter at Townhall) are complaining that Donald Trump is complacent about Kamala Harris because he is unusually quiet instead of in full-throated attack mode. This is one of the reasons so many otherwise competent commentators would make such terrible political strategists.
The first thing you do in any competitive race is make a candid assessment of both your candidate and your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. Then you assess what the most likely driving forces behind the particular contest will be. If you can, you do issues polling (insisting that your pollster give you good data – and not ‘pushed’ data) on a whole variety of issues to see which of them pop with voters – and which pop with particular subsets of voters. This can confirm or refute your gut on what will drive the contest. Amateurs constantly demand that a candidate focus only on what pops for them – without any awareness that others have different concerns and priorities. You do NOT abandon basic principles because of what this data reveals, but you know how to package it. I once got a large minority of moderate, pro-choice women and gay activists to support a pro-life, pro-family candidate. From that you can plot a path to victory that includes field-work, key issue priorities (no more than three in normal times), timing, and forcing your opponent onto your home field.
Always I watched for an opponent’s tin ear on certain subjects, things they were focused on that that did not cut their way or could be easily flipped on them. Then I would lay back, subtly encouraging them to dig themselves in so deeply into those issues that they could not credibly claw it back when we sprung our offensive. It is like setting the hook when you are fishing. Admittedly, that was probably my favored technique. I was very good at it, so good that near the end of my regular work in Illinois, opponents often would not spring on errors from a campaign I was running, for fear it was one of my little traps. Often, it was. To do that successfully, you have to lay back in the weeds frequently, letting the opponent think he is making hay with an ill-conceived tactic. If you just start barking from the get-go you scare the opponent away from that area and can never get them into position to spring the trap. Most commentators think if a candidate is not constantly barking, he’s losing. Sheesh! (By the way, my traps were all designed so that only your own malice could get you snared in them.)
I loved opponents who were over-aggressive. They were easy to lead into traps. I loved opponents who would, without discipline, speak at length on every issue thrown at them. Without the message discipline to draw every extraneous question back to their fundamental priorities, they could never clearly define who they were in the general public’s mind. The perception of them was always hazy. The only candidate I ever saw who could survive this was Barack Obama – who had the advantage of being a soothing black man in a nation still eager to prove it was not racist. He talked like a moderate and governed like a hard left activist, permanently disfiguring the medical industry in his signature ‘accomplishment.’
Candidly, since 2009, I have not been near as good at assessing the opposition or the electorate as I once was. I don’t think that is a decline in my analytical prowess, but because of a major warping of the once-shared values of the electorate. There is no consistent, coherent philosophy underpinning modern Democrats’ strategic thinking. It is all a hodge-podge of opportunistic stabs at exercising power over ordinary people and holding onto that power. As a point of illustration, just 50 years ago Richard Nixon was driven from office for ineffectively trying to spy on a political opponent, trying unsuccessfully to use the IRS to target political opponents, and trying to cover it up. Obama did ALL of these things successfully and is hailed as a hero for it. We are no longer a nation where the majority stands for any sort of fundamental, objective principles. Just get opponents and dissidents by hook or by crook, no matter. It is much harder to make astute assessments when one side’s strategy is always catch-as-catch-can. Then, the other side’s strategy is warped because sometimes it must react in kind – and that conditions the other side to act that way when it is not necessary. That spiral accelerates what the late, great, Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan described as, “defining deviancy down.” At a certain point, the decline becomes irreversible until a cataclysmic crisis is reached and passed.
If I were formally advising Trump I would be encouraging him to do exactly what he is doing right now. Kamala Harris is a candidate who incorporates all the fundamental weaknesses I looked for in an opponent – and more. She chose a running mate who may well have more baggage than she does. This is a team sent by heaven to run against. BUT, the Democrats have already pulled a switcheroo once this cycle because of electability. Pledged delegates to the Democratic Convention were required to vote for Joe Biden (or the candidate who they were pledged to when elected) on the first ballot. Whatever their promises, those delegates are NOT required to vote for Harris on the first ballot. If Harris faltered badly before the convention, there is a huge hole in which party power-brokers could potentially drive a replacement through. The primary task for Trump right now is to make sure she gets locked in as the Dem nominee. The best way to accomplish that is to continue to criticize her, but mute it so as not to give Dem powerbrokers the willies.
Most in the media are obsessed with the horse race aspect of polls – the least interesting and least informative thing about them. I used polls to identify hot button issues, dead ends, and in what subsections of the electorate various issues did – and did not – resonate. From there I would work out a path to victory. The horse race question was useful in telling me how much we had to make up and to plan accordingly in my path to victory calculation. In one statewide race, the first publicly published poll – in the Chicago Tribune – showed our opponent at 61% and us at 2%. We won. In a Congressional race, a senior staffer to the Speaker of the House confided in me a week before election that we were going to lose by 10 points, but that did not diminish their respect for me, as we had started from much further behind. We won by 10 points. Once in a local race against a 20-year incumbent and his entire slate, I managed the opposition slate. At the courthouse all manner of people commiserated with me early on that I had run a great race, but it is impossible to dislodge a 20-year incumbent. That stopped when I finally growled that “the surprise of the night is not going to be that we win, but how much we win by.” When returns came in and our lowest vote-getter polled just over 60%, everyone looked at me as if I were some exotic tiger who had just slipped his cage. Don’t get me wrong: that is not how it always happened or even how they usually happened – but a polling deficit is just one of many types of obstacles to be factored into your calculations. In a close race, polls have a rhythm. You worry less about where you are in the poll than how to influence the rhythm to your advantage. A puckish part of me sometimes wants the polls to show my guy behind – because sometimes the most effective way to beat an opponent is to do it before he ever even realizes he has a problem. If you work it effectively, you can use polls to both foster overconfidence and then panic in an opponent.
One candidate who was like a brother to me was, himself, obsessed by polls. He is also very Catholic. Once in the state Capitol building, he asked me for the umpteenth time about the latest polls. I looked at him with portentious gloom and said, “In those days there will be polls…and rumors of polls.” He well knew my contempt for the horse race question. He was silent for a moment – and then busted out laughing. We both did. To his credit, he did not press me near as much for polling info after that.
It’s all just an internal part of devising the proper strategy and tactics to put you in a position to win. My state or district wide coffee shop sessions and reports I got door knockers to give me were more useful to me, on a daily basis, than polls (a lot less expensive, too).
If Trump ramps up hard the week after the Dem convention, be thankful you have a nominee who is smarter and steadier than all the one-trick-pundits out there. BUT, every bit as dangerous to a sound campaign as panicked, defeatist gloom is irrational exuberance. I loved – and applied – the line from the old Kenny Rogers song, The Gambler: “every hand’s a winner and every hand’s a loser.”
I think a much better strategist than I ever dreamed of being is guiding current events in the country – and the world, for that matter. We are, literally, living an illumination of conscience right now. I, personally, think it is THE Illumination of Conscience – but in the subtle way God always does it rather than the simplistic, literal way His followers always expect it. (God ALWAYS leaves room for doubt: it weeds out the self-serving sunshine soldiers who can never get past thinking what is best for them, temporally, in their own estimation.)
The gaslighting from the Godless, globalist left was once cloaked in a profusion of distracting veils. Now it stands naked in the public square for all to see clearly. The gutter press once lied and memory-holed what it had said a decade ago that proved inconvenient to it today. Now it lies and tries to memory-hole what happened yesterday to make way for today’s narrative. It has reached and surpassed Orwellian levels of gaslighting: “We have always been at war with Eastasia…we have never been at war with Eastasia.” The Secret Service, Homeland Security, and the Justice Department clearly intentionally subverted Donald Trump’s security protocols (and Robert Kennedy’s, for that matter), if it was not actively complicit in the assassination attempt. The FBI and Justice Department actively collaborated with social media to censor people – and some news outlets, throughout and just before the Biden administration. That is a conspiracy, but it is not a theory. The public medical establishment actively lies to the American people to accomplish their ideological goals – even if it kills people. (Might want to check out that last link: I used a different subject than the mountain of Covid lies to illustrate the point this time). Author Jack Cashill is just about to release a book offering compelling evidence that J6 was a planned, inside job to smear conservatives and prevent serious investigation of massive vote fraud in the 2020 election. Even before the book is released, he offers much compelling evidence. I could go on and on, making an encyclopedia of such transparent frauds and gaslighting, but you get the point.
There is an old story about a man who, when asked about the universe, posits that it sits on the back of a giant turtle. If that is so, he is then asked, what is the turtle standing on. Shaken, he pauses, then finally blurts out, “It’s turtles all the way down.” He could not bear the idea of simple, irrefutable logic destroying his cherished narrative fantasy.
Remember the sequence I wrote about how God generally gives us rescue. First there is revelation of the depth of the disorder. Then we are forced to choose where we stand. Then battle ensues. After much strife, the forces standing with God win.
You may think we are deep into the revelation stage. We are not. Eyes that could see and ears that could hear knew years ago what was confronting us. We are smack dab in the middle of the choosing stage. The lies now are so obvious that even the most obtuse partisan knows they are lies. That is God’s intention. Everyone knows – and now they must choose. Will you serve the truth or will you parrot and justify the lies? You must choose. When you stand before God in judgment, you may still parrot your narrative, but you will not be able to excuse yourself by pretending you did not know what you were choosing. Even if you did not know the consequences, you knew you were serving lies. You knew. You chose your doom. This is not just for the Godless, globalist left. Almost all of us have certain cherished beliefs that events are pricing and will prove errant. If, confronted with irrefutable proof of error, you petulantly choose “turtles all the way down,” you will need a lot of luck – and a multitude of charity – to avoid the fires of hell.
Not only naked in its lies, the left is casting away the last veils hiding its furious malice. The alphabet agencies and the Justice Department ignore – or even empower – violent criminals while focusing on arresting peaceful dissidents: parents at PTA meetings, people praying at abortion clinics, and traditionalist Catholics. They weaponized the system to try to destroy everyone close to Trump, for example – America’s hero Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, General Michael Flynn et. al. They actively try to disbar and jail, if possible, any lawyers who dare to take up Trump’s cause. This is both to destroy his lawyers and prevent others from working for him. What would make anyone think that, if the left loses in November, it will go gently into the night? At that point, what would it have to lose by staging a genuinely violent insurrection? Its members have committed genuine crimes that do not have to be manufactured to be prosecuted. You think they will be consistent? No, they will just go into, “We have always been at war with Eastasia” mode – and the gutter press will desperately follow them. If they win (by hook or by crook) will you just allow yourself, your children, and your grandchildren to submit to tyranny? To be told what they can and cannot think, what they can and cannot eat, what they can and cannot do? Will you stand idly by as the state grooms them for sexual service, up to and including genital mutilation?
God may have a way that avoids violent – and perhaps extended – confrontation, but I can’t think of one. Normal people will not submit; the left will not concede. One side must win and the other lose – existentially. But that is where this sequence almost always leads when the goals are so diametrically opposed. I often say that the disorder before us has no political solution – which is not to say politics has no bearing in it. But we will have to stand to prevail, IF the globalist left will not concede. Do you think they will?
We love to envision easy resolutions. There are many who peddle such things. Lord knows, through my lifetime I have brokered many compromise deals and kept the peace between warring factions. But when one side wants to go west into ordered liberty and the other wants to go east into a one-party command state to rule everyone, there is no basis for compromise. Last Monday, the first reading at Mass was from the 28th Chapter of Jeremiah. On the one hand, there was a false prophet who gave the people soothing words. Jeremiah told them true – of the dire danger they were in that they had brought on themselves. Of course, the people chose the soothing fantasies and largely rejected Jeremiah – and so had no plan to deal with the doom that came upon them.
If we miraculously avoid extended violent strife (and it would be a great miracle to do so) I will be very glad. Shoot, maybe I can even retire. Like Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, I often think that, “I’m too old for this (stuff).” But it would not be prudent or responsible to count on that. So I plan for engagement, how best to subdue violence, how best to rally ordinary people to unity, and how best to rebuild from the ashes the left is determined to reduce us to.
But make no mistake: revelation is not what God is doing right now. He is busy separating the sheep from the goats in the decisive conflict between good and evil. I would that all be delivered from the evil that surrounds us. I don’t think that will happen. Some people, inexplicably, choose evil in order to dominate others. In that case, I devote myself to practically helping everyone who would be delivered find a way forward that does not mutilate their souls. Again, make no mistake: this is the time of choosing.
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I was angered to learn that Fr. Chad Ripperger has been the victim of phony videos imitating him and attributing statements he never made to him. A few years back I was ambivalent about Fr. Ripperger. Some of what he said was undoubtedly true, but some I thought was just him venting his spleen and attributing things he merely did not like to the devil. I have been deeply impressed these last few years – as Fr. Ripperger is one of those rare public voices who, as things got crazier, got more steady and solid. I feared he might be backsliding. But according to a letter he sent to the Spirit Daily website, he is being maliciously imitated and misquoted. (Boy, can I ever feel his pain on that!)
There are several offenders here, but the worst are coming from an organization styling itself “Most Holy Trinity” and its affiliate, “Spiritual Messengers.” Help Fr. Ripperger out and don’t let these groups slander him. And take care not to fall for the devil’s tricks just because he hijacks a pious name. The devil will be doing more and more of that to try to deceive the faithful.
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My friend, Guy Murphy, has sponsored many Marian Conferences in the Chicago area over the years. I was a featured speaker there one year, along with Drew Mariani of Relevant Radio. He gets a nice crowd out – over 1,500 people at the one I spoke at.
He also has a tour company, Totally Yours Pilgrimages, specializing in Catholic Pilgrimages. He has a couple of very nice ones coming up late next month. There are choices involving Medjugorje, Fatima, Lourdes, and Garabandal. If you’ve been thinking of one as things get stranger, I can tell you Guy is a top-notch guy with great enthusiasm and love for the faith. It came to mind because he contacted me and offered to bring me along as his guest on one of the tours. I had to decline for now, but told him I would let people know. You’ll have a good pilgrimage – and good company. You can reach them at info@MEDJ1.com or at (630) 315-0533. If you go, say a few prayers for CORAC and for me!
Squirrels are taking the day off. It’s scary out there!
If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.
Find me on Twitter at @JohnstonPilgrim
The Corps of Renewal and Charity (CORAC)
18208 Preston Rd., Ste. D9-552
Dallas, Texas 75252
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