Scoreboard Baby! Democrat’s strategy to focus and align

The Paternal Optimist: “Dad” logic and humor for today’s issues

Over a month into the second Trump administration, and a couple of things are obvious.

One, the Media and Democrats recognize his administrations tactic of “flooding the zone with shit” and the importance of not following every new outrage down the rabbit hole. There seems to be a unanimous acknowledgement the response and strategy focus has to be less on what “he says” and more so on “what he does”. This seems like a good realization. It’s like lining up against the Kansas City Chiefs, they are going to throw all kinds of “eye candy” at the defense before they snap to get them confused and not prepared for what is really going to happen. The defense needs to focus and not get distracted. (Dad likes sports analogies….more to come). The key for Democrats is to not fall for the stuff that doesn’t really matter.

But second, unlike the Philadelphia Eagles, the opposition (Democrats. Congress?) have not figured out yet how they should defend. So, it feels like all the Trump ideas and initiatives are stampeding ahead with no organized opposition. Certainly, part of the difficulty is the speed and volume of shit flooding the zone….and this go around vs. Trump 1.0 its more consequential developments (actual actions and orders). Staying with the football analogy (told ya), It’s like when the offensive team goes “hurry up” and snaps the ball while the unorganized defense is trying to sub defensive players in, heading down the field against an undermanned defense. Lots of ground gained.

SO…. How should the opposition defend?

If it was an easy answer they would have already figured it out. It would seem a defensive strategy will need be aimed in 2 directions. The first will be to attempt to stop the most damaging real actions, a real challenge for Democrats in congress. The second is an effective communication strategy to influence media and importantly voters. Here is an idea for at least one part of #2, the communication strategy. Let’s call it “Scoreboard baby”. In sports, when a team is all bluster and trash talking, the eventual winner can just confidently smile, point, and say “scoreboard baby!”, meaning: “we won loud mouth” but also: let’s cut through the bullshit and focus on the results. I learned the hard way in my corporate career, there is a difference between “activities” and actual results… “process” and outcomes.

So what are the critical results that ALL Americans want to see? And how can those be factually identified, tracked, and compared to where things were before his initiatives to be the ultimate determinant in how the administration is doing. This would be the “scoreboard” that focuses the communication strategy. Below is what this scorecard could look like.

It could track Inflation for sure since high prices were a key issue in the election that resulted in Trump 2.0. Trump promised he’d “reduce prices on day 1”. OK, the scoreboard can track and compare the CPI inflation rate. The final quarter of Biden’s term it was 2.7% . Are tariffs a good idea? I don’t know but let’s watch the scoreboard for what we really care about—the “results”, not the activities.

Border protection was the other key issue Trump emphasized. He promised border security and deportations would “reduce crime in our communities”. While there were 2.1million border crossings in 2024, it was down 15% from the year before, and major crime was down significantly. We’ll see what the scoreboard shows for Trump’s actual progress.

Trump campaigned that he would “create 10 million new jobs in 10 months”, with 1 million of those being in manufacturing. OK, easily tracked on the scoreboard with the unemployment rate and jobs created. Hard to see beating Biden’s results with the DOGE chainsaw circus but we can see.

That chain sawing is intended to, as Trump promised, to “eliminate the national debt in 8 years”. With big tax cuts planned it’s a bit hard to see how the pesky math will work, but let’s watch the scoreboard. We must admit, it didn’t go so well beforehand (a budget deficit of $1.4 TRILLION in 2024!)

You get the idea. He’s made many other promises, I’d suggest the other key things Americans all care about can be scored by tracking GDP, and the Stock Market.

Smarter people will probably think of more measures that could be added, I’d just say something like this is most effective if it follows KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid) so it is easily followed, gets to the “results” that matter and can be used and referred to over and over as one key part of the “defense” communication strategy.

The use of the scoreboard should be obvious: Is all of Trump’s bluster and executive actions actually making America Great Again? Have the ICE deportations actually reduced crime? Is picking a (trade) war with Canada and Mexico improving prices or inflation? Is the DOGE chaos doing anything to improve employment and GDP? Is floating your offer for Greenland and/or Panama doing ANYTHING that matters?

Maybe less obvious will be this: Things were going pretty darn well before, when you really look at the results from the Biden administration. Certainly job creation and employment levels, and the Stock market’s impact on people’s 401K’s. Violent crime rates had a steep decline, and GDP growth was pretty darn good. So when Trump repeats “Biden was the worst President ever” we point and refer to the Scoreboard.

And what if the Trump moves were to generate positive results? It seems unlikely, since most already are heading in the wrong direction. But in that case, Democrats can add to their list all the things they need to reconsider, learn from, and adjust their policy and proposals to be in touch with where Americans really are.

Part of the “Flooding the zone….” strategy is the MAGA glee of “owning the libs”. Provoking what they see as automatic hysterical reactions to the nonsense gives them their air. Let’s take the air away and get focused on the RESULTS that are impacting American lives. And hold the current administration accountable for their actions—they own the results and the consequences.