How Politicians Get Their Bad Ideas
It's almost always from people who think they're savvier than the rubes who vote.
I alluded Wednesday to a schism in Democratic ranks over how to attack Trump for tariffing and menacing the United States into economic collapse.
Democrats have demonstrated broad unity of opposition to Trump’s trade war over the past several days, but beneath the surface there is some division. Most Democrats have taken a firm and direct line, blaming Trump outright for obliterating trillions of dollars in wealth and placing the U.S. on course for recession or worse. But some Democrats—a hodgepodge of labor progressives and officials representing blue-collar states and districts—have tempered their critiques with caveats about how protectionist trade policy can be wise if implemented carefully, to advance specific goals.
The substantive difference here is, for most purposes, larger than the political one. Sharper is better, but there’s simply no question within Washington and far beyond that Democrats are aligned against Trump’s trade war, which Republicans in Congress have fully enabled. What’s missing, if anything and as usual, is tactical creativity and aggression to end the trade war, rather than rhetorical sharpness. Trump’s tariffs, his erratic conduct, and his faithless abuse of trading partners, frankly threaten to transform the U.S. into a wasting backwater; the only cure for this disease is removing Trump from office; but Democrats are scared to utter the word, let alone to lay out the logic in a way that clarifies the stakes of this crisis, and why sidelining or impeaching him is so essential.
But the parsing of rhetoric is overblown, in my estimation, by people with big dogs in the fight over whether Democrats as a party should embrace freer trade, or whether they should maintain an openness to limited protectionist measures. Really, it’s an ongoing fight over whether Barack Obama or Joe Biden was the bestest liberal1.
See Jonathan Chait here and Eric Levitz here among others.
In his recent conversation with
, Hakeem Jeffries attributes these intraparty differences to the trade unions and their ideological allies.[T]he Trump tariffs are reckless and they’re doing great damage to the economy. They are raising costs for everyday Americans—the largest tax increase in more than 50 years—and we are strongly opposed to it. Now, some of our colleagues and friends in organized labor—such as the United Auto Workers, the Steelworkers, and others who we have worked with on a whole host of other issues—do have a different perspective in terms of the use of tariffs: that targeted tariffs, in some instances where you actually do have economic cheating occurring by China or others, can be used as a strategy to make sure that American jobs and economic growth is more competitive. And that’s fine. That’s a discussion that can be had when we are in a period of actually being able to debate policy in an enlightened way.
That’s not this moment.
To an almost obvious degree, pro-union, pro-protectionist sentiment in the Democratic Party stems from its effort to appeal to workers and the labor movement.
But that doesn’t answer the question, implicit in
’s comment here, of why Democrats feel they have to genuflect to unions in this moment. Why they can’t just say, “‘This is insane; he’ll kill us all, including your 401k; and he’ll make inflation worse than it’s ever been.’ End of message. It’s really not complicated. You can say that very easily without anyone thinking you’re Joe NAFTA”?It’s a good question, and the answer, as I argued in Politix this week, is Democratic consultants and in-house strategists.
Of course consultants don’t develop ideas and positions about trade and tariffs or anything else on their own. But they’re the reason Democrats representing states from Michigan to Arizona sound so similar—their opposition clear, but with caveats.
“Tariffs only work when they’re used strategically,” cautioned Elissa Slotkin.
“Our tariff and trade policy should bring manufacturing back to the U.S., support the working class, and hold countries accountable for unfair trade practices—not enrich billionaires at the expense of hardworking Americans," said Ruben Gallego.
These statements aren’t similarly hedged because Slotkin and Gallego have the same constituencies or union contacts. It’s because they’re newly elected frontline members leaning heavily on strategists. And the strategists’ job is to survey the landscape—look at polling and interest group positions and the rest of the political field—and then give their clients (Democratic governors, Democrats in Congress) the lowest-risk jumble of words required to please all audiences.
They carry a mental composite in their heads, drawn from stereotype, of the cross-pressured swing-voter, and then try not to offend that person. It is a poor method, and sometimes it’s disastrous.
WHITMER? HARDLY KNEW ‘ER!
The Slotkin and Gallego statements are fine, caveats and all. Yes, they carry the hallmarks of Democratic strategists ticking all the boxes—anti-Trump? Check! Pro-labor? Check! Not at the expense of America’s working families? Check!—but so what?
In other instances, though, the method goes badly awry.
Consider Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom.
It’s not a stretch to say that Whitmer may have cut her own political career short by appearing with Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday. She melted into the backdrop as he signed fascistic executive orders instructing the Department of Justice to investigate two of his own first-term officials.
A spokesperson later claimed Whitmer didn’t know she’d get pulled in to the Oval Office, and I have no reason to doubt that.
But on the most generous reading, it means she somehow still doesn’t understand how Trump manipulates and exploits people.
A more cynical reading is that she was engaged in some combination of kissing up to Trump to protect Michigan’s interests, and kissing up to swing voters who might one day elect her president. That morning, without endorsing Trump’s policy per se, she delivered a policy speech in Washington aimed at finding common ground with him. “[L]et’s usher in, as President Trump says, a ‘golden age’ of American manufacturing.”
As a reminder, five years ago, Trump tried to scapegoat Whitmer for his own failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He cheered on the armed mob that swarmed the Michigan state capitol and inspired a plot to kidnap her. I don’t think the fiduciary obligations of public service requires a governor to pretend a man like Trump can be dealt with. Even if he hadn’t nearly gotten her killed, she could just look to Columbia University and various corporate law firms and see that this is an approach Trump will exploit to bleed her dry.
But if we could peek behind the scenes, I suspect we’d find that this idea was hatched up in consultation with advisers who thought it would be a savvy move. Swing voters pandered to? Check! Michiganders advocated for? Check! It’s stupid. Far worse than if Whitmer had simply expressed what I imagine are her true feelings about Trump and his tariffs and the way he comports himself.
Likewise, I suspect Newsom’s advisers sold him on launching a podcast with an initial conceit along the lines of: “Trump loyalists: you gotta hand it to ‘em.” Within one episode, his favorability ratings dropped 10 percent.
THE LAMB AND THE CROW
The Trump tariff crisis has trade on everyone’s mind. But the dynamics I’m describing here are generalizable. They’re the reason Democrats did such a poor job from 2019-2024 of turning Trump’s history-warping corruption into a bigger liability for him and the party. And they’re why history is repeating itself.
Jason Crow has been a good House Democrat, and showed genuine bravery on January 6, 2021.
But now he’s co-chair of candidate recruitment for House Democrats and he’s reading from the same playbook as every Democratic leader in the Trump era.
“We just can’t be the anti-Trump party,” he said. “That’s not to say we don’t call him out and hold him accountable but talking more about our positive agenda and what it is we stand for is really important.”
When Dave Weigel asked him whether ‘calling Trump out’ meant “running on investigations and anti-corruption,” Crow answered, “No, I don’t think so.”
I don’t talk a lot about investigations and congressional oversight, right? I mean that’s something that people within the DC bubble talk mostly about. You know, regular Americans are not thinking about that. People back home, they want someone who’s gonna be focused on their lives and their issues and what they’re trying to do to achieve the American dream. You don’t have to beat people over the head with the fact that Donald Trump is incompetent and erratic and largely brings chaos to every situation he’s in. People see it, and we can call it out, and then you rapidly pivot to—and this is our solution, this is how we’re gonna address it.
This is all wrong. And it reflects a real, familiar failure of imagination. I’ve watched Republicans ride things “people in the DC bubble talk about” to victory in three history-changing elections in just the past decade. “People back home” are not without real passions and fascinations—they would absolutely respond well to promises of real accountability right now.
Democrats condescend to voters when they act as if they’re walking stomachs who care only about having extra money in their bank accounts once their essentials are covered. About “solutions,” rather than holding the people responsible for big problems accountable. Voters are human just like us. They find drama and scandal compelling; it infuriates them. How does Crow think median voters would react if they knew Trump tanked their 401ks so his buddies could buy the dip just in time for him to move markets again? Do we really think those voters wouldn’t cheer on Democrats promising to get to the bottom of it?
Compare Crow to his former colleague, Conor Lamb
Democrats are limited in some ways. They have no compulsory power. It leaves them a bit frustrated at times. But there’s literally nothing stopping them from placing the onus on Republicans to prove they haven’t traded on Trump’s market crash. One ambitious Democrat could round up as many colleagues as possible to enter their April trading histories into the record, and create the expectation that all members should do this to prove their innocence. If some Republicans were to follow suit, the ones who concealed their records would indict themselves. If they bent to the pressure, all eyes would turn to administration officials to show clean hands. If they aligned as a bloc to refuse to disclose anything, that’d be a coverup of criminal wrongdoing in the White House.
These are the kinds of ideas that well to the surface when you set aside the preconceived notion that the average American is a hayseed. When you ignore people who think they’re savvier than the rubes who vote—the main source of the Democrats’ worst political ideas.
Abstracted from economic theory, it’s actually a tough question. I think it’s almost entirely situational. Obama inherited an economy in which demand had been utterly destroyed, but industries other than finance itself were still intact across the globe. Biden inherited a country with recovering demand, but a huge supply problem, underscoring important ways global trade leaves us vulnerable to unpredictable events and single points of failure. Biden’s economy was stronger in almost every way, but Obama who won re-election, and Biden…did not. I think that’s attributable almost entirely to Biden’s weaknesses as a politician, which were created and exacerbated by his age. But your mileage may vary.
Great post. I have been repeatedly irked by these rhetorical pivots from Dems lately. It looks like a panicked default to the "turn the page/looking forward not backward" messaging that failed last time around, or more bluntly it looks like cowardice. And it's especially maddening because real and sustained accountability is the only way we're going to build something durable, something that's less susceptible to the 2 and 4 year cycles of obstruction and theater the GOP always uses when they're out of power.
I don't want to vote for anyone who isn't willing to scour as much rot as they can, and shine a light on what's left. It's the only way we'll get past this godforsaken stupid chapter of our history with anything left to build on. I don't see how some of our "leaders" don't see it. I guess they're still waiting for the fever to break.
This is exactly the analysis Democrats need to hear. The problem isn’t that voters are too dumb or apathetic—it’s that too many Democrats treat them that way. Brian nails the core issue: bland, consultant-driven messaging that fears clarity more than failure. Voters respond to boldness, to moral stakes, to someone who actually gives a damn. Enough triangulation. Enough “both sides” hand-wringing. The path forward isn’t safer messaging—it’s sharper messaging rooted in truth and courage. If Democrats want to win, they need to stop fearing their own shadow and start trusting voters to recognize—and reward—real leadership. Bravo.