Peter Hamby

As the curtain rises on the 2020 election, some Democrats worry their party is not doing enough to adapt their campaigns to modern habits, clinging instead to a naive hope that internet discourse will somehow fix itself, or that the tactics from the previous campaigns will somehow overcome the baser human instincts that gave rise to Donald Trump. A decade after Barack Obama’s campaign was heralded for its digital savvy around data and email marketing, Trump-era conservatives are now the ascendant political force of the networked internet.

President Donald Trump and his team understand that for the political press, the only thing that matters is what’s happening right now, not yesterday. And whether through his tweets or his surrogates in the briefing room, the president has been largely able to bait reporters into playing his game, because he knows what makes them tick.