The only one of those three points that is actually going to matter on January 20th is the first one. The second point is but a foot note in history at this point, and the third point was hammered home with millions of dollars of ads- and he still won. The truth is that Trump won in no small part because the attacks on him didn't motivate anyone. It's not that they didn't work, people don't like Donald Trump who voted for him, but none of these attacks got people motivated to vote for Hillary Clinton, and so they didn't. The late movement in the polls was simply a matter of people deciding she was an unacceptable choice for President, and voting for the alternative. People believed every thing that was said about Trump. None of it mattered to their lives.
Now we can sit here and slam those people, and sometimes it's worth doing so. It does take an extremely privileged person to ignore that a candidate for President is a bigot. It does take a morally bankrupt person to accept a White Nationalist in the White House. That's all true. It's not productive to constantly beat people up though. Telling white folks they are to blame for the "Trail of Tears," slavery, and all the Neo-Nazis behind Trump doesn't move them to act, it moves them to shut down. It moves them to tune you out. Why would you vote for a movement that's calling you a racist? No one is motivated by being shamed. Frankly, the perceived (though false) dishonesty of Hillary Clinton appeared to have more of an effect on voters than Donald being mixed in with bigots.
Shouting louder won't change the behavior of people. Calling them racists louder won't make them buy into it. Telling the working class to be different is probably not going to change them from what they are. If that is the game plan moving forward, Trump's coalition will hold.
There are three steps to attack Trump. If we do all three of them, there's a chance we start to hurt him, politically.
- Put forward an actual economic agenda. No, it's not just trade and the minimum wage. How would we re-write the tax code? How about get more working class people into apprenticeships and other good paying jobs that anyone who wants to work can do? Let's talk community college and trade schools, how about it? Talk retirement. Talk protecting the safety net. Talk home ownership. Yes, talk trade and minimum wage too, but not just those. Oh, and for the love of God, talk inclusive, not intersectional. I'm all for intersectional politics, but that's not what sells a message to the middle class. The middle class is where elections are still won.
- Attack Donald Trump's failures. Donald Trump is not going to deliver the successes that he says. When he inevitably only delivers the kinds of things that any standard Republican would deliver (tax cuts, de-regulation), nail him with it. Remind people constantly of the things he promised. Remind them that they aren't getting those things. Be relentless on it.
- Focus on the economic, not the cultural. This doesn't mean we abandon all cultural issues or that we abandon attacking his most egregious failures. This means pick your spots. Donald Trump is going to encourage a lot of hate speech, hate crimes, and online harassment hate. You can't just slap him with all of them, people stop paying attention. Every time he passes traditional Republican orthodoxy on cutting wages, taxes, and regulation, you crush him with it. You call him an establishment Republican. You hit him on the worst of the culture war offenses, and you fight him on the fights that need fighting- like a Supreme Court justice.
We can't just hit Donald Trump how we want and expect it to work. I know that's not what anyone wants to hear, just like we hated when our mom told us to eat our peas and carrots before ice cream. I've spent my life in a white, working class house hold. I don't want this guy around any longer than necessary either. If we want him gone, discipline will be a huge part of how we do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment