I'll keep saying it until it sinks in: Hillary didn't lose because of her strategy, or because we got complacent. She lost because Comey's last minute letter completely upended the election. Trump didn't win because of his strategy. He ran a shit campaign and he got lucky.
The worst thing we can do is learn the wrong lessons from 2016. This notion that we can only win if we pretend we're losing? Silly and counterproductive. People like voting for a winning team, not for a team that's afraid to admit it's winning.
Trump didn't make one move that helped him in the entire 2016 general election. His every move backfired. Even his Russian collusion didn't work; it wasn't enough to put him over the top. Yet we somehow cower in fear over the idea of him using the same losing strategies again.
Trump unwittingly did everything he could to lose in 2016. He's doing everything he can to lose in 2020. If he wins again, it'll be because of another fluke, not because of some strategy that he's using.
The reason we have to run up the score in 2020 is that if another fluke does happen, it could cost us everything. If Biden is ahead by a large enough margin, the fluke might not change the outcome. But how do we run up the score if we're too busy pretending we're losing?
How do we run up the score? First, we have to acknowledge we're winning. Be proud of it. Use it to attract additional voters and volunteers who want to be a part of a winning team. And put in all the voter registration and turnout work that's necessary in any winning campaign.
Stop cowering to Trump. He occasionally flexes his nonexistent muscles for five minutes, and then we cower for five days. He has no idea what he's doing, yet we cower anyway. Stop falling for his smoke and mirrors. All you're doing is giving him leverage he doesn't have.
If Trump starts running a completely different campaign than that losing crapfest he ran in 2016, we'll have to worry. As long as he keeps making the same mistakes in 2020, pushing the same ineffective messaging, using the same advisers, and so on, then he's doing our job for us.
There's this notion that in order to win in 2020, we have to do the opposite of everything we did in 2016. This is dangerous thinking. We mostly did 2016 right. Short of having ESP to know the Comey letter was coming, and locking him in a basement, no major mistakes were made.
Michigan and Wisconsin were NEVER in play until the Comey letter. Hillary had them locked up. She was correct to put her time/resources into Florida and Ohio instead, which were in danger. By the time the Comey letter changed the entire map, it was too late to change course.
Should Biden spend some time and money in Michigan and Wisconsin? Sure. Should he spend too much of his time and money there, while neglecting other swing states, because of a whacked out fluke in 2016? Of course not.
All we know about 2020 is that if a last minute fluke does happen, it won't be the same fluke, so it won't have the same specific impact in the same states. You can go crazy trying to guess what might happen, overcorrecting. But it's smarter to just use sound strategy all around.
