Inside the mission to blow up the 2020 Democratic field
The effort to dig up dirt on Donald Trump’s potential opponent is well underway.
By CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO 07/23/2018 05:02 AM EDT
Opposition research books are already being assembled. Political detectives are scouring archives, public records, real-time video and decades of old footage.
America Rising PAC, which at the time of its founding five years ago focused exclusively on researching, tracking and deploying rapid-response against Hillary Clinton, is well into a beneath-the-radar effort to define — and ultimately derail — the Democrats preparing to take on President Donald Trump in 2020.
The oppo-research carpet-bombing has commenced against Sens. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, among others: America Rising was responsible for spotting and blasting out a video of Warren telling an audience she wants to “cut open” the bodies of Republicans to see if they have hearts, generating a spate of 2017 stories.
With a potentially colossal field of Democratic presidential contenders and no one close to being a front-runner, the mission figures to be an expensive endeavor. So donors across the country are quietly getting the hard sell as the group moves toward its goal of raising $8 million for the 2020 cycle — roughly three times as much as it took in during the successful three-year quest to help defeat Clinton.
“They are sitting back and building up their ammunition stockpile,” said Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist not involved in the effort, adding that Rising has proven to be among the best at “exploiting a candidate’s weaknesses.”
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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/23/2020-democrats-opposition-research-republicans-735563
= new reply since forum marked as read
And Trump/GOP will *viciously* attack any opponent. It's not as though he's squeaky clean, of course. And he's given us so much ammo since 2016, our "problem" will be figuring out exactly WHAT exactly to use against him in 2020.
As for me, I will support any candidate who hasn't done everything Trump has or will do by the time 2020 rolls around. Should be pretty easy to find a suitable candidate IMHO. Hell, you could run a Pet Rock against Donald Trump and the Pet Rock gets my vote.
