Trump is running against a caricature of Stalin, Mao, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders.
We saw it last night at Mt. Rushmore and we see it in his new TV ads.
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| Trump's poster boy |
Trump has a One-Two punch.
Step one is describing Biden as weak and a puppet unable to stop extremists in the political left. Step two is describing those extremists with images of mob violence, leftist intolerance, and anti-White sentiment. Trump won't run against Biden himself, not directly. He will run against Biden's manipulators and allies.
Both steps are underway. Trump makes constant reference to Biden as senile. These two ads shape the idea that our lingering idea of Biden as a moderate is irrelevant. Biden has changed:
Click: Clearly Diminished and
Click: Diminished and Weak
Step Two is defining the enemy. It is a war between good and bad, people who respect an America whose history includes maybe some unfortunate things, way back, and people who hate America because they think everything is about race ,and they focus on that, and then attack good, honest, patriotic, normal Americans.
At Mt. Rushmore Trump condemned "far left fascism." He condemned "cancel culture." He condemned the "left wing cultural revolution" and the "totalitarianism" of stifling and shaming disagreement. He condemned athletes who take a knee during the National Anthem.
Click: Clearly Diminished and
Click: Diminished and Weak
Step Two is defining the enemy. It is a war between good and bad, people who respect an America whose history includes maybe some unfortunate things, way back, and people who hate America because they think everything is about race ,and they focus on that, and then attack good, honest, patriotic, normal Americans.
At Mt. Rushmore Trump condemned "far left fascism." He condemned "cancel culture." He condemned the "left wing cultural revolution" and the "totalitarianism" of stifling and shaming disagreement. He condemned athletes who take a knee during the National Anthem.
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| Looter, in Trump ad |
"This monument will never be desecrated. These heroes will never be defaced. Their legacy will never, ever be destroyed. Their achievements will never be forgotten. And Mount Rushmore will stand forever as an eternal tribute to our forefathers and to our freedom."
Trump creates a picture: Democrats are a mash up of vandals, looters, arsonists, home invaders, anarchists, anti-White racists, Stalin, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Ilhan Omar, AOC, and Bernie Sanders. Democrats are out to destroy American heritage, destroy public safety by de-funding the police, destroy the economy, and they are doing so because they hate White people and their role in America's history. They are attacking you, you good Americans. Beware!
The irony is that Biden is criticized from the left because none of these things are true about Biden himself. His nomination was a rejection of the progressive left. Biden represents the establishment center left. The engaged progressive left knows it; the unengaged swing voters may not.
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| Trump theme: lawless Biden |
This ad by Trump goes right to the fear that the left is dangerous. Biden promptly spoke out against the police being de-funded, but no matter, since, after all, Biden is defined as a puppet of stronger, more articulate, voices on the left.
Click: 911 is closed. You are in danger.
Democrats may have watched Trump last night and thought he was attacking people who have nothing to do with Biden. But Biden whispers in a tornado. Trump is defining Biden, with his bigger, bolder megaphone.
In this media environment Biden needs big, bold, unmistakable action to define himself away from that caricature. He won't want to do it. Biden is trying to make nice with progressive voters who consider him a mere reformer, at best, and surely no Bernie Sanders. Parsing policy and message with the political left creates a minefield for Biden. He will want to tiptoe.
The public will notice he is tiptoeing, not denouncing. Trump will make sure of that.
2 comments:
Thanks for the recap. Didn't watch.
Sounds like a pivot from the immigration BS to a more inclusive "bad white people, too" BS. Fear mongering 101.
All Morons Matter.
I was thinking in more general terms about the Regressive base and the idea that it has a lot to do with the mistaken idea that that being nice is for chumps and the meanest kid in the schoolyard, the bully, is the role model for success. Now, this is totally wrong; the most successful people in our culture whether business or entertainment are almost exclusively gentle, thoughtful, and considerate. This is how one wins in a civilized society. You couldn't find a better example of this than Barack Obama.
Trump, and his followers including the Republican party, do not demonstrate these characteristics, in fact the opposite. However much success they achieve it's often through unethical and immoral means, and at some level I think they know it, hence the defensiveness and preemptive attacks. In this way the culture war is one sided; generally, Regressive elements in the media and elsewhere are ignored and relegated to the sidelines. By the way, I have doubts that Trump really cares about winning the election. Rather, he is grooming a solid base for a future media empire, less Putin and more Rupert Murdoch.
I don't watch Trump anymore because everything he says is a lie and an insult to one's intelligence. Republican enablers know this and are complicit, because it's all they have left after the bankruptcy of the conservative ideology.
I hope Democrats are listening to the BLM movement because it's a rejection of the neo-liberal policies that paved the way for Trump and the Regressives as well as serving notice on the systemic racism historically ignored by both parties.
Not much to celebrate this Fourth...
What Joe Biden needs is a "Sister Souljah moment."
For those of you who do not remember what that means, Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992. A black activist named "Sister Souljah" said the following:
I mean, if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people? ... So if you're a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person?
Bill Clinton responded as follows:
If you took the words 'white' and 'black,' and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech.
By saying this, he distanced himself from black extremism in general and Jesse Jackson in particular, and cemented his ability to run as "a new kind of Democrat."
While "black lives matter" is a thought that almost everyone including me agrees with, the current iteration of the Black Lives Matter movement is very extreme and goes well beyond that simple thought. Things have happened like:
* A soccer player in Los Angeles was fired from the team because his wife tweeted the phrase, "all lives matter." Punishing people for the ideological heresies of their family members is a tactic last seen in communist East Germany.
* A high level editor at The New York Times lost his job for deciding to publish an editorial by Senator Tom Cotton which said that if riots got out of control and the local authorities couldn't stop them, the US military should be used to restore order. A majority of the people in this country agree with this, but not the woke mob at the NY Times.
* A high level editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer lost his job because in the aftermath of writing and arson, he authorized the publication of an article which had the headline, "Buildings Matter Too." Score one more for the woke mob.
Meanwhile, the mainstream liberal media, which has been captured by this movement, has decided that the names of all ethnic groups should be capitalized, except that "white" should not be. Apparently, every tribe deserves respect but the white tribe.
This is a slap in the face to white people on the order of Hillary Clinton's remark about "deplorables."
The movement has a message, which is sometimes quite explicit, to white people: "Shut up and do what you're told." Some white people apparently respond positively to this message. Many of us do not.
Donald Trump got elected in part because of this sort of thing. He might get elected again because of it.
Joe Biden would be smart to have a "Sister Souljah moment" of his own. It's encouraging that he has already said he does not agree with "abolishing the police." We'll see if he's smart enough to take this approach as far as he needs to. I hope that he does.
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