Running Against the Devil by Rick Wilson

Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump – and Democrats from Themselves
by Rick Wilson
Crown Forum, 2020

Republican strategist Rick Wilson will no longer use his expertise to elect Republicans, “That party is gone.” Election strategy received some attention in his 2018 best seller Everything Trump Touches Dies, but it is the center of its sequel, Running Against The Devil. Here he treats Democrats like a client because they “are terrible at the work of electoral politics and they need to hear this.” Enamored of his own insight he writes:

I’m going to tell the truth about how Democrats’ feel-good intentions end up as political branding disasters. My job is to show you the real rules of the 2020 election game, and to explain how Democrats’ policies are frequently box-office poison in red and purple states.

That is, overcome with concern and clarity (“Donald Trump is a bigger threat to America and its future than a Democratic President”), Wilson is willing to help his lessers get elected to save the country (“I have a low tolerance for stupidity, and by God, I will overcome your stubborn resistance to the truth”). A little ridiculous? Sure. Formulaic? Definitely. Vain? It’s becoming a brand. But it all sounds a lot less stupid when he writes something that should be hyperbole, but isn’t: “Pick one: our messy flawed, wonderfully sloppy democratic republic stumbling toward the shining city on the hill, or a kingdom of cruelty and utter corruption led by a family of authoritarian kleptocrats in thrall to foreign powers.”

The most succinct description of Wilsons’ message is that the entire point of the Democratic Party in 2020 is to defeat Donald Trump. Unfortunately, it isn’t until page 77 we are actually told, “Your mission is tough but simple. Defeat Donald Trump.” This highlights an issue carried over from Everything Trump Touches Dies. Namely, both books are about 300 pages, neither of them need to be, and their structures are choppy and unbalanced. Those first 75 pages of Running Against The Devil are billed as “Part 1: The Case Against Trump, or Four More Year in Hell,” but are really just Wilson’s opportunity to provide an updated and condensed version of the previous book. This is, of course, extremely entertaining, but also superfluous. And one gets the sense his best lines were used up in the first round. On corruption in the administration: “I, for one, would be shocked to find gambling going on here in Casablanca.” Clever; or, “Trumpism corrupts, and absolute Trumpism corrupts absolutely.” Allusions to Lord Acton are appreciated, but “everything Trump touches dies” is better. Additionally, Wilson does have some annoying habits of style. For example, there are a lot of sarcastic comments followed by “oh, wait,” and then a reality check.

Parts four and five are on “How to Lose” and “How to Win,” and the reasons for both are about the same. Basically, don’t run too far to the left, stay aggressive, make the election a referendum on Trump, don’t get too wonkish, and remember you win through the Electoral College, not the popular vote. It is at this point the reader starts to wish the first 75 pages had been edited down (as beautifully vindictive as they are) and substance added here. For example, Wilson writes:

Trump’s campaign team desperately, passionately wants 2020 to be about socialism, abortion, gun control left-wing anti-Semitism, gender pronouns, the news media, and identity politics. It’s their safe space, and Democrats who get lured into playing the Social Justice Olympics of Political Correctness are going to lose forty-plus states.

Maybe, but no one Democratic candidate has all of these problems, and whoever the nominee is, Trump’s campaign will slander them with this anyway. So it isn’t, on the basis of superficially intuitive asseverations and a few polls, obvious that, say, Bernie Sanders is a worse candidate than Joe Biden. Moreover, Wilson has one paragraph on the insufficiency of the Democratic base to carry the election, just over a page on debate strategy, a little over two pages on the culture war (which is almost entirely about abortion), and in a more interesting chapter on the Electoral College, he gives a “very brief tour” of the fifteen most important states over a mere six pages.

Rick Wilson is a strategist and ad-maker who fancies himself negotiating political swamps with a knife in his teeth. This is his specialty (if you don’t believe it, just ask him). But Running Against The Devil subverts expectations Wilson himself sets up and often offers advice any amateur could extend. That being said, while sharing many of its vices, this book also shares the virtues of Everything Trump Touches Dies: Wilson can still throw you into stitches while making incisive and experienced observations, plus he is right on the main points.

—David Murphy holds a Masters of Finance from the University of Minnesota.