TEAM TRUMP 2020 STRATEGY: IF WE ALL DO THE THINGS TRUMP DOES THAT SWING VOTERS HATE, HE'LL WIN

I didn't see this coming, though I probably should have:

Kellyanne Conway Snaps Back at Reporter: ‘What’s Your Ethnicity?’

When White House reporter Andrew Feinberg posed a question to Kellyanne Conway on Tuesday about the president’s racist tweets against the four congresswomen known as the “Squad,” he found himself taken aback by her response.

Feinberg, a reporter for the website BeltwayBreakfast.com, asked the White House counselor which countries President Donald Trump was referring to when he suggested Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar—all U.S. citizens—should “go back” to where they came from.

Instead of answering that question, Conway asked him, “What’s your ethnicity?”

“Uh... why is that relevant?” Feinberg asked before Conway interrupted him to say, “Because I’m asking you a question.”

After Conway shares that her ancestors are from Ireland and Italy, the reporter said, “My ethnicity is not relevant to the question I’m asking you.”

Conway still would not answer Feinberg’s question, instead insisting that [the] question was relevant because Trump said “originally” from—he didn’t—and going on a rant about how “a lot of us are sick and tired in this country of America coming last” ...

It's not news that Conway would rather kneecap reporters than inform them of the truth. But she hasn't been in the habit of tossing ethnicity into the mix. That's been the president's specialty.

That, however, seems to be the Trump team's strategy for 2020: Everyone should become even more like Trump than they've been up to now. Everyone should scorch earth the way Trump does. Everyone should embrace Trump's obsessions, including his obsession with race.

A fair number of Americans voted for Trump in 2016 in the belief that he was putting on an act during the campaign and wouldn't be that bad as president. Unlike the diehards, these voters don't cheer every time Trump does something thuggish. They wish he wouldn't tweet. They wish he wouldn't set out to divide the country.

If everybody on Team Trump turns into Trump, those folks aren't going to be happy. I'm not saying they'll inevitably give the Democrats a landslide win. Maybe they just won't vote. I think Trump took the Electoral College last time because quite a few people who don't usually vote decided to vote for him. Can he win if they blow him off this time?

If you engender the kind of brand loyalty in certain customers that Trump has engendered in his most fervent supporters, maybe those customers will spend increasing amounts of money on your goods and services. But voting doesn't work like that. Every voter in the crazy base can vote only once. Whether he understands it or not, Trump has them. He can stop trying so hard to please them.

Because doing that is probably alienating his soft supporters. In 2020, he may well regret that.