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Memo To Donald Trump

facebook.com (donald trump)

Commentary:  

MEMO
TO: Donald Trump
FROM: Richard Kadzis

Donald, you have a month to convince undecided voters that you're a viable alternative to Hillary Clinton for President.

The media scoffed at your candidacy when you entered the race for the Republican nomination. They mocked you as each primary election and caucus came and went.

Hardly anyone took you seriously.

Then, you swept through a field of 12 GOP contenders, knocking them off one by one with a masterful outpouring of unpaid, mainly news media coverage. Not a dime spent on paid advertising, because of your blunt outspokenness.

You skillfully exposed the irrelevance of today's Republican Party to mainstream America.

You tapped the frustration and pent up anger of an electorate numbed by 8 years of gridlock on Capitol Hill.

You accentuated the feeling of disenfranchisement over Obama's adversarial relationship with Congress.

Watching thousands of our jobs going offshore, you've struck a chord with working people and how trade deals like NAFTA have hurt more them helped our economy.

The resulting growth of lower-paying jobs replacing those better jobs we exported, this is another Obama outcome that resonates with your potential voters. It began with Bill Clinton’s support of NAFTA during his presidency.

Many of us found your lack of political correctness to be refreshing. We embraced your acerbic wit, hoping that we finally have a leader who will tell it like it is vs. the double-talking herd of career politicians in Washington who are clearly more committed to their own reelection over the needs of their constituents.

Your refusal to accept PAC money - facilitated by your personal wealth - was also a big plus, because, like you, many of us are fed up with the dominance of special interests, both during and after elections. 

Your poll numbers rose thanks to Hillary Clinton's deception over the misuse of her personal email server as Secretary of State.

The race got closer, in part, because people are realizing a lot about Clinton's record, too, questionable things like:

- The email issue emerged after the killing of an American diplomat in the Benghazi terror attack, for which she faced close scrutiny over how the Embassy remained under-protected following pleas for added security there.

- Recently, she fell ill but did not come clean with the American public, trying instead to gloss over what some independent doctors described as a potentially life threatening condition. You wondered about her stamina.

- Unlike Hillary, you haven't felt the need to exploit your public office to make millions in personal wealth with the very people she pretends to criticize today: deep pocketed Wall Street investors and bankers.

- And because you have no political track record per se, you were not in a position to put the squeeze on major global players for large donations to a spouse's private, supposedly non-profit, foundation, as she did.

Other women pose liabilities to you and to her.

You've been married three times, but then there’s Hillary's acceptance of her serial cheating husband's apparent sex addiction. 

But your attacks on women of notoriety, whether network news anchors or global beauty queens, could well mark the reason you might not win November's general election. This could surpass your low standing among Hispanics.

With the Miss Universe controversy, your dead heat with Clinton has tipped in her favor. It might be a good idea to swear off the beauty pageant business.

While you have taken outspoken stands to the edge of disaster before now and made them work for you, you've reach a tipping point in the 2016 campaign.

It's crunch time.

First and foremost, double check your ground game at the local level. A grass-roots organization is vital. Are you ready to get out the vote on election day?

Next, you should seriously consider taking nothing but the high road in the month remaining before the final votes are cast. Do an about-face.

If it’s not too late in the game, be more executive and less visceral.

Change the spin.

Focus on policy, yes, policy. But peg it directly to key voting blocks.

Base it on your business acumen. But keep it simple. 

- In the first TV debate, the question of Social Security never came up. Start to hammer on how you support a solution to the long-term funding of social security, and reassure older voters by making it a priority.

- Promote an equal pay doctrine and target professional women with a long-term plan and structure to make more employers buy into the principle of equal pay for equal work.

- Talk to young voters and propose ways to reduce student loan debt, or at least to restructure it to make it more manageable.

- Make a play for Libertarian Gary Johnson’s 10 percent of the vote which otherwise would go for Clinton with Johnson’s recent ‘Aleppo Moment’ in mind.

There are other issues to seize upon, to start talking about more tangibly.

Make it a conversation, not a monologue. Base it on bold vision. Propose new ideas. It could turn heads.

Engage more with voters, especially on social media. You need a better Facebook campaign presence.

Get back to controlling the message the way you did during the primaries, and be sure to carry the key message into your paid media.

After all, who can forget what Lee Atwater did for Vice President George Bush when the footage aired of Governor Mike Dukakis wearing an infantry helmet riding on top of a tank?

The image proved toxic for Dukakis, who looked like a wimp in that iconic political TV ad from the 1988 presidential race.

Hint, Donald: Strong enough to lead? You're striking another chord. Seize the message!

Richard Kadzis, a former New England correspondent for NPR’s All Things Considered, has reported on numerous presidential candidates including Ronald Reagan, Mike Dukakis, Jimmy Carter, Jerry Brown and Eugene McCarthy.