The Tricky Political Problem for Democrats Who Want to Fight Back Against Trump

“Trump lied” is the best way out of a bad situation where the logical inference in any attack on Donald Trump is “you were fooled you silly stupid baby.” While cathartic for those of us aware of what silly stupid babies many Americans are, it is not exactly electorally beneficial to tell your voters that they’re a bunch of doofuses who would probably lose their life savings to a Nigerian prince e-mail scam. Attacking Trump is attacking his supporters, and many Trump voters are not in the cult and were just wooed by his immense powers over low information voters. It is a delicate rhetorical situation where you can’t just wail away as if Trump is the only person you’re going after. It’s a subtle dance separating a voter from the person they voted for, but Trump has done wonders for the cause.

And ultimately, this is why I don’t want to apologize for Hakeem Jeffries, because thoughts of “I got fooled” are unfolding organically across the nation every week, and you can see it in Trump’s plummeting polls. The hard work of self-reflection and critique is already being done by voters themselves, the Democrats just have to take this natural momentum against Trump and turn it into something other than “we want to reach across the aisle to find common sense bipartisan solutions with the fascist.” Pick one!

I know the Very Serious People in the Beltway will “well akshually” this column and point out how the seven remaining competitive congressional districts make it such that we must recite their consultants’ meaningless pablum in order to win 50.1 percent of the vote so we can save democracy, but I also know how polls and math work. I know that your polling starting point is the national environment, which is why when gerrymandering always comes up, people define it as “Democrats would need to run X points ahead of Republicans to win.” David Shor’s company that has helped Democrats follow his polling into their worst polling figures ever can try to triangulate all the meaningless verbiage they want, but measuring this stuff starts with the national environment, and the bigger the better.

Which is why you need a coherent message. Either Trump’s a fascist and you fight him tooth and nail, or Democrats are functionally Reagan Republicans now and are searching for common ground with the fascists. You can’t do both. And you can’t go back to 1996. I’m sure it felt amazing when the entire Democratic gerontocracy was on top of the world doing the Macarena, but it’s a new world now. That one is gone forever.

And it’s one where voters are going to do a lot of the hard work for politicians. Negative polarization is the defining trait of our politics, which means that voters aren’t going to stick with a candidate for long. On a certain “don’t hate the player, hate the game” level, I commend Kamala Harris for trying her damndest to prove the maxim true that “the most popular Democrat is a generic Democrat no one knows anything about.” We are a fickle populace, riding through a herky jerky era where we have proven willing to vote for a Black man whose middle name is Hussein five American Idol winners after invading Iraq, as well as a meat filled bottle of spray tanner hosting a game show just eight years later.

So have some sympathy for your local Democratic politician, but not too much. And understand the delicate world they live in where calling Trump an idiotic piece of shit means calling potential persuadable voters that too. This is why the fighters versus folders framing is the right way to think about it, as voters have made it clear to both parties that they will pay attention to anyone who comes off as earnest and genuine, even if they are a credibly accused rapist caught on camera bragging about how he grabs women “by the pussy.” Americans contain multitudes, and if you’re wondering why our politics is so fucked up, it’s because we are too.