In the years since election night 2016 — when he wrote he has “never been as wrong on anything in my life” — he has rewatched a time lapse of The New York Times tracking needle and Fox News’ election night coverage multiple times. Quietly and by himself, Plouffe said.
“I just kind of wanted to stare at that in the mirror,” he told POLITICO in an interview. “And so for me, I did that before I started writing just as kind of a motivational tool and it was painful. … It was much more gruesome the second and third time than the first time, which is hard to imagine, but that’s why I chose Fox just because I figured: ‘Watch the thing that would bother you the most.’”
He added: “It’s so interesting because I don’t watch the Obama election nights.”
Plouffe has been chewing on what he got wrong and what it will take for Democrats to be victorious this time. The product is “A Citizen’s Guide to Beating Donald Trump” (there’s a children’s version too, titled “Ripples of Hope: Your Guide to Electing a New President”). It focuses on small things individuals can do that could be significant in the aggregate.
If his first book, “Audacity to Win,” was an insider political tome, this is meant for the broader, grassroots #resistance crowd.
After spending 2016 pacifying nervous Democrats, Plouffe is now trying to make Democrats nervous, telling anyone who will listen that Trump can win. His Twitter feed has been full of dire warnings: a picture of Trump holding a newspaper reading “TRUMP RE-ELECTED,” and the ominous declaration that “Despite it all he could still win. Make your own plan for activism to make sure it isn’t so.”
Plouffe warns that he thinks Trump will be much stronger this time around with all the advantages of incumbency, an almost singular focus on reelection and a campaign team that will likely be less chaotic than the one that replaced its top leadership three months before the election in 2016. Trump also won’t be outspent like he was last time.
Asked if he’s become one of the bedwetters he once teased needed adult diapers, he said, “I would reject strongly the idea that I’m a bedwetter. I just deal with facts and reality.”
After several years in the private sector after his Obama-era stints — at companies such as Uber and at Mark Zuckerberg’s public policy-heavy philanthropic initiative — Plouffe is as close to being back in the game as he can get without joining a campaign.
His work in the private sector has drawn criticism from the ascendant left, which is skeptical that he has his finger on the eat-the-rich pulse of the party. But Plouffe is unmoved.
“I know in our party today, you know, some of us who’ve gone on to work in the private sector get criticized. That’s fine, people can have their opinion, but I think it makes me a better professional,“ he said.
He also said he expects the populist fervor to grow after 2020 regardless of who’s president. “I think kind of no matter, whether Trump wins, Biden wins, Sanders wins, I still think you’re going to see, you know, strong populism coursing through both parties,” he said. “And it’s not just both parties, it’s basically voters and citizens alike.”
Plouffe’s other big projects besides the book include advising a $75 million digital campaign through the firm Acronym — he joined the group’s board — and serving as an MSNBC contributor. He’s also grizzlier now, sporting a beard, which he says he started growing while he wrote the books.
Plouffe is most focused on campaigning and activism in the digital space, which he grimly wrote is “unrestricted chemical and biological warfare, in effect, insidious molecular attacks, minute by minute, second by second, on our computers, tablets, phones.”
Despite its potential toxicity, Plouffe argues that progressives — from campaigns to progressive activists — need to be more proactive about creating and sharing content. “To be in the game you have to be in the arena, and social media is the primary arena this race will be fought in. Fact of life,” he writes.
Acronym has been doing some of that work as it has tried to raise $25 million for digital newspapers focused on swing states. Some have criticized the effort as promoting propaganda disguised as news, but the group has said it’s necessary to counter what Republicans have been doing for years.
“We’re doing advertising, but we also boost news, which I think is a big necessity for progressives,” Plouffe said. “It’s real news … but covering things like Medicaid expansion, covering things like criminal justice locally — that’s content that can be used both for organic consumption, but then that can be boosted as well by groups and elected officials, or candidates.”
Source: politico.com
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