Trump gave Democrats a gift.
They should accept it and run with it.
I have been blunt in this blog. I said Trump has been winning the policy and message war. But now he's screwing up.
Trump was relentless in making his case framing Democrats as weak and wrongheaded, leading the country into carnage. He is superb at grabbing and holding the spotlight. He is vulgar and crude, but people understand him.
Joe Biden had some behind-the-scenes skills, but he was terrible at the single most important job of a president, which is explaining stuff to Americans -- creating a narrative of what is happening and why. Biden was frozen into bad policies on immigration and cultural issues by disagreements within the Democratic Party. The Biden policy on the southern border was suicidal and he ignored the backlash to cutting-edge Democratic orthodoxy on cultural issues. Biden hid in silence because his staff recognized that they needed to keep his age-related decline out of sight. Trump's insult, "Sleepy Joe Biden," rang true to voters.
It isn't the Biden era anymore. We are shaping a new era and Trump is doing the Democrats' work for them.
Even Trump's allies in the media and Congress consider Trump, Musk, and DOGE to be slipshod and out of control. Trump is trying to describe DOGE as overdue action by a can-do, no-nonsense president, but the tariff-on, tariff-off, then tariff-on again behavior does not come across as five-dimension chess. It looks haphazard. He is simultaneously courting Canada and threatening it. Americans are not predisposed to fear or dislike Canada. His designs on Greenland look predatory and Greenland's voters just responded by electing an independence stop-the-USA majority. This doesn't look calculated; it looks careless. Trump reversed polarity on our European alliances and trade policy. The part of the Trump coalition that extended outside his true-believing MAGA base is surprised and disappointed. The businesses that thought Trump was all about lowering taxes and regulations are discovering that Trump is more about destroying an old establishment that they lead.
Trump may be reading the Fox News MAGA room, but he is not reading the room of people who have been the establishment base of the GOP.
Trump looks like he is reforming government with a chainsaw, and indeed Trump created that very image and metaphor, with a dark-clothed man wearing dark glasses indoors, shaking a chainsaw like a giant in-your-face erection. It looks crazy and careless.
Trump is led astray by his true-believing MAGA base. They presume that there is such widespread waste and institutional resistance that only a chainsaw will produce change. Those people exist but they aren't a majority and they aren't Democrats. A majority of Americans interact with the federal government in ways that are benign and welcome: National Weather service predictions, forest fire suppression, veterans health care, Social Security, Medicaid, air traffic control, postal service, and more. People expect services and they won't get it or will get it amid delays. They will notice and complain.
Democrats have an easy-to-understand narrative amid those complaints: Trump turned the government over to a manic billionaire who operates with a chainsaw. Americans across the political spectrum are quick to assume that billionaires are dangerous and self-serving. Democrats don't need to create this metaphor of a chainsaw-wielding billionaire. Trump did it himself. Even people inclined to make a hero out of Musk admire him for the wondrous way that a rocket returns gently and safely to a launchpad. What precision. What control! That is the good-Musk image. The dangerous-Musk image is him using a chainsaw.
Trump is stuck with this. Maybe Trump thinks this helps him. The job of Democrats is to see that it doesn't. Somewhere out there is a Democrat -- or two or three of them-- who will pick up this gift and weave it into an alternative narrative, one of good reform, careful and competent reform, not Trump mayhem on behalf of billionaires.
A majority of Americans wanted change in 2024, and they voted for it. But not the change that Trump is delivering up.
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4 comments:
Americans don't know Musk much in the same way they don't know Trump outside of his reality show persona. Do you really believe the man who made those rockets is the one waving the chainsaw?
Musk spent 250 mil to rent the White House as a car dealership. Doesn't it make you proud to be an American?
"A majority of Americans wanted change in 2024"...Wrong.
A plurality voted for Republicans. The majority voted Democrat or didn't vote.
Exactly right.
James Carville told the Democrats to shut up until they had something politically useful to work with. And by “politically useful” he did not mean cries of outrage over the violation of left-wing woke orthodoxies.
That useful thing is now appearing. Trump has a good message about how over-regulation is strangling our ability to build anything. But the "chainsaw" approach to cutting government is cutting the wrong things: cancer research, for example, instead of unreasonable regulations and the bureaucrats who enforce them.
The opportunity consists of attacking actions by the administration that hurt Trump supporters: things like cutting Medicaid.
I am hoping that the Democrats will prove themselves capable of being strategic and competent. Fingers crossed...
“And by “politically useful” he did not mean cries of outrage over the violation of left-wing woke orthodoxies.”
I suppose we should all be grateful to the DoD for enforcing Hegseth’s anti-DEI rules and deleting pictures of that LGBTQ bomber, the Enola Gay. I know I should feel safer already, but for some reason I don’t. I guess I’d rather be woke than comatose.
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