How to Win in 2024

You ain't got a thing, if you ain't got that swing vote.

In 2020, Donald Trump filled stadiums with thousands of adoring fans. Trump fans spontaneously organized convoys, chanted "Let's Go Brandon!" at sporting events, etc. Yet Joe Biden won despite campaigning from his basement.

Was it cheating? Was it ballot stuffing? Was it electronic voting machines? If so, we are doomed. But it ain't necessarily so!

Yes, Team D gamed the crap out of the COVID crisis. Thanks to mail in voting and drop boxes, Team D was able to secure millions of low information/low motivation votes.

But that is not the only reason they won in 2020! Team Donald lost because Team Donald flunked Presidential Politics 101. During primary season you acquire your base; during the general election you move to the center and most target swing voters, with just enough raw meat for your base to keep them on board.

The Trump campaign over motivated its base without giving them useful things to do.

Remember, kids: you only get to vote once -- if you are voting Republican.

Worse yet, Trump alienated a significant part of the Republican base that he theoretically secured by winning the Republican Primary. This was partly due to his schoolyard bully public persona. But the other factor is that Donald Trump is not a real Republican -- at least not by the standards of the Reagan Era. Donald Trump is a hostile takeover of the Republican Party by the Reform Party. This is a Good Thing, but it comes at a price: The Donald needs to widen the base to replace the Romneys.

The good news is that The Donald has learned his lesson and is reaching out beyond his base. He gave a speech at the Libertarian Party national convention and promised to put a Libertarian in his cabinet.

He courted the support of RFK Jr. and promised him an opportunity to attack the country's public health crisis.

This is yuge! Indeed, I was personally ambivalent between Trump and RFK Jr. because the autism and endocrine disruption crisis is at least as big a problem as our ideological insanity. Indeed, I believe that the two are related.

Adding RFK Jr. to the Trump team puts me in my Happy Place. But others are not so happy. I see grumblings of Sellout, Squish, and so forth on Substack and right wing social media. These need to be squashed. The last thing America needs is the equivalent of Once Great Britain's Zero Seats movement.

Don't be a Losertarian

Ideology is overrated. You cannot win an election in the United States with voters dedicated to any single ideology. American politics is all about coalition building. A coherent ideology may provide a central pole for the Tent, but if it isn't a Big Tent, it isn't worth anything.

I learned this lesson the hard way. I was part of an overly ideological movement for roughly a quarter of a century: the Libertarian Party. Yes, there is an elegance to being able to derive a multi page political platform from a single axiom. And if you can sell a new member on that axiom, you have created a fresh ideological purist. Very handy, that!

But not handy enough to win elections.

Wiser heads in the Libertarian Party have attempted to create a Bigger Tent from time to time. They downplayed the LP's membership oath and defined a libertarian as one who is socially liberal and economically conservative. This position can be displayed graphically using the Nolan Chart.

Had the Libertarian Party attempted to occupy the entire upper diamond on the chart above, it would have won some real races back in the 20^thCentury.

It's too late now. The Nolan Chart is obsolete. Marijuana is legal in enough states that dedicated dopers can find a place to peacefully toke. Gay Marriage has been imposed on the entire land thanks to the courts, and kids carry around portable pornographs.

Today, the hedonists and satanists are the new puritans, demanding the right to indoctrinate our kids to normalize their preferred perversions. Technically speaking, The Babylon Bee is more socially liberal than Mother Jones. .

But back in the days when the Nolan Chart was still relevant, the base of the Libertarian Party did not truly adopt the Nolan Chart. That was mere external propaganda, out beginning of a sales funnel to indoctrinate new people into the Zero Aggression Principle. The honest Nolan Chart was something like this:

The Dissident Right is not nearly as narrow minded. Indeed, it is hard to even define a loose ideology which unites today's new Right -- though I took a crack at it:

But I do see echoes of the Honest Nolan Chart in the writings of this corner of Substack. Democrat = Communist, and Liberal = Socialist are common themes. And they are dangerously incorrect!

A more genteel, hair gelled Presidential candidate might be able to sell Trump's populism to normies and independents. Indeed, there was a time when I could sell such a program to the Wine and Brie set.

Trump cannot do that. His personality is incredibly abrasive to those who don't already like him. It takes people who vote on issues to overlook his personality.

But those who vote on issues tend to have a history of membership in an existing political party. Since Trump has lost a bunch of core Republicans, Trump needs to win over members of the other significant parties. That means Libertarians, Greens, and/or Democrats.

In the sections to follow, I'll show you where to look for swayable Democrats, and provide you with some juicy talking points. Much of what I will cover overlaps Rules 8 and 11, but here I narrow things down to selling Trump, vs. a Reactionary movement in general.

Replacing the Romneys

The Never Trumpers are gone and few, if any, are coming back. Those driven off by Trump's rudeness will likely come back into the Republican fold, but they are a minority of the Never Trumpers. Most of the Never Trumpers are ideologically opposed to Trump's populism. They are closer ideologically to today's Democratic Party than they are to today's Republican Party.

Conservatism was never a coherent ideology, and the Republican Party was never fully conservative. Go back 40 years and the Republican coalition included:

• Wall St.

• Country clubbers wanting their special tax breaks

• Corporate leaders wanting relief from labor unions and burdensome regulations

• Drug warriors

• Environmental skeptics and fast food junk junkies

• The Religious Right

• Anti abortionists

• Economic libertarians

• Aggressive anti communists

• General imperialists (aka Neocons)

• Gun nuts

• Small business owners

Well, like the Nolan Chart, parts of this list are obsolete. The Moral Majority isn't. Communism is dead save in North Korea, some parts of Latin America, and U.S. college campuses. With the end of the external communist threat, the Republican Party is reverting to the isolationism of the 1920s.

Meanwhile, the influx of blue collar populists means today's Republican Party is less friendly to Wall St. parasites, and Wall St. has gone woke in response. As for the anti-environmental junk food junkies, the epidemic of autism and ambiguous sexuality has Christian conservatives turning into health foodies -- albeit with more meat.

As for the Neocons? They are now proudly flying the Rainbow of Abominations flag as they drop love bombs around the world. They are solid Democrats now. We need to replace them with some not-so-solid Democrats.

To find them, let's break out a more relevant political map:

Donald Trump has moved the Republican Part into the Upper Left of the chart above.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has begun occupying Wall St., along with the political niche of Mitt Romney, the Neocons, and the Bush family. For all their rhetoric of Equity, today's Democratic Party is the party of bureaucrats, oligarchs, and grovelers. Romney and the Bushes are diametrically opposed to what the Republican Party is becoming. Write them off! And good riddance.

But to successfully oppose them, we need to activate more people in the Populist Quadrant. Once upon a time, this quadrant was occupied only by conspiracy theorists, Georgists, and a handful of classical liberals. Trump has successfully courted the conspiracy theorists, with mixed results.

We need to move those on the edges of the Populist Quadrant into the box. That means courting libertarians (broadly defined) and those liberals who are more about the personal liberty and equality than the big government. That means disgruntled Democrats like RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Naomi Wolf, and Michael Shellenberger.

Dissecting the Democratic Coalition

While Team D does a better job of being Borg than Team R, underneath the tent there is true diversity.

• Big Government Keynesians.

• Socialists

• Communists

• Aging hippie peaceniks

• Next generation hippie peaceniks

• Civil libertarians

• Anti big corporation independent business owners

• Government workers

• Most of academia

• Blue collar labor unions

• Social liberals as defined by the Nolan Chart

• DEI grifters

• Welfare recipients

• Egalitarians

• Modern managerialists

• Genuinely generous do gooders

• Hypocritical virtue signallers

• Environmentalists

• Anti imperialists

• Fans of world government

• Fans of democracy

• Fans of an unleashed Deep State

• Defenders of Free Speech

This is a contradictory coalition! And the contradictions run deeper than you probably expect.

For those who think liberal=commie, recall that Woodrow Wilson arrested communists in this country and sent U.S. troops into Russia to fight against the Communists. Lyndon Johnson got us deep in the Vietnam War, and it's possible that the U.S.S. Liberty incident that Joo haters love to cite might well have been an attempted false flag operation to start a war with Egypt -- which was leaning Commie at the time.

I remember a time when progressive Leftists read John Stuart Mill's On Liberty religiously, and the ACLU defended the rights of Nazis and Klansmen to hold public rallies.

I remember a time when liberals were proudly open-minded and enjoyed debate. Back in college I spent many a pleasant hour debating all sorts of issues at a weekly salon hosted by a liberal college professor. (He taught Soviet History, by the way. While he was very liberal, he was not a communist.)

As for Managerialism, I recall liberal academics passing around the joke about administratium. Come to think of it, there are complaints about bureaucracy in Fyodor Gladkov's Socialist Realist class, Cement, which was Joseph Stalin's favorite novel.

While liberals of yore were egalitarians, most had some grounding in reality. I frequently got hammered in debates because my libertarian positions required higher expectations on the part of the lower classes. The progressives of four decades ago had some of the elitism of the original progressives.

Once upon a time I got in an ugly fight with a liberal psych major over the issue of inborn personality. Her position was that all personality was due to environment, and cited a study by a pair of married psychologists who brought up their son with girlie toys and expectations in order to prove that gender roles were an artifact of society. (Implications: grooming works!) The only personality feature which could not be molded was IQ. Yesteryear's liberal mainstream psychology was today's unthinkable Alt Right ideology!

Yesteryear's Left vs. Today's Dissident Right, the Surprising Overlaps

Go back a half century. Who was complaining about the intelligence agencies run amok? That would be the Flower Children and their Silent Generation gurus. See Celine's Laws and note how relevant they are today.

Who was writing about the opportunities and dangers of Imprinting? That would be LSD gurus Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson.

Who was complaining about imperialism and defending the rights of self-governance of third world countries? That would be the hippie Left.

Who was complaining loudest about toxins in our environment? Who were the first anti vaxxers?

Who believed in enforcing picket lines? Way back when I was in high school, my 60s liberal U.S. history teacher taught that Evil Big Corporations imported workers from ever more alien societies in order to get cheap labor that wouldn't unionize. Cesar Chavez campaigned against illegal immigration, realizing the illegal immigrants made great strike breakers.

Remember the World Trade Organization protests? They were associated with the Left.

Or how about the more recent Occupy Wall St. protests? There are plenty of Dissident Right writers who agree about the bailouts, rent-seeking, and excessive power concentration in today's Wall St. firms.

I read many Dissident Right writers who have or want to get out of the cities and have children on independent farms, closer to nature. Well guess who chased small farmers off the land? That would be Richard Nixon and his agriculture secretary Earl Butz, who redirected our farm programs to support industrial agriculture in order to hide inflation.

How about big corporations Cancelling the uppity? This tradition goes back to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, when it was labor activists who were being Cancelled.

How about the lawfare waged against Trump and the J6 protesters? Civil and uncivil libertarians have been complaining weaponizable law about for decades.

Given how those naturally in the Populist Quadrant had little in the way of an organization other than the John Birch Society, most natural Populists got pulled into the gravity wells of more active political movements, be it factions of the Left or the libertarian black hole.

Now that the Democratic Party has gone anti-Populist, it's time for a bit of deprogramming.

Talking Points for 2024

OK, so we only have a couple months before Election Day. Worse yet, early voting starts...early. This is not enough time to produce deep converts. What we need to do is identify liberals and liberal-leaners (and libertarians) who hold (or held!) some of the Populist/Dissident Right positions but who have been guilt tripped into being assimilated into the Woke Borg.

That is, we need to give:

• Bernietopians permission to have safe, bum free streets, in return for their high tax welfare state.

• Labor union activists and members permission to support the measures that would raise their wages.

• Soccer moms permission to drive a car that holds the entire family, safety seats and all.

• Concerned moms alternatives to the transexual agenda.

• Communitarians permission to preserve their personal Lake Woebegons.

• Ecotopians permission to preserve nature and enjoy it.

Trump makes this hard, with his belligerent tough guy style. It is up to us to portray the benevolent side of the Trump agenda and expose the bloodthirsty, poverty inducing, tyrannical elements of Team D's agenda.

Immigration and Tariffs

The Trump agenda has very liberal friendly implications at home!

• Trump will enforce the National Picket Line.

• Trump will raise the market minimum wage.

• The Biden-Harris administration has imported millions of strikebreakers.

• If you import people faster than you build new housing, you get more homeless.

• The Democrats are trying to lower U.S. wages down to Third World levels.

• The Democrats are trying to extend the U.S. welfare system to the entire planet. Deficits are exploding!

Or if you have time to go long form: Bernietopia and open borders do not mix! Low tax countries can dump their welfare caseload on Bernietopia. Even Bernie himself admitted this back in the day.

And then there is the environmental pitch:

Ecotopia and open borders do not mix. Ecotopians who limit their fertility get replaced by those who don't care about the environment.

Regarding trade:

• High labor taxes and low tariffs = Subsidized Outsourcing.

• Low tariffs allow giant multinational corporations to dodge the corporate income tax.

• Outsourcing to China is outsourcing our pollution.

• Outsourcing to China allows companies to dodge U.S. environmental regulations.

• China: industry powered by coal. Dirty coal.

OK, most of the above is a bit self interested. (Yes, it is possible for taxpayers to vote for an expensive welfare state out of rational self-interest. A properly implemented welfare state in a high trust society means lower crime and no excuse for beggars. This is the Bernietopian Dream. The parallel Populist dream would be a society where the market minimum wage would allow a 70 IQ man to support a family without resorting to welfare.)

How do we counter the sad stories about refugees? What of those poor people trying to escape poverty and high crime?

• The most humane place to fight a drug war is at the border.

• Either legalize it or stop it at the border.

• Fighting the Drug War in U.S. cities kills Black children.

• Letting drugs cross the borders subsidizes Latin American drug gangs.

• Fighting a war on cocaine in the jungles of South America kills South Americans.

Remember when Kamala Harris was the Border Czar? She never visited our border. Instead, she went to Central America in order "deal with the underlying problems." This was Imperialism, pure and simple. Kamala Harris and her puppet masters are Imperialists.

Open borders make other country's problems our problems. The logical response is foreign intervention, aka Imperialism.

• Imperialism kills.

• Imperialism is the opposite of democracy.

• World government would be the ultimate empire.

• Love bombs hurt more than mean tweets.

• Trump was the Peace President.

Hammer this point: the Democrats have become the party of war and empire. Bring those hippie peaceniks on board. (And yes, hippie peaceniks can switch from Progressive Democrat to Republican when peace is the issue. They turned out in large quantities for Ron Paul back in the day.)

We are the Anti Imperialists. (not the Nationalists! Adolf Hitler seized the nationalist brand generations ago and he's not giving it back. Never ever ever ever ever call yourself or Trump a Nationalist!)

As for those who think it is all so noble to sprinkle foreign aid around the world, point out that all our foreign aid is paid for with borrowed money. Deficit spending is a subsidy for the Already Rich.

Now here is where things get interesting. We have multi trillion dollar deficits, yet real interest rates are not all that high. How is that even possible? Answer: The United States, like ancient Rome, is collecting tribute from the world.

Look at our perpetual trade deficits. We import megatons of manufactured products in return for...numbers.

Oh yes, we also export arms...and troops. Our economy resembles that of late Republican Rome. We receive cheap labor from around the world while our own working class becomes ever more dependent on government handouts. Instead of Bread and Circuses, we have hard drugs and hardcore porn.

The narrative practically writes itself. Better yet, the narrative has already been written...by hard Leftists. Replace MAGA and America First with Mind Our Own Business and the Trump agenda becomes yesteryear's lefty college professor agenda.

Exact. Same. Policies.

Winning the Green Front

The Democrats may be the party of deficits, division, and World War, but at least they are going to save the planet from runaway global warming -- or so they claim. Meanwhile, Trump is all in for fossil fuels.

Spinning this is a challenge. But it's not impossible. Just how Green is the Green New Deal anyway? And how Green is the Democrat agenda overall? Answer: not very!

• Crime causes sprawl.

• A high crime neighborhood is not bike friendly.

• A big SUV is like a tank.

• Sidewalks covered with bums and poo are not pedestrian friendly.

• When bums occupy the public spaces, people demand bigger yards.

• There's no point in living in a city if looters get to destroy the shops.

• Raising beef on pastures sequesters carbon.

And I repeat: You cannot have Ecotopia and open borders at the same time.

As for whether global warming is real, don't question The Science, point out The Science. Use credible sources. For example, according to NASA the sea level is rising 3.4 millimeters per year. At this rate, the oceans will rise a foot in 87 years. And notice the chart on the NASA page: the rise looks rather linear.

We have some time.

Or here's a fun fact: The radiative forcing function from increasing CO₂ is logarithmic. In other words, to first order, if atmospheric carbon dioxide increases exponentially, the radiative forcing function goes up linearly. Now look at the Wikipedia page on the Greenhouse Effect. Temperature increases at the fourth root of the forcing function.

We have more time than advertised.

You do not need to resort to science denial or conspiracy theories. The Journal of Climate article I cited above was written by a University of California at Berkeley professor.

The Science is not a conspiracy. The panic might be. But even there, the explanation is simpler: journalism is a go to major for those who cannot handle math.

So, don't attack The Science, attack the stupid solutions.

• Premature panic is ridiculously expensive.

• Premature panic increases poverty.

• Poor countries need cheap petroleum (or a reasonable substitute)

• Expensive solutions are pointless, because poor countries cannot adopt them.

• Premature panic is bad for the planet.

You can go to town elaborating on the last point:

• Covering wilderness and farmland with low efficiency solar cells destroys habitat.

• It is better to burn petroleum than to burn rainforests for biofuels.

• Giant windmills are an eyesore and kill birds.

• Ocean based windmills kill whales.

• Copper mining is dirty business.

Why deploy bad technology when better technology is in the pipeline? Batteries are getting better, and you do not need electric vehicle mandates to provide a market. Good batteries are just plain useful.

At some point, higher efficiency solar panels will be available. The trick is to bond multiple layers which absorb different wavelengths. When multi layer solar panels become affordable, they will be advertised on right wing talk radio, along with the emergency food ration survival kits.

We now have high temperature (as in liquid nitrogen) superconductors. Odds are decent that we will have working fusion reactors before global warming becomes a true crisis.

Finally: Premature panic detracts from more pressing concerns such as lost habitat and environmental toxins.

Now go forth and convince some peaceniks, eco hippies, and cafetopians to vote Republican this year. It's good for the planet.