Post-Campaign Strategy

 

November 5, 2020

 

Nicole Galloway, Missouri State Auditor, ran against incumbent governor Mike Parson. She has demonstrated fairness and good business sense. She lost the rural vote—not because rural citizens are against fairness and good sense, but because Mike Parson was one of their own, and her campaign didn’t point out the obvious: their economies are in the toilet because of current bad political practices.

Joe Biden may be elected president of the United States. If he wins, he will have to deal with a Congress that includes the likes of Roy Blunt, Josh Hawley, and the woman from QAnon; individuals whose actions indicate that they wouldn’t understand the concept of Public Good if it came up and introduced itself.

My advice to them both is: Spend less energy appealing to people who already support you; give the people who voted against you concrete reasons to work with you from now on. 

It won’t be easy—if this election has demonstrated nothing else, it is that FACTS DO NOT MATTER when a person’s mind is made up.

 

Biden should start working the states who voted against him RIGHT NOW. He should give voters reasons to support his policies and to make sure that their representatives vote accordingly during his presidency.  He should be strategizing already about what will shake people’s confidence in hucksters and conspiracy theorists. He should get people out there on the ground, talking to citizens in ways that they can relate to. His biggest opponents are comfortable, middle-class people who have not yet been damaged economically or personally by the destructive policies or complete indifference of the current administration. (When current policies do start to backfire on them, they will blame him, because he’ll be holding office, so he should prepare for that, too.) He should figure out how to morph their current complacency into a long-term awareness of what their actions can lead to.

Galloway should frame her campaign in terms of dollars and cents. How have current tax policies (i.e. tax breaks for corporations in the cities, tariff wars on farm goods) negatively affected the rural communities and economies? In this case, demonstrable facts will matter somewhat more than they will to the comfortable urbanites; being able to point to reasons why rural areas are losing economic ground will hit closer to home. However, she should also find people that can make the case in the same grass-roots fashion that I suggested for Biden.

Short version: While you should never neglect the people who support you, find ways to relate to the people who don’t. Don’t wait until the next election; start now.