He was not the only one in the vast, well-heeled infrastructure that funds the Democratic Party and progressive movement to be thinking ahead. But as is Brock’s habit, his ambitions tended to be more sweeping. For years, he has employed eight researchers whose only job was to dig up dirt and impugn the motives of Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists who have endeavored to remake much of the conservative movement. Now Brock decided, once again, that he wanted to be more like those he had railed against. “Donald Trump famously threw out the political rulebook,” he wrote, in the prepared remarks for his donors. “If we are to succeed in this period, we Democrats must suspend the normal rules of politics as well.”