Democrats have been trying to take down former President Donald Trump for the better part of a decade – without much success.
And while Democrats did successfully unseat Trump from the presidency during the 2020 election, Trump remains the foremost figure in conservative politics and a viable threat to rewin the presidency in 2024.
Donald Trump is Resilient
I can’t name an American politician with resiliency equivalent to Donald Trump.
I’ve taken to calling him a political cockroach, or Rasputin. He just won’t die. Consider the trivial moments that derailed other political careers. Bush and his watch check. Dukakis and his tank helmet. Dean and his yelp.
The margins for error are typically razor-thin. Trump is the exception of course. He can kind of do what he wants without consequence.
Insult Gold Star parents. Insult John McCain’s POW status. Be caught on tape describing acts of sexual aggression with Billy Bush. Be convicted of sexual assault in civil court. Be indicted on federal charges.
But part of the reason Trump is so impervious is because his opponents are so zealous in maligning him, in prosecuting him. The eagerness with which Democrats mobilize to ‘get Trump in trouble’ is obsessive and it started even before day one. Trump’s base is in part Trump’s base because they recognize how obsessive the Democrats’ behavior is and have circled the wagons in response.
It’s not even about Trump at this point, maybe it never was.
It’s more about coastal-managerial-elites saying what is right and what is wrong. Donald Trump is just the conduit through which many common Americans have chosen to push back.
Personally, I would have chosen a more articulate, intelligent, or benevolent conduit. Maybe someone more authentic who actually cared about the base he professed to work for. But I suppose one takes what they can get.
The point is that Trump isn’t just a politician anymore. He’s not just Michael Dukakis. So the trivialities that can derail a normal person’s political career aren’t going to work against Trump.
Even non-trivialities (i.e. a federal indictment) aren’t going to work. And Trump recognized this years ago when he claimed that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and retain his positive approval rating amongst Republicans. Probably true.
Yet, Donald Trump has Vulnerabilities
Still, Trump can be defeated. He lost the 2020 election (by 7 million votes). As Alex Shephard points out in The New Republic: “We have seen time and time again that the best way to defeat Donald Trump is not in a court of law but at the ballot box.”
But defeating Trump at the ballot box cannot depend on who he insulted or what uncouth thing he said or what he did in some dressing room in the 1990s. Democrats need to degrade Trump in a political sense. Democrats need to make the case that Trump isn’t good for the country – not because he’s a bad guy with bad values – but because his policies are bad.
Or because Trump isn’t the populist he says he is. Democrats need to offer middle-class Americans a more attractive alternative to Trump, someone who understands that the anger simmering in middle-class America is righteous. Someone who can stay out of the culture war and appreciate that the social values of Disney or Smith College or AOC are not universal. Trump can be defeated.
But it can’t be accomplished through suggesting that his followers are amoral and it can’t be accomplished through indicting him for a third time.
Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor and opinion writer at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
From 19FortyFive
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