Drop That Oppo Like It’s Hot
The term opposition research — “oppo,” for short — gets thrown around during campaign seasons, rarely in a positive way. But neither opposition nor self research are, as they’re sometimes pejoratively labeled, the “dark arts.” More often, research is what you saw on display during the debate last night.
Sorry to burst anyone’s bubble, but research isn’t going through people’s trash or hiding in the bushes with a camera and long-focus lens. Rather, it’s the grind of obtaining and reviewing hundreds of thousands of pages of public records, court cases, TV and radio transcripts, newspaper articles, bill sponsorships and co-sponsorships, legislative records, tweets, corporate filings — the list goes on. Research is about unearthing, cataloging, analyzing, and presenting the definitive factual records of your own candidate and that of your opponent.
So in a presidential campaign where it has often felt like one candidate has single-handedly (the diminutive size of those hands notwithstanding…) obliterated the importance of truth and facts, opposing Research Directors might have found themselves having a few Admiral Stockdale moments — who am I and why am I here?
That’s why what Hillary Clinton did last night — with crucial support from her debate prep team and campaign writ large — was so important and impressive. In 95 minutes, she may have accomplished what has seemed impossible for 16 months: wrestling the conversation away from just “saying more crazy things” and anchoring it firmly back in reality.
As Jonathan Martin from the New York Times noted, she did it by coming ready for all 12 rounds of the fight, hitting Trump with “at least 19 pieces of pure oppo” during the course of the debate. A factual jab once every five minutes or so that culminated in a knockout blow as Secretary Clinton ticked off examples of how Trump talks about women and what he said about Alicia Machado.
You could almost hear Team Research cheering in Brooklyn.
I suspect, though, there are more oppo shoes waiting to drop. Everyone — GOP primary contenders, the media, and Democrats included — spent 2015 focused on the Republicans we all assumed might actually be the nominee. But when Trump didn’t fade as the primary season made the turn into 2016, my hunch is that research departments everywhere began scrambling to catch up. Consequently, we’ve seen a delay in Trump oppo, with it coming in fits and starts since last summer.
By comparison, in 2012, we had the advantage of no primary opponent and the likelihood that Mitt Romney would be our opponent in the general election, so were able to allocate our research time and resources accordingly. We moved almost all of our deep-dive research on Gov. Romney out the door by late summer; the fall was focused on rapid response and any opportunities presented in real-time.
In 2016, the circumstances and timetable are different. That leads me to believe that there may be more to come, and that part of what Secretary Clinton was doing last night was dropping bread crumbs along the trail for people — especially the media — to follow.
Some of the 19 oppo drops from Secretary Clinton were, of course, opportunistic, driven by the the topics that were raised during the debate. But several of them jumped out to me as subjects that the campaign not only knows work to their advantage, but also those for which they may have more specific examples when it comes to Trump’s record. In particular:
Housing Crisis: Trump’s 2006 quote rooting for the housing market to collapse is horrendous on its own. But that, combined with his appalling response (“That’s called business, by the way.”), are indications that there’s more to be found than just problematic statements.
Benefiting from His Own Policy Proposals: Granted, this is more challenging given that Trump is running an almost policy-free campaign, but Secretary Clinton’s mention that his tax proposal would result in a $4 billion tax benefit for his family may be just the beginning when it comes to enriching himself and those close to him through his policies.
Trump Inc.: As Secretary Clinton said, “If your main claim to be president of the United States is your business, then I think we should talk about that.” And boy howdy did she. She was ready with examples of working Americans (“dishwashers, painters, architects, glass installers, marble installers, drapery installers”) who’d done work for Trump, but had never been paid, taking the abstract concept of Trump being a con man and a swindler and putting faces to it. Does anyone really think her campaign doesn’t have more stories to tell here?
Tax Returns: Confession: this brought back wonderful memories of 2012. Back here in 2016, I don’t think Secretary Clinton was idly speculating about what’s lurking in Donald Trump’s tax returns. She and her campaign want to have the conversation about and investigation into whether Trump is worth what he says he is (nope), whether he’s donated the money he claims he has (of course not), what he owes and to whom he owes it, and whether he’s paid his fair share in federal taxes (negative, Ghost Rider). It was the verbal equivalent of a giant neon sign saying, “LOOK HERE!!”
Racism: As somebody who spent time in the trenches dealing with President Obama’s birth certificate, my favorite exchange from last night was, hands down, Secretary Clinton deftly threading the 1973 racial discrimination case against Trump into her response to the birther lie. In addition to laying the predicate that Trump’s obsession with birtherism was not some racist one-off but part of a larger pattern, her comment that “he has a long record of engaging in racist behavior” may have been a tip of the hand that there’s more to come on this issue.
Now, I could be wrong about this. Perhaps there’s not much else left in the research hopper. But I think there’s a lot more to see of the iceberg that is Donald Trump’s record, and I think the team in Brooklyn will use the next 42 days to show us just that.
