In Running Against The Devil, Rick Wilson details how Democrats can (and must) win the presidency in November. Wilson created pit bull attack ads for Republican candidates for years, is a conservative, original Never Trumper, and author of best selling Everything Trump Touches Dies. The book is funny, profane, and filled with solid battle-won advice.

1) This is a must-win campaign for Democrats and the country. Republicans will pull every slimy trick imaginable. There is no bottom for Trump and he doesn’t know what ethics are. It’s going to be a gun fight in a biker bar. Don’t bring a knife or babble about how we have to go high when they go low. Start fighting now and don’t stop until we win.

2) Make the election entirely about Trump, his venality, incompetence, obvious mental incapacity, and corruption. Never stop attacking Trump and his cronies. Use Trump’s pathethic response to coronavirus to attack him mercilessly.

3) Third party candidates may well be sock puppets. Wilson says Republicans specialize in funding stoner idiots to run as Greens in areas where their candidate just needs a couple of percentage points to win. Democrats should return the favor and finance sock puppet Libertarian candidates.

4) The election will be won or lost in about ten swing states. California and New York are going to vote Democratic. Alabama and Mississippi will go Republican. Democrats must focus on the swing states. All of which are different. Most of them have Democratic or potentially Democratic voters who are not woke, and don’t want to be woke. They mostly DGAK about trans rights, however do want preexisting conditions covered by health insurance. Focus on what they want. What works in Berkeley doesn’t work in Ohio.

5) It’s all about the electoral college. Howling that the electoral college is obsolete or unfair is pointlessly stupid. It is the only way to win in 2020. Deal with it. Florida as always is key here. It’s a swing state. Votes are often close, and it has 29 crucial electoral votes. Whoever wins Florida probably wins the election.

So, pick up your tire iron and get in the fight.

Being religious won’t keep coronavirus away. Jesus has more important things to do than protect wilfully ignorant knuckleheads from themselves. Really, he does.

Also, being a wealthy liberal shopping at the Brentwood farmers market thinking only The Poors get coronavirus, and that your money somehow magically protects you is equally braindead.

Assume we are at war with coronavirus. Then assume that people who do stupid things in wartime have a much greater risk of getting killed or maimed.

A Pentecostal pastor refused to cancel a revival. Predictably, multiple people got deathly ill. His wife said – with zero self-reflection or accepting of any responsibility – “One of the main pillars in our church, who has cancer, is in the hospital with pneumonia and a blood infection and pancreatic cancer and Covid19. He is not doing good. He’s in ICU and on a ventilator. My husband is tore up about it! SO torn up! He’s been so sick as well.”

Coronavirus is a black swan event, unpredictable and unforeseen with extremely bad, consequences. Oh, some might have thought it could happen, but they were mostly ignored. And the black swan absolutely upsets everything, derailing our normal day-to-day existence.

Most of us are isolating at home now, wondering how to cope, and when and how it will end.

1. Welp, no one knows how and when it will end, or how many will be dead, and what the damage will be. So, as we say in recovery programs, one day at a time. Don’t spend time fretting about what will happen two months for now. Just concentrate on today.
2. I’ve been self-employed for years and am used to working at home. My advice: Get a regular schedule. Stick to it. Don’t spend all day in your bathrobe. When you wake up, put on street clothes.
3. A regular schedule could involve working at home (if you can.) Start at the regular time and end at the regular time.
4. If you are laid-off or lost your job, a lot of places like Walmart, Amazon, and grocery stores are hiring temp labor. Might not be the best of jobs but will pay the bills.
5. Use the internet to stay in touch. Social media, texting, and especially Zoom meetings can be essential to staying connected with people. Just because we may be physically isolated now doesn’t mean we have to be socially and mentally isolated too.
6. Eat healthy and exercise. Resist the temptation to say screw it and sit in front of Netflix for month eating junk food. Because then you’ll gain weight and won’t be eating what you need to stay healthy. And the healthier you are, the better your chance of not getting infected.
7. Yes, get exercise. Even if it’s just fifteen minutes a day walking. Do it. I use TRX training, dumbbells at home, and run as well. It makes me feel better.
8. This is probably not a good time to drink and smoke weed until you’re in a coma. It’s never a good time to do that, but it’s even less of a good time for that now because surviving this will be better if we are clear-headed.
9. And wash your hands. But you already knew that!

Sue and I attend a statewide conference twice a year in Tonopah NV, a town of 3,000 halfway between Reno and Las Vegas. It was scheduled for the end of this month and just got cancelled because of coronavirus. I called the Best Western there to cancel our reservations. The person who answered clearly had been getting these cancellations all day and was a bit shell-shocked. It’s an excellent hotel, walking distance to the venue, and is generally sold out on the convention dates. Now, it’ll be crickets.

Not only does Best Western lose the bookings, they would have scheduled extra staff to help out. Those people now will have their hours cancelled. Ditto for all the other Tonopah hotels. Local restaurants and casinos that expected a boost to business will now be empty (due to no conference and to most everyone now not traveling.) The conference is about 150 people, which is considerable for a small town.

Here in Las Vegas, the Wynn CEO just said they expect 15% occupancy for a while. Ouch. Normal occupancy is 90%+. Restaurants, clubs, stores, buffets, clubs, events. conventions, sports books at Wynn and in every other casino here will be on reduced schedules or closed. This means thousands of workers will be laid off or have drastically reduced hours. This will severely impact the local Vegas economy.

However, Vegas has much deeper pockets than Tonopah. It can survive better. Give a thought to areas like Tonopah who may get clobbered by what’s coming.

Yes, capitalism has huge structural problems. Way too many people are getting mangled by it. However, the standard radical response is some type of socialism, generally saying “we must organize the people now” for something nebulous we hope happens decades from now.

Now only does that not help those in trouble now, it isn’t working. Osawatomie and Prairie Fire were from the Weather Underground in the mid-1970s. They pretty much were saying the same thing that that itty bitty Marxist parties in the U.S. are saying now. Organize for the future. Smash capitalism. Power to the people. Rah rah!

Except, Osawatomie was 45 years ago. Socialism has made few inroads in the U.S. since then. Yet the standard message from the hard and progressive left remains the same. And it clearly not working, not resonating with the public at large.

So maybe we need a new message, a new way of framing things, new ideas. Because what we are doing isn’t working.