VDH: New rules for radicals — How to reinvent Kamala Harris.
6. Do not mention Biden at all. Harris is not to be seen with him in photos or at events. Create a vaguely joyful but completely imaginary, “Harris record.” Separate it from the miserable Biden-Harris administration. Leak that she was unhappy with Biden.
7. Call Trump a mobster, criminal, insurrectionist, and dictator nonstop. Never provide any evidence to support such charges. When challenged, double down and let loose with worse invective.
8. Talk about abortion nonstop. But never dare mention the word. Relabel abortion “reproductive rights.” Falsely reinvent Trump as a radical anti-abortionist who wants a federal ban.
9. Follow the 2020 successful Biden “basement” strategy: keep out of the public eye, silent on the issues, reliant on 70 percent of the ballots not being cast on Election Day, and outsourcing the campaign to the fusion media and billionaire class.
10. Harangue about race and gender nonstop. Define the election as a stark binary between a “young” oppressed but dynamic black woman and an old oppressor racist white guy.
11. Reinvent the “journey” and life “story” of Harris — the child of two PhDs — into a hardscrabble, lifelong struggle against poverty, systemic racism, and greedy “billionaires” like Trump. She is always to be from Oakland — never Berkeley.
12. Talk about transparency nonstop. Feign a willingness to have three or four debates. But agree to hold only one — and only on a left-wing network. Promise interviews and town halls endlessly. Enter into discussions about them. But always delay, stonewall, and evade for the next 10 weeks.
13. Meet privately and endlessly with the megarich donor class that helped to remove Biden. Assure Wall Street, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley grandees that banter about wealth taxes, taxes on unearned income, and higher corporate taxes are mere campaign posturing. Then outraise Trump again 3-1.
14. Privately assure leftist activists and Democrat politicos that any backslidings from supporting lifelong left-wing advocacies are temporary and necessary 70-day pretexts. Instead look at what Harris actually does after November 5, not anything she must say before then.
Saul Alinsky published Rules for Radicals in 1971 after the domestic battles of the previous decade, where American politics largely consisted of radical new leftists versus older, establishment New Deal Democrats. (Conservatives were largely on the sidelines. Goldwater’s stillborn campaign failed in 1964 and Nixon was a moderate Rockefeller Republican.) But reading between the lines of VDH’s latest column, it’s obvious that the radicals have been running the show for the Democratic Party (and by extension, much of the country) for quite some time.