Splinters from the 2020 Democratic Presidential Campaign Trail

• Joe Biden is hewing to a center right political approach to secure the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination, and so far, he has been able to keep voters of color ‘happy’ while he reaches out to white moderates, independents, and Trump’s hardcore base.

• Elizabeth Warren is continuing to surge among African American and other progressive voters which may serve to further secure Biden’s position as the Democratic frontrunner as the Democratic base is further divided.

• Bernie Sanders has lost his luster within the Democratic base as his ongoing decline in the polls indicates. He feels that his call for Medicare for All and other progressive issues in 2016 entitles him to a higher standing and is campaigning the same way over and over again expecting a different result.

• Unless Democrats come up with a strong rationale for impeaching Trump, they will lose independents and moderates in 2020 and likely the control of the House of Representatives if they proceed to do so.

Democrats show no signs of understanding or addressing President Trump’s deft deployment of racial strategies to spearhead his 2020 approach to reelection. They are dismissing them as more of the same old brash, lying, misogynistic, obnoxious Trump. They fail to realize that there is a thoughtful, political method behind his unorthodox style of functioning as the nation’s leader.

Trump, as did his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush (in 2000 and 2004), realizes that he only needs to cobble together 270 Electoral College votes to retain his office. He narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election by winning the reliably Democratic states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin largely as a result of her mistaken sureness in her campaign algorithms.

She refused to direct personal and financial resources to these previously Democratic bastions. Proof of her folly is the Democrats flipping of Republican seats in these same states during the 2018 midterms by returning to the above-mentioned strategies. This time around, Trump is upping his dependence on race to both divide the electorate and to congeal his base, understanding that he only needs to garner 51 percent of the votes cast in any state or political jurisdiction (or a plurality in a race of three candidates or more) to win.

Trump is depending on minority voter suppression, in numerous forms, the continued recruitment of minority clergy and grassroots leaders to push his outreach to minorities via criminal justice reforms, the use of more virulent, anti-immigrant rhetoric and schemes to feed his base’s continuing need for racist fuel, and his rapid changing of the ideological composition of federal District, Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Courts which will reinforce his edicts from the Oval office.

Minority voter suppression is the centerpiece of his reelection tactics. It is taking a variety of forms: the escalating use of Voter ID in heavily minority precincts, reduction of polling places in minority areas, usage of Russian trolls, escalating minority voter intimidation and vote theft, and the proposed 2020 census question about citizenship.

Voter ID is proving to be a tried and true scheme for reducing minority voter participation. In addition to laws being proposed and/or passed in more than two dozen states, it is often illegally requested at local polls in minority areas. Coupled with the deliberate reduction of voting precincts in minority neighborhoods, voters of color have more difficulty in accessing the ballot.

Russian trolls are again targeting African American voters to dissuade them from voting as they did in 2016 to propel Trump over the top although he decries it (wink wink). However, minority voter intimidation, as it occurred in Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina (along with vote theft) during the 2018 midterms, is gearing up for a rerun in 2020 as the number of prospective minority voters is reaching unprecedented heights throughout the nation.

The proposed 2020 census question on citizenship is already having a chilling consequence on the registration of Hispanic immigrants who fear deportation whether they have green cards, have been naturalized, or not. It is likely to have the effect that it is designed to have as indicated by a key deceased Republican consultant, Thomas B. Hofeller, to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who proposed it. In an exhaustive study of Texas legislative districts, Hofeller concluded that the question “would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites” due to the decrease in the number of minority voters.

Trump’s use of minority clergy and grassroots leaders is again on the front burner of his 2020 campaign. After his success in outreach to African American pastors: Cleveland Ohio’s Rev. Darrell Scott and South Carolina’s Rev. Mark Burns (although the state has been consistently Republican), Trump is convinced that their deliverance of even a small slice of the black vote would prove helpful.

More recently, he has recruited Bishop Darrell Hines who heads the Christian Faith Fellowship Church of God in Christ in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The city’s Churches of God in Christ have long been a mainstay of Republican support as President George W. Bush visited Holy Redeemer Institutional Church of God in Christ there in 2002 on a victory lap to celebrate the U.S. Supreme Court’s affirmation of school choice. Here again, Trump is hoping for a chunk of the black vote in Wisconsin’s largest city to assist in giving him an edge in winning the state again. This strategy is being employed in Democratic cities throughout the nation.

The Trump administration’s criminal justice reform has been carefully crafted to appeal to the sensibilities of African Americans which he lets other high profile liberals, who are often featured in media, trumpet on his behalf, e.g., Kim Kardashian on his parole of a black woman, Alice Marie Johnson, from a life sentence for a non-violent drug crime (for which she had already served more than 20 years) and Van Jones, a CNN anchor, also joined by Kim Kardashian, who promotes his First Step Program on criminal justice reform. Kardashian and Jones, who have given Trump effusive praise for these acts, serve as a shield against his other enduring, noxious social policies.

In the interim, Trump persists in ratcheting up attacks on immigrants and other minorities to feed and organize his Republican base to enhance and ensure their turnout. The combination of increased turnout of his base, a sizeable piece of independent and suburban voters, as a result of his economic policies, and enhanced minority voter suppression, Trump believes, will be the linchpins of his 2020 victory.

The Democrats seem unaffected by these plots as they have done little to nothing to rebuff them on a comprehensive scale. There are few legal responses to voter suppression (with the exception of Stacey Abram’s Fair Fight initiative), and no widespread organizing of communities of color by the Democratic National Committee or the 24 presidential candidates. Instead, these would-be presidents insist on using the polls to guide their campaign emphases as did Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The successes of the 2018 organizing and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) plans do not appear to resonate with them. We have witnessed the political outcomes of this naiveté before.