Still living in Brooklyn-With-a-Bubble-On-It with Pauline Kael

From Democrats Should Acknowledge Reality And Abandon Their Utterly Failed Anti-Trump Strategy (If You Can Even Call It That) by Jesse Singal.  The subheading is “Orange Man Bad” might be accurate, but it doesn’t work as a campaign slogan in 2024.

Singal is a dyed-in-the-wool establishment Democrat.  I read him, not for the validity of his arguments but as a bellwether of the fashionable left.  In this column he is making a clear argument.

For about a decade now, the Democratic Party has put a referendum to the American public: “Donald Trump is a racist, fascist, misogynistic strongman and alleged serial sexual assaulter who doesn’t care about democratic norms and who will seek, whenever possible, to demolish them if it benefits him. Do you really want someone like this to be president?” Over time, the party has been able to add ever-more damning, fully accurate details, like “felon,” “adjudicated rapist,” and “attack on the Capitol instigator” to this description of the now-former president.

The American people have answered the same way, over and over: “Sure, maybe.” 

And it hasn't worked.  The Establishment narrative just doesn't have traction.

Look, you took a crack at the “Trump is racist and fascist” line — many cracks, in fact — and you got all the already-liberal folks on board, plus some moderate (mostly suburban) educated Republican types, at least for an election or two. But clearly, clearly, clearly, this is a failing strategy when it comes to consistently beating Trump at the national level. 

The most damning evidence against the orthodox Democratic strategy for fighting Trump and Trumpism is the trajectory of black and Latino opinion toward Trump. This graph from Bloomberg shows what those lines look like during seven years of blanket dissemination of the message that Trump is a dangerous and bigoted madman who is perhaps one or two steps removed from bona fide white nationalists: 

 

 

It. . .didn’t seem to work. At all. This shouldn’t necessarily surprise anyone familiar with the heterogeneous nature of these voting blocs, and with the fact that both include tens of millions of moderate-to-conservative voters, but at the end of the day, if you’re a Democrat who thought Trump was beatable if only the racist/fascist drum was beaten hard and loudly enough, how can you come to any other conclusion that you’ve failed spectacularly? The very groups you are claiming to want to protect from Trump have warmed to him over time.

I agree.  Their tactic was flawed from the beginning both because it was a negative message and because it was at best only weakly and even then only occasionally linked to reality.  

Singal has a striking statement interposed in the opening paragraphs.  Perhaps it is only a declaration of tribal fealty to avoid being cancelled.  Perhaps.  But if taken literally, he is the very thing he is objecting to. 

I am intentionally setting aside my own feelings about Trump for the purpose of this post, but I’ve made them clear over and over and over. Suffice it to say, I cannot wrap my head around the fact that Trump is so popular, relatively speaking, and I know most of my friends can’t either. 

He doesn't understand and nobody in his network of friends understands either.  If that isn't a declaration of blind insularity, I don't know what is.  Calls to mind the SNL skit, Brooklyn with a bubble on it.

Double click to enlarge.

He is supposed to be a public intellectual commenting on the times and yet is declaring he does not understand those times at all.  In that opening paragraph he affirms all the fevered beliefs that the institutional Left have about Trump and for which there is no or only ambiguous evidence.  It is all supposition and projection.

And we have been down this path before.  Staunch Democratic party stalwart Pauline Kael, theater critic for The New Yorker, had a very similar take as Singal back fifty-two years ago in 1972 when McGovern lost to Nixon.

How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him.

Another variant being, and the version most resonant of Singal's confession:

I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them.

Singal's basic argument is true.  The Democratic Party effort to demonize Trump has failed.  The Democratic Party needs to persuade voters that they have the better alternative.  After last week's debate performance, that is a much harder task, but it is the task that needs to be accomplished.

But to persuade, you have to understand the counterargument and Singal (and Democrats) appear to no understand at all.  Singal.

I hate Trump.

I don't understand how anyone can like him. 

 

Nobody I know understands why Trump is popular.

He is a demon.

OK.  All that is already apparent.  But if that is the case, as you acknowledge, then how can you understand enough to be credible trying to persuade?  

This part of the argument simply does not compute.