Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Rick Wilson’s Everything Trump Touches Dies was the funniest political book of the 2018. It was grim humor, certainly, but robust grim humor, filled with vicious takedowns of all the human caricatures scribbled in the margins of the Trumpian universe—including an expert demolition of the Orange Julius Caesar himself.

Wilson has done it again, but I find I’m not laughing quite as hard this time.

But I don’t think that this is Wilson’s fault. This endless farce we call the Trump Administration, this crapapolooza festival, just isn’t funny anymore. The melancholy minders (Kelly, Tillerson, Mattis) and minor looney-tuners (Gorka, Omorosa, Scaramucci) have given way to a legion of pallid yes-men cheering on the apocalypse, and it is not only the fecal pharaoh himself, but each one of us charioteers who is drowning in the Brown Sea of incompetence, and guess what?—oh, lookie, lookie!—now the plague itself has arrived!

Sorry about the strained attempt at humor. I sound a little hysterical, don’t I? But it seems that humor gets a little harder every day. And I think this may be part of the problem with Rick Wilson’s new book too.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read it. You should. Because Wilson—a self-styled Republican political hack and determined never-Trumper—gives Democrats much useful, sobering advice about how to win the 2020 presidential election, stuff that many of us—including a devoted Elizabeth Warren supporter like me—definitely don’t want to hear.

Stop looking at the national polls—Wilson says—and exulting in the President’s bad numbers, for this is the United States, where—thanks to the electoral college (which--sorry--isn't going away)—there’s no such thing as a real American national election. Instead, there are series of individual swing-state elections, roughly fifteen in number, held on the same day in November, and this is where you must concentrate all your money, expertise, and volunteer strength. Forget California (you’ll win it!), and forget Idaho (you’ll lose it!). Instead, concentrate on where the game is � Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Virginia, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Nevada. (And maybe Ohio too, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.)

And don’t bother talking about all that commie-sounding stuff like Medicare-for-All, gun buy-backs and abortion rights. Instead, talk like an American about things swing-voters care about:

Speaking American isn’t tricky. It isn’t secret. It isn’t an act. It’s a recognition that leaving the confines of Washington and new York shows you a world where voters curse, spit, love their dogs and their kids, play sports, drink beer, talk shit, recycle, pray, work, sing bad karaoke, and worry about the future but push on every day. It’s a social media cliché that authenticity sells, but it’s not wrong.

They hate politics, but they love leadership. They hate partisanship but they love passion. They’re flawed and frail and uncertain much of the time, but they still imagine a bigger, better life. Tell them you’re listening. Tell them they matter. For once, tell them it’s not about you, or the party, or some book of policy proposals but about THEM.