By Ward Clark
In the great classic martial advisory “The Art of War,” Sun Tzu wrote:
Thus the expert in battle moves the enemy, and is not moved by him.
In a Fox News op-ed piece on Saturday, columnist David Marcus notes how the Trump campaign is doing just this, taking the fight to blue cities in blue states and forcing the Biden campaign to react to him, rather than the other way around.
Former President Donald Trump is set to speak in North Philadelphia on Saturday, the next stop in what has been an unconventional but highly effective strategy of his 2024 presidential campaign.
It all started, as so many things in life do, with a trip to a bodega in New York City, and now it is a staple of the former president’s third run at the White House.
Back in April, at the beginning of a criminal trial that would limit his campaigning for weeks, Donald Trump showed up after court at a small locally owned store in Harlem for an impromptu and mostly organic little rally.
Within minutes, social media blew up with images of a diverse crowd chanting Trump’s name, with a kind of celebrity appeal we have not seen from a politician since at least Barack Obama.
Next, Trump took his show to the Wildwood boardwalks of deep blue New Jersey, then to a rally in the Bronx, next to an event in a black church in Detroit, and on Saturday Trump will deliver remarks in North Philadelphia.
That’s how it’s done, and if the Trump campaign keeps this up, they will have the Biden people on their back feet throughout the campaign and should do well in November. In any conflict, some of the same rules apply as do in warfare:
- Make your opponent react to you, not vice versa; don’t put yourself in a position where your opponent can dictate the terms of the engagement.
- Always leave your opponent a way to disengage. Don’t drive them to desperation.
- Know your opponent. Know his strengths as well as his weaknesses. Know his vulnerable points.
- Strike where your opponent is weakest. Focus your efforts on that point.
- Never make any statement or present any appearance that could be construed as weakness. Appear strong, even where you are not.
- And, finally: Be gracious in victory. I know, the Biden administration and its minions have not done this, but there is an opportunity for Trump to be the better man.
Here’s the thing: This isn’t something Joe Biden can do in reverse. The man himself has approval ratings that are down there with polecats and social diseases; he and members of his administration have been openly contemptuous of red-state folks and generally anyone to the political right of Vyacheslav Molotov.
Trump won Philly and Pennsylvania in 2020, too. There is still much to be done to protect the vote.
Time for them to be told the truth that the Democrats held them as Slaves and the GOP Freed them the Late Robert Byrd was in the KKK
Democrats are watching all their plantation folks jump the fences and scurry off. They are losing support from some of their most important mainstays. In the blue cities, the key to this is something the left was counting on to swing elections their way: a flood of illegal immigrants being mailed ballots. The flood of illegal immigrants have rubbed inner city folks the wrong way, massively. At the same time as many are seeing their benefits taken out of their hands and handed off to illegal immigrants they see the purchasing power of what money they have left shrink, thanks to Bidenflation. In other words, these are all totally self-inflicted wounds and when you are watching the opposition circle the drain, it is the self-inflicted damage that is the sweetest.
But make no mistake; they already ARE desperate.
Who else remembers that debate in 2015 when Ben Carson missed his cue to come to the podium?
Donald Trump waited past his own introduction to walk out with Ben instead of acting like Ben’s problem was just Ben’s problem.
Ben Carson has been one of the most loyal Trump supporters ever since the day he dropped his own run for president.
Who knows?
He might be Trump’s VP choice.