How to win an election

There are 2 basic ways. The classic way which everybody is familiar with is to get out in front of the public and shake a lot of hands, kiss a lot of babies, spend a lot of money on TV ads, brag about how great you'll be as the new whatever, bad mouth your opponents etc. That's the way most people believe elections are won or lost, whoever does a better job at all that stuff.

Then there's another little known scheme which works remarkably well that nobody talks about, at least not in public and never where the opposition can get wind of it. It's very effective, in fact, it's so effective it actually works too well sometimes and the worst outcome can happen and in fact has happened at least twice in the last 20 years. The scheme worked perfectly in 2004 and got George Bush re-elected for a second term. The scheme worked so well in fact it was employed again in 2008 and backfired because Obama won the presidential election and that was not supposed to happen. The scheme couldn't be employed against Obama's re-election for reasons you'll understand later.

Here's the basic idea of the scheme: If your candidate is weak, make every effort to assist a worse candidate from the opposing party to win the nomination in the Primaries prior to the main election thus enhancing your candidates chances for a win. In other words, move up by pushing the opposition down.
If the opposing candidate is strong there is nothing you can do but revert back to the classic method including name calling and launching a smear campaign. This was employed by the Right against Obama by inferring he is a Muslim, casting doubt on his citizenship, mocking on his name, yada, yada, yada. It had been employed on Ms Clinton attacking her use of a private email server, Benghazi, and mocking her name IE "Hitlery".

The scheme is possible whenever there is an “Open Primary” meaning voters of any party can vote for anybody regardless of party affiliation. The scheme is most effectively employed in the Iowa primaries because that is the first one in the country and whoever wins Iowa will almost certainly be the candidate in the general election. This is why John Kerry won the Iowa primary in 2004, the Right figured with his Anti-War activism which they colored as Anti American and cadaver like appearance it would be easy for their candidate to defeat him in the general election. Therefore in Iowa, they went all out by getting their party loyalists to vote for John Kerry (a Democrat, instead of voting for their candidate) thus assuring George Bush would have an easy win.
This scheme was most effectively used in the currant cycle when Kenye West was conned into throwing his hat in the ring to steal the black vote from the Democrats. I guess he woke up to the scam and to his credit, dropped out.