Who will get the blame? Who will "win" the message war?
Trump has a strong message, but Democrats have a Trump card.
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| Trump: Democrats like illegal immigrants to you. |
Trump is getting his message out: it is all the fault of the Democrats, and for the politically worst of reasons. It is the "Schumer Shutdown", Trump says. And they are doing it because they are dedicated to helping "illegal immigrants."
Trump is positioning Democrats in the role of protecting others, not protecting voters. Some 65% of voters say they favor allowing DACA children to be able to stay in the US, but this is an appeal to American generosity, not American voter personal self interest.
This is dangerous for Democrats for two reasons. It continues the meme that Trump is fighting to protect us, Americans, while Democrats are the soft hearted generous party that places the interests of foreigners above ourselves. Moreover, it confuses and muddles the big message of Trump incompetence and chaos. They have stepped on that story. Worse, they have given opportunity for an alternative explanation for the chaos.
The avalanche of news coming out of the White House had a simple focus: Trump was a screwup. The Fire and Fury revelations, the Bannon firing, the Meuller investigation, "shithole", the mental illness story, the payoff to the porn start, etc., all together created a simple story: Trump was the bull in a china shop, and it was all about Trump. Trump knows how to deflect. He points the blame elsewhere.
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| Trump: Give me operating majorities |
There is a new story of government dysfunction: the Senate partisanship created gridlock. Maybe Trump isn't the problem after all. Maybe Trump is the victim, not the cause. The big Democratic message had been that we needed to elect Democrats to put a brake on Trump, thereby restoring good government.. The shutdown invites an opposite message: that Trump needs even bigger majorities so that he can finally overcome the gridlock, get things done, thus restoring good government..
Will the Trump message work? Will Trump "win" the message war?
Trump has a problem, and it is Trump's very nature. Trump wants to be the center of attention, and Trump likes to make news. Trump is positioning himself today as the victim with Schumer driving the agenda, but that isn't who Trump will be comfortable being. Trump will stay on center stage. He can vigorously sell any message, except one: that the story isn't all about Trump.
3 comments:
New York Times (https://t.co/28AAD1oHQ): Democrats hope voters will quickly forget their "unmistakably perilous ... strong-armed move to protect undocumented immigrants". Indeed, we are counting on that passage of time until the midterms.
Unfortunately, it's not as simple that. The shutdown drama is not over, it has just begun. Indeed we may see shutdowns plural. Democrats can dig this electoral trap much deeper still. Yesterday's CNN poll says it all: 42% of Democrats and 57% of independents say DACA is not worth the shutdown. (https://t.co/M96q1FrepM).
As we double down on our immigration-fueled 2016 loss, we are positioning ourselves once again "to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory". We are proving very adept at that irony.
I have been relieved to see the narrative amongst some analysts shift from the mental illness/dementia themes to the lazy to the point of incompetence themes best illustrated by the meeting in which Cotton and Perdue overrode him the presence of Schumer and Graham. Lazy leading to incompetence is to my thinking a damnable and demonstrable accusation.
Funding the government requires passing a budget. The GOP had a year to do so and let it go down to the last hours. Never before has a party controlled both houses of Congress and the White House and failed to get a budget passed. The GOP cannot govern. Blaming anyone on the last day ignores the ineptitude of this unholy GOP alliance with the Vulgar Little Man.
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