In the hallowed tradition of hastily written and instantly forgettable election year books, David Plouffe’s A Citizen’s Guide to Beating Donald Trump amounts to pretty standard fare. Given its author’s bona fides (Plouffe served as Barack Obama’s campaign manager in 2008, a fact emblazoned on the front cover for those still unaware), readers who expect a master class in grand strategy will, I must regretfully report, be let down. As I’ve written elsewhere, Plouffe essentially spends two hundred pages telling rank-and-file Democrats to canvass, make sure their friends are registered to vote, and post regularly on social media.

Suffice it to say that, for a book that’s supposedly about what the average person can do to fight Donald Trump, it’s heavy on banal anecdotes from throughout Plouffe’s career and embarrassingly thin on insights about campaigning or political strategy. Although these add up to a very dull read, I was quite struck by several passages dealing with what the author wants liberal partisans to do to fight conservatism online come election season. Among all the instructions Plouffe offers his readers, the most clearly fleshed out has to do with how they should be reacting to right-wing narratives on social media. His premise is a simple and familiar one:

Trump unleashes lies at an unprecedented rate, and his accomplices in the Fox News/Sinclair/Breitbart media-entertainment vortex from hell defend every single one . . . Young voters will be served ads claiming that the Democratic nominee is in bed with the fossil-fuel industry and won’t do anything on climate change. Health care sensitive swing voters will hear that our candidate is opposed to universal healthcare . . . Unbelievable claims — except that they aren’t unbelievable to everyone. In fact, the Trump campaign is already spending millions on these types of digital ads in core battleground states . . . We don’t have to match the Trump machine blow for blow, but we do have to unleash responses in such numbers and in so many mediums that his one huge presidential megaphone is matched not with volume . . . but with numbers.