POLITICO is reporting this morning that after a recent secret meeting 100 Republican donors were left with very serious concerns about Donald Trump’s re-election campaign team, his plan and his strategy for the 2020 election.
The GOP donors met recently at the Trump International Hotel to hear presentations from Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale as well as other GOP operatives about their strategy to maintain control of the White House.
According to POLITICO, a dozen sources connected to Trump’s re-election campaign, and to donors who attended the retreat, said they are very nervous about the plans laid out by Parscale, who served as the president’s digital media director in 2016. Parscale has never run a large political campaign before.
One outside adviser who’s close to the campaign said:
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“Donors are asking for the plan and they have no plan. There’s not a strategy.”
Donors expressed confusion about why America First Action, the president’s main 2020 super PAC, spent $3 million of its $34 million in last year’s elections to back Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), who lost.
“There is true reluctance to give because there’s no plan or coherent structure to give to,” said one anonymous Republican fundraiser. “The campaign is doing really well with small-dollar donations, but it’s the high-end contributions the PAC is failing on.”
Republican donors are concerned that Trump’s re-election campaign officials have reached incorrect conclusions from November’s midterm shellacking that saw an historic Blue Wave and Democrats taking control of the House.
One donor friend of Trump said:
“There’s a lot of anxiety. There isn’t a lot of confidence.”
The president’s midterm strategy relied mostly on giving campaign speeches to his base voters at political rallies in states he won in 2016. And he almost completely ignored independent and moderate voters who he needs to win reelection.
“A more inclusive … strategy is needed,” said Dan Eberhart, a major GOP donor.
Anyone who has paid attention to Donald Trump’s behavior over the past several years cannot be surprised that he doesn’t have a plan or a strategy for reelection. We know that he doesn’t listen to the advice of others. We also know that he follows his own gut feelings about what to do, on a day to day basis.
Donald Trump’s political strategy is to do things to get attention, like shutting down the government to try to get border wall funding, or traveling to Vietnam for a worthless photo-op and summit with North Korea’s brutal dictator.
Donald Trump has no strategy to win reelection, just like he has no strategy for the United States. If GOP donors were smart they would wake up and smell the coffee. Even if Donald Trump somehow manages to stay in office long enough to win the Republican nomination in 2020, he will go down in flames in one of the biggest defeats in presidential election history.
I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.
