Here is Trump's campaign strategy Democrats are eager to engage in

President Donald Trump has left many people in Washington scratching his head when he entrusted his 2016 digital campaign manager with responsibility for all his re-election efforts.

But now the Democrats are also adopting this strategy.

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Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Beto O. Rourke are among White House hopefuls who replicate Trump's approach by entrusting leadership roles in the campaign to mavens of data and social media. It's an acknowledgment of the centrality of the online space – whether it's collecting amazing amounts of money via e-mail or winning social networking wars on a minute-by-minute basis – for any candidate to the White House.

Many Democrats also reluctantly admit that Trump, who ran a chaotic presidential race in 2016, sets the tone for how to integrate the Internet strategy into a campaign promoting Brad Parscale.

"Brad is a man who was a digital marketing professional who, let's be honest, ran a very effective digital program," said Evan Sutton, a veteran of the progressive digital training group New Organizing Institute. "They just overwhelmed us: they spent a lot of money and spent it effectively, and Trump rightly recognized it and raised it."

Trump picked Parscale, a San Antonio web designer who created the Trump Winery websites and other projects from the Trump family, to run his 2016 digital store. Mocked during the campaign to oversee a streamlined operation – and for many observers, ad hoc – which seemed to be the opposite of President Barack Obama's data incubator, Parscale has since gained respect from his field for his extensive use of online advertising and social networks. media, which helped propel his long-time candidate to the White House. Trump named Parscale its 2020 campaign manager last year.

Nowadays, parscalisation is played out in the vast and growing democratic domain.

In February, Sanders appointed Faiz Shakir, former director of New Media Nancy Pelosi, to lead his campaign. Booker hired Jenna Lowenstein, Digital Director of Hillary Clinton's White House in 2016, as Assistant Campaign Manager. And O'Rourke chose Jen O'Malley Dillon, political data expert, as campaign manager and relies on Becky Bond, a long-time digital organizer, for his strategy advice.

At the same time, Warren appealed to Joe Rospars, chief strategist for the Obama presidential election in 2008, to become chief strategist. Other digital veterinarians are scattered among the highest ranks of the Democratic presidential campaigns.

It's a change, say the professionals of the Democratic campaign.

"One of the underlying frustrations was for a long time in the sense that digital was not allowed to sit at the table of adults," said Catherine Algeri, former Digital Director of the Committee. Campaign for Senators Democrats and Senate. Algeri said for many years, "You sit there and collect money."

Today, the stakes are even greater. Early online successes can fully frame a candidacy, and misfires can condemn an ​​incipient candidate.

"Now it's so obvious that if you do not have a management team that really understands how to dominate social media and how news travels on the Web, you're simply at a disadvantage," said Laura Olin. , a Democratic Digital Strategist who led the social media strategy for Obama's reelection in 2012.

Digital experts point to O'Rourke, who almost instantly grabbed the site's attention – and his e-mail list – when he was defeated in the Senate in 2018 against Ted Cruz in a credible bid for the presidency. Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, with 102,000 residents, is another candidate who is taking advantage of the enthusiasm for his online application.

"In particular, given the DNC's fundraising requirements to participate in the debate, it is a serious mistake not to put digital at the forefront," said Sutton. He was referring to a new Democratic Party policy allowing candidates to participate in its first presidential debate in June when they received donations from 65,000 people in at least 20 states.

"Andrew F — ing Yang will probably be on the scene because he's focused on this measurement," he added, pointing to the dark man's "dark side." New York City business that has sparked online interest on Reddit and elsewhere.

The importance of digital awareness and enthusiasm is becoming increasingly important as Democrats announce their first fundraisers.

Sanders said he has received $ 18 million from nearly 900,000 donors since the announcement of his latest candidacy for the White House. California Senator Kamala Harris, who works closely with digital strategy firm Authentic Camps, raised $ 12 million in the first quarter of 2019. Buttigieg reported $ 7 million to 158,550 donors. O 'Rourke announced on Wednesday that he had collected $ 9.4 million during the first 18 days of his campaign.

Campaign veterans say that the new phenomenon of digital campaigns of experts is, to some extent, a simple registration: with the Internet being applied for the first time to politics in the early 2000s, the people who worked in these campaigns reach for the first time the age of the campaign manager.

But there is much more than that. On the one hand, many American voters expect to be able to engage in online politics, often via their mobile phone, in the same way that they engage in almost every other facets of their lives.

This omnipresence is reflected in campaigns, where the Internet has altered just about all the tasks associated with being elected. This means that digital staff is working more and more with a range of campaign teams that previously existed as separate fiefdoms.

"Digital has an impact on many areas of the campaign, whether it's fundraising, the platform on which you move your media, targeting or organizing your volunteers," said Joe Trippi, campaign director for Howard Dean's candidacy for the White House in 2004, which stunned the audience. at the time, with his use of the Internet to raise funds and organize sympathizers. "Thus, people who really master it are better prepared to handle the jobs of campaign manager and deputy campaign manager.

The trend has been observed recently in negative voting races. For example, Hilary Nachem Loewenstein, a former EMILY Scanning Advisor for the list, served in 2018 as the leader of the campaign for the unsuccessful race in the US Senate of Democrat Jane Raybould. Nicole Aro, former Director of Digital Strategies at the AFL-CIO, served as Campaign Director at the attempt of actress and activist Cynthia Nixon to overthrow New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Democrats insist that this scheme is not a reaction to the promotion of Parscale and many say not to be inspired by the Trump 2020 operation. But they recognize that the attention given to digital is at least partly an answer to their struggles during the last presidential election to compete with Trump's dominance in online messaging wars, via social media and digital advertising.

"I think we realized in 2016 that we are at a disadvantage and that we are not doing as good a job as some Republicans, and that we need to clearly intensify it," Olin said.

Some veterans of the campaign predict that if the art of digital politics, once marginalized, becomes more and more centralized and professionalized, its practitioners will eventually be completely absorbed by campaigns.

"This may be the last cycle of our digital departments," said Zac Moffatt, digital director of Republican Mitt Romney's presidential candidacy in 2012 and CEO of strategy firm Targeted Victory. "At first, it was love at first sight. Now he becomes mainstream. I think we're probably only at a digital cycle that actually dissolves in the countryside. "

Many digital veterans who lead democratic campaigns know each other well, whether in previous campaigns or at rallies such as RootsCamp, a training event organized for the first time in 2006 by union organizers and others. to share best practices in digital policy.

The vast primary area of ​​the presidency, with more than a dozen declared candidates, will give these Democrats a chance to hone their digital skills against each other.

"It's great to see digital natives and digital experts among the highest ranking," said Robby Mook, campaign manager for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential race. "Digital Leaders in Roles management is now the new standard. "