Trump Has to Run Like It's 2016 Again

If Donald Trump wants to return to the White House, he has to get serious about winning the "ground war."

Social media memes didn't elect him in 2016 — his relentless schedule of campaign rallies did.

But this month, the Republican nominee is taking a break from the campaign trail, while the Democrats bask in the publicity of their national convention.

Is this wise?

Trump held 27 rallies in August 2016, according to CNBC, yet this time he has only a handful.

Instead he's returned to X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, for an interview with its larger-than-life impresario, Elon Musk.

It's a move straight out of the playbook that failed to get Ron DeSantis the Republican nomination.

The Florida governor kicked off his doomed campaign with a Musk interview in May of last year.

Social media has a place in 21st-century campaigning, but it isn't where elections are won.

Then again, before Trump's stunning upset eight years ago, the conventional wisdom was that rallies didn't win elections, either.

They were Trump's secret weapon — a tactic so old-fashioned that Hillary Clinton's top-dollar political professionals didn't dream it could change the course of the contest.

The top-dollar consultants were wrong, and Clinton paid for her campaign's complacency.

She expected to win an "air war," with her side's 2-to-1 fundraising edge over Trump's effort translating into overwhelming dominance in television ads.

But by showing up in places no nominee from either party had set foot in for a generation, Trump convinced voters in the vital Rust Belt battlegrounds that he cared about Americans the elites had written off.

Whether or not Wisconsinites, Pennsylvanians and Michiganders got to attend a Trump rally in person, the candidate's personal presence in some of the less fashionable zip codes in their states made an impression — in a way slick television commercials didn't.

Trump couldn't run a ground war the same way in 2020, of course, amid COVID fears and lockdowns.

Without the advantage his rallies gave him, he lost.

Joe Biden was an absentee on the campaign trail, much as he's been an absentee as president, too.

In the circumstances, it didn't matter — and Biden might have hoped he could win the same way this November even without COVID to cover for him.

That was a vain hope even before the president's debate meltdown:

Trump wouldn't have had to barnstorm the battleground states with anything like the energy he marshaled in 2016 to outdo Biden, given the president's decrepitude.

But now that Kamala Harris is the Democratic nominee, Trump can't afford to be any less vigorous than he was when he took on Clinton.

He's eight years older, but his stamina remains remarkable — all the more so for a man who was nearly slain by an assassin's bullet just a month ago.

He had the vim to deliver a 92-minute acceptance speech at the Republican convention, longer than some of his listeners could last.

The question now is less whether Trump is capable of campaigning like it's 2016 than whether he sees a need to.

He has tools at his disposal now that he didn't have then, chief among them a better-funded, more professional campaign team.

But the best team that money could buy only led Clinton to defeat.

Whatever new strengths Trump thinks he's acquired, he'd be reckless to rely on them rather than on the one thing that worked before: going straight to the voters.

That means not only holding more rallies but also augmenting his operation in the battlegrounds, where early yet persistent reports say Republican organizing lags behind the Democrats'.

Harris' party perfected a new kind of campaign in 2020, just as Trump reinvented an old one with his in-person politicking four years before.

The Democrats head into the final phase of this year's contest with a strategy for mail-in and early voting that Republicans were utterly unprepared for four years ago.

Has the GOP since caught up?

Trump can hardly count on it — not after the party's lackluster results in the 2022 midterms.

Only once in the past 32 years has a Republican received more votes in a presidential contest than the Democrat.

Except for George W. Bush's reelection in 2004, Democrats have won the popular vote every time since 1992.

It's not just recent polls that make Trump out to be the underdog in this race — the underlying electoral makeup of the country favors Democrats for the White House.

Trump defied polling and history alike when he demolished the Democrats' "blue wall" in the industrial heartland two cycles ago.

He did it by just by showing up, in the flesh, which is exactly what he needs to do again.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
• 08/07/24: Is Trump Running Against Harris -- or Donald Trump?
• 07/30/24: Kamala Harris' 'Mean Girls' Election
• 07/23/24: Kamala Harris Is the Opponent Donald Trump Wants
• 07/16/24: Ready for Biden's Counterattack?
• 07/09/24: Biden Faces Richard Nixon's Choice
• 07/02/24: Should Biden Drop Out -- or Resign?
• 06/18/24: Separate Sexual Identity and State
• 06/18/24: Nigel Farage Makes the Trump Moment Permanent
• 06/04/24: State that's long eluded GOP turns toward Trump
• 05/21/24: Trump's Sun Belt Hopes and Rust Belt Needs
• 05/14/24: What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
• 05/07/24: The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden's Party
• 05/06/24: Nationalists of the World, Unite?
• 04/25/24: Foreign Policy Splits
• 04/16/24: How pro-lifers stand to lose everything gained in overturning Roe
• 04/02/24: PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
• 04/02/24: Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
• 03/26/24: Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
• 03/19/24: Princess Kate and Democracy's Discontents
• 03/12/24: Can Biden Buy the Voters?
• 03/05/24: Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
• 02/20/24: Do Americans Trust Either Party?
• 02/13/24: Vladimir Putin -- A Passive Aggressor
• 01/23/24: Will 'Lawfare' Take Trump Off the Ballot?
• 01/16/24: Will Africa Save America?
• 01/09/24:'The Sopranos' at 25: A new world tragedy
• 01/02/24: Trump, Biden and a Fight for the Heart
• 12/12/23: What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
• 12/12/23: Biden Looks Doomed -- But Is He?
• 12/05/23: A Test for Trump and His Rivals
• 11/21/23: When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
• 11/14/23: Nevermind, The Battle's Over
• 11/07/23: War in the Dem Party -- and at the Opera
• 10/24/23: Israel's Lesson for 2024: A Lib Crackup
• 10/17/23: Libs' Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
• 10/10/23: Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
• 10/03/23: Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
• 09/26/23: Biden's a Loser -- but Dems Can't Ditch Him
• 09/19/23: Do Sex Scandals Matter?
• 09/12/23: Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
• 09/05/23: What Trump Does for Democracy
• 08/2/23: Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
• 08/22/23: Take 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Seriously
• 08/16/23: How America Kills Its Own
• 08/08/23: The Biden Pardon That Can Spare America
• 08/01/23: Harding, a consevative for the ages
• 07/25/23: Demography Destiny, for Us and China
• 07/18/23: The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
• 07/11/23: Britain's Bad Example for American Conservatives
• 07/05/23: Could We Still Win a Revolutionary War?
• 06/27/23: Civilizations Clash -- in Ukraine and at Home
• 06/20/23: China Comes for the Caribbean
• 06/13/23: Fertility, Family and Bio-Socialism
• 06/06/23: From American Dream to Orwell's Nightmare
• 05/23/23: Ukraine war is an existential struggle --- for the West
• 05/23/23: Learn the Right Midterm Lessons -- or Lose in 2024
• 05/16/23: Feinstein Today Is Biden Tomorrow
• 05/09/23: Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
• 05/02/23: RFK Jr.'s Threat to Biden
• 04/25/23: Biden's Lost Generation
• 04/25/23: Who's In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
• 04/11/23: Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
• 04/04/23: 2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
• 03/28/23: Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
• 03/21/23: All the Conspiracy That's Fit to Print