Reminder To Democrats: Donald Trump Is One Of America's Worst People
Joe Biden, by contrast, is pretty good
Once upon a time (about seven years ago) a Democratic Party critic whose identity would probably surprise you conceded to me that, whatever flaws leading American liberals might embody, Donald Trump is worse—a person, he said, who has “no redeeming qualities.”
That description has stuck with me all this time less because of its insight (tens of millions of people already felt the same way) than because of how durable it’s been. Given a four year term, and three more years out of power, Trump never once conducted himself in a way that might one day give his obituary writers material for a “to be sure” paragraph. (“To be sure, the paper towels he threw at hurricane victims were brand name…”)
When Hillary Clinton debated Trump in 2016, and was asked what if anything she admired about him, she referred to his offspring. “I respect his children," she said. "His children are incredibly able and devoted, and I think that says a lot about Donald.” But even this almost-backhanded compliment was wrong! His adult children are wretched egomaniacs, liars, and thieves. The only one who seems truly devoted to his father, Donald Trump, Jr., is the most degenerate and least capable. He’s also the one Trump himself holds in the greatest contempt.
Trump is just a bad man. The patriarch of a bad family. A person who came closest to demonstrating a trace of humanity not after any national tragedy, but when he lamented the regrettable-yet-necessary killing of Harambe.
It’s this irreducible thing about Trump that makes me so frustrated with the upper echelons of the Democratic Party. Beating a bad person in a popularity contest should be easy.
Trump would of course have millions of devotees no matter what. He’s a skilled con artist and a famous celebrity. A substantial portion of humanity apparently loves a good bully and lives to be servile. But mobilizing the greater millions who are on to his con and hate the way he treats people seems much easier than, say, beating a devoutly religious family man in the midst of a stalled-out economic recovery.
Scouring the news this week, I came away once again with the sense that the Trump opposition has grown fatalistic about Trump’s large and steady base of support, and flummoxed over how to organize against him given how badly Biden’s has frayed. So I thought it might be a good time to revisit the simple premise: Joe Biden is pretty good; Donald Trump is one of the worst people in American history.
ELEPHANT IN THE GLOOM
For his recently launched New Republic podcast, Greg Sargent interviewed Jim Prokopiac, a Democratic candidate running in a special election for a Pennsylvania state house district near Philadelphia.
Like most frontline candidates Prokopiac has decided or been advised not to dwell on Donald Trump. “To a certain extent their perception is already baked in,” he said. “I’ve had people who in previous elections—Democrats—who have said, ‘You know what, lay off the Trump stuff. We already have our opinion on Trump, you’re not changing us. Tell us what you’re going to do.’ And so I think to a certain extent some of that’s baked in, and we can say all we want about what’s going on and for more blue-collar people, they already have their opinion.”
Naturally I hope Prokopiac wins. And a win is a win even if it doesn’t come about as a referendum on Trump. But this strikes me as a naive way to think about human behavior, and about how persuasion works.
If a partisan Democrat doesn’t want to talk about Trump, fine—but they’re already a partisan Democrat! If they need any motivation at all it’s simply to remember to vote, and reminding them that we’re in a twilight struggle for American democracy will galvanize them at least as much as the details of a pension reform plan.
If a registered, Trump-curious Democrat said “lay off the Trump stuff, I already have an opinion on Trump,” I might interpret it as the pleading of a person who’s trying to avoid the torment of cognitive dissonance. They like Trump even though they know they shouldn’t. I would want to make sure that person knew both recent revelations about Trump, and the degree to which civil and criminal fraud is at the heart of all of his legal troubles. If he’ll defraud voters and charity donors, what makes you think he doesn’t see you as a mark as well?
If a pro-Trump Republican, festooned head to toe in MAGA gear, said “lay off the Trump stuff, I already have an opinion on Trump,” I probably wouldn’t sweat it. That’s a partisan, pro-Trump Republican! But I would still try to tickle their lizard brain, at least until I heard the click of a shotgun—you’re being manipulated by a con man, don’t you want to take your independence back? You’re stronger than to fall for the false promises of a lying crook.
Democrats and liberal elites are paralyzed by this idea that Trump sentiment is “baked in.” But nothing in politics is baked in. You can’t add more cocoa powder to a baked cupcake, but you can always change the salience and public awareness of issues with effort. Three years ago, liberals believed Trump’s unique corruption was “baked in,” but now between him and Biden it’s much closer to a wash. How did that happen? It happened because conservatives understand nothing is fixed, and so they set about trying to rehabilitate Trump and slime Biden. So far they’ve been quite successful.
The same thing can work in reverse. Persuasion is not just about getting people from zero knowledge to partial or full knowledge of Trump’s corruption. It’s getting them to dwell on things they already know. At an individual level, that can make the difference between a voter and an abstainer; at a herd level, increasing the salience of derogatory information can demoralize large groups. If James Comey had made his final comments about Hillary Clinton’s emails in September 2016, and the Access Hollywood tape had surfaced in late October, rather than the other way around, Clinton would’ve won.
And at the end of the day, this job should be easier for Democrats than Republicans. They have much more real, verifiable material to work with because Joe Biden is pretty good, but Donald Trump is one of the worst people in American history.
NO SUGAR-COATTAILING IT
There are obviously good reasons (or at least fairly fixed ones) progressives might not be enthused about another Biden presidency. But Biden at least offsets his demerits with successes.
People who hoped electing Biden would make a chastened America receptive to policy revolution, or at least make American politics feel less distressing, will probably never upload Dark Brandon avatars or think of him as a ballast in turbulent waters. But they can be reminded that their efforts to help him beat Trump have been rewarded.
Depending on who they are, they might benefit from knowing or being reminded of Biden’s policy laundry list, or at least individual elements of it. Though the burning anger they felt when they first heard Trump say “grab ‘em by the pussy” (or when Trump tried to repeal Obamacare or when he lied about the pandemic, then encouraged people to inject bleach into their veins) may have faded a bit, it it should not be very hard to rekindle.
Yet leading Democrats have shown little interest in, for instance, the E. Jean Carroll verdict—that Trump owes one of his rape victims nearly $90 million because he serially defamed her after she came forward. To the frustration of progressive activists across the country, they are not saying much about his corruption of the judiciary, or about how his allies on the bench are now helping him evade justice. But homing in on these scandals would help them communicate something bracing: that re-electing Joe Biden is the only way to pry loose the right wing stranglehold on the judiciary.
Absent these kinds of clarifying confrontations, reminders that the election really will pit good vs. evil, organizers have to look elsewhere for ways to mobilize grassroots volunteers.
Crooked Media will reportedly focus its political action on local races, abortion ballot initiatives, and other progressive referenda rather than on the make-or-break presidential election. I am not second guessing this decision. If there were tons of enthusiasm for Biden in the millennial grassroots, I don’t think operations like Vote Save America would need to retool around what’s ultimately a reverse-coattails strategy. But that’s just to say: it’s indicative of a huge problem, including around an issue that should be a mobilization and persuasion force multiplier.
This gets a little complicated, but I think it’s important: As a theoretical matter, mobilizing people to support pro-choice ballot initiatives during a presidential election is a way of denationalizing the abortion issue. Foregrounding the ballot measures could thus (again, theoretically) undermine Democratic candidates including Biden by giving cross-pressured pro-choice voters an alternative to voting blue. Over the past decade, voters in many different kinds of states have routinely adopted progressive ballot measures in elections that Republican candidates won on the same ticket.
Now there are layers to this (like I said, a little complicated). In 2022, an abortion-rights ballot initiative in Michigan was no impediment to Gretchen Whitmer, whose GOP opponent Tudor Dixon even appealed directly to pro-choice voters: “You can vote for Gretchen Whitmer’s abortion agenda & still vote against her.” And of course, these ballot initiatives are still very important. If Donald Trump wins the election, he’ll likely have a trifecta in Washington—but not necessarily. He could win the presidency while Republicans lose the House, which would allow Democrats to block a national abortion ban. And in that case these ballot initiatives will serve as critical firewalls.
But swing voters and demoralized progressives alike need to hear from leaders who can communicate Biden’s place in all this. He’s the only surefire thing standing in Trump’s way, because a ballot initiative can’t save anyone from a national abortion ban that will supersede state law.
I outlined this piece in my head early in the week after I saw a bunch of polls that showed Joe Biden losing swing states pretty badly to Donald Trump. By Thursday, different polls (particularly Quinnipiac) had boosted my morale. My strong suspicion is that millions of American liberals (including ones like me who know to ignore individual polls and focus on averages) have been experiencing similar swings between despair and determination. I prize my equanimity, but I’m afraid this is just how it’s going to go between now and the election—unless and until the race stabilizes and a clear frontrunner emerges.
But one thing that would help is a bit more confidence among leading Democrats in the simple truth that Joe Biden is good, while Donald Trump is one of the worst people in America. It’ll be easier to elect Democrats adhering to that Manichean creed than with appeals that abstract away the top of the ticket on the theory that people’s views are set in stone.
For me, and for many other Democrats I know, Biden’s seeming indifference to the horrible suffering of Palestinian civilians is his largest Achilles heel. His position on Israel is no better than Trump’s, and the campaign’s premise that detractors on genocide in Palestine will come back into the fold because they have nowhere else to go is simply infuriating. Many Democratic constituencies are tired of being taken for granted, and abhor being lectured by the likes of Nancy Pelosi, whose ties to AIPAC and other pro-Israeli financiers have compromised her moral standing on the issue. Many in the elite media continue to underplay the importance of this issue, leaving them perplexed why Democrats are not simply rallying behind Biden. Sound familiar?
Brian, your column has touched on the looming disaster for this election. All voters of sane mind have to row together in the same direction toward the greater good, to keep our canoe of liberty from falling over the cataract maw of tfg’s possible victory to our sure deaths in the rocky, boiling waters below.
We’re in the battle of our lives to save democracy, & don’t have the luxury of people using protest votes to pound home their anger about middling progress on various issues like Israel’s genocide, homo sapien’s genocide on all other beings/Earth, etc. We instead need to stave off the end of life as we know it, should tfg win by electoral college manipulation (via gerrymandering/voter-suppression/disinformation/misinformation/foreign-government-interference/etc.).
Because a victorious tfg will destroy democracy and ape his dictators pals like Putin, Xi, Orban…he’ll let them subsume the world as long as they pat him on the head. “Nice imbecile. Now go chew on your bone.”