Armageddon (29 page)

But will black voters show up for Hillary in the same record-setting numbers as they did for Obama?

Barack Obama, running as the first African American to seek the presidency as the nominee of a major party, carried the black vote
by 95%–4% in 2008 and by 93%–6% in 2012. In each contest, blacks cast a record 13% of the total vote.

This huge African-American turnout is not typical of American elections. In 2000 blacks cast 10% of the vote and in 2004, they accounted for 11%. Since African-Americans have not increased their share of the nation's population in the last two censuses, there is no reason why black turnout should continue at record levels.

If African American turnout dropped from 13% to 11%, Hillary would lose about two points in her race against Trump—about half of Obama's margin against Romney.

The handoff between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton need not be seamless. The Trump campaign affords us an opportunity to show how Democrats will always side with the municipal unions against the black community. Whether the issue is school choice, sanitation services, health care, or law enforcement, city government officials depend on unions to get elected and take the black vote for granted. On each of these issues, Democrats have had to choose between the consumers of the city services (such as children in school or patients in city clinics and hospitals) and the providers of the service (the teachers and health care unions). Since these politicians have always been able to count on a bloc vote from African Americans, they have little incentive to cater to them and, since their campaigns are financed by municipal unions, a great deal of incentive to side with the service providers.

Republicans need to make it clear that we seek and want the black vote and, now that Obama is not on the ballot, do not believe that they will vote for Hillary as a knee jerk reaction. The African American community is particularly unhappy with how white liberals govern their cities. Their resentment usually spills over in mayoral elections that pit a white liberal (e.g., Emanuel in Chicago, de Blasio in New York) against an African American candidate. The black urban voter resents being taken for granted by his white liberal elected official. These Democratic office holders treat blacks as if
they were a golf handicap, a lead with which they start the race and which they never have to earn.

Trump should select key issues (like school choice) where he can side with the black community against City Hall.

As noted, there is strong African American support for school choice. In Philadelphia, 58,000 children attend charter schools and another 40,000 are said to be on waiting lists. The majority of these children are nonwhite. The charter school space is so limited in Philadelphia that the city runs a lottery each year to decide who gets in. Tens of thousands of families are turned away and are disappointed. The teachers' union does all it can to limit and cut the charter school program. By decisively siding with parents and backing expansion of charter schools, Trump can show that he puts the people ahead of those who are supposed to serve them.

Even on the issue of police brutality, there is running room for Donald Trump.

Big city mayors—Democrats all—are wont to sweep reports of police brutality under the rug, particularly at election time. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel actually refused to release a video showing a Chicago officer shooting a 17-year-old who was obviously posing no threat. Emanuel, locked in a tight runoff race with an African American candidate, held onto the video to avoid embarrassment—and to hang onto his share of the black vote.

Knowing that her popularity among African Americans, while broad, is still thin, Hillary will try to get a large turnout in the community by portraying Trump as their enemy and trying to draw racial issues against him. Trump must avoid this characterization and show how he is fighting for the community against City Hall, where necessary, it is unlikely that Hillary can raise the fear level to the point where it generates a large black turnout.

It isn't that Trump needs to carry the black vote. He just has to stop Hillary from scaring African-Americans to death over the prospect of his victory so they do not come out to vote.

Y
ou bet he can.
To see how, lets reverse engineer Obama's victory over Romney. Obama beat Romney by 5 million votes in 2012.

Trump increased turnout in Republican primaries by a projected total of 14 million votes. How many of those are people who did not vote in 2012 but participated in the 2016 primary? Exit polls didn't ask.

But we know that turnout among white registered voters fell by 3.1% (or 6.3 million voters) from a high in 2004 to 2012. With Trump's drawing power, it is not unreasonable to posit that the white vote will rise by ten million from 2012 to 2016. If Trump
carries it by the same margin Romney did (61-39) it will give him 1.2 million more votes than Romney got in 2012.

There is no reason to suppose that black turnout for Hillary will equal that for Obama. In 2004, African-Americans cast 11% of the national vote. In 2012, with no increase in their share of the national population, blacks cast 13% of the vote. If they fell back to their historic level of 11%, it would deny Hillary 2.5 million votes that Obama got.

Those under 30 voted for Obama by a margin of 8 million total votes, backing the Democrats 60-37. Hillary has shown great weakness among young voters, losing them to Bernie Sanders in the primaries by huge margins. If we assume that among white under 30s, Obama won by 5 million votes, Hillary's unpopularity among younger voters should show up by cutting her margin by at least two million.

When we combine a Hillary loss of 2 million young voters and 2.5 million blacks with a Trump gain of 1.2 million white voters, we see a reversal of the 2012 verdict. While Obama beat Romney by 5 million votes, Trump would defeat Hillary by 700,000.

Some say that the electoral map is so tilted in favor of the Democratic Party that a Republican cannot win. While this statement is not true, a Republican does have a difficult task ahead to climb to a majority of the electoral vote.

The key to winning the Electoral College is a Virginia-plus strategy. Here's the math: Romney won 206 electoral votes in 2012, short of the 270 votes needed to win. To get the remaining 64 votes, the Republicans would first need to carry the two states where Obama's margin of victory over Romney was the smallest—where the election was closest—Ohio (18 electoral votes) and Florida (29). Obama beat Romney in the national popular vote by 51.1–47.2, a margin of 4.1%. Of all the states Obama carried, he had the smallest margin in Florida (0.9%) and in Ohio (3.0%).

If we lose the popular vote by anything like Romney's 4.1%, we will lose both states—and the election. But if we can tie or pass Obama's 2012 vote share, we should have no problem carrying them. That would give us 47 of the 64 electoral votes we needs to win. To pick up the remaining 17 votes is more complicated. A Republican would need to carry some of the following states:

Swing States

Of these states, Virginia seems the closest within reach. And that's the key. If we can win Ohio, Florida, and Virginia, we will have 266 electoral votes, just four short of victory. We could pick those votes by winning any one of the remaining six toss-up states (Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, and Wisconsin).

And we probably can do it. Ed Gillespie, Republican, came within less than one point of winning the Virginia senate seat in 2014.
Colorado and Iowa are also moving our way. Both elected new Republican senators in 2014, and in Colorado, we even overthrew a Democratic incumbent. Pennsylvania and New Hampshire already have Republican senators, and in Pennsylvania, the GOP controls both houses of the legislature. Any one of them would suffice to win.

The 2016 election will, of course, revolve around not just the issues but the candidates as well. In Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democrats have nominated one of the most unpopular, compromised candidates in recent years. The list of her negatives is so long as to be daunting and her record is so filled with evidence of corruption, incompetence, deceit, prevarication, inconsistency, self-dealing, and cover-ups as to make her practically unelectable.

T
o defeat Hillary, we
need to use every weapon in our arsenal. We need to use the right jab—to animate our base and get them out to vote. Then we must throw the left hook—to attract the Bernie Sanders voters by appealing to their essential populism. And throughout, we must keep Hillary under pressure and on the defensive by revisiting the various scandals, lies, flip-flops, and failures in her record.

We know that Hillary makes mistakes under pressure. We've seen it. Confronted with her past, she resorts to lies, evasions, and distortions. When she gets caught in these misstatements, she lies again and again and again. Keep pressing her and she will keep making mistakes. So we need to keep pressing her. And isn't Donald Trump just the man to do it? By constantly calling her “corrupt Hillary,” he hammers away at her scandals and her lies, evasions, and misstatements.

Won't Hillary's handlers prepare her for these attacks, scripting her replies? They won't. Hillary's handlers are usually terrified of their candidate. They can't sit down with her and discuss how she handled Bill's sexually predatory conduct. Nor can they ask her about e-mails, or Benghazi, or her theft of the White House china, or the pardons her brothers secured in return for fees, or the quid pro quo she dished out to those who paid Bill for speeches. If they dared to ask—or even raise these topics—she'd take their heads off (and they would never be seen in her campaign again).

In handling and protecting a candidate, consultants have to know the truth—the full truth. Unless they do, the truth will come back to bite them and their candidate. You can't defend a scandal if you don't know what really happened. But Hillary will never ever tell her advisors the truth. It is likely she never admits the truth to herself. Denial is her way of life. It's how she keeps going every day. She will not breech that wall of denial unless she is forced to do so. And no advisor, consultant, or handler has the clout or security to make her tell the truth.

So when we challenge Hillary, it will be like peeling an onion: Each time we disprove one layer of denial, another will take its place. Hillary's denial strategy will blow up in her face. On the campaign trail, she will hang herself by lying and covering up. The key is to keep her under pressure.

Bernie Sanders's basic mistake was not to raise any of these important issues. He based his campaign on his ideology and condemned Hillary for her dependence on special interest and Wall Street money. But Hillary's scandals played no role in his effort. He never discussed them and famously dismissed her e-mails, saying that “nobody gives a damn about your e-mails.” In the Democratic primary, perhaps not. But in the general election, her blatant breach of the law and of national security ranks high on her list of negatives. Throughout the primary campaign, Hillary's supporters and the entire Democratic establishment warned Bernie about his
“tone” in attacking Hillary. And like the good liberal he is, Sanders did not go for the jugular.

But Donald Trump will. He won't ignore the idiocy of her excuses. We've listened to her talking points about why she won't release the transcripts of the paid speeches she's made. We've heard her say she'll do it when everyone else does and not before then. We've heard her say that everyone did it—other secretaries of state like Colin Powell and Madeline Albright and Henry Kissinger gave paid speeches. But Donald Trump will point out the flaw in her silly argument—that none of them were running for president and could do favors down the line.

That's why people paid Hillary such exorbitant speaking fees—not because they wanted to hear her view of the world, but because they wanted to create an IOU. Donald will flatten her arguments and repeatedly point out why she is a flawed candidate.

Keep up the pressure. Make her make mistakes. Force her to dig herself deeper and deeper into lies and cover-ups. That's how we keep Hillary out of the White House. And put Donald Trump in.