How Trump’s Detestability Lures Democrats Into Repeating Mistakes

They keep winning because voters hate Trump—they keep telling themselves otherwise

(Photo by Olivier Douliery - Pool/Getty Images)

I was struggling a bit with how to tee up this essay, but then

Matthew Yglesias

grabbed my attention with an insight from an anonymous source in Trump world. 

“We’re going to win because our message is Dems wants [sic] to sacrifice the interests of middle class Americans to benefit refugees, Ukrainians, criminals, and climate fanatics and it will work because we both know it’s true — Biden won’t even deny it.”

Let’s stipulate three things quickly:

1. None of the things this person said is actually true, not that anyone in Trump world cares. There is no zero-sum conflict between funding the Ukrainian resistance and advancing the interests of the American middle class; even if there were, Biden has prioritized middle-class interests over every other issue area by at least an order of magnitude, to the tune of trillions of dollars (in pandemic relief, infrastructure spending, energy investment, health-care savings) to say nothing of the unfinished business of Build Back Better, his scrutiny of monopolists, his moral and regulatory support for unions. It has summed to real wage growth, record-low unemployment, and a labor-action revival.

2. It’s unclear whether any campaign with Trump at the helm can settle on anything like a “message”—at least one that isn’t “the last election was rigged and stolen and everything else is a witch hunt!” And even if Republicans got on the same page with a more substantive appeal, their unifying obsession with regressive tax cuts for the rich ties their shoelaces together—there’s no middle-class agenda over there!

3. I don’t actually think it’s a difficult allegation to rebut or that Biden would leave it unchallenged. We’re America! Our people come first, but we’re the wealthiest most powerful nation in the world and when the meek need help our calling is to be a beacon of hope for them. Or whatever. Some ad writer can finesse that.

Despite these three caveats, my initial response was honestly to be pretty alarmed. It has the hallmarks of an effective attack line. And in the current political-media climate of relentless negativity about an empirically strong economy (which has bled into a larger climate of public opinion) it could be potent. People think the economy is bad, now here come Republicans to explain why Democrats with their shitty values made it that way. 

If that worries you, good. It should. I hope it worries Democrats, too. But I also hope they think about why the attack feels resonant. What about it might put people off Joe Biden and his party? 

Yes, it works on some level as an appeal to racists and xenophobes. But if that’s all it was, it’d be a losing message. At a glance, it looks like some kind of kitchen-table appeal to middle-class voters but notice there’s no actual economic appeal there, just a smear. And you can tell that the real political value isn’t economic because a factual rejoinder wouldn’t really soften the blow. Democrats could scream “here are the numbers and policies that prove this charge is false” till their capillaries burst and it would get them nowhere. There are no referees. 

No, it resonates outside the basket of deplorables because it implies that Democrats are compromised. They aren’t working for the American public, but on behalf of their favorite outsiders and derelicts. Strip away the racial and ethnic dogwhistles and you have the same basic line of attack Republicans used to coast on when they were still a majority party: Democrats are just doing favors for special interests! 

When you realize it doesn’t operate on a wonkish level, but on the level of ethics and tribes and lizard brains, you might start to wonder why Democrats are so taken with the hamster wheel of literal and quantitative appeals. A favorite question of mine!

I think the answer is something like this: 

Democrats have done pretty well in recent elections—great in 2018, decent in 2020 and 2022, when they beat historic expectations by fighting a midterm to a draw. Those victories have allowed party leaders to stand in place and reject calls for rethinking their political methods—their approach is working, after all! But what’s really going on is that the anti-Trump grassroots is really motivated. It turns out to vote, donates money, and fights Trumpism no matter what Democratic officialdom says or does. 

And the main concern critics like me have is that the returns of these organic anti-Trump efforts will diminish if and as Democrats follow the advice of the incumbent strategists who tell them to change the topic from Donald Trump. There could be a great symbiosis between the party and the anti-Trump grassroots, but if memories fade, and Democrats contribute to the collective forgetting, the political potential of anti-Trumpism will be squandered.

There is no more comically compromised politician in American history than Donald Trump, and no more venal party than the one that has molded itself around him.

And as a result, Donald Trump is widely reviled. Not “unpopular.” Joe Biden is unpopular, Barack Obama was usually unpopular. Trump is loathed by more than half the country. Nearly all Americans who disapprove of Trump say they disapprove strongly. He and his repulsive coterie of imitators should be like a cold-fusion machine for Democratic political success. 

But election after election, Democrats quickly unlearn who voters keep telling us they hate (Trump and his hand-picked down-ballot candidates) and who they can accept (Democrats, yes, but also just about any Republican who can claim nominal distance from MAGA). Trump is the most detestable; the more closely associated Republicans are with him, the worse they do; a drumbeat politics of emphasizing Trump and Republican fealty to him would thus be perilous for the GOP.

But, for instance, here’s the advice Biden’s getting from veteran Democratic pollster Joel Benenson mediated through the New York Times.

By focusing on bipartisanship and doing less name calling about MAGA and the right, he would not just recite his accomplishments; he would bring focus to what government can do for the American people when both sides work together….

One thing Mr. Biden should stop talking about: Mr. Trump. It’s tempting. It’s the red meat his base wants. But it’s not the job. The months of Republican debates and headlines about court cases against the former president will inflict damage without Mr. Biden having to say a word.

Emphasis added. The Trump problem will take care of itself. The media will see to it.

Democrats are inundated with data that’s framed to suggest boilerplate economic talking points, rather than rigid anti-Trumpism are the key to salvaging the 2024 election. 

And that kind of thinking clouds what should be clear and simple insights.

When it looked like Republicans might coalesce around Jim Jordan for the speakership the DCCC provided messaging guidance to House Democrats.

Jordan Memo

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The memo has something for everybody, so it’d be wrong to say it ignores Donald Trump, or the insurrection, or Jim Jordan’s cover up of a serial sex-abuse scandal. That stuff is in there. But most of it is buried in such observations as “Jim Jordan is one of the least bipartisan members of Congress.”

Check your own intuition: is the main problem with Jim Jordan that he (like so many other Republicans) is a partisan? That he has a history of opposing Medicare and Social Security? Or is it that he helped a fellow coach cover up his serial molestation of college wrestlers, then became an insurrectionist for Donald Trump? Which attack do you think the Republicans who ultimately voted down Jordan’s speakership fear more?

This is why I’m always at pains to get Democrats spun up about Republican corruption scandals. As a first-order concern, the public hates corruption. Voters hate politicians whom they believe to be crooked, they want to throw the bums out because the bums are corrupt. But the second order concern is why: They hate corrupt politicians because those politicians only look out for themselves and their buddies, and they think they’re getting one over on us.

That makes anti-corruption politics an appeal to the center, and Republican corruption a gift to the Democratic Party. Donald Trump actually intends to sacrifice middle-class interests to favored parties, and his favored parties lack any sympathetic qualities. They aren’t refugees, or Ukrainians struggling for independence, or victims of police abuse, or young Americans who fear the future they stand to inherit. They’re right-wing billionaires, January 6 rioters, Vladimir Putin, and the Saudi royals. 

In theory, it’s a remarkable bounty. In practice, Democrats tend to shrug it all off, or assume it “will inflict damage without Mr. Biden having to say a word,” freeing him to focus on things like bipartisanship that really leave voters atingle. 

I honestly think most Americans if asked on the street could not provide a correct definition of the word “bipartisan,” and that the ones who could aren’t low-information swing voters. By contrast, all but the greediest hate corruption, and everyone knows what a crook is.