Winning an election because you're the best is not automatic. Winning must be engineered.

How can a candidate as flawed as Donald Trump be running even with VP Kamala Harris, a decent, competent, empathetic candidate with real policies to help the middle-class?

How can a candidate as flawed as Donald Trump run even with VP Kamala Harris, a decent, competent, empathetic candidate with real policies to help the middle class?

The answer is upsetting because grassroots activists and independent progressives have always known it. We have been shouting about it on air, online, and in print. Do you know who else knows the answer? Donald Trump’s team.

Last night at a Pittsburg rally for VP Kamala Harris, former President Obama implored men to get off the couch and vote. Obama would later have a message targeted specifically to black men that they needed to get off the couch and vote for Harris as she was the one with their interest at hand. He implied that it is misogyny and sexism why support for Harris among men is lagging.

A panelist on MSNBC earlier today pointed out that some young 3rd-generation Latino men are amenable to vote for Trump. Their trigger point is not immigration but the economy and other issues. I experienced that firsthand while joining a Spanish TikTok live. I felt compelled to speak because of the number of Spanish-speaking MAGA talkers who were completely ill-informed as to Trump’s past tax cuts, stimulus, and policies like tariffs & tax cuts he intends to implement if elected.

Ali Velshi invited Roland Martin to discuss the issue of black men not voting for Harris and had some inconvenient truths. Democrats continue to play from the old playbook. They continue to address young black men as if this is still the civil rights era. He had the numbers to suggest that misogyny and sexism were not the most important factor. Instead, they needed to message correctly. While the Biden administration, more than any other, has been good in the criminal justice and economic justice for all and specifically black men, it is not messaged or publicized.

I noticed the same dynamic on the Spanish chat on TikTok last night. They have zero messaging from the administration or the Harris campaign but received emails and links from Trump. I took the opportunity to introduce them to my TikTok channel. I also got the opportunity to explain in three sentences that the tariff Trump has convinced them is a good thing will cost them a lot in the form he wants to implement it. Neither our mainstream media, sans Ali Velshi, nor the Harris campaign is doing a good job explaining it in a form these different groups can feel.

This election should not be close. I have written that it would be a landslide for Harris because her policies are very good, Biden’s policies are good — when explained in a group-specific manner — and Trump is just a flawed candidate.

Engineers use whatever material they have to build something useful. Defective materials require more and better engineering and often a lot of time to create something useful. Electoral wins can be engineered regardless of the material, aka the candidate. Trump’s team has been laying the groundwork for a long time. They have been seeding the communities with lies online, by email, on the radio in Spanish, and often subliminally on urban radio.

The Harris campaign has collected over $1 billion, and the Democratic committees have collected several hundred million more. They invest that money with overpriced consultants who do not know how to message different demographics and sub-demographics in different forms. It is one of the issues those of us in the independent progressive media who are closest to the people shout to anyone who would listen.

I must get real here. We make an effort to reach audiences at the grassroots level. The MAGA Spanish-speaking audience I reached last night is one those high-priced consultants know nothing about, yet not having an infrastructure to find and reach them means they left a vacuum that Trump filled.

The Harris Campaign and the Democratic committees are flush with more cash than they can use—that is the cash many of you reading this have sent to them. And that is a good thing. We must win. But winning cannot be bought. It has to be engineered. Successful projects have several engineers working horizontally and vertically to fulfill a mission. Unfortunately, the engineers closest to the job, independent progressive media, work on fumes while the consultants furthest from the grassroots are fully gassed up.

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Thank you in advance for your support,

Egberto Willies