Aspiring Democratic U.S. Presidential Candidates:
Are you all trying to get Donald J. Trump elected to a second term as President of these United States? I ask that question very seriously because none of you have done anything to prevent Trump from winning. For the most part you have wasted everyone’s time letting the American voter know not why he or she should vote for you, but rather why it is they should not vote for any of your opponents. It requires an enormous ego to ask the People to place you in the highest office in the land: perhaps the most powerful in the world. Use that ego to promote yourself, not to denigrate your opponents.
As a young man (long ago, in a galaxy far, far away) I was taught, first by my parents and then by my teachers, that when running for office you must let the People know for what you stand. This is accomplished in a very simple way...first tell the People what you are going to do, and then explain how you will accomplish it. This was force fed to me through repetition. It was reinforced both in college and later on in the workplace, where I learned to set goals and explain how I would achieve those goals through quantifiable objectives. Not one educator told me to present reasons why someone else was not able to get the job done because of their flaws. But that is what you have been doing.
No one is going to vote for you because of what you believe...they will vote for you because of what they believe. Therefore, it is incumbent upon you give reasons for them to believe in you. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren say they believe in Universal Healthcare, or Medicare for All as they call it. Yet neither of them has presented a practical method of achieving this most admirable goal. I would suggest that rather that fighting over whose idea it was and whether it is rampant Socialism or not, they use their respective staffs to run all of the numbers to determine how it can work. Look at the problem from the perspective of individual families: allay constituents fears that not only will it not work, but that it will cause great harm by raising taxes and reducing efficacy. Using the example of Goals and detailed objectives build a solid platform point.
Joe Biden spends much of his time telling us what his past experience has done to prepare him for the future, and not enough time on what he will accomplish in that future for which he is so very prepared; or, just how he will make things happen. Pete Buttigieg seems to have some fine ideas, yet spends much of his and his staff’s time preparing to deflect darts thrown at him and to hurl them back at their initiator with an unerring accuracy: time and resources better spent on detailing his goals and objectives.
There is also a good deal of discussion over who did, or did not support the war in Iraq: another waste of time. The American People want to know how you will get them out of the wars that occupy our time and resources today.
The most recent polls indicate that voter’s major concerns are as follows:
- Healthcare
- National Security/Gun Control Policy
- Education
- Economy (including income distribution)
- Immigration
- Climate Change
That is a lot to deal with, however, an astute candidate might combine National Security with terrorism and asymmetric warfare; or Climate Change, since it does pose an existential threat.
The point is that you need to focus on each of these and provide provable, quantifiable solutions (including necessary steps required to achieve success).
In case you haven’t noticed, you are running against a master “snake oil” salesman. He is a liar, a cheat, and a thief; yet he understands the selling of himself better than any of you. He will use every negative you have used against one another to gain himself a second term as President. None of you are qualified to fight fire with fire, so don’t. Fall back on the tried and true method of laying out a platform and the steps and revenue required to make the platform a reality. I believe you will be pleasantly surprised by the results.
If the People do not believe you can do what you say needs doing, Donald J. Trump will again be elected President of the United States. If that happens this nation will never recover: he will finish shredding the Constitution and the rule of law. He will write the nation’s obituary: our epitaph will read, “Oh well, we gave it a shot.”
