A New Mantra for Democrats:

Drain the Swamp

"Drain the swamp. Drain the swamp in Washington D.C." Those were Donald Trump's words at a rally in North Carolina on October 26th. And according to Mr. Trump, those words are now "trending all over the world." He's right. The simple, evocative and easily hash-tag-able phrase "Drain the Swamp" took off on social media and beyond, and it's completely attributable to Trump's campaign.

And now "Drain the Swamp" is the strongest phrase in the Democrats' arsenal.

Donald Trump's modus operandi is this: enrich himself. For him, it is the absolute end and there are few things he won't do or people he won't harm in pursuit of said enrichment. It's that bottomless desire to increase his worth before all else that will make the Trump Administration the greatest and most foul swamp Americans have ever seen.

If you need evidence, look to Trump's history.

Donald Trump likely went at least 18 years without paying federal income taxes. That's enriching himself on the backs of...well, everyone who does pay taxes. Oh, and to the great cost those who could benefit greatly from federal tax dollars, such as American Marines dying of upper body wounds in Iraq because they had inadequate body armor.

A similar level of unabashed selfishness is found nearly anywhere you look in Trump's history. Take, for example, Donald Trump's venture into the gambling industry with his Taj Mahal Casino in New Jersey. While the company was taking enormous losses and stockholders were losing hundreds of millions of dollars, Trump was scraping the bottom of the barrel to extract money for himself. This was in the same period, mind you, that Trump was stiffing contractors, such as painters and plumbers, who had completed work for his company.

The Trump Foundation — ostensibly a charitable organization — provides further evidence of Trump's willingness to enrich himself at everyone else's expense. This article by investigative journalist David Farenthold offers a complete catalogue of Trump's self-giving. Here are just two highlights:

"New findings, for instance, show that the Trump Foundation's largest-ever gift — $264,631 — was used to renovate a fountain outside the windows of Trump's Plaza Hotel."

"Its smallest-ever gift, for $7, was paid to the Boy Scouts in 1989, at a time when it cost $7 to register a new Scout. Trump's oldest son was 11 at the time. Trump did not respond to a question about whether the money was paid to register him."

And how about when Donald used the Trump Foundation to make illegal political donations?

If Trump's past is any indicator, he's poised to turn Washington into exactly the swamp he claims to want to drain. And his past is an indicator.

Already we are seeing the evidence of the kinds of patronage and nepotism that will fuel the Trump Administration. Instead of surrounding himself with top advisors who will make up for Trump's policy deficiencies, the President-elect is opting for those with non-policy backgrounds, like his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Like Trump, Kushner comes from the real estate world and will bring untold conflicts of interest to the White House. And how is Kushner operating? His first moves have been aimed at firing the hires of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (himself implicated in foul play), which many speculate is retribution for the fact that Christie, as an attorney, prosecuted Jared Kushner's father, Charles Kushner, on corruption charges. It's hard to call such a tangled web of family, business, and political interests "draining the swamp."

In other respects, the swamp is also not being drained. Much of Trump's transition team has been composed of lobbyists, despite internal guidelines from the campaign not to hire lobbyists. In the days after the election Trump's team has made it clear that they cannot even abide by the low standards they've set for themselves. (Once the story was picked up by the media, the Trump team did quickly go on to fire these lobbyists.) This goes beyond just his transition team, though; a number of those in consideration for cabinet level appointments in the Trump administration come fresh from the lobbying world.

The Democrats had enormous trouble with messaging over the course of the 2016 election. Trump, on the other hand, had no such problem. That's why it's a smart move for Democrats to borrow Trump's own effective rhetoric of #DrainTheSwamp and use it against him relentlessly over the next four or eight years.

Trump's propensity for self-dealing will ensure that Washington will be swampier than ever, and Democrats have a golden opportunity in "Drain the Swamp" to remind Americans every single day that Donald Trump is embodying precisely the sort of murkiness that he would put an end to.

#DrainTheSwamp.