747: Decoding the Path to Victory - 2024 Election Insights for Trump, Desantis, Vivek, RFK Jr., & Biden

Brian Nichols  
What's the path to victory for the GOP and DNC top candidates? Let's discuss that today with a political consultant. So let's talk about that instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show

Speaker 2  
on The Brian Nichols Show. Another episode I am as always joining us live from rpm. Rios, you're in eastern Indiana and today

Brian Nichols  
we're going to be taking on the role of political consultant looking at the top candidates both on the Democratic side of the aisle as well as the GOP being Joe Biden RFK, Jr, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and the veck Ramaswamy to help me do that joining us from McShane LLC. Rory McShane, welcome to The Brian Nichols

Rory McShane  
Show. Brian, great to be with you man.

Brian Nichols  
Rory, thank you for joining us looking forward to digging into a political consultants take today in the top five candidates but first, do us a favor. Rory Introduce yourself here to The Brian Nichols Show audience and where you get this perspective as a political consultant.

Rory McShane  
Sure, happy to do it. So I've been in the political industry for about 15 years. I own I'm the principal of McShane LLC, we are twice now. The fastest growing political consultancy in the country as ranked by Inc Magazine. We have we have staff in Nevada, Texas, Tennessee, Idaho. We we work on a number of congressional races, super PACs all across the country. And and work with some of the largest players in the in the political business, multiple incumbent members of Congress, some of the largest spending Republican Super PACs in the country, multiple state Republican parties, large police unions and all across the gambit.

Brian Nichols  
So obviously have some experience both in the local state, but also that national conversation. So glad to have you on the show as we dig into the topic for today. And that is yes, let's take a political consultants approach to giving some advice to the top five candidates. I mapped out here for today's conversation on both the left and the right. And I think for the fun, let's start out on the left, let's talk about the top two Democratic candidates. One is incumbent president and that is Joe Biden. The other is a kind of rogue startup from the the left and that is RFK Jr. I'll start with President Biden worry what be kind of your political consultant suggestion to the Biden campaign to actually have a successful 2024 even though maybe that's not what we want to see. But what would that actually look like on your end?

Rory McShane  
So truthfully, I think President Biden is doing a lot of the right things. You know, and and if I were advising him, and the people who advising him are clearly smart, he's obviously not going to be reelected on the strength of his can of his candidacy, right, he's not going to be reelected by a by a winning personality or even winning policy. So that means he's going to need to have a superior campaign operation, he's going to need to have a good data driven operation and from what I can tell they're building that right they're building it to be impenetrable in the primary and impenetrable in the general election. The Democrats that especially the democratic institutions have a bit of an advantage because they've smartly learned how to use C three organizations to transfer staff between C three organizations and political organizations. But but but his his success will be based on if he can achieve it operational excellency, and, and thus far he is on the path to do that. And truthfully, he needs to make this election a referendum on Republicans, right. He's not going to be able to get reelected on his own. You know, it's like when Truman ran against the Do Nothing Congress, right. You know, his opponent was Dewey, he wasn't going to be able to beat Dewey. So you know, so he ran against the Do Nothing Congress. It's kind of a similar similar stick here for Joe Biden. He has to run against obstructionists and obstructionist in January Sixers and and he has to say, Well, wasn't the country so much more divided and so much more chaotic and dramatic under President Trump? And And while you might not like everything about me, I'm not you know, he needs to find a couple of issues that he can harken to the writer little bit on because what you have to have this for Biden to be defeated. You have to have the Trump. There's a lot of people out there who they didn't really like Joe Biden and they didn't really like. So one of the most important things in politics. So it's called the lesser of all evils test. Right. So when you when you pull voters who have a negative impression of both candidates, who do they break for? And in 2016, they when you polled voters who both disliked Donald Trump and disliked Hillary Clinton, they broke for Donald Trump by 16 points in this past in this in this most recent presidential election, when you polled voters who dislike Trump and dislike Biden, they broke for they broke for Biden, right. And the reason being is simple Biden is a little is affable. Right, he's, you know, he's maybe not mentally acute and up to the job. But he's, he's personable enough and inoffensive enough, right. So if Biden can continue to be this, you know, kind of inoffensive all around, you know, decently well liked guy, he has an opportunity to be successful if the operation around him is strong enough. And to this point, it has been

Brian Nichols  
interesting. I like that approach, too, because because if you look at kind of what helped him, you mentioned, get over the finish line 2020. It was this kind of restore to normalcy. Joe is this nice, kind old grandpa kind of figure. And I guess right now, as we're looking at things that are coming out, that's also speaking to why this Hunter Biden stuff is so damning in so many instances, because it really does put a crack in that persona. And speaking of putting cracks in the Persona, one of the folks on the left trying to do that is RFK, Jr. He announced his candidacy not too long ago, a couple of months back, and he's really doing some some good work from a, you know, upstarts perspective, I think he's last numbers I saw was in the 20% Plus polling going against the incumbent president in his own party. Rory, what would be your advice to a campaign like RFK, Jr.

Rory McShane  
So RFK is in a really tough spot, right? Because the because his his his issue profile, generally speaking, means much more with a Democrat in the late 80s or early 90s than it does a Democrat today. So for instance, right RFK Jr. had a lot of very legitimate and very well made points and, and questions about the COVID vaccine and his issues with that. But the overwhelming amount of Democratic voters supported the COVID vaccine supported mandatory vaccines. If you look at a similar circumstance of a of an upstart candidate, being able to nearly topple an establishment candidate, you look at Bernie Sanders, right, very being very close to toppling both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, but the issue was Bernie was running to the left. And the further out you go on the on the political spectrum, the more committed people are. So the problem with RFK is it's very, it's very difficult to beat someone to beat someone who's going to have more financing and a superior organization to you. A from from this from the center, right? Most of those voters who are fk could appeal to have long since left the Democratic Party and joined the republican party where there's their independence now. Right. So RFK has to focus on a couple of things. He has to focus on states where, where where independents can vote in a row in a democratic primary like Virginia, and he has to focus, I believe, because I don't think he's going to find any issues that he's significantly to the left of Biden on. He and that's not his persona, he's going to have to focus on corruption. Right? It's going to have to be you know, I am I, you know, I am I am the Democratic Party's last hope it Camelot. Right like, and that and that the Biden administration is corrupt, and is a betrayal of core democratic values. And truthfully, I think that his his ability to, to do that would be would be the only way that he would move forward. I mean, truthfully, I'm hopeful to see a Trump Academy ticket, I think that would be incredible. But I think his only way to really make an impact on Joe Biden is to is to is to run a really aggressive campaign of his corruption.

Brian Nichols  
Yeah, and one thing I think, as well, that caddy really does bring to the table is he is a skepticism sometimes outright, vehement being against the vaccine conversation, right, which is definitely a stark contrast to what we see with Joe Biden. And that actually maybe goes a little bit of a foil against the next candidate. We might talk about Donald Trump because one of Trumps highlights of his presidency he likes to tout is operation warp speed. So ironically enough, so let's kind of go now to the other side of the aisle. Let's talk about Donald Trump. And what do you think is the best path forward for Trump, if you were to have like pearls success here in 2024?

Rory McShane  
So Trump has a massive lead in the primary right now. I think that the issue is there's a lot of money that Trump's going to need in the general election that is currently sitting in the DeSantis camp a little bit sitting in the Tim Scott camp. Um, I don't know how much of its in the buyback camp. But, but he's going to I, you know, I really think, you know, he needs to, he needs to tone down the attacks on primary opponents, you know, I mean, he's, he's, he's doing well enough where I don't see any of these numbers really moving. And I understand that. That sucks that that strategy was successful for him in 2016. But the money that is sitting behind those candidates right now, he's going to need that money in the general I think the voters are going to be there for me their way. You know, I'm a Trump guy. I like it support President Trump. You know, and the other the other issue is going to be operation right the people behind Ron DeSantis Jeff row and his group are brilliant operational tacticians, right, they broke build a brilliant operation in Iowa in the last cycle, and that's going to be supercharged in this election cycle. Right. They are spending 10s of millions of dollars training door knockers in Iowa recruiting caucus attendees. Remember, Jeff Roe was also behind Glenn young kids convention victory caucus victory in Virginia. Right and the strategy they use there, I'm sure it'll be very similar to strategies in Iowa, so So you can't underestimate especially in these caucus states, where organization Trump's popularity a lot of times you can't you can't underestimate the importance of of operational excellence. And that's that's always something Trump campaigns have had, you know, they've had a lot of they have lots of staff changes and stuff like that. Donald Trump has the personality down, right, the the average Republican voter believes that he's fighting for them, he's going to need the operational excellence to hopefully defeat DeSantis in, in, in Iowa and Nevada in the organizationally focused state.

Brian Nichols  
Well, let's kind of talk about the organization standpoint, cuz that's one thing maybe the next candy we're gonna talk about has been known for that is Ron DeSantis. Doing a really good job getting his team really built up strong. Now, there's obviously been some some hiccups here of the past few months. poll numbers really have taken a nosedive and it seems from a team standpoint, that might be some of the areas were having red flags there. So what would you do for a consultant standpoint to help get the the Sanders campaign back on course,

Rory McShane  
I don't think there's anything that DeSantis says they tried attacking Trump and that didn't work and look, here's the thing, the only you know, you look at the only way to defeat Donald Trump was the way they beat steve King in Iowa, right is where the way Randy Feenstra defeated steve King in Iowa, you cannot attack Donald Trump that the more you attack Donald Trump, the smarter he or sorry, the more hardened his supporters become. When he said he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and he wouldn't lose a single supporter. He wasn't like the only you know, so if you look at the way they defeated steve King, right, the average Western Island fully believed that Steve King had their back steve King advocated for the issues that they cared about that Steve King was their guy, but But Randy so Randy Fincher never attacked steve King as being insufficiently conservative or a bad person. He said, Hey, we all love steve King, but he's no longer effective. It's the grandpa attack. Right, everybody thanks grandpa for his service in World War Two, but nobody wants to give grandpa their car keys. Right. And that is that is the and it's and it's a very difficult position to be in. I don't and I don't envy roe and his team at all for having to do this. It's the position where they have to paint Donald Trump as the elder statesman of the party, but not the guy you want. In a starting position, right? We don't worry if you're a Steelers fan. You might love Terry Bradshaw, but you don't think he should be on the starting lineup this season.

Brian Nichols  
That's a great analogy. And I say that my dad, my uncle were cowboys and Steelers fan respectively in the 70s. So Terry Bradshaw Roger Staubach primarily for those

Rory McShane  
similarly, if you're a Cowboys fan, you know I lived I'm not a Cowboys fan, but I live down in Texas. There's a ton of Cowboys fans here. And they all love Roger Staubach, but they don't want a minute quarterback this

Brian Nichols  
season. Yeah, no wouldn't go too well, probably physically for him either. But let's talk about the next candidate. Let's then that's actually gonna go on the opposite side of the conversation going towards the youth, the youngest candidate thus far who was announced and that is one, billionaire tech mogul. Vivec, Rana Swamy. He's really kind of taking the GOP primaries by now let's say storm, but maybe by surprise, Shirley, independent media podcast specifically going out having conversations actually going out and engaging with some sometimes more aggressive and more left leaning media and having some really good success. He's kind of doing the best of what Trump does the best. Ron DeSantis does, what he's doing so through the perspective of youth, so what are your thoughts there on the kind of surprising success we've seen thus far of the Vic Ramaswamy? And do you see any path for 2024 success for him?

Rory McShane  
I don't, but I see a lot of path for 2028 success, right. And a lot of credit to the to the team behind his campaign, Ben Yoho. And those guys, real smart guys, your friends of mine. They've done an incredible job and they did exactly what you said they were going to do. He knew that he wasn't in a place where he was going to be able to afford But the most FoxNews airtime or at the most coveted interviews, so he's went on podcasts and he's challenged conceptions and he's challenged norms and stuff like that. But I think what he's but I would I would bet dollars to donuts that what he's trying to do is he's trying to make himself a consensus nominee in 2028. Right, which means he can't attack Donald. I mean, if you look, you know, when Trump was indicted, he was the first one to come out and defend Trump. And in doing so endearing himself to a lot of people in the Magga movement, I'd consider myself part of the magnet movement, endearing himself to a lot of people in the Magna movement endearing himself to a lot of Trump loyalists. I think he understands that, you know, this is, you know, when you have a billion dollars, you have a lot of runway, and I think he understands that there's that there's a lot of runway to be had. And I think he's resonating conservative ideas. So after Donald Trump is off the stage, I actually think he is the I think that Trump supporters will be more inclined to migrate to supporting him in the next cycle than they will to then they will to a Ron DeSantis or Tim Scott or something like

Brian Nichols  
that. It feels like it'd be a better future for the GOP frankly, too, because it seems like the era of the the Bush the Cheney's around these the McCain's that just that that's that's over, right, it's it's time to move forward. And this could be a really interesting face for the GOP, because traditionally, what's been one of the biggest, you know, the biggest thorns in the side of the GOP is an old white dudes party, to have someone like veck premise Swami is the face of the party, a millennial who is, I think, believed I believe he's Indian descent. I mean, what where did the arguments go from there, right, like you can no longer have that as the thorn in the side. And also going forward. It I think, would also inspire a lot of different potential voters to the GOP, which would open the floodgates. Now, let me ask you this as we go towards the tail end of the conversation here worry. Where do you kind of see things actually lining up? We've gone through five candidates today, obviously, Biden versus RFK. On the Democratic side on the right, really right now the top three Trump DeSantis and the VEC. We're, I guess, where do you see these primaries, shaping up? And then ultimately coming to 2024? Kind of what's your gut telling you at this point as we look at the ultimate showdown in November there? So a great

Rory McShane  
question, I think, I think at this point, it's almost Viet accompli, Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. In all of the primary states. Donald Trump has a 30 point lead. I think the lowest lead he's got is in the high 20s. Right now, some states he's got a 14 point lead. You know, I mean, it reminds me of that. It reminds me of that moment, where, you know, where, where Donald Trump and Jeb Bush were arguing on stage in 2016. And Donald Trump's alignment 40 in Europe, too. So whatever I'm doing is working. And I and Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee. I mean, even if RFK is able to catch lightning in a bottle, you have to remember the democratic super delegates structure, right? The Democrats have a lot of their delegate a lot meant a lot in in super delegates. So I think it's almost impossible that that Joe Biden will not be the Democratic nominee. And I will say this, the Trump campaign is going to have to, you know, they're going to have to do something very new, or I won't say very new, but something that they weren't able to make a forefront in the last campaign which they need to do now. They may need to make it clear that the Biden family is a corrupt crime family, right. Whether or not you agree with the policies of Donald Trump, you have members of the Biden family, taking multimillion dollar payouts, from Ukrainian interests, from Chinese interests, from from the Chinese Communist Party connections, people who are the enemies of America. And that I believe, needs to be the forefront of the campaign. I think, I think if people voted against Hillary Clinton, as much as they voted for Donald Trump, and they and those people, the people who were in the lesser of all evils group that people with a negative opinion of both candidates, they did that they voted against Hillary Clinton because they said, well, I might not like this Trump guy, but you know what, he's for real. And he's not corrupt. And he's not part of this deal. He's not part of the swamp. And Joe Biden was able to kind of frame the conversation as hey, you might not like me, but I'm a normal guy, that guy over there's a loony channels, right. He needs to bring it back to even for the people who don't like Trump. They don't want to see a corrupt White House. They don't want to see a White House where people are smoking crack, and given, you know, multimillion dollar, you know, paychecks to their kids, and basically rebuild that narrative 2016 Which is, hey, I might not be your first choice, but I'm not corrupt. I'm not in the swamp. I'm not making $1 on this.

Brian Nichols  
Rory as we go towards the end of the episode, I wanted to kind of use the tail end here to maybe be more of a workshop right for a lot of the folks who listen to our show. They're either running for local office for state office, both the Libertarians but also the Republicans out there. So you know, there's usually I get tons of emails from folks asking for it. I've help on specific campaign issues. And I think one of the overarching themes I hear of a problem campaigns find is finding their voice. What do you recommend to a campaign as they're going out and trying trying to establish that campaign narrative? What's the best way to figure out what are the most important issues your voters care about? How can you make sure your campaign or your campaign is reflecting that messaging and that

Rory McShane  
narrative? So actually, one is a great question, but to not entirely inaccurate one, because here's the thing, any poll in America, if you say what issue is most important to you? Every voter is going to say economy, education, health care, economy, education, health care, from the beginning of time, through ever, right. And those aren't wedge issues. Those are issues that divide you from your opponents. So you can come and say, Well, I'm going to help spur the economy by doing, you know, by cutting taxes 2%. And your opponent can then say, well, I'm going to spur the economy by adding more jobs programs, right. But Those both sound like possible and reasonable solutions. What you have to find are wedge issues, issues that divide you and your opponent. Every successful campaign, at least that I've ever studied, has three easily identifiable solutions, right? It has a problem, a hero and a villain a problem, a hero and a villain. So George Bush 2004 What's the problem? The world is unsafe. Who's the villain? Easy. That's Osama bin Laden, who's the hero the cowboy from Texas, George W. Bush. Look at look at Barack Obama. Oh, eight, right. It was very different. McCain wasn't the villain in this campaign. Right. The problem was, is that you know, Washington is a mess. It's all these people who've been there politics is the same as usual. It's this insider deal, right? Who's the villain? The villain was just this kind of shadowy swamp white rich white guys, country clubbers who's the hero, Barack Obama's going to change it? Right. You know, so I've seen you know, so so so so every successful, identifiable candidate, every successful campaign, in my opinion, has those three clearly identifiable elements. What's the problem? Who's the hero and who's the villain? Right? Sometimes the villains your opponent, sometimes it is.

Brian Nichols  
Interesting, interesting. Rory up, there's been a really great conversation. And I definitely think you know, the audience today, they got a lot of value, not only kind of taking things from different contexts of behind the eyes of really each individual candidate and what's their best path for success, but also, you know, how we can apply some of these, these ideas. We talked about every single day to actual people running for office and having electoral success, which at the end of the day is important. Talking about the stuff is important, but winning elections and actually dictating policy. Yeah, that's kind of important as well, but that being said, Rory, do us a favor as we wrap things up. Where Can folks go ahead find you support your work over at Nick Shane, LLC, and if you want to go ahead and reach out to you we're gonna go ahead and do that.

Rory McShane  
Sure. Everyone's welcome to go to our website, McShane llc.com can email me Rory ROI at McShane llc.com I always always encourage folks to reach out to us I do everything I can to be helpful to people whether they hire us or not trying to pick our brains and stuff like that.

Brian Nichols  
Awesome. All right, where are we? Well, we will go ahead include all that in the show notes and by the way, folks, if you enjoy today's episode, you know the drill go ahead and give it a share. When you do please tag yours truly at B nickels liberty by the way, if you are joining us here on YouTube well thank you number one, go ahead, give us a like and a subscribe and also hit that notification bell so don't miss a single time we go live but also we have other platforms we are on to support independent independent media like rumble, but also Ben swans sovereign s o v e r e n in which by the way if you are watching us over on sovereign wealth Thank you for watching today you are seeing us before anybody else in that as a sovereign exclusive and also we are a podcast so if you want to go ahead and subscribe to The Brian Nichols Show on your favorite podcast catcher whether that's YouTube Music, Spotify, Apple podcasts or something else out there. I just do me a favor when you go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Also downplay or downplay download all unplayed episodes, starting from episode one all the way to Episode 745. And with all those different episodes, I promise you, we have amazing guests like Rory here on the show, who will leave you educated, enlightened and informed. And of course, one last thing Today's episode is brought to you by our awesome friends over at proud libertarian, we have our Brian Nichols show shop over there, where you can go ahead and grab your Michael Scott 2024 shirt which I am rocking today here on the show. Link will be in the show notes. So do me a favor if you'd like go ahead and support the program. Also go ahead use code T B and S 15% off your order over at proud libertarian, but that's all we have for you today. Thank you for joining us, folks. And with that being said Brian co signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Rory McShane we'll see you next time.

Rory McShane  
Okay, see Brian

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