Ignoring Donald Trump Conveys Weakness
Conceding to Trump's depiction of America conveys failure
If Republicans are poised to nominate Donald Trump for the presidency yet again—and it appears they are—the best news Democrats have had in a long while is the sudden glut of media emphasizing his petty-tyrannical ambitions.
The Atlantic dedicated its latest print issue to gaming out the how and the why of Trump’s agenda and the abuses of power he’s promised.
The New York Times has devoted regular A1 coverage to reporting out the plan Trump and his institutional allies on the far right are putting together to shock and awe the country with an early burst of authoritarian control.
Liz Cheney published a best-selling, tell-all book about Trump’s fascist inclinations and the Republican Party’s decision to pave the way for him.
At the fourth Republican primary debate, Chris Christie finally brought Trump’s cowardice, corruption, and unfitness for office home to a right-wing audience, and exposed the cravenness of the other Republican candidates, all of whom know Christie’s right but refuse to say so for careerist reasons.
These articles and critics paint an alarming picture, and it is right that they do so—but only insofar as Trump’s opponents respond by meeting the threat with commensurate toughness rather than by cowering. After all, which sounds more galvanizing:
“We’re not going to let him end American democracy!”
VS.
“Ack! He’s going to end American democracy!”
Why should we do him the favor of making him seem like the brave one, fully in command, as his enemies scurry for safety?
Unfortunately, Democrats have a different idea about all this: It’s not to panic, per se, but also not to stand up to him. It’s to simply pretend he does not exist.
“You’ve got to run for something and not against someone,” Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) advised at a gathering of Democratic governors.
“If I were in Biden’s shoes, I would not talk about Trump,” added Gov. Laura Kelly (D-KS). “I would let other people talk about Trump.”
I have news for them: The election is going to be about Donald Trump, and trying to wish him out of existence once again will work no better than it worked in 2019, or 2020, or 2021, or 2022, or 2023.
SNOWBALLS TO THE WALL
This is one of the worst zombie ideas shambling through Democratic politics: The public cares about other things more, the thinking goes, and besides, Trump wants his opponents down in the muck, so squaring off with him just gives him what he wants. The alternative is to float above the fray.
If they were right about the premises, that’d be the correct conclusion to draw. But they are wrong.
Most people despise Donald Trump, and dread his return. Trump also hates being confronted, hates having to answer for his lies and contradictions and failures. He loves having free rein over the information environment, because that’s how he spreads lies uncontested. One week of high-impact coverage of Trump’s dictatorial agenda sent the right into a tailspin of special pleading. So at pains are Republican propagandists to sweep the evidence of Trump’s dictatorial designs under the rug that Sean Hannity pleaded with Trump to disclaim his authoritarianism on live television. Trump wouldn’t do it, so Hannity cut to commercial.
Against this backdrop, House Speaker Mike Johnson revealed his plan to protect Capitol insurrectionists from apprehension, and his office had to do the world’s most unpersuasive cleanup job, because they recognize how toxic their election lies are to the broader public.
They don’t want the broader media to fixate on the stakes of Republican victory. Why should Dems oblige them by pivoting to the pet issues of red-state Democratic governors, whose particular circumstances happen to become more challenging when Trump predominates the news?
Democrats have already brushed off Trump’s vermin libel, but here we see why that was a mistake: The momentum that droplets need to become snowballs has been lost. The media is suddenly primed for Biden and other Democrats to stand and be counted, but they’re all tucked away in their crevasses where all anyone cares about is infrastructure.
THIS IS MY FIGHT GONG
At some deep level I know Biden understands that Beat Trump, Save Democracy is his central and most solemn obligation. He keeps coming back to it over the advice of his aides, and it’s pretty clear it keeps him up at night more than semiconductor manufacturing or insulin prices.
Unfortunately, as is often the case with Biden, his effort to communicate it came out in a bit of a garble.
“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running,” Biden said at a Boston fundraiser this week (he has reserved much of his recent commentary on Trump for off-camera fundraisers). I believe he meant to convey his belief that Trump is a danger to America, and that he feels duty bound to stop him. The way he phrased it conveys: I’m really tired and wish I could go home, but I guess I’m stuck here.
Not confidence inspiring. And to the extent that’s how he feels, we should note that he’s reaping the consequences of his party’s obsession with dropping the curtain on Trump, as if Trump didn’t have a mind of his own and will to spare.
They imagined Biden—too old for vigor and too cross-pressured to follow his instincts—could restore normalcy all on his own with a gentle demeanor, forgetting once again that the out party also has sway over the tenor of public life. Biden chose to test this theory, and right-wing aggressors filled the void. They’ve fomented chaos and disquiet and bad feelings everywhere they could for several years, often unopposed, and now people are blaming Biden for the shitty national mood.
To cap it all off, the same advisers who were leery of fighting the last war (which had not actually been won), and who believed Biden could make politics normal and boring again unilaterally, now say the bad feelings that flourished absent vigorous, patriotic pushback are Biden’s burden to bear.
Recognizing the risk of reinforcing Trump’s strongman image, Democratic strategist Dan Pfeiffer nevertheless counsels Democrats to concede that, under Biden, everyone is miserable. “Across the country, people are desperately looking for help. They are anxious and afraid for their financial security and personal safety. We have to show that Trump is too weak to help them; otherwise, his dictator schtick will appeal to the masses.”
Maybe it’s just me, but if I were a Republican, and the incumbent Democrats made a big point of acknowledging that people everywhere “are desperately looking for help,” I’d simply say, “yes, because you’ve failed them, and thus deserve to lose.”
Fortunately, people have more financial security now than they did under Trump. They have more jobs than they did under Trump. And they’re safer from crime and COVID-19 than they were under Trump. They’re also constantly assured that none of this is true. Apologetics aren’t necessary, but fighting is. It has been all along.
From the moment he lost the 2020 election, if not before, Trump has confronted us with a single proposition: that he, this bitter old disgrace of a man, is more durable and resolute than the whole American republic. It should be obvious that he’s wrong. But it’s not.
That Dan Pfeiffer quote brings me to the edge of weeping. May that man never step within 100 yards of another Democratic campaign. It's literally terrifying how much incompetence and spinelessness is rampant among the people on Team Democracy.
Thank you for plugging away at trying to shed light on a better approach.
This reminds me of how all the savvy political consultant types and conventional wisdom commentators thought how awful it was going to be when Biden gave his speech about threats to democracy in Philadelphia in summer 2022 and the Big Red Wave was going to swamp all of us because he would be too divisive, etc. etc. etc.