Nobody knows the magic formula to beat Trump. A little humility is required right now

Nobody knows the magic formula to beat Trump.  A little humility is required right now

 by digby




My Salon column this morning:

We are just hours away from the first debate of the presidential primary season. It's hard to believe that four years have passed since the last round of primary debates. It feels like 40. But here we are, getting ready to embark on yet another presidential campaign featuring Donald Trump. And everyone on the planet has advice for the Democratic candidates about what they need to do to beat him. It may be the most annoying conversation in all of politics and that's saying something.

The pundits are all dully blathering on about "lanes" again, extending the horserace metaphor to ridiculous lengths, as they did in the GOP primaries in 2016. So far they've declared the lanes to be "establishment," "insurgent," "youth," "black vote," and "working class." And yes, they are meaningless, since the person who wins the nomination will have to take up big parts of all the "lanes." But it makes it easy for pundits and analysts to drone on endlessly about polling despite the fact that there is very little chance this campaign will end up going the way they are predicting.

Former candidates have been all over TV the past week or so talking about what the candidates absolutely must do in these first debates which almost always comes down to "getting attention" and "being themselves." I'm sure this is a very good idea but I'd guess that anyone who needs to be told this probably shouldn't be running for president. In fact, they probably shouldn't be in politics at all.

But of all the annoying advice inundating us in recent days, the most irritating has to be that coming from the Never-Trumpers. First, let me say I totally believe that they, like the majority of Americans, are desperate to defeat Trump, and I would never reject anyone who wants to enter the fray to make that happen. I'm not a Never-Trumper basher.  (Of course, I also understand that some of them have a lot to answer for in terms of how we got to this point and I look forward to the day when the Trump emergency has passed and we can sort all that out. If that day doesn't come, we will have bigger problems to worry about.) I welcome them to the fight.

So, I hope they don't take this the wrong way.  But they really need to zip it when it comes to harranguing Democrats about their primary. They particularly need to stop speaking to the Democratic base as if they are a bunch of fools who need remedial lessons in politics from Republicans who couldn't stop Donald Trump from snagging the nomination right out from under them. They should know better than anyone that running against him is like running against an alien from outer space. There is only one race that Democrats and Never-Trumpers can look to for clues about how to defeat him and neither of them were successful so nobody has the higher ground here.

Here's an example of the discussion from one of my favorite Never-Trumpers, strategist Rick Wilson, who is wildly entertaining and spot on about Trump:

I'm a Republican strategist who with others helped take 1100 seats from the Dems in the late 90s and 2000s, including in places like WA, VT, MA, and NY.

But by all means, preen and front when i tell you how to avoid getting your ass kicked. https://t.co/1R0o5pXkT2
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 20, 2019

I hate to preen and front, but it must be pointed out that the Republicans have only won the popular vote once in the last 31 years and the two other electoral college victories were more than a little bit suspect. 

Strategists in both parties have had big victories.  Again, nobody knows the magic formula that will beat Trump.

More importantly, Never-Trumpers telling Democrats what they shouldn't be doing is even worse. It's not just insulting, it's also strangely naive in a way that explains why some of these folks were so surprised that a demagogic conman took out that venerable list of GOP All-Stars back in 2016, with none other than the odious Senator Ted Cruz being the last man standing. These are not normal times and simply assuming that the way for Democrats to win is to be more like pre-TrumpRepublicans is going to fall on deaf ears for good reason:


Be like the GOP, or more accurately, like McConnell. Just for once enforce some party discipline, wait for the win, and *then* fight about what to do. You're all arguing over the primary like Trump is toast and you're just dickering over the spoils. Win first, argue later.
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) June 25, 2019

This is all Sykes (and Wilson, and me, and others) are recommending. Be ice cold, leave the crazy stuff aside, stop talking about court packing and the damn electoral college, win the election, and sort it out later.
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) June 25, 2019

Telling Democrats to be more like Mitch McConnell in the same breath as saying they should stop talking about court packing and the electoral college doesn't make sense. When they talk about those things they ARE being like Mitch McConnell. It's not as if McConnell has ever hidden his agenda.

Former radio talk show host and prominent Never-Trumper Charlie Sykes wrote a snarky piece for Politico this week in which he laid out a long list of all the things the Democrats need to stop doing if they want to beat Trump. Unsurprisingly, it's mostly standard hippie bashing, including admonitions not to "embrace the weird" which, coming from a Republican, is just a bit rich these days. He also says they should talk about Democratic priorities on issues like health care and immigration and abortion as if they are moderate Republicans. Indeed, it appears he thinks they should adopt Jeb Bush's agenda from 2016 because that's what Americans really want.

This line of argument will not convince any Democrats, whether they are leaning toward Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren or Andrew Yang.  I'm sorry, there is no Jeb Bush lane in the Democratic Party.

As this excellent post by Neil H. Buchanan at The Verdict legal blog points out, Never-Trumpers are "perfectly satisfied with the radical-right changes wrought by Republicans (and triangulating Democrats) over the past four decades...By contrast, it is on matters of process, not substance, that the anti-Trump right actually has a good point to make."

In other words, their appalled reaction to the assault on the constitution and the political norms that make it possible for the system to function is where they have the power to make a difference. As Buchanan writes,  "American conservatives who are genuine “constitutional conservatives” understand that there are more important things than, say, the optimal design of the estate tax...If you are on the winning side in the fight to save our constitutional democracy, you can live to fight another day to attempt to reverse your losses in the fights over various substantive policies. But the opposite is not true, because if we lose the fight for our political system, there will be no more opportunities to fight for anything else."

I know they want Democrats to beat Donald Trump. But Democrats have a large coalition that must be respected by their leaders. These Republicans should take their own smug advice and get off twitter and they'll find that the Party is ideologically diverse and is also even more committed to defeating Donald Trump than they are.  Democrats will make their decisions accordingly.

But if there are Republicans and GOP leaning Independents who are appalled by Trump's assault on the system and the GOP's descent into madness, these Never-Trumpers could best contribute to this fight by helping them realize that stopping Trump means we'll all live to fight each other on the issues about which we disagree another day.  There's no guarantee of that if he wins.


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