Trump will brand the Democrats

Trump has a strategy. Get people to dislike the Democrat even more than voters dislike him.  

"Crooked Hillary"

Insult them. Brand them.

Trump's strategy fits the current media environment. Humiliate opponents by branding and bullying them. It sends a message that the opponent can be pushed around, and is therefore unfit to be Commander in Chief. A candidate who can't defend him or her self from a bully cannot defend America.

It worked in 2016 and can work again. In 2016 Trump did not win big. Hillary Clinton lost big.  He branded her "crooked" and it stuck, at least with enough people to win 300-plus electoral votes.

He is very good at this. He brands with an insult. The media picks it up. It frames discussion of that person. Just how true is the insult??  It is a tar pit, and the more a person struggles the worse it gets because the subject is the insult. Low Energy Jeb, Little Marco, 1% Lindsay Graham, Lyin' Ted, Crazy Ben Carson. 

We saw him name a candidate "Pocahontas." We know who he means, which is my point.

Preview of future insults:

Define Biden as a gaffe machine

Joe Biden:  "Crazy Gaffe Joe."  Trump needs to switch the story about Joe Biden from his extraordinary depth of experience as a Senator and Vice President into a story of his supposed gaffes over a long career.  He can make Biden's son's death a negative for Biden with the implication that Joe Biden is still disabled by grief, he has been through so much.  It turns "experience" into "damage."  Biden detractors on the left will finish the job: he is a centrist.

Elizabeth Warren: "Pocahontas." Trump defines her as a fraud. She uses identity politics to enrich herself! It is outrageous that a politician would enrich herself at public expense, Trump can charge.. Accuse her of what he himself is accused of. This has already worked for him. She is damaged. 

Bernie Sanders: "Socialist Extremist. He will confiscate your money and bankrupt America! He is too crazy left to be a Democrat, much less a president. Your taxes will go up to be given to lazy illegals. Will it work to say Sanders is too extreme?  Ask president George McGovern. Sanders will spend the campaign defending that he won't actually confiscate the wealth of the middle class.

Beto O'Rourke: "Skateboard Beto." Trump will turn O'Rourke's youth and energy against him, highlighting is presumed lack of experience, by trivializing it and him. While Trump was a supposed captain of industry, Beto was a loser congressman from a backwater border town, who lost to Ted Cruz. Lightweight Beto.

Kamala Harris: "California Dreamer." Trump knows he won't win California, so he will demonize it. Tofu. Extreme Climate rules. Yoga classes. It will be a culture war against the easiest to caricature elements of California, and he will position it against heartland states. He will talk about "midwest values" rather than "California values."  It will be Asians and Mexicans against good old regular Americans. He wins the upper midwest with this.

Kirsten Gillibrand: "Feminist backstabber Kirsten." He will turn Gillibrand into a feminist devil, someone who knifed Al Franken at the first glimmer and then turned on Bill Clinton and said he should have been impeached. Trump will start defending Franken as railroaded by Gillibrand in a rush to judgement, and make the campaign all about women out for revenge. Gillibrand is already struggling to defend her tweet saying "The future is female, intersectional, powered by our belief in one another. And we are just getting started." Trump will say he wants everyone to share in the American dream. He becomes the "includer;" she the divider. It may already be too late for her.

Jeff Merkley: "Nice Jeff. Oh so nice Jeff." Trump will turn Merkley's earnest, soft spoken manner into a deep negative with the implication that nice means weak. Merkley will either break his brand by fighting back, or look meek. Lose-lose.

Click: Atlantic

Michael Bloomberg: "Soda Pop Mike."  Trump has already secured the gun rights people, but Bloomberg's attacks on soda pop will define Bloomberg as an out of control tyrant, who uses his wealth to bully people. Trump will position himself as the defender of regular people versus Bloomberg who is out to get people sen for their harmless little vices, e.g. drinking sugared drinks. Bloomberg, the puritan tyrant. First guns. Then soda. Then who knows what? Be afraid.

Tom Steyer: "Mr. Hedge Fund." Tom Steyer went to Phillips Exeter, Yale, Stanford Business School, then Wall Street where he made a fortune, and now he gives it away and tries to convince people to be generous and climate friendly and impeach Trump. However admirable many readers will find that biography, it is the least populist biography possible, and it is too late to fix it. (Teddy Roosevelt did ranch work in South Dakota, then led a calvary charge in the Spanish American War. He fixed it)  Trump will make Steyer's Wall Street wealth a big negative. Mister out of touch.

And so on.

Trump understands that the branding that will stick are the ones that have an element of truth in them. Gillibrand did tell Franken to resign. Tom Steyer is Wall Street rich. Bernie Sanders is a Socialist. Beto O'Rourke was videotaped on a skateboard.  

What can these people do? Is there a defense? Yes, a partial one. Recognize how one can be caricatured to ones disadvantage and then very publicly do things which demonstrate the charge is actually a positive.

For example, Tom Steyer: "Damned right, Trump, I made a bundle on Wall Street. You lost a bundle and screwed over your investors,  and I made my bundle by cleaning up the mess that people like you made."