Welcome to the Permanent Campaign

[EasyAce]

Trump’s campaign-style rallies delight his base and antagonize the opposition — just as they’re supposed to do.
By Theodore Kupfer
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450757/trump-rallies-permanent-campaign-tactics

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. Donald Trump put on what his press secretary
called a “campaign event” Tuesday night in Phoenix and, during the rally, made generous use of the future
tense, that hallmark of election season: “We will make America the best place in the world to hire, grow, and
start a business,” Trump said, “we’re going to do an infrastructure bill,” he continued, and “we will make
American great again,” he divined. The president even issued a call to action, telling his thousands of supporters:
“This is our opportunity to recapture our dynasty like never before.” No, Trump didn’t forget that 2016 came
and went — he’s getting a head start on 2020. And he’s glad, so glad, you could attend.

That campaign is already well underway, despite being three years away. Trump established his reelection
committee on his first day in office, and Politico recently reported that its fundraisers, pollsters, and opposition
researchers are hard at work. Brendan Doherty, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, isn’t surprised.
Doherty, author of The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign, is well acquainted with the phenomenon
of the never-ending campaign. He’s found that recent presidents have consistently made more and earlier
public appearances in battleground states than their predecessors . . .

. . . People increasingly watch like-minded shows, read like-minded websites, and associate with like-minded
people. In turn, the media have adapted to a changing market, catering to distinct clusters of people. Trump
doesn’t have to worry about how his speech might play on the networks; that term, signifying a monolithic
media, is obsolete. His rallies are instead “audience-specific,” political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg tells NR,
“and he gets terrific coverage on the media that his base pays attention to.” Trump’s campaign delights who
it’s supposed to delight, just like it did a year ago.

But if Trump prefers campaigns to governance, he could wind up widening the partisan divide. On Election
Night, he vowed to “be president for all the citizens” of the country. A never-ending campaign, with rallies
designed to please some and unnerve others, works against that goal. Perhaps the reaction of some of Trump’s
opponents to Tuesday night’s rally was ill conceived. Perhaps the rally was, too.

[InHeavenThereIsNoBeer]

"Welcome to the Permanent Campaign"

Welcome?  We've been seeing this crap for eight years.

[mountaineer]

I'm not a fan of Pres. Trump's many campaign-style rallies, either, but the writer is disingenuous to characterize Obama's perpetual campaigning thus:

But these rallies were attempts to grow public support for particular policies: Obama, Bush, and Clinton kept things focused on their agendas.

The agenda - that is, the latest proposed piece of legislative pandering posing as BHO policy - was just an excuse for campaigning.