Donald Trump’s rally strategy is a disaster

Donald Trump, fresh off seeing his Republican Party and his endorsed candidates lose all the competitive elections last night, is holding a large scale rally tonight so he can play to his base. He still doesn’t get it.

If Trump understood anything about how politics works, he’d know that a rally is for arming your base with the kind of messaging that they can use to go win you additional supporters outside your base. Trump still thinks rallies are for stroking his own ego – then he wonders why he keeps losing.

No one ever seems to want to talk about this, but Donald Trump has always been an extremely ineffective campaigner. It’s one of his biggest weaknesses. He has no idea how to reach anyone beyond his core base, which is always a recipe for disaster. He lost in 2016 by three million votes (and got lucky). He lost in 2020 by seven million votes. When he goes out and campaigns for candidates in competitive races, they usually end up losing. Trump’s approach just doesn’t work, and never has.

Trump’s large scale ego-driven rallies simply do not work. It’s the same losers showing up every time, thinking that the rally is just a show they’re supposed to watch, and failing to go out and expand Trump’s too-small base in any way. You’re infinitely better off drawing in a hundred people and convincing them to roll up their sleeves and go get you some more votes, than you are if you set up your rallies as passive entertainment and draw a thousand people who just go home afterwards. And Trump will never, ever get this.