Thread by @PalmerReport

After Trump is over, I'm going to open a school to teach my fellow liberals how politics actually works. How strategy works. How to win. How to know if you're winning or losing.

Liberals are correct on all the issues. But you have to understand politics to make a difference.

Lesson #1: Everything in politics is about leverage. You want to force someone on the other side to bend to your will? You figure out what they care about most, and you use it. 99% of the time, they care most about getting reelected and keeping their seat.

Lesson #2: Very few people in the highest reaches of politics are mustache twirling cartoon villains who are just looking for mischief. The corrupt politicians care about money, donors, etc, not about random acts of villainy. Stop thinking of them as cartoon characters.

Lesson #3: You never take any politician's words at face value. The good guys AND bad guys are always posturing, trying to use their words to set things in motion. You want to figure out what's about to happen? Start by ignoring what the politicians say is about to happen.

Lesson #4: There are two kinds of wins.

The first is when something good happens (you pass a good law, etc).

The second is when something "bad" happens that doesn't really hurt your side, and gives your side better odds in the next election. Liberals rarely understand this one.

Lesson #5: Conservatives always think they're going to win. Liberals always think they're going to lose.

It's why conservatives win often, even though liberals have all the facts and virtue on their side.

A winning mindset is contagious. So is a losing mindset.

Lesson #6: voters in the middle generally know the Democrats are the good guys, and the Republicans are creepy wackos, so they hold Democrats to a higher standard. So if they decide the Democratic and Republican canddiates are equal, they paradoxically vote for the Republican.

Lesson #7: liberals have the moral high ground, but that can work against them. There's a tendency for each liberal to want to prove they're the "best" liberal, as if it's a competition, usually by obsessively attacking the Democratic frontrunner. Knock it off.

Lesson #8: Your vote isn't precious. It's not a sentimentality contest. You're not picking a spouse. You just pick a politician to do your dirty work and steer the country in your direction. Then you turn out and vote in droves. Conservatives get this. Liberals often don't.

Lesson #9: a politician who moderately leans to the left, but is effective at governing and making deals, will be able to steer the country to the left.

A politician who's far-left, but isn't effective at governing or making deals, won't move the country one inch to the left.

Lesson #10: Most people think politics is done by magic wand. Someone in office waves the wand, gets their way, and just gets away with it. But that's never how it works.

Every time a politician or party makes a move, there's pushback, consequences, fallout. Every single time.

Lesson #11: Fairness doesn't exist in politics. It just doesn't.

If you're a liberal, you're fighting for what's right. So whenever you win a battle, you're making the world better. If you stop to whine about fairness, no one cares. You're wasting time when you could be winning.

Lesson 12: Politics is (metaphorically) war. Both sides suffer losses every day. The losses are never acceptable. But just because your side is suffering losses, it doesn't mean your side is losing. The war is won by the side that's still standing after both sides take losses.

Lesson 13: The only scandals that have any impact are the ones that the mainstream media is willing to run with, and that cause the voters in the middle to perk up. When your side hits on an effective scandal, you focus heavily on it. Repetition. The point is to win voters over.

Lesson 14: Liberals are the good guys, so we always want to play up the Republican scandals that we think are the most evil.

But no matter how important you think any given scandal is, if it doesn't win your side any support or votes, why waste bandwidth playing it up?

Lesson 15: Once you find a scandal that's resonating with the middle, you don't let up. Look what the Republicans did with email and Benghazi, and those weren't even real.

Trump's Ukraine scandal is resonating across the board, so keep pushing it. Not exclusively, but heavily.

Lesson 16: When the GOP cheats in an election, it's not done by pulling a magic lever. It takes a ton of cheating effort to move the needle a tiny fraction. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, hacking, etc, only gets them 2-3 points. Massive turnout can always overcome cheating.

Lesson 17: Republican politicians always vote based on what they think gives them the best shot at keeping their seat. Sometimes the vulnerable ones can be pushed into voting with us on something. Sometimes not. But whining about how shitty they are is a total waste of your time.

Lesson 18: No amount of whining will ever put you any closer to winning. Lamar Alexander proved he's a coward tonight. So what? He's irrelevant. Don't waste time obsessing over him. He's retiring anyway. Move on and fight meaningful battles. You can whine, or you can win.

Lesson 19: Nothing has ever been sacred in politics. Andrew Johnson bribed a senator to acquit him. Reagan conspired with Iran in the 1980 election. Trump's crimes are nothing new. Stop acting like your centuries old porcelain is suddenly breaking. Politics has always been shit.

Lesson 20: Liberals are so worried about heartbreak, they convince themselves the very worst will happen, so they're not let down. But that fatalism spreads, and pretty soon, liberals give up trying to win. Conservatives never have this problem. Liberals must stop the fatalism.