How To Beat Donald Trump In 2020: Run Only Against Mike Pence, Ignoring ‘Irrelevant’ Trump, Author Suggests

On Sunday, Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, on her first full day as a declared candidate for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination, said that Donald Trump may not be a factor in the 2020 election — because he could be in prison, CNN quoted her as saying.

“By the time we get to 2020, Donald Trump may not even be President,” Warren said at a campaign stop in Iowa, site of the caucuses which open the election season on February 3 next year. “In fact, he may not even be a free person.”

Perhaps inspired by Warren’s speculation, the author of a bestselling book on the Trump-Russia collusion scandal surrounding the 2016 presidential election came up with his own idea, that he quickly took to his Twitter account to promote. At least one Democratic candidate in the expanding field should run only against current Vice President Mike Pence, and simply ignore Trump — on the assumption that Trump will be out of office before the 2020 election rolls around.

“It would be the ultimate troll, as Trump has no idea what to do when 100 percent ignored,” wrote Seth Abramson, author of the recent bestselling book Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America. “Doing this would also free that candidate to answer any question about Trump or anything Trump has said about them with, ‘It’s irrelevant.'”

Abramson also said in his Twitter thread on Sunday that running a campaign against Pence while simply ignoring Trump would serve as a strategic technique for a candidate to distinguish herself or himself from what is already a large field on contenders and long shot hopefuls.

After Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar declared her candidacy on Sunday, as Vox reported, the Democratic field stands at 10 declared candidates, with a full 51 weeks to go before the Iowa caucuses. The field appears to be led by Warren, California Senator Kamala Harris, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, New Jersey Senator Corey Booker, and as of Sunday, Klobuchar.

But according to an inventory compiled by Rolling Stone, several major candidates are expected to declare in coming weeks, including former Vice President Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic primary runner-up Bernie Sanders, former Texas congressional rep Beto O’Rourke, and several others.

“Look at it this way, candidates,” Abramson wrote on Twitter. “If you start running against Mike Pence now and Trump indeed goes down politically and/or legally sometime during or before the 2020 primaries you get a massive credibility boost and are many many months ahead of your competitors rhetorically.”

Abramsom said that the “run against Pence” strategy would also pay dividends because Trump would, “talk about you constantly because he’d be enraged at you,” he wrote on Twitter.

“But his obsession with you which you’d never acknowledge or return in any way would simultaneously vault you into the first tier of Dem candidates and show you’d know how to beat him if you had to,” he said.