Together, through Center Action Now, a political nonprofit they founded, Longwell and Miller married the ideas of giving Biden a leg up in the Democratic primary by playing in states that allowed non-Democrats to participate, boosting the participation of disaffected Republicans and center-right independents. The plan was to generate votes for Biden by encouraging registered Republicans, conservative independents, and swing voters opposed to Trump to support a so-called moderate alternative to Sanders—and educating them how to do so. Longwell and Miller had a pretty good idea of who these voters might be, too.

Between the approximately three hundred thousand people who had signed up to support Republicans for the Rule of Law, the group Longwell and Kristol started to support the Russia investigation, plus subscribers to the Bulwark, she had amassed a decent list of prospective voters, many of them living in the suburbs, who identified as moderates, Republican-leaning independents, and soft Republicans who tended to be unhappy with Trump’s leadership and open to supporting his 2020 Democratic challenger. With the purchase of additional voter lists and bolstered by knowledge of the electorate gained through her focus group work, Longwell and Miller ran a very robust but very under-the-radar digital campaign, text messaging and the like, targeting these voters. It wasn’t a persuasion advertising campaign. Center Action Now was not specifically advocating for Biden. It was simple electioneering: show up and vote. Longwell and Miller figured if their target audience participated in the Democratic primary, they were more likely to punch the chad for Biden; former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg; or Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar than they were for Sanders (and by extension, über progressive Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren). And that was good enough…

As much as Longwell and Miller despised Trump, they learned something along the way that some of his detractors, especially the Democrats among them, couldn’t come to terms with. He had won in 2016 because so many Republican voters who would never countenance a racist, or an authoritarian, or a crook, didn’t think he was any of that. Was Trump the dictionary definition of “moral rectitude”? Obviously not. Personally offensive and given to hyperbole? Obviously yes. But the country was broken and maybe this pragmatic businessman provocateur could fix it. And that was the thing—in the swing states that matter in presidential elections, a majority of voters didn’t see Trump as particularly ideologically threatening. This image, and pure, unadulterated distrust in and distaste for Clinton, helped the 2016 Republican nominee hold on to traditional Republican voters while expanding the GOP tent by adding a bunch of white working-class Democrats and former Democrats. This crucial community of traditional Republican voters was not tiring of Trump because of the record number of conservative judges he appointed to the federal bench, or because he moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, or because he championed a historic $1.3 trillion overhaul of the federal tax code.