Greetings all. Sending along an edited recording of the live discussion I held on Monday with master political strategist, Stuart Stevens. While we get together monthly and talk about the issues of the day this get together was a little different. I asked Stuart to play a Democratic strategist, and walk us through how they would go about making the campaign’s strategy for the final four weeks. It ended up being a fascinating conversation. Here’s some of what he tells us:
The greatest mistake campaigns make is to go too positive. It's very rare in my career I ever sat around on election night waiting for the results and thinking, you know, we should have gone more positive. Yet it's a difficult thing when you're dealing with candidates. Because when you run a positive ad and you meet somebody, they go, I like that ad. It's about you know, the future. It's about your kids.
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People never run away from winners. And I say this to all these Democratic candidates — I would start talking about, hey, we are going to win this. We are winning. And we're going to win this. We're going to change this country. I would not shy away from it. This whole idea of “this race is super tight… I need every vote…” I mean, that's a message, but I don't think it's as powerful of a message as “don't you want to be part of a movement?" Do you want to vote or do you want to make history?” That's the way I would put it up there. Make it big, make it dramatic, make it change. And just ask people wouldn't you rather be part of something bigger than something smaller?
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I think that the way to connect with voters out there —— if you look at Rob Sand, he’s doing a brilliant job at it —— is just saying, look, I'm not some crazy ideologue here. I just want to help people. I want to be a public servant.
More from Stuart:
The greatest danger for Democratic candidates is to go positive. To get there where you think, you know, it's a week out, numbers are great, you really want to start shifting to talking about what you're going to do. That's the way you lose races.It's very difficult for candidates and campaigns who usually have been out there for at least six months, sometimes a year, sometimes two years, to wrap your heads around the fact that there is a huge number of voters out there who haven't really paid attention. And they're not going to pay attention until that final weekend, that final day before the election. You want to make sure that you are delivering negative information about your opponent, reminding people what is at stake. Don't think that because you've done it for the last month or two months or three months, that's enough.
You've got to keep up with contrast to the very end. And it's a weird human trap you fall into. Candidates particularly. You know, most candidates don't like to go negative. They'd rather talk about themselves or the future, which I get, but that's just not what you need to do to win. So, I would be out there talking about how we're going to win big and about how it'll be a disaster if we don't, but that we are. And keep at it.
I mean, attack, attack, attack. You can wake up every morning and go, what should I do? The default is attack. And if you attacked yesterday, that just means you need to attack more today.
We end our discussion with an acknowledgement that the coming winter for Ukraine is going to be very, very hard; and I commit to work with Stuart and others to lobby the new Democratic to make supporting Ukraine and re-establishing our traditional Western alliances a major priority in the coming months.
Finally, I want to acknowledge that we faced some technical challenges during our live discussion so please be patient all the way through - you will be glad you did!
Enjoy this compelling political conversation with one of the great strategists of our time, hit like so more will see it, share it with others, and keep working hard all. We have a country to save, and elections to win all across the country, together! - Simon
