Welcome To Big Boy Politics

Early on in his campaign, Donald Trump refused to allow his campaign staff to do opposition research on him. Most political professionals will tell you that this is a necessary step in the evolution of professional politics. The reason it is so important, as Mr. Trump is now learning, is that you can root out possible attacks and neutralize them before they become a major issue and derail a campaign prior to an election. Politics can be a dirty high stakes game and political professionals will do what they have to, within the bounds of the law, to get their candidates elected. When you are running against a candidate with so many “built-in” flaws like Donald Trump, sometimes it is best to just get out of the way and let things take their course.

When you are twenty-five days away from an election and you find yourself sinking in the polls, constantly defending yourself from self inflicted wounds, attacking everyone and touting conspiracy theories, it is time to realize that you are woefully out of your league. Donald Trump came into Presidential politics with somewhat of a simplistic view of the process. He had very little organization, little to no ground game, and thought he could coast to a victory based on his own self-importance and the view of himself as a popular benevolent leader. This view is just naive for anyone, much less someone as “intelligent” as Donald Trump. Good opposition research could have prevented many of the problems he has faced recently but once again, ego and self-aggrandizement got in the way.

The main question voters need to ask themselves at this point is, if someone is so inept at running a Presidential campaign, how competent will they be as a chief executive. Welcome, Donald, to the world of big boy politics.