Basically, you are running for office, and have this problem (weakness) in the general public. So you go to your news media friends, and issue an appeal. You ask them, in kind words, to elevate the weakest of the weak from the opposition party, and ensure that weaker candidate rises from the dozen-odd possibilities, and you are guaranteed to win.
Well....that was the intention.
One of the odd Wiki-Leaks emails from Hillary Clinton (dated 7 Apr 2015) was a two-page document which listed the priority of news media 'services'.
The three that Hillary hinted upon? Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Donald Trump.
Based on some type of review (you have to wonder who told Hillary this was brilliant, and I doubt it was Bill).....these three were guaranteed to make the GOP unhappy, and ensure she won.
You can go back to the week prior to the 2016 election, and find various Hillary strategists who were practically begging for Donald Trump to be the convention winner, and be staged to gracefully (or doomed) to lose to Hillary Clinton.
So the question ought to be on your mind.....did the people who envisioned this strategy really know the general public in 2016?
For the past week, I've been on this topic and pondering it.
I've come to the conclusion that this strategy might have worked well in 2008, and might even suspect that in 2007....as things were drifting around for the primary season approaching....that Hillary's team were already at work, hyping up the Pied-Piper approach for 2008's election. Yes, convincing folks that John McCain was the perfect marginal candidate for the Republican Party, and the best loser possible.
I don't think McCain realized it, or cared (even if you had laid out the trap).
Then you come to this reality on the evening of 8 November 2016. Everything was set. The polls had faked everyone out, even the journalists, and the Hillary team itself. The journalists were prepared for this massive 'win-evening', and by 9 PM eastern time.....the party was dissolving. By 10 PM, folks were doing double-shots, weeping away, and in a state of 'Pied-Piper' shock. Every trap had been set, and yet failed.
But now we come to the 2019 situation....all of these new Pied-Piper strategies. The Mueller Report was supposed to eradicate Trump.....the media was all peppy for almost twelve months....with that Pied-Piper trap failing. The whole Russian-in-your-election fiasco? That Pied-Piper trap failed. This Ukrainian business enveloping into an impeachment, with the news media again all hyped up? You'd need a well weakened Republican senate to make that happen, and losers in the House who just let the impeachment hearings clear a path.
The problem with Pied-Piper thinking? It's basically a decade too late.
It's the kind of thing that worked before social media came along, or people noticing 'fake news', or hostility brewing within the working class. It was perfectly designed for 2000 to 2010. In 2016 and present? It won't work.
Before closing, what if some crazy guy picked up the Pied-Piper strategy, skipped the Republican National Committee, and the news media, and just went full-throttle with Twitter and public speeches? What if that guy intentionally rigged up the 2020 primary period for the most marginal candidate to face him...skipping virtually every single political 'gear-box'?
Just something to think about.