Democrats should pay attention to this: Trump is trying to copy Obama's election strategy

Today the New York Times published an article about the fact that a group of former Trump aides will try to register to vote and find potential voters in rural areas of the United States.

This wouldn't be such a big deal if it wasn't for the following two paragraphs:

The former aides are starting a group called Look Ahead America to identify “disaffected” rural and working-class Americans who either do not vote or are not on the voter rolls, in order to register and mobilize them ahead of future elections, according to a prospectus being distributed to possible donors.

...

Look Ahead America plans to use what the prospectus calls “psychographic modeling” of data from voter files and commercial sources to identify unregistered adults who fit the targeted demographic. The group intends to contact these people using a combination of direct mail, phone calls and in-person visits from full-time field staffers — it intends to hire 12 people in Virginia working out of a handful of offices to start.

The "psychographic modeling" they're describing is nothing more than the microtargetting strategy used by Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Microtargetting basically identifies potential voters by cross-referencing voter rolls with consumer lists in order to idenify consumer behavior that may indicate if a consumer is liberal or conservative.

For example: in 2008 if a consumer bought a hybrid car, or organic food, there was a higher probability that the consumer would lean liberal. But if the consumer bought a big truck or fire arms, statistically there was a bigger chance that the consumer would lean conservative.

Once the consumer is identified as a potential voter, the strategy sends the campaign to actually interact with the potential voter, even convincing the voter of volunteering for the campaign.

Why should Democrats be paying attention to this? Because Obama did this twice. And it worked. If Trump figures out a way to make it work for conservatives in rural areas in just 3 states, he might be able to boost his numbers enough to secure a reelection.

How can the Democrats counter this? By attracting new voters, including young voters, minorities, and voters who are not registered as Democrats.

But in order to do that, the Democrats will have to offer them something other than "the other guy is worse." Hillary Clinton lost a lot of votes compared to Barack Obama in 2012 in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio. Not because they went to Trump, but because they went to Jill Stein and Gary Johnson as a "punishment" against the idea that the Democrats rigged the primary against Bernie Sanders, which was never the case.

The easiest way for the Democrats to recover those votes is by nominating Bernie Sanders for president in 2020. If that happens, Trump won't stand a chance even if he tries to copy Barack Obama.