Definitely not a "genius " , just another dishonest bigot.
We should all be more worried about who is going to run in the next election and get rid of this big mistake that the voters made.
15
Trickling in stories about Iran...the biggest story is the one that no one seems to be writing about: The best way for an incumbent to get re-elected is to start a war.
8
Genius and Trump is the same sentence is an oxymorne. He is rounding up the dictators of the world to protect him and them.
This is a scary world that the republicans have created since Reagan and it lies at your feet also.
8
No, he is an ignorant racist who knows that there is a significant portion of the electorate who respond to his trafficking in hatred and bigotry. It is not a sophisticated strategy. It does not have to be. Just look at the faces and watch the responses of people at his rallies. This is a kind of demagoguery we have seen before in another time and place, but very similar to this. White supremacists identify him as one of them. That is enough. He has given permission for every kind of bigotry to be voiced proudly in public.
Trump wants to get reelected. He feels it is his due and that those revved up white voters will give him another victory. He is morally bankrupt as is any more benign view of him. The only antidote is for 2020 to mark his defeat along with all of those who enable him.
18
Here we go again with Douthat who needs to get out of his bubble and get into the real world. Trump is not a genius, and I don't know if I would use the word sinister to describe him. I see him as a hate filled man with little experience in reality who does not know what he is doing and how it will affect the US and the world. He likes to called himself a "stable genius." He is neither. His economic ideas are a failure. He thinks that China will fold and do his bidding. That ain't gonna happen. China has other ways of circumventing Trump's insatiable desire to increase tariffs which he thinks are a tax on China, but in reality, they are a tax on consumers. His rather ignorance desire to revitalize the coal industry is not working and if it did, it would only foul the air we breath and, as coal fed power plants have demonstrated time and time again, ruin our water ways. In good Calvinistic terms, Douthat is not working in his "calling." He needs to get him an honest job and get his hands dirty.
11
Ross, you are so right. Feral, cunning, a predator's instinctive sense of when something is working. But overlaid on that is the unloved little boy, so insecure he lashes out in all directions, he has trouble focusing on authentic actions but no trouble at all focusing on black and brown people as a tactic. Not a strategic person, as someone pointed out. Driven on by the loathsome teachings of his father. He is being used quite successfully by the 1% and corporations to destroy the entire Federal social services apparatus. And let's not forget the assault on laws against pollution, the rampant attempt to destroy nature for the almighty $$$.
8
After almost three years of the incompetent in chief, it doesn't take a genius to recognize an angry narcissistic racist for precisely what he is. Yes, he's impulsive, ignorant and utterly dishonest in every conceivable way, but he's also only speaking to those who support him, giving them what they want to hear because he says what they think.
He's a sociopath, undeterred by the norms and values most of us consider fundamental as humans, not as Democrats or Republicans or independents. That his supporters know this but look the other way says everything about them and Trump. They have no defense or excuse for being so willing to ignore what they know...or should know...is wrong in so many ways.
The rest of us know. And we vote.
Eclectic Pragmatism — http://eclectic-pragmatist.tumblr.com/
Eclectic Pragmatist — https://medium.com/eclectic-pragmatism
9
He certainly is sinister, just look at what happened in El Paso and Dayton. He is largely responsible. Impeach him, now.
9
"...forced conservatives to excuse statements they once would have denounced." Really?
Since Nixon's Southern Manifesto, and Reagan's "welfare queens" and Willie Horton and "white hands" and the Tea Party and the birther movement, the Republican Party has used statements they always campaigned on.
Let's not pretend there is anywhere for the GOP to go. Donald is a RINO. There is nothing left to the conservative movement. The Republicans have lost their economic and fiscal policies, their moral authority and their credibility. All they have left is racism and denying women's reproductive health.
When Donald leaves office, the Republican Party will be a hollowed out husk.
10
trump will add zero new voters to the ones he got in 2016. whoever the dems nominate will get no fewer than the 3 million more that an unpopular and noncharismatic clinton got - and will almost certainly garner the votes of all those who sat out the election thinking the choice between bad and worse didn't matter - until it did.
2
"First, even if he’s forced conservatives to excuse statements they once would have denounced, there’s no sign that Trump’s rhetoric has generally boosted white America’s sense of racial grievance. Instead, polls show that even among Republicans, let alone independents, racial stereotypes have softened under Trump"
Even if fewer in number, the people with racial grievances and racialist views now have a leader, and that leader gives them focus, status, and power. If the US polity tells us anything, it is that numbers alone don't mean much. And that's without considering the effects of violence and stochastic terrorism getting the majority to be quiet.
5
"First, even if he’s forced conservatives to excuse statements they once would have denounced, there’s no sign that Trump’s rhetoric has generally boosted white America’s sense of racial grievance."
Oh, really, Ross? Tell that to the grieving family members in El Paso and Dayton.
What are you talking about ? Do you know what you're talking about?
11
If somebody ever handed me the microphone at a Trump rally (not likely, but bear with me), I would say one thing:
"Okay, folks, let's have a show of hands, please! How many of you want a $15 nation-wide minimum wage?"
My guess would be that about one-third of the audience would raise their hands.
This is basically what happened when Bernie Sanders appeared on a FoxNews townhall meeting back in April. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/04/15/full_video_fox_news_town_hall_with_bernie_sanders.html
So, that's the dirty little secret at the core of the Republican Party. On the meat-and-potatoes issues like jobs, health care and the minimum wage, a large percentage of the rank-and-file of the Republican party are actually Bernie Sanders supporters.
4
This column was written before the shootings in El Paso and Dayton. Now it takes on additional poignancy. Trump is absolutely guilty of inciting these hateful, violent racists, who quote him endlessly and think they are being patriotic by "eradicating" immigrants and attacking all people of color. Whether this is a "strategy" or not, it is irresponsible in the extreme. I note that he hasn't tweeted yet about this, but I expect he will eventually blame the press and Democrats, because that is what he does when he has nothing intelligent to say (most of the time).
13
Stupid; ignorant; uniformed; emotionally immature. You pick the adjective. Whichever you feel most comfortable with is why his red-hatted rally base love him. They are simply ecstatic that they have a President who is as stupid; ignorant; uniformed or emotionally immature as they are. The rest of the Republicans are opportunists who use his base to prey on the US Treasury to line their pockets.
Stupidity + Greed = Trump
16
I think, Mr. Douthat, that you are giving Trump too much credit. I don't believe he has ever exhibited any clear, composed, complex thought about anything, much less any genius. He makes decisions based upon instinct alone.
I don't believe he started the birther movement. He just picked up on it as it provided a venue for him to attack Obama.
Further I believe that in a subtle but very important and definitive way, he is helping liberals (i.e. Democrats) much more than he is his own party.
For several decades now the Republican party has been in decline and the only way the liberals are going to begin to be able to undo all the harm the Republicans have done and are continuing to do is to take control of all three branches of government.
Because all but a handful of Republicans follow Trump's lead, they are only helping the Democrats win more seats in the Senate and House as Trump continues to act in a manner totally unsuitable for the position he holds. He is fooling less and less people every day that he is in any way competent.
With the possible exception of the crisis we faced following the Great Depression, and that of the Civil War, we have never faced a graver crisis than the one we face today. Never has it been more important for every eligible American to cast a vote than it will be in the 2020 election.
228
@Richard Phelps....During the Great Depression all Americans realized the country was in trouble. During this current mess we find ourselves in..there were and are still...too many of us who have not understood and still do not realize the gravity of our situation and the threat to our hard fought Democracy !! Too many of us decided that Voting for and supporting a Russian endorsed and aided candidate was and still is a good idea ! When those in leadership and positions of authority earn nicknames like Moscow Mitch, Leningrad Lindsey, Borscht Barr and Putin's Pick Trump...things are not looking good !! Trump support is UNAMERICAN !! There's NO DOUBT !!
21
Is the critical question about Trump's openly White Nationalist campaign really is it the most effective electoral strategy vs a more traditional dog whistle approach?
I used to find writings on race in America by authors like Ta-Nehisi Coates very illuminating and thought provoking but wondered if some of the analysis was overwrought. Was it really that bad?
Then 63 million Americans went out and voted for an openly racist president. More than two years laters over 40% of Americans support, and often cheer this foul racist as he routinely denigrates millions of their fellow Americans.
I was ignorant, naive, and too comfortable in my little white liberal bubble to see what was obvious to Mr. Coates and millions of others. It was that bad. And it's worse now. Because of Trump.
Trump has encouraged expressions of racial hatred in this country and has given permission to millions to express it. He has, for some, normalized it. For others, he has shown an entire political party to be racist to it's core. The GOP in my view is irredeemable, there is no way back for them. They die as a force in our politics or hope for an inclusive American democracy dies.
Even if Trump's racial polarization fails as a 2020 campaign strategy, if it indeed fails, it has caused damage that will take decades to repair. If it can be repaired.
257
@LT, from one who is happy to have never lived in the little white liberal bubble you describe. It's beautiful and full of clear eyed life outside of that bubble. The damage can be repaired; and, yes, the movement forward towards actually seeing people for the content of their character not race or skin color still continues it appears with the majority of humanity in this country. Who knows how long it will take given the centuries racism and bigotry that continues to be this country's original sin to be fully realized. Trump has sought to provide ten steps backwards for the start of the twenty-first century. Trump's attempts will turn out to be a grand failure.
7
I agree with most of this column except for one thing. It suggests Trump's blatant race-baiting is unpopular and will lose him votes.
I don't see it that way. Unbelievably, no matter how low he stoops, about 40% of the population is fine with him. There's been very little if any real change in his unpopularity since he became President and revealed just who he was. (Personally this was already clear to me after the birther nonsense.)
But I still agree with Douthat that it is (or at least should be) a losing strategy. The reason is not that it will lose him votes from former supporters, but that it will further energize those who didn't like him in the first place: more people will turn out to vote than might have, and more -- substantially more -- will start contributing campaign money to oust him and his supporters.
And we should all remember that this is not just about Trump, but -- even more so -- the 40% of the electorate who continue to support him and as well as the craven behavior of congressional Republicans. These both point to a real sickness in our country and society that will not go away even if Trump goes down in flames in 2020.
201
@Observer The same line caught me (along with "there's no sign that Trump's rhetoric has generally boosted white America's sense of racial grievance"), and like you, I disagree. I don't think that the point is to bring in more white voters to the camp, but to energize those 40% who approve of him regardless of how outrageous his conduct. If THEY get out and vote in 2020, and if the Democratic nominee allow him/herself to be painted effectively as a radical bomb-thrower, enough people will stay home and Trump wins.
9
@Observer "no matter how low he stoops, about 40% of the population is fine with him"
But he is not adding to his total, while whoever opposes him will get hillary's majority, plus all the people (a mere 70k of them) who elected trump by staying home in 2016 .... and undoubtedly far, far more besides.
5
When the history of this awful time is written, many fingerprints will be found on Trump's means of ascent. How can it be that this man who, is not a wily political manipulator, or strategist (no LBJ he) but impulsive and unread beat first a field of Republicans and then a well known Democrat?
That major blame must always rest with forces unleashed as far back as Nixon and then Lee Atwater in Republican party politics is clear. The race based Southern strategy. But there is a troublesome specter haunting our recent history. Trump is a figure (at least on the national scene--we in New York know him far longer) created and sustained by a media persona.
A media personality crafted not by Trump alone by any means but aided and promoted by our entertainment networks and later their news arms. Most of our fellow Americans do not read this or any similar "deep" publication. They watch cable, hear talk radio, and peruse the internet social platforms.
Trump was given star treatment from the descent on the Trump Tower elevator through broadcasting every campaign rally start to finish (no other Republican nor HRC later got that!). Why? Simple, in the circles in which media execs travel none of their friends were supporting this oaf. He couldn't possibly win so milk his rise for ratings like crazy. The chickens as they say have come home to roost.
5
Douthat picked the wrong 24 hours to write this gem of a line: "there’s no sign that Trump’s rhetoric has generally boosted white America’s sense of racial grievance". Tell it to the murdered and their families, Ross.
14
America cannot afford to create for the Republicans a "devil you know vs the devil you don't know" scenario. We need a clear and compelling moderate who can remind the country of our once-lofty world leadership, our moral highground and our belief that no one (especially not the President) is above the law. Our candidate must have impecable credentials, great carisma and be a superb debator...able to throw Trump off his game and make him look as ridiculous as it truly is. If we don't accomplish this, the world's enviornmental health will be destroyed, our economy will spin out of control and our health care will disappear before our eyes. Women will lose their reproductive rights and guns will continue to create havoc in American cities and we'll very likely be in another war with either North Korea or Iran...or both. Democrats, we're counting on you. You better not let us down. Because, in truth, it would be way down.
2
From the first words out of his mouth on the escalator, Trump has spouted his racism for all the world to see. He would never have been elected President without it. It enures his popularity today. It is what white America loves about him the most and I will never believe otherwise.
5
I suppose it makes a difference whether you are shot dead by a crack shot sniper or a crackhead waving a gun around.
But you're just as dead.
3
The danger of Trump’s race-bating religion-bating and gender-bating is less converting the good-willed as inflaming those susceptible to violence. With the GOP in thrall to the NRA, we are doomed to more slaughters like El Paso.
5
Trump's birtherism was evil. The GOP should have tossed him on his ear and forbad him to participate in their primary process. That it doesn't says all you need to know about the Republican Party.
Vote (any) Democrat.
19
Trump’s 2020 strategy is simple— “It is ALL about Me!”
“Make America Great” & “Keep America Great” — are really about “America” being Trump.
A better slogan for Trump to use is “More for Me and Nothing for a You” (wink).
Trump’s power base depends on uniting & controlling fractured and marginalized groups - Evangelicals, Pro-Life, ProGun/NRA, Neo-Nazis, Anti-Immigrant, and disenfranchised blue collar workers... but these groups are starting to falter.
As long as Trump has his narcissistic supply — of active & “silent” enablers in the GOP and the media— which includes “mainstream media” — his strategy will be a winner.
Want to stop or impede Trump?
1. Cut off this oxygen supply .... significantly reduce news coverage of Trump to only the “essentials”.
2. Stop taking the bait & allowing Trump to control the issues/topics, the “tempo” and the terms & conditions of the media relationship.
3. How about Trump’s Twitter platform - a North-star goal should be to cut him off from Twitter— since it is a one-way hate & propaganda channel targeting his base supporters.
Let’s Face it.... The REAL power center in the USA are with US and Global businesses ... not Congress or Trump.
Thesis: When business leaders tire of Trump (the man) and Trump’s policies... and wake up and realize that their short-term gains & profit focus will only result in long-term losses ... to themselves, their firms, their friends & families and the planet... they will boot the bum out!
4
One doesn't have to read one more analysis of trump. If you don't know what he is by now then there is not much hope for you. So what it boils down to is if there are enough of your fellow citizens living in enough states with enough electoral votes then you're getting 4 more years of him. Good luck.
5
Trump is a charismatic demagogue of the highest order, or lowest. We are dealing with a huge, very dangerous, well armed, cult. We already see ghastly mass violence increasing. Numerous thoughtful, respected people, have predicted Trump will refuse to leave office if he loses the coming election. I agree. Paging General Grant.
12
This opinion piece feeling a bit outdated already, Mr. Douthat??
In the wake of TWO mass shootings clearly inspired by Trump's racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric, can you really say what he is tweeting and what he is saying at his fascist rallies isn't "having an effect"?
Wake up, Mr. Douthat. Your party is totally complicit in the decay of our democracy and the White Nationalist violence taking root. It is time to stop making excuses for the phony "conservatives" who rule this country without the support of the majority of its people.
17
So, let’s get your point straight:
Trump is evil, but not sinister.
His evil has a clear goal, but is not genius.
So let’s move on and discuss how Democrats should not champion policies that are so popular that Tump beat the conservative elite by running on them.
2
Ross nails it about Trump, not so differently than others have. His policy, religion, worldview is derived from disordered narcissism. When trying to interpret any action or tweet, a good bet is it's about himself. Sick man.
3
if the current president is voted (legally or illegally) back into the WH, it will be because the faux news channel has convinced far too many people of his lies and his capabilities. these are the arguments i see over and over on social media, from his supporters. hannity has them - hook, line, and stinkers.
4
Hardly impulsive, Trump seems to have modelled his public appearances, from rhetoric to facial expression, on Adolph Hitler. I believe he has studied the performance. He is cooler and older, true, but there are those unmistakeable similarities.
Trump, reputedly loathe to read, was said to have a book of Hitler's speeches that were kept at his bedside that he carefully studied. He had to watch a few films as well. He loves to play the heroic martyr who is only giving others the problems that they would gladly heap upon him if only they able. He has to get those immigrants because they are coming after him.
4
To the extent that Trump is a "dark psychic force", to use Ms Williamson's words, which I strongly agree with, he is therefore also a "Sinister Genius". We are not talking about the conscious level here, we are way off the charts in subconscious behavior.
4
"there’s no sign that Trump’s rhetoric has generally boosted white America’s sense of racial grievance."
Especially in light of last night's shootings, I find this statement very hard to believe. Trumps' race baiting is not aimed at the population at large, but rather at the electoral base that will again carry him to victory with narrow electorate from red and rust belt states. As Nate Cohn recently wrote, Trump may very well lose the popular vote by 5 million votes, yet still win the electoral college.
I don't think Trump is an evil genius, but I do think he is smart enough to know that his chances of re-election rest on carving out just enough of an electoral college win using divisive speech, misleading social media, and by attempting to define his opponent in negative terms.
8
Well, I agree that he's not a genius, although he is canny and cagey. However, given his espousal of bigoted beliefs and the increase in the number of mass shootings and hate crimes, I think he can be called "sinister," at the very least.
7
The only way the words 'Trump' and 'genius' can be used in a sentence is if there is some sort of negative before the latter word.
1
Trump is not a sinister genius but he certainly has outsmarted the rest of us by taking over the Republic party, then got himself reelected despite all the polls, mainstream medium and Washington elite. What would Ross make the rest of us, if he is not a genius?
Ross Douthat wrote: "Polls show that even among Republicans, let alone independents, racial stereotypes have softened under Trump."
^ Wow. Douthat assumes that people—especially racists—always tell the truth when answering polls. Riiiiiiight.
If you ask someone on the street if they are racist, the vast majority of racists will deny it. But, in Douthat's judgment, if a pollster asks this same question and the racist gives the same denial, suddenly it becomes true because it is "a poll."
The unreliability of polls due to respondents often lying is well-known by even high schoolers. Hence, why does Douthat lend such credence to a random poll? If Douthat had written this op-ed as a political science essay, he would have received a failing grade.
4
We all have a genius, latent or realized. Trump's is fully realized and it is the instinctual drive and ability to command attention. Starve him of attention and he melts like the wicked witch of the west (unfortunately it's not possible to ignore the President). Policy and policy wonks are a dime a dozen. The 2020 election will be won by she who speaks to deep truths and inspires the politically unengaged to stand up and become a force for change and good. Or, it will be "won" via election interference.
3
He is a stable genius.... and should go back to the stable. To shovel muck there.
7
Mr. Douthat feels that Trump is impulsive and not a strategist.
Let me offer an alternative take on this question. And let me start with Trump's endless rage-based tweets, where he presents himself as the victim. Back in 1940, George Orwell wrote a review of "Mein Kampf". In it, he made the following comments on how Hitler saw himself:
"He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to a rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon."
Now there is the question of Trump's appeal to his base. As Orwell noted:
"Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don't only want comfort, comfort safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense, they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty parades...Whereas socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people 'I offer you a good time', Hitler has said to them, 'I offer you struggle, danger and death'...
I am not convinced that Trump is simply impulsive, I think he knows precisely what he is doing, and I find it very, very frightening.
11
Don't forget djt launched his presidential campaign to advance his reality tv personality profile and his false construct as a billionaire--while hiding his behind-the-scenes effort to build a Trump Tower-Moscow. Oops! But he won the republican party nomination and then slouched his way into the oval office. He still wants to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. He will stop at nothing to get his way. His Moscow project has to wait until he is out of the oval office. The world watched him and his antics before taking office, which provided an entertaining spectacle initially. His speech after taking the oath of office pronounced the approach he and his minions would take. His proclamations and tweets have become less entertaining. He is steadily eroding our national presence and working to dismantle our democratic infrastructure. The only thing that will stop him is the application of the laws that remain intact--the rule of law that holds him to account, even as he holds the office of POTUS. It is impossible to ignore him. He is prez. We must do more than dismiss him as an entertainer, a con-artist, a mafia-type, a spectacle-maker.
4
Whether or not Trump believes the garbage he spews is immaterial. He is the greatest danger to the country since the Civil War. And much of the country doesn't see this.
10
Trump beat Hillary in 2016 because, while both New Yorkers had net negative appproval among voters, Hillary (then) appeared to be even more obnoxious than Trump.
("Scrub my computer?" You mean, with a cloth?)
All the D's need to do is nominate a breathing biped who is less annoying than Trump...if they can. (DiBlassio, anyone?)
20 dead. By a white guy. How many times will douthart excuse Trump? 50,5 million? How can you possibly look at yourself and think in any kind of contorted way this is okay? Trump is causing violence and murder. These are not lonesome wolves, these are people energized by trump.
8
I don't think Trump is either sinister or a genius. He strikes me as being the text-book example of the obnoxious narcissistic brat of a nouveau riche father. Trump's ignorance is matched only by his arrogance. I suspect that deep, deep inside this over weight buffoon is a frightened little kid, stilll terrified of not being able to satisfy an overbearing "daddy dear" whose sole criterion of "value" is a person's monetary worth. A person who has to pay for sex is truly pathetic. He ain't got no class and he ain't got no couth! That this person happens to be the President of the United States is beyond being merely pathetic - it bodes ill for the continued welfare of this nation. I long for the day Trump is led out of the White House in hand cuffs and put in jail.
8
Trump is a disease. He only exists to spread without a thought as to what is evil or good. The disease spreads through the cells of the body politic engendering hate, fear, envy and resentment. The disease couldn’t have spread if the population had not neglected the civic vaccine that teaches us what makes this country truly unique. To the disease vectors spreading through this land; yes, we will replace you. The damage done to America can be undone with a thorough scouring the government of the rot and criminal cancer with which Trump has attempted to infect a great and good people. Never again.
4
Look at a psychology dictionary at egoistic.
3
"[T}here’s no sign that Trump’s rhetoric has generally boosted white America’s sense of racial grievance." Tell that to the people of El Paso.
7
We, the People, are encaged in an amoral obscenity, with a Sociopathic Liar at the Helm. Part of his Sociopathy, which is
beyond the People’s comprehension, is his given personal Satisfaction in his position of National Power in the “Presidency”
and his abundant Pleasure in his Oval Office occupation of our absolute Center Of Attention. Most of the Pub.ic have absolutely no comprehension of the symptoms and dynamics of the
Diagnostic Presence of the Sociopathic Personality Disorder.
We may simply choose to Wait for the movie on “The Sociopathic
President”. Meanwhile, enjoy his Narcissism.
5
No, not sinister, No not genius, just vicious, a liar and a cheat and I would think his hair, yellow, tells us enough about his character
7
Liberal trash talk about Trump is nothing but "sound and fury, signifying nothing".
Trump will be elected in 2020 because his program has been successful, he has a large enthusiastic band of followers and, most important the Democrats have nothing better to offer. Them's the facts.
1
@Michael Dowd, only as you and Fox see them.
5
Trump can encourage violence in public rallies and it is okay. If I make reference to that reality in this space, my comment is deemed uncivil and rejected. Interesting to say the least. I expect this to be rejected as well.
Trump has definitely caused me to revise my opinion of George W. Bush upwards. Bigly!
2
He is a disordered narcissist with the entire universe of narcissistic shortcuts; depression, projection, lying, reinterpretation of flaws as positives, attention deficit, lazy, tired...
4
No, dimwitted Trump cannot be a sinister genius, he just doesn't have the capacity, allergic to knowledge and understanding, and yet with a crude measure of emotional upheaval to rattle his masses, his 'base mob', which stopped questioning the veracity of his cheap and nonsensical blabber, adopting a cult of personality instead: whatever he says, no matter how stupid, or outrageous, or a repeated lie (however much debunked), is taken as the 'gospel' truth. This is 'fascism' personalized, as these Trumpian times have shown in his by-now tiring diatribes attacking old foes...for lack of any original ideas worth our attention. Basically, Trump is a narcissist, a vulgar bully hungry for attention, to feed a sick ego, no matter how destructive to this democracy. Given that this demagogue has no remedy, it is hoped the democrats will save this country from his ongoing trampling wrath...if only they could resolve to mount a case against this monster...instead of agains each other. Too bad the republicans fell asleep at the wheel, complicit with Trump's corrupted misrule.
3
Donald Trump is the greatest con man in history. Aside from that idiot-savant talent, he is profoundly, monumentally stupid. He could cruise to re-election with one simple act: Delete his Twitter account. But he won't, because it defines him.
I do not like to write this, but the most certain Democratic path to victory is to nominate a qualified straight white male under 70 from the heartland. That person could hold positions as economically liberal as Sanders or Warren and still win easily. Bullock, Hickenlooper, Bennett, Ryan, O'Rourke and Sestak all qualify. Because 4 out of 5 ain't bad, I think Buttigieg or Klobuchar would also win.
Again, I hate to say it, but this election will not be about policy. It will be about race. A 5 million popular vote edge will be as meaningless as Clinton's 3 million vote victory if the Electoral College is lost again. The only votes that count will be those in the upper Midwest and the Southeast. A Democratic candidate who looks and sounds like the Obama-Trump voters in these regions will be the next President... nominate anybody else and we risk everything.
Dan Kravitz
4
I think you are spot on.
2
Not a strategy? I’m not so sure anymore. I used to think that, but I think he regards the situation as “whatever it takes”.
3
The chant should go:
Do you have better health insurance?
-No!
Do you have a better job?
-No!
Is your family safer?
-No
Does Washington work better?
-No!!
Do you feel duped by Trump?
YES!!!!
Well, let’s get busy...
8
Why no mention of voter suppression and Russian meddling as plausible campaign strategies? Because those actually are evil, if not genius? Seinfeld once said of Newman, "I've looked into his eyes, he's pure evil." Trump is impure evil!
"...The campaign may turn on how successfully the Democrats claim or build an anti-Trump center, as opposed to appearing to offer an unpalatable extremism of their own..." [op cit]
--
I totally agree.
--
But what I also think I'm hearing is, "...that as it stands, Donald Trump could actually win in 2020. But only:
1. If he allows his campaign strategists to promote him, 'their way,' without his unwanted interference.
2. And if the Democrats persist in promoting their unpopular, 'Socialist' agenda... " [my quote]
***
I don't want Trump to win in 2020.
—
So l for one, am hoping and praying:
1. That the Dems will get wise concerning their own agenda.
2. And that Donald Trump will continue to offend friends and enemies alike, “… [with his] racialized Twitter feuds, the battles over Baltimore and Ilhan Omar, the media freak-outs and the ‘don’t call us racist!’ defensiveness of his rallygoing fans…” [op cit]
--
"We'll see what happens."
“Donald Trump is not a sinister genius.”
Thanks for stating the obvious, Ross; though the headline would have been more incisive had it read, “Donald Trump is not a genius,” because he *is* sinister. He is the most malevolent person to occupy the White House in at least a hundred years.
It is myth of popular narrative that evil and intelligence go hand-in-hand. Think Hannibal Lecter or perhaps Walter White. In reality, evil’s running-mate is more often stupidity. In fact, stupidity is often the means by which evil exerts its destructive force. Trump’s manifest stupidity and ignorance are therefore not in any way reassuring. If he were smart enough to understand all the damage he was causing, he might be less inclined towards destruction.
3
This man is the symptom of the disease that's destroying this country. This guy is the poster child for racism, hatred and soulless narcissism. And I use the term "man" loosely.
Quit giving him oxygen.
2
I don't think anyone ever mistook him for a sinister genius. Now, a sinister idiot is an entirely different matter...
3
George Washington was an immigrant.
@CGM
No he wasn’t an immigrant. He was born in Virginia
Washington's great-grandfather John Washington immigrated in 1656 from Sulgrave, England to the British Colony of Virginia where he accumulated 5,000 acres.
George Washington was born February 22, 1732 at Popes Creek in Westmoreland County, Virginia.
4
Funny how you kinda skated over Republican complicity with Trump’s racism on this one Ross.
5
Metaphor fail: Enough already with darkness: "The dark fruit of a white-identitarian campaign." Bad fruit can be white too!
Trump is a soulless grifter who is drunk on power. He is not intellectual or curious or articulate. He is a destructive force, a narcissist, and a small minded cruel man. Everything he says and does horrifies me, but what frightens me even more is the deafening silence of the GOP and the disheartening support of some fellow Americans.
3
trump just wants to "be himself." And he "himself" isn't very smart and refuses to learn. He is a racist, a misogynist, a xenophobe, and a homophobe. And those following him are also just all of that. They prefer isolationist foreign "policy" because they don't know any better. They are shallow and ignorant, scared little things who need to band together and shout hate to feel alive and supported and safe, like trump himself.
It's really that simple. trump being trump and those following him are simply horrible people.
2
Mr. Douhat appears to be one of the few pundits who grasp that Trump is a true anti-politician. Besides having no political experience and no real political aganda, he doesn't really like politics. In 2016 he benefited from a perfect storm of having the right message at the right time while running against the right mix of traditional stale politicians. Even hard-core politicians get wary of the presidency very quickly. But Trump doesn't enjoy anything about being President except for speaking at sycophantic rallies and being able to command the news cycle with the twitch of his thumb. Sure, he would like to win a second term, but he doesn't want to change his MO in order to do so. He's too addicted to the massive news coverage he gets through his outrageously offensive tweets. That's way more important to a narcissist like him than a second term. If defeated for reelection he will simply retire to Mar-a-Lago and resume his life as a jet setting septuagenarian billionaire — a pretty nice consolation prize
1
So, in other words if the Democrats wish to take the White House they need to nominate a non-racist status quo candidate. Say, somebody like Bill Clinton whose Democratic party along with their allies in the Republican party famously cut larger holes in America's safety net, undermined labor and deregulated America's finance industry. No thank you, Mr. Douthat.
4
I agree with the headline, but solely because the second word does not apply.
1
He is a malignancy on the body politic; the blood of El Paso is on his hands and for this reason alone, forget about all the other reasons we have, the hurt he has done this country and the suffering we will experience in the near future because of him, we need to PURGE him.
3
There's only so many times you can shoot yourself in the foot before it becomes really difficult to walk. And he's already got CSBS (chronic situational bone spurs).
3
Trump has no genius. He is evil. Period. End of analysis.
5
So, Trump is not a racist, he is just stupid. Is that the message? If so, I certainly agree with the latter, but Trump's actions over decades are pretty much definitive proof of his racism.
What is amazing is the reaction from the MAGA-head supporters. They think his racist comments are just fine. They say things like: "He's not racist! Because I know I'm not racist and I have been telling my (brown/black) neighbors that if they don't like what I say or how they are treated, they should just go back where they came from. That's free speech! And Trump is protecting my free speech."
This kind of insane logic is what sustains Trump's base. And if Trump is not strategizing this kind of rhetoric, he is certainly benefiting from it.
Moreover, Mr. Douthat, we know already from his campaign strategists that they believe the appeal to racism is a winning strategy for the election. So, frankly, whatever Trump is doing or saying, his handlers are telling him to keep on doing it--keep on race-baiting.
3
This statement comports with everything I've ever heard from his die-hard supporters. They positively despise his loose tongue and his incessant tweeting. It amazes me how he keeps his base, but that's another discussion entirely.
1
The sinister genius is Vladimir Putin and the goal is to weaken the US and the West... And it is working.
4
The "genius" of Trump is that he can pick personnel that are convinced by his rants that they have to support him. McConnell is the person who has done the most to support his narcissistic actions by preventing Obama from appointing Garland to the Supreme Court and filling lower federal courts. Trump could then nominate far right appointees to the federal courts that were never brought to the Senate. Trump also succeeded in getting Barr as AG and McConnell would not bring any bill to the Senate floor to fund our defending against a repeat in 2020 of what worked in 2016. If his ranting and twittering have had such a great success for the long sought power of the GOP it does not take a "genius" for Trump to continue doing what he has been very successful in doing.
2
"There’s no sign that Trump’s rhetoric has generally boosted white America’s sense of racial grievance." Please, Mr. Douthat. Poorly timed assertion in the wake of El Paso, or willful omission in the shadow of Pittsburgh, Poway, Charleston and Charlottesville?
4
for the first time i actually agree with you Ross--he is not a genius just plain sinister!
1
The sinister geniuses at work labor in the upper echelons of power at your newspaper, Ross.
It was they who decided that every twitspasm was newsworthy. Other print media and the electronic media dutifully, if thoughtlessly followed suit.
It was the editorial “leadership” of the organ that pays your salary that did everything in its power to reverse engineer a Trump-Clinton general election, thinking it the smoothest path to a Clinton Presidency.
Had the deeply researched story of how Fred Trump repeatedly floated his less than competent son surfaced before Trump secured the nomination, the entire rationale of his candidacy would have been destroyed. The same is true had the BillyBushBus tape surfaced before the nomination was his. The Times even saw no reason to question the corruption at the core of the Trump Foundation, abdicating that Pulitzer nugget to the WaPo’s David Farenthold. The Times seemed to willfully hold back damaging research until the general election, utterly forgetting the axiom that “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.” The Times’ editorship badly misjudged Democrats’ ability to fall in love with Hillary Clinton. Worse, after the BillyBushBus tape surfaced, the Times, more than once, mooted that Trump would withdraw, while ballot certification laws would have left his name on more than half of the states’ ballots, and the Times was not even dimly aware that Republicans were busy falling in line behind him. The Times failed us all, Ross.
3
I agree. Trump is not a sinister genius. But he IS an evil (rhymes with truck).
2
Dear Ross he is no genius. Indeed he is probably the least intelligent, most unqualified and incompetent man to ever hold public office. But he is sinister, an amoral and a shameless demagogue who exploits economic anxiety with false promises and barely concealed appeals to racism and hate. What is worse is that he has voters and an abysmal Republican Party that still supports him. How anybody can is beyond me! Maybe you should explore why you don’t denounce him and your party forthwith instead of rationalizing excuses for him.
2
No he is most assuredly not a genius, He is just extremely sinister on steriods, so to speak.
1
Well, you're half right. Trump is no genius.
But he's definitely sinister.
Oh, did mention, AND a racist?
2
His race-baiting IS popular. Shockingly so.
No decent person would tolerate it, yet Midwest diners are stuffed with people who *do* tolerate it. And that’s not even considering the former Confederate states.
2
Too many words Ross. No need to say "race-baiting" or "white grievances" or other political strategist lingo.
RACIST. Just one word, is all you need.
Whether he wins or loses in 2020 America will have elected and tolerated a RACIST.
Frankly you continue to dance around this point.
4
Tump’s silence on: “Send them back,” is the progression to kill brown people in Walmart.
Hate crimes are on the rise since Trump took office.
The white men who have committed mass murders are terrorist, but Trump remains silent. He refuses to condemn them as terrorists.
When white nationalists commit crimes in Charlottesville, he claims there are “bad people on both sides.”
2
Which is to say, we can hope that moral outrage is the animating factor that brings down our vile occupant of the White House.
2
He has no strategy. He is completely subject to the narcissistic and antisocial agendas of his severe mental illnesses.
4
We can only wonder why, even when Mr. Douthat wants to criticize what he knows he should, the repulsive and disgraceful amorality of Trump, he cannot call the man on his obvious racism yet he can get to call "Omar's anti-Semitic tropes."
3
He's certainly not a genius but he is sinister and repulsive as well.
3
It appears from early donation patterns that Republican stalwarts like the Koch brothers have already decided that Trump is not going to be re-elected. He has managed to polarize not only the Democrats, but also those who trusted him to make major Republican changes. Instead, they throwing their money at defending their senate majority and taking a large stake in the house. However, if the Democrats don't winnow down all the wannabees to those that have a serious chance of defeating Trump and get rid of the old school candidates that are mired in the past, enough people could decide that the known Trump is better than the unknown. Both parties need to figure out what to do with the Trumpster, and how to keep him from ravaging the country (and by extension, every other country we collaborate with) or the next 6 years will see further descent into darkness and possibly the extinction of democracy as we know it.
2
It dosn't take a genius to know that the last refuge of a bigot, homophobe or fascist is in the voting booth.
1
after the thirty-odd dead bodies piled up over this weekend, trump's approval ratings are going to hit the cellar. the connection to his racist rants, doubled and redoubled over the past few days, is just too direct and obvious. everybody knows this is on him.
2
Trump's 2016 win was a confluence of flukes. Hillary Clinton's inept campaign, the GOPs inability to take on Trump's clownish bigoted clap trap, and the electoral college. Like it or not Trump used social media hate speech to propel himself into the 2016 general election. There was a good deal of white resentment that could easily be influenced by scurrilous belligerent bigotry. Now the GOP is stuck with their nasty big mouthed party chief. The Democrats leftward story line is the same old story. Win the nomination on the left then move to the center for the general election. The party leadership who tried to ram rod corporatist Hillary Clinton to the nomination learned a valuable lesson with with their super delegate debacle.
1
trump is not a sinister genius but he is sinister. He has no strategy except he believes America is a racist nation and he can't lose by appealing to it.
3
Trump scraped by to the White House by the skin of his teeth.
the fact that Republicans are afraid to cross him is an embarrassment to them, as they have ceded power to a man who did not win the popular vote and scraped by the win the electoral college. His constant playing to his base and not the rest of the country, the white disenfranchised who he really hasn't helped, the Wall Streeters and other billionaires who think about their own wallet and not the common good and the religious zealots who elected him to defeat abortion are not enough to win the White House a second time. Cream will rise to the top among the Dems and there will be a strong candidate to take him on who will hopefully work to bring the Country together.
3
Douthat wants us to take comfort in the notion that Trump’s racist and white nationalist rhetoric may not poll so well. But it’s extremely popular among the angry men who keep deciding to shoot other people in churches, stores, schools and at concerts and festivals. He and his minions know this and refuse even to acknowledge it. Sinister? Yes.
everyone.
2
When health care for all is extremism, that’s when we know that words have no meaning.
His race baiting is not impulsive although his outbursts may be. Trump is all about stepping on other humans and smearing them. He is shameless in his lies and his blatant hatred of anyone who isn’t him. His supportors don’t realize that they mean nothing to him except that he can con them into voting for him. All they care about is that he seems to hate everyone they do....even when some of those people are the very people who support him.
5
Mr. Douthat misses the mark by a long shot. Democrats ran a "centrist" candidate in 2016 and the electorate yawned. Moderates in DC have failed miserably - "extremists" are tired of the status quo and want real change. The truth is that moderates today are the real extremists. Both the left and the right are similar in many more ways than pundits realize. But of course Mr. Douthat's employer and other corporate monoliths are terrified of what is going to come sooner or later. They're grip on what we read and hear is going to go down either with Trump or Bernie. Choose your flavor!
I'm not wealth, don't work for a major corporation (I work for a nonprofit) do t own lots of stock, and I don't like either of those choices. Revolutionaries fight revolutions, but history tells us they don't make great governments. Fight the revolution, but don't let firebrand drive once we've won the wheel.
3
It's obvious that Trump isn't a genius, but the proposition that his race baiting isn't a deliberate strategy seems naive. While Steve Bannon isn't a genius either, it seems likely that he gave Trump the idea for the race-baiting when he was Trump's chief strategist. He seems to be the kind of person that spends a lot of time reading up on things like that. While it's unlikely that Trump actually believes much of what he says politically, he definitely wants to stay in power, now that he has it, and will use whatever means are available. As to "people disliking political correctness." Yes, there are some people who dislike political correctness, largely because they don't understand it as a way of showing basic courtesy and decency in an in an increasingly diverse society, and Trump is quite willing to use their obliviousness to get their support. If all of these things aren't sinister in someone with as much power as the president of the United States wields, I don't know what is.
7
We could debate "impulse vs strategy" on every subject of Trump outrageousness, not just Race-Baiting. Next, Adoring-the-Nobel-Laureates? "They were great letters. And then we fell in love."
Bottom line: Outrage Sells. For each edition, the Master Salesman President RECEIVES EVER-GREATER LEVELS of media oxygen. But, always for what? ..always for HIS dumpster fires ..which are always the same. Each fire is a crude construction of what Donald Trump thinks is transpiring and of what Donald Trump wants to be transpiring.
60 million voters are still caught in the web. Conservative talk radio entertainers, Fox News program hosts, Kellyanne Conway, Lindsey Graham, Rudi Giuliani, Jerry Falwell Jr, even Franklin Graham still bind Republicans to Donald Trump. The Koch brothers, the Mercers, the Adelsons bankroll it.
Strident web weavers are an outgrowth of the potent, the entrenched, and the self-reinforcing loyalty that define Republicans. ONLY the transference of party loyalty keeps the Trumptanic afloat. Those supporters who don't benefit from the web and may tire of promises -- are maintained by vilifying a "left" media.
Mr Douthat's premise for pursuing "race-baiting is not a strategy" was as weak as his argument. Soon, his real thesis statement appeared and confirmed that this is a LOYALTY MAINTENANCE exercise:
"And here I agree with the left that there’s a media tendency to give Trump’s race-baiting impulses more credit as a strategy than they actually deserve."
@Able Nommer "ONLY the transference of party loyalty keeps the Trumptanic afloat." indeed.
Two facts cannot be denied: Many more people are working and wages are rising; we are in a relative peace. Which leads me to ask why would the American people risk changing from peace and prosperity for an unknown?
They won't.
1
Are you referring to the peace in El Paso and Dayton?
6
@Douglas these things were true under obama, too, without the ugly, humiliating racist tone. people had the option to continue obama's course. how did that go?
oh, wait. people voted by 3 million votes to pursue obama's way. but a fluke tipped he election to the man they roundly rejected.
5
Race baiting? I think not, but it is an easy refrain for the democrats. They have been doing it for years, one only needs to look to the black caucus. They can say anything they like, even if profane and no one says a word. However, should Trump make a comment, it's all about race. A good example is Trump's comment about the squad, four woman of color. Trump didn't tell them to go back to another country, he told them to go home and clean up the mess there before telling him what is wrong with America. Likewise, Mr. Trump's comments regarding Baltimore and Cummings and the BILLIONS of dollars sent there and Baltimore is still rat infested. Why aren't the democrats looking into that? I can tell you why, Cummings and the rest in Baltimore have been lining their pockets at the expense of their constituents. This is the true status quo, not the one Mr. Douthat describes.
3
We know that Trump's birtherism nonsense didn't insult your intelligence.
4
@DEWaldron
This is what Trump tweeted: "So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world ... Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."
Notice the repetition of the verb "came"? He was referring they go back to the "countries" they "came" from. Trump was clearly race-baiting his crowd with that tweet. He wasn't saying they should go back to their districts. He never even mentions the term. There is no doubt (and this tweet proves) Trump actually believed all four women were foreign born. Making excuses for Trump's racism is the "refrain" of his base.
In order to have an honest debate one needs to be honest. Honesty and truth are clearly not part of Trump's or his followers' discourse.
4
Have you seen the film "The Manchurian Candidate," the Angela Lansbury/Laurence Harvey version? Is it possible that it's really happening?
3
President Russia's impulsiveness is the basis for his OBESITY, which we are not permitted to mention - how strange.
1
What garbage! So the birtherism was simply some kind of temporary "urge?" So the Republican Party's Southern Strategy of Lee Atwater, Manifort, and Stone, a strategy in which the Party agreed to try to make America White again way back in 1964-65, a strategy the Party still pursues with alacrity? Trump has simply made explicit what Republican's have been working and hoping for for 50 years. Who knows, maybe the "dog won't hunt" anymore, but it is clear that there will be more violence before Trump and the Republican Party's white nationalism is over.
8
Douthat is basically making excuses for Trumps racism.. trying to marginalize it's effect and therefore downplay the seriousness of it.
I'm getting real tired of his constant narrative designed to excuse conservatives and be hyper critical of liberals.
7
"...conservative intellectuals trying to transform Trumpism into something intellectually robust."
Ha,ha, ha! Seven hundred years ago, these same "intellectuals" would have been arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
3
I have found your upper case (class?caste?) Conservative/Catholic ideological persuasion to be rational while not reaching the same conclusions myself. However as I see it, you're as naive as Obama in the sense that your education, personal morality, ethics etc in other words, your Humanity cannot fantom the behavior of Trump,his associates and disciples. It is incomprehensible to that people would behave this way and be as craven, corrupt and hateful. President Trump is about winning, dominating as are most of those who surround him it is NOT for the good of the country or the rugged individualism, exceptionalism, faux patriotism or whatever cliche du jour -Selfish Amorality is what the Trump hierarchy of White House advisers and cabinet yes men and women are all about. The smarter have fled the rest are "in for a penny..." desperate and are Collaborators in the upper case. Today's performance by Mulvaney a case in point. The never Trump R's seem terribly disappointed in their former Political home and rightfully so.
3
"But it means that if he wins again, it will likely be in spite of his own rhetoric, not as the dark fruit of a white-identitarian campaign." Sorry Ross. If he wins again it'll be definitive proof that we're in a cold civil war guided by racism and xenophobia. Then after the election whoever is still keeping their head down can hold it high while wearing a maga hat. Or a white hood.
5
He is not a genius, but he is a smarter than the people who elected him, and as long sa he keeps a step ahead of that electorate he will continue feeding them morsels of hate and racism.
White people has a history and tradition of voting, minorities historically have been marginalized and do not vote, therefore, Trump knows his chances are fully vested on the angry people who thinks that anything is better than losing privilege.
His tactics are following the book of Germany's national socialism and Italy's fascism. His speeches mimic the antics of Adolf and Benito.
6
Another day and another horrific shooting in our country and neither our leader or any of his followers speak out against guns. We only hear about the horrific multiple shootings. People are shot every day in our large cities and the gun violence goes on because the Republicans continue to support the gun manufacturers, the gun dealers, the gun buyers and most of all the NRA. Our leader only directs his venom towards individuals. He is a stupid man. And he is most responsible for allowing this slaughter to go on. These are hate crimes and our leader spews his hatred every time he speaks to his followers.
6
Douthat mentions "Omar’s anti-Semitic tropes".
I know of none. Clearly, Mr. Douthat knows of none, either. If he did, he would quote Rep. Omar instead of using this non-specific, generalized, bland descriptor.
See
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/chasemadar/ilhan-omar-anti-semitism-load-bearing-myth
6
Right, Trump is not a sinister genius, he's just a racist. It comes natural to him, when a black person speaks negatively of him, he attacks with racist innuendos, i.e. the Squad with "send them back", John Lewis back in 2017 with crime ridden Atlanta, and recently with Elijah Cummings with Baltimore.
I also think that a Never-Trump campaign is a flat out loser. The Democrats won the 2018 midterms with healthcare, wages, education campaigns, etc.
And the Dems are wasting time if they think they can convert someone that supports Trump today.
6
Mr. Trump seems to believe that if he does not use the "N" word, he is not a racist. Wrong. His "dog whistle" approach to racism is just as bad, and as POTUS he is inciting some of his base to more extreme actions, possibly violent. "I believe that what this president has done to our culture, to our civic discourse ... you cannot unring these bells and you cannot unsay what he has said, and you cannot change that he has now in a very short time made it seem normal for schoolboy taunts and obvious lies to be spun out in a constant stream. I think this will do more lasting damage than Richard Nixon's surreptitious burglaries did." (George Will, CNN, 15July2019)
5
Trump is very ill. We are being negligent to the nation allowing an unbalanced individual to have so much power. Fortunately, the planet only has a dozen or so years.
4
"None of this means that Trump cannot be re-elected. But it means that if he wins again, it will likely be in spite of his own rhetoric, not as the dark fruit of a white-identitarian campaign."
I disagree that if Trump wins again it will be despite his rhetoric. Trump won in 2016 because he tapped into racism that lies just under the surface of a civil society. Look at his poll numbers and we have a good estimate of the percentage of American voters who share his views (~42%). He ran a racist campaign in 2016, which worked, and he has markedly upped his rhetoric since becoming president without losing his base. His favorability ratings have been constant regardless of anything that comes out of his mouth. The only reasonable explanation for this is that what Trump says is what his supporters want to hear. To win again, he just needs to convince a small number of people in key states that his opponent is a crooked socialist, a fake native American, or some other ridiculous characterization. He does not have to convince them he is not a racist. It will be an ugly, ugly campaign.
3
You colleague, David Brook has proposed a sound approach for the The anti Trump center in his column on Friday.
1
Vacationing abroad, I find that, xlearly, Trump has already tarnished the US image abroad for generations to come. if he gets re-elected, fuggettadboutit.
6
He isn't a genius but he is sinister and provokes others. He has the blood of the dead in El Paso on his hands.
6
Never Trump again is exactly the point. And however that goal is achieved is the important part. Democrats need to assure those fence-sitters that economically speaking, things will mostly remain the same. But Trump, vile, idiotic, abrasive, evil, terrible-man Trump won't be at the helm. Once Democrats get in--and Republicans who have stayed silent or embrace Trumpism are subject to the same vulnerability as vile, idiotic, abrasive, evil, terrible-man Trump--then progressive policies can move forward. Get him out of office is the first and salient objective.
4
Trump is racist. Introduced to it by his dad, Fred. He is prone to infidelity, but demands loyalty to cover his hypocrisy and savage impulsive behaviors. Likely the reason everyone working around him in the past and in the WH has had to sign a non-disclosure act. He is that bad. He is no genius. He is all puff and fluff. Won't even fire anyone in his midst. In the WH, he is just pure dangerous. If the GOP stuck with any rule of law, he would have been ousted with their help during the first year of office. How long did it take for that big tax cut to happen that benefited 80% of congress more so than the majority of the rest of the country? By then, it was about the investigation and the prospects of impeachment and jail, now or later. No genius. Trying to save his hide. Its about his survival. All the more reason that he is more dangerous than before. He has congresspersons scared of losing their seats; democrats too if they don't go along partially with his antics, masking it as pointless since the GOP led senate will do nothing to restrain Trump. None of them are geniuses. This is how Dictators are made. Everyone looking for cover from one person who has influenced the worst in them.
4
Trump is not a genius anything. This is not a diabolically crafted, clear-eyed plan to get re-elected. This is Trump as Trump has always been: self-centered, manically egotistical, childishly immature and thin-skinned, anti-women, a racist, blind to anything negative in his image, deaf to any staffer not effusive with praise, and quite frankly, not very smart.
He uses harsh words that his followers understand because they are the same harsh words they thought, but only said in controlled situations. Now, the locks have been removed and the angry, decisive rhetoric often leads to violence, mayhem, and deaths.
Using the word “genius” when writing about the current occupant of the Oval Office is silly.
3
Ross Douthat gets closer to the truth of what Trump is than almost anyone else with this piece. Trump is not that sinister and he's certainly no genius. He's just a guy who thought running for president was a fine platform from which to launch a new TV show. He never expected to win, but once he did, woohoo! He's the president of the United States and has the world to toy with. He doesn't have to think about the consequences of his tweets, actions, appointments, because he's the president and can obviously do whatever he wants.
What fun. It's better than a TV show. He can hold rallies in places where people can't believe their luck to have someone just like them being a president up there saying and believing things they do and. Awesome!
It's not deep and it's not evil. It's just really stupid and dangerous to have such a man wield so much power so badly for so long. For that you can blame the party he ostensibly belongs to who seem to think they are getting what they want out of their useful idiot. They aren't, as they are about to find out.
The only way to beat Trump at his own game is to ignore him, his tweets, his daily outbursts, his taunts, his speeches, and his base. So far not too many understand they feed the beast when they engage him on those fronts.
He can't stand to be ignored. So ignore him. Let him rant to his base and don't report it. Go on without him and get to work on winning the election. You really don't need him there as a foil to do that.
340
@Memi von Gaza
I agree. Focus on the policies of his enablers. Ignore Trump. Deprive him of attention. It is not, and should not be, news that he says (or more likely tweets) something outrageous or lies.
28
Fun times: The Donald is now an accessory after the fact in several mass murders. Woohoo
22
@Memi von Gaza
I agree, but every so often I email my GOP Senator and make sutle comparisons and question his Party and personnal beliefs.
11
Elizabeth Warren's message can beat Trump's status quo message, even if Warren isn't the head of the ticket.
3
Moderation in defense of liberty is no vice and a big snoozer.
1
GOOD NEWS: Trump is bringing us all together.
BAD NEWS: The place he's bringing us to is Armageddon.
4
Ross, You should keep these thoughts to yourself. Do you really think that Trump should have an opportunity to continue screwi g with this country? Let him rant and rave. Better for the country prior to the election.
2
“His race-baiting is impulsive and unpopular, not a brilliant strategy to win white votes.”
He’s no genius. You don’t have to be that smart to do what he does. You just have to see what it is and want to do it. And it works.
2
Not a genius, but sinister. And crafty. And racist. And sexist. And untruthful. And puerile. And so much more that sentient people know and the voluntarily blind ignore.
With our system of checks and balances crippled into paralysis by Moscow Mitch and his ilk, the US faces one simple choice from now through 2020: vote for every Democrat in every election at every level, and sort out the shades of difference later. With electoral power, we can stop this juggernaut. Without it, forget the America we thought we knew.
5
This column hits it out of the park. Thank you Ross Douthat for pointing out the blindingly obvious.
Trump’s like that delinquent kid who starts a fire, pulls the alarm, and that watches from across the street in extreme glee as the fire engines roll in.
3
How about "danger"! Trump is outright endangering the country supported by Fox News' propaganda that bolsters his approval rating by spewing lies. Moscow Mitch is right there with him.
2
Trump is endangering all Americans.
God help us.
I hope we vote wisely so that Trump does not continue to be President.
He is unkind, unhelpful, selfish, incapable, etc.
I know there are others in elected offices such as him.
The way I see it he is among the most noxious human chemical composition fouling a potentially healthy swamp.
Trump is more like the matter which we use cesspools for,
PS
I wonder why his sister, the federal judge, does not speak out?
God bless America !
1
@Lenny
Could it be that Putin has successfully attacked the USA by effectively making Trump, and incapable and a dangerous person, making Trump the President of the USA ? I think to some degree (?) this is true.
Congress and the Senate need to Impeach, fire, Trump before too much more damage is done, damage such as the 2 mass shootings in the last 24 hours.
2
“None of this means that Trump can’t be re-elected....”
Yes, you needed to put that in, because you really don’t know what Trump’s draw is to millions of his followers. And you know that he may, indeed, win again; providing you, of course, with another 4 years of writing about how non-strategic and bumbling he is.
1
Donald Trump has been a born narcissist and has become at some point in his early life a racist. As a narcissist he can’t help himself but to seek attention and as a racist he can’t help himself but to tweet racist two liners. The inherent personality disorder and the acquired bias work beautifully in tandem to satisfy his needs by provoking a never ending storm of indignation and outrage. But in order to get the attention he has to get extremer over time. So he does.
The winning formula is simple: Ignore the tweets, focus on the disastrous policies, ridiculous incompetence, the lack of decorum and corruption.
2
Bizarre column. Why suggest Trump's any kind of genius - because he said so? "Sinister" is a word for cartoon characters and 50s noir. It has almost amusing connotations at this point and is an inappropriate way to describe the unhinged, anti-American, amoral, brand-building buffoon currently occupying the WH - y'know; that "dump."
Douthat's Trump apologies and admiration ( "defiantly outside the mainstream" "...every day, in a particular way, proves himself extreme") are not welcome here. That they're welcome anywhere - in the face of the overwhelmingly bad inspiration Trump is now responsible for - is as unacceptable as the race-baiting Douthat decries as "impulsive."
4
Really Mr. Douthat? Shouldn't we take him at his word, namely, that his is a "stable genius"? Since you are trying to dissuade your readers from accepting that, you clearly think this is a likely scenario. Perhaps not for you, Mr. Douthat, but for anyone else who cares to apply minimal judgement It's a no-brainer that Trump is a run-of-the-mill vulgar crook.
2
Trump is no sinister genius, but he doesn't need to be to successfully maintain power by exploiting hate. It is Trump's racism and xenophobia, not impulsiveness, which matters as it inspired tens of millions of Americans to vote for him, and still support him, knowing he's a terrible person.
What does it say of those supporting Trump for selfish ideological reasons and monetary gain?
Virtually every Republican is a Trump defender, none more so than Mitch McConnell, who (like you Mr. Douthat), tolerates and excuses Trump's deadly toxicity as long as it allows him to take over the judiciary with right-wing activists who, among other things, deny a woman the right to control her own body.
All of this is insidiously marketed as supposedly saving fetuses, when, as the last 24 hours has proven once again, Trump is fomenting such hate that mass murder of actual human beings is occurring.
Americans, if black, brown, Latino, Jewish, Muslim, or Gay, are not safe from the white supremacists Trump empowers whether they are in a Walmart, or in a Church, a Mosque, or a Synagogue. The only concern these white supremacists have is that an AK-47 might "overheat...after about 100 shots fired in quick succession."
Trump isn't brilliant, yet it is shocking to hear you minimize his racist and xenophobic rhetoric by saying it is making him slightly less popular. He's still plenty popular, and a massive number of Americans have little to no problem if his hate speech incites mass murder.
4
Well you're half right. He's not a genius.
1
Does the president actually have a plan for the nation's future? Or even for his own future? I would say not. He is like a bull in the arena, irritated by one red flag and then by another, all the time causing havoc in the world around him. But there is no point in explaining the historical failure of his preferred policies such as increasing tariffs - not only does he not know that the latter fuelled the Great Depression, but he probably has no idea what the Great Depression was.
A plan is something he must get others to work out for him, and we have already seen how he embraces such "gurus" and worships their every word until for reasons unknown even to himself he discards them, often accusing them of treason.
But history has shown that a poor president has often been followed by one who is more competent, even if at the time people have not appreciated the fact. (Party allegiances may blur one´s vision in this respect!)
As Republicans would not dare replace the candidate Trump with another (although not all Republicans are evil, they all seem to be scared sockless of proposing any more suitable candidate) we must hope that one of the Democrats now vying for the presidential race will a) be elected and b) not be stymied by a reactionary Congress.
"Hope springs eternal in the human breast" ...
1
You are absolutely right. Trump never had a strategy and never will. He sounded like he had one early on, but it was fed to him by Bannon or others who today can be found either in the slammer or on the lecture circuit.
Trump’s ace in the hole is that he has no conscience. No matter how much we disparage the political class, even they don’t understand how to deal with this particular character trait. Even acquitted murderers have been known to return to the local prosecutor’s office to admit guilt. Trump will watch a tape of himself saying something stupid and without missing a beat, deny he said it... call it fake news...shrug and laugh...resulting in people simply left speechless.
Here we have a third generation white collar criminal with a quenched conscience shrugging through a presidency and laughing at how easy it is to pull off. Americans are in no mood for progressive dreams of having it all. A Dump Trump slogan just may be the only path to success.
3
Ok, I agree that he is not a sinister “ genius”—not “ stable” either!
Yes, his race baiting is often bad impulse control.
But much of it is very intentional.
This is the man who lead the charge of the “ birther” campaign against Obama, for crying out loud! ( As if the FBI doesn’t get that candidates actually qualify under the Constitution!!!)
And about that shameful Cincinnati rally:
OF COURSE Trump favored the only Ohio major city that sits along the Ohio River and Appalachia! The Appalachian natives more receptive to his shenanigans and racism.
3
Another Republican telling Democrats how to run. Fix the mess YOU made!
3
I did not know that Trump's harsh border policy was unpopular. It is probably the most important issue he has going for him. Take the immigration/asylum issue away from him and he will stand naked before the Pelosi's spears.
Give it a try, Democrats.
Of course Douthat wants to pretend that Trump’s rancid bigotry isn’t appealing to him and his fellow Republicans. Of course Trup’s bigotry is a main draw for the Republican base. I have no problem understanding that Trump isn’t a genius, just a run of the mill sociopath and con man born to wealth and privilege that placed him on a higher socioeconomic plain than the average snake oil salesman, but I also see what is crystal clear about his base: his racism, sexism, nationalism and general fear of and hatred toward anyone even slightly different is Trump’s main appeal for them. I predict that Douthat, being a natural-born Republican, will continue with his pattern of mild rebukes,of Trump, patently dishonest claims of never-Trumpism, lie-based attacks on Democrats to deflect from the growing lost of the sins of his Republican Party, and will pull the lever for Trump in 2020.
1
This column's attempt to make sense of the Trump Presidency is quite astonishing and ridiculous. Why is it so hard to understand the unique destructive force Trump has unleashed? How can we seriously discuss the fine points of the re-election strategy of an openly racist candidate, let alone president? Please if you feel the need to find an alternative to the Democrats the offer up a Republican alternative to Trump. The GOP surely can find a standard bearer with more decency the the traitor Trump and Moscow Mitch!
1
“Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitic tropes...” I’m going to stop right there.
I still don’t understand what about Ilhan Omar’s statements were anti-Semitic. Criticizing Israel is not inherently anti semitic. “Benjamins” is not some sort of symbol for Jewish people, it’s a symbol for corruption. If I were to question the Trump Administration’s cozy relationship with Saudi Arabia by saying its “all about the Benjamin’s”, would that be considered anti-Christian (against the trump admin) or anti-Islam (against Saudi Arabia)? If people say that associating money (Benjamin’s) with Israel is a classic anti-Semitic trope then does that allow for Israel to get away with all suspicions of any sort of money-induced corruption from here to eternity? I just don’t get it. Maybe that’s on me, but I’ll wait until someone gives me a real explanation.
3
trump is not any kind of genius, stable or otherwise
3
No, Trump is not a "sinister genius" — he is simply sinister (as well as diabolical and malevolent).
2
There is a policy platform that a challenger to Trump could employ to beat him, nearly at his own game....
That platform would be to oppose people who game the generous systems that are the United States;
welfare cheats,
white crime cheats,
labor and lobby cheats,
...and those who cheat the rights of free speech and press with daily slanders and libel abuses.
1
The word "sinister" definitely belongs in the same sentence with the word "Trump." The word "genius"...not so much.
1
Trump is not a genius but a tool of greedy hedge fund owners who need instability and a degree of chaos to profit by their short attacks. He deserves no credit for the economy, just jail time for his traitorous deeds.
4
trumps new campaign slogan. MAHA. Not MAGA.
Make America HATE Again = new campaign slogan.
2
I only want know if you will vote for any Democrat for president in 2020 or abstain from voting.
2
A few days ago my doctor described a moment with her 5-year-old daughter. The little girl pointed at the image on a t-shirt recently acquired from Disneyland. “Who’s this again?” she asked. Mother said, “It’s Donald Duck, remember?” Daughter replied, somewhat agitatedly, “Well what about this Donald Trump everyone keeps talking about? Who’s this Donald Trump?”
Repetition equals recognition, basic advertising, aka brainwashing. If that 5-year-old could vote today, she’d vote for Donald.
It got me thinking about how I’ve become both addicted to and oversaturated with incessant sensationalism in the beloved “liberal media of my own kind,” NYT, CNBC, etc. And what actually distinguishes them at this point from, for example, Fox News, in advertising Donald in shrill tones?
My conclusion: Stop talking about Donald all the time. Every word he speaks, every breath he takes. Stop reacting to his attention-getting tactics. Do not broadcast Twitter comments, campaign rallies, no more interviews.
Also, stop pitting Democratic candidates against each other, inventing feuds and ill will. Let viewers make up their own minds. Be objective. Otherwise, it’s just more soap opera—another spin-off of the Donald show.
Sent from my iPhone
1
We have over 300,000,000 people in this country. Is Donald Trump the best we can do?
2
I don't see Trump as a racist, although he makes racist remarks. Trump is an anti, anti-Trump. He makes up disparaging names and comments about anyone who criticizes or opposes him. Exactly what one would expect from a thin-skinned incompetent with a criminal background. There are only two logical outcomes for Trump, either he wins re-elections and with the help of Bill Barr literally locks up his political enemies or he is locked up the day he walks out of the White House for the last time. Someone is going to jail.
No, there's nothing "genius" about Donald Trump. He's just a good con-artist---a modern Elmer Gantry.
1
Donald Trump is just being himself, a bigoted racist.
But if wins it will be because of that, not despite it.
I have yet to see from your august paper a clear-eyed analysis of the bigotry and racism of Trump’s major bloc of supporters, namely white conservative evangelicals. They are not overlooking these statements of Trump, they are soaking them up.
I say that by the way as a professing Christian, who is as concerned about the soul of the American church as I am about the future of American society.
2
I am surprised that someone has to point out that Trump is not a genius strategist. If you consider his impulsive tweeting, the inconsistency of his views, his positions on domestic matters, his ridiculous and dangerous positions on foreign policy, and who he likes and dislikes - that changes from moment to moment - it is obvious that Trump does not have a coherent plan. I was going to give a few examples of the inconsistency and, let’s face it, ridiculousness of Trump’s so-called strategies or policy positions but it was too difficult to limit it to a few. Trump demonstrates his lack of intelligence and lack of critical thinking skills every day. So, Trump’s racist and bigoted comments are just examples of his racism and bigotry. There is nothing else going on. Please, vote him out before he does more damage to the world.
2
A lot of people don’t like it, but the ones who do are eating it up with a spoon and that’s what matters.
Between them and the “Yeah But Abortion” voters he’s got a good chunk of the electorate right there.
1
Well, he's certainly not a genius, that I'll give you.
1
This election is about morality, not policy. Either you want a racist, sexist, anti-immigrant bully running (HA!) the country plus the Republicans who overtly or silently support him, or you want to take our country back. It IS black and white this time. There cannot be any gray areas or nuances. It truly is good vs. evil.
Our President represents us to the world at large. What Trump represents is hate, ugliness, ignorance and criminality. Either you see that and you are horrified, or that doesn’t matter to you. The latter equals collusion.
The United States of America - our values, our credibility - is on the brink of being destroyed. Vote them OUT in 2020. Otherwise, we’re damaged irreparably.
2
Trump is no genius, but he certainly is sinister. He is calculating enough to pick these fights in order to get the Dems to impeach him. He knows that McConnell and his toadies will never convict him, so he can declare a victory close to the election against those nasty people who have always been out to get him. Yes, his racism is inherent in his character, and has been demonstrated for decades, but that doesn't mean he can't use it for nefarious purposes.
1
Spot on, Ross...he's not a genius.
Trump is first and foremost a vaudeville showman who is addicted to hearing the roars of approval from his audience.
He is a xenophobic racist and a misogynist and so are the people who come to his rallies.
His agenda is what Pence and the Federalists feed him. He knows nothing about government or how to be a President. He admitted the other day he chooses people for posts in his administration on the spur of the moment and expects the press to vet them.
His lies are based on a fantasy idea of himself and ignorance.
He will not be running against HRC this time and the nation now knows exactly what kind of person Trump is.
He will lose.
153
Trump will soon be out of office and quickly forgotten.
1
In this Opinion Ross Douthat takes tame aim at Donald Trumps 'racialized Twitter feuds'. He reports observations that are obvious to anyone that isn't sleeping, such as Trump's feeding on his us against them 'rhetoric' and how much he loves exciting 'his rallygoing fans' with inflamed attacks on his self-selected enemies. Douthat claims that '...there’s no sign that Trump’s rhetoric has generally boosted white America’s sense of racial grievance. Instead, polls show that even among Republicans, let alone independents, racial stereotypes have softened under Trump.' What polls is he referring to? He doesn't back up his claim that Trump hasn't boosted white America's sense of racial grievance'? There has been a increase in hate crimes in this country during Trump's presidency. No where is this lame Opinion does Douthat address the hate that Trump expresses and encourages. The president cannot open his mouth without spewing venom. This Opinion has its cake at eats it, too. According to Douthat, Trump is not hurting the American people just his chances of being reelected. What does Douthat think of the mass murder in El Paso today? I hope he doesn't write about it.
4
And the follow-up mass murder in Dayton.
2
Mr. Douthat contributes excellent observations and analysis regarding President Trump's impulsive and long-term "race-baiting", beginning long ago with his extremist, anti-Obama "birther" rants that deeply connected with a frightening percentage of the Republican base.
It begs several questions for the author:
Can you deny that anyone with such a race-baiting resume is, by definition, a racist?
If no, why don't you call President Trump a racist?
Finally, whether you consider President Trump merely an extreme race-baiter, or a full-blown racist, do you believe that President Trump's rhetoric has contributed to a culture through which the most hateful and unstable racists are more likely to feel empowered and encouraged to manifest their hate as mass murder, as in this morning's El Paso carnage?
2
"whether Democrats claim .... an unpalatable extremism of their own." Whatever platform Democrats run on, the GOP fear and hate mongers will paint it as 'extremism'.
2
Given that large pluralities of rural White voters, especially men, make up most of the core, and Trump won last election by appealing to racists, assuming it won't work again gives way too much credit to Republicans. Nothing is too low for the majority of GOP voters and politicians. Unless Republicans have miraculously become decent, it may well be a winning strategy again. These are your people.
2
The President is by no means a genius, but he is sinister.
He is also a great many other things, but the FIRST thing that comes to mind is that he is a thief. He is stealing our Democracy (with help from foreign powers) right out from under us.
He is also stealing our futures by financial and ideological means. On the financial side his administration, trade and financial policies are running up debts and deficits that may never be able to be paid. His trade and financial policies are destroying whole sectors of the economy and ways of life, while making us all work harder for the same amount of recompense.
He is stealing our futures (and possibly leading to all of our destruction) by ignoring and doing everything to speed up climate change. The policies enacted now, may never be able to be rolled back in time to undo the massive damage done.
A thief is a thief is a thief.
5
While I think Douthat’s right—Trump’s far more greedy swine than criminal mastermind—he might have mentioned two things:
1. The only way a guy like this gets over is if there’s something really wrong with a country;
2. Republicans sure haven’t been shy about riding this fat horse.
Mr. Douthat, ever think about what some of your victories cost?
2
Trump knows as much about political strategy as he does science, economics, casinos, the NFL, history, etc. etc. He’s making it up as he goes along, it’s time we smartened up, he’s clueless, and we’ve all bought Into his schtick.
1
"Donald Trump Is Not a Sinister Genius"
Donald Trump is no genius at all. But he's certainly sinister.
There. Fixed it for ya.
3
A Quinnipiac Poll showed that 51% of voters believed that Trump is racist. That 51% is a pure majority and more than enough to beat him in 2020. This begs the question, will people vote to keep a racist as President of The United States?
2
Whenever I get into arguments about how smart or dumb Trump may be, finding it impossible to prove either way, I always end up by saying "While combating him, the mistakes we will make by assuming he is smarter than he really is, are not as bad as the mistakes we will make (and have made) by assuming he is dumber than he actually is." Trump makes it hard to believe he is terribly smart by saying some stupid stuff, sure, but sometimes so stupid that I just cannot imagine that even he really believes it. Even he knows China did not make up climate change, or that there is such a thing as "clean coal". He has claimed both as a strategic ploy because it resonates with his base, and drives the left crazy (which itself resonates with his base!).
Trumps stream of outrageous lies, nonsense, and half truths manage to keep the supposedly smarter members of the press and the Democrats occupied discussing his every word and making sure that they have the proper analysis and condemnation of it. They ought to focus on what his purpose is for each particular lie he crafts. Meanwhile, he dominates the framing of the debate, leaving Democrats constantly defending unauthorized immigrants and a variety of other marginalized people, instead of focusing on alternate ideas that might attract potential voters. Trump is skillfully using a variety of marginalized people as hostages.
We'd be wise to assume he is clever, not to complement him, but to avoid being complacent or getting outmaneuvered.
2
Trump is anything but cunning, crafty or a master of some form of dark arts. Trump is reactive and constantly on the defensive in order to protect his delicate ego. There is nothing deep or long-term about Trump's strategy. He makes it up daily as he goes along.
An evil genius? Come on, people! Stop at 'evil' and you got it.
3
The President is by no means a genius - we all agree.
He is also a great many other things, but the FIRST thing that comes to mind is that he is a thief. He is stealing our Democracy (with help from foreign powers) right out from under us.
He is also stealing our futures by financial and ideological means. On the financial side his administration, trade and financial policies are running up debts and deficits that may never be able to be paid. His trade and financial policies are destroying whole sectors of the economy and ways of life, while making us all work harder for the same amount of recompense.
He is stealing our futures (and possibly leading to all of our destruction) by ignoring and doing everything to speed up climate change. The policies enacted now, may never be able to be rolled back in time to undo the massive damage done.
A thief is a thief is a thief.
3
I certainly agree that Trump is mostly impulsive and certainly has no brilliant strategy to win white votes; but sadly, his impulsive instinct will attract white racists votes. The turn out from white racists will be higher than otherwise; in prior elections they just stayed home. That's how trump won Pennsylvania in 2016, a higher racist turnout coupled with a slightly lower black turnout.
Worse, we have an electoral system, manipulated by the Republican Party, where Trump could easily lose the popular vote by 5 million votes and still be President. The higher racist turnout could win the election even if they are a minority.
2
So, as racial attitudes soften, Trump has unwittingly done more to kill off the pernicious concept of race than the election of a so-called mixed race President has done. To be fair, the often wild reactions to him, the racist hollering and so on, have helped. This is good news indeed. With the proper marketing push that elusive Nobel could be at hand.
Douthat should be ashamed of himself with his column in the shadow the latest killing in the name of White nationalism which Trump and the Republican Party have aided and abetted. Douthat and the Republicans have provided the bullets with phony arguments about the second amendment and created false equivalencies about the methods and goals of the two parties. The Republicans and Douthat turn a blind eye to the extremism they've helped to foment that is now murdering people and endangering our planet.
3
And if Trump's race-baiting, hate-inspiring tweets are impulsive, wouldn't you still call that a strategy if he repeats the same impulsive tweets again and again and again?
Obama is gone, so birtherism is gone as an issue. For now.
But Trump knows what's left of what got him elected.
He knows what keeps those rallies chanting.
1
So he's a genuine racist, and doesn't just play one on reality TV? The effect is the same. it may be, as you say, impulsive and unpopular, not a brilliant strategy to win white votes," but you have to admit it's very effective with a subset of them.
1
Call Trump's rhetoric calculated or simply spontaneous... the result is the same.
Ironically, they charged a teenage girl for telling her boyfriend to kill himself but the president isn't even being tied to this El Paso shooting... and of course, it's all about him...
Attitude reflects leadership.
1
Ross Douthat is overthinking this. Trump never has been interested in anything or anyone but himself. Bannon and Miller and their ilk may genuinely believe in their twisted and nasty philosophies, but as some of them have found out, as soon as they forget to pander to Trump, he kicks them to the curb. Trump just wants adulation and has largely abandoned the pretense of having a coherent policy on anything, especially since all the adults in his administration who were supposed to keep him on track have left or been pushed out. That's why his rallies have degenerated into pure racism. Yet the vast majority of the Republican party who are so quick to squeal about "socialism" do not have the courage or decency to confront this.
2
Ross, sorry but I only read your lead. Who cares what goes on in Trump's head? He has blood on his hands this evening. The time for navel gazing is over. I live in a small town in NH that will vote once again for Trump. If you read the bumper stickers here and heard the rhetoric you'd have a clearer picture of what's important. You might be asking yourself (as I do) if it's time to get a handgun.
2
I disagree that Trump will run on the status quo. The stock market, sure. But he will promise the world--jobs coming back, peace with North Korea, China and Iran cowering in fear, fantastic health care. He'd be foolish not to, since people have accepted an endless stream of non-facts. If you think he's making America great, you'll believe anything. Never give a sucker an even break.
2
“there’s no sign that Trump’s rhetoric has generally boosted white America’s sense of racial grievance”
I’m assuming that the deadline for this piece was before the Trump inspired attack in El Paso.
3
Agreed. Trump is not a brilliant evil genius. He’s evil, all right, but only successful because the press continues to fuel his pyromaniac amoral outbursts with free publicity, though Cable-TV is also making money from commercials. It’s synergistic; it’s where we are.
At this point, I question whether being left or center matter for Dems. Perhaps it is just basic racism and sexism.
One point is correct. DT is not an evil genius. He is a severely insecure soul who craves the spotlight and will do anything to keep it going, while turning a blind eye to the negativity that swirls around him. The "look at me, look at me" syndrome that this person has is being played out on an international stage whereupon he happens to occupy the Oval Office. He has absolutely no interest in our government or any other, only in so much as it can benefit his ego and/or his pocketbook. He is a charlatan of epic proportions.
2
Oh Ross.
You didn't need to tell us that Trump is not a genius—of any kind.
2
It’s ridiculous to say Trump is a racist. Before, he said captured illegal immigrants should be sent to sanctuary cities for them to feel the worst burdens of broken immigration systems directly. Now, he is saying the representatives of some broken cities should take care of their constituents more than the detained uninvited new comers from the southern border because the conditions of the first is no better than the latter. His point has been same: America first, my constituents first as a politician! I don’t understand why some say he is a racist just because one of the blamed person is not white. It’s a nonsense.
1
I don't believe that Trump is a genius, but he does have a strategy and that strategy has worked, and continues to work. You can cherry-pick all the polls you want, you can make sweeping generalizations about a varied and polarized electorate, but it doesn't change the fact that the worst president in our history was successfully elected. He's turned his opposition into a crowded group of mostly sad crybabies who eagerly await any opportunity to stab the other in the back. Meanwhile, Trump sits back and says or does pretty much anything he wants. And while it may be demographic suicide to latch onto the angry white voter, to ignore that constituency or intentionally alienate it is utter foolishness. Republicans are adapting to the fact that they have to do and say more and more outrageous things to stay in power, and are willing to do it. Democrats....sulk off to the corner to whine and cry into their echo chambers.
When Trump supporters look back and seriously come to the conclusion they’ve been lied to, duped, and that Trump doesn’t care one bit about them, they’ll come to their senses.
Democrats’ problem? When will that be and even more - how to get those supporters there?
Perhaps the early debates aren’t as silly as it seems. One of these times along with the silly Trump rallies, something will click. Then snap and cling to that, fellow Democrats, don’t lose the grasp. And for heaven’s sake don’t leave Wisconsin out next time!!!!
1
Trump is not the root cause of the disease but has assumed a linchpin role today. He rode to power on the tide of tribalism and racism that are rising everywhere in the world. The last surge of these elements in the 1920s and 1930s contributed to the rise of Fascism and global conflict. The international institutions that were created under American leadership to guard against this danger is being weakened by an America President who openly admires Fascist dictators. Trump is no genius but the danger that Trump posted to America and the world cannot be underestimated.
1
Only a genius like Trump could pull off a forty-plus career centered on bullying, lying, distorting, and intimidating, and end up being president of the United States. He’s not the stable genius he claims to be, and sinister genius seems about right, but at the very least he’s a genius grifter. Pulling off the greatest con our country has ever seen, Donald Trump is, in his own words, “the best.”
1
After watching the disastrous CNN debates as perhaps others I was left with a very poor impression of the panel that only mouthed the position of Republicans. And did not let people answer; this was abhorrent and a disservice to candidates and viewers. Warren accurately accused the panel of using opposition points
One expects tough interviewers. No questions whatsoever about economic policy about war potential nothing nothing
of the role of president in the World stage
No questions what so ever about everything facing this nation in the international arena in fundamental changes in the role of institutions in this country. Nothing make them look as stupid as possible.
And these parties call themselves the Press?The first thing Ameica has to do is stop classifying people white black or brown.Every nationality that emigrated years ago would not have attained acceptance today. I would not ever make it legal to cross the border. I would pursue all the illegal residents that over stay their visas.No secret there. Europeans or Asians or Russian or other.No I would not allow the treatment given those immigrants poor and destitute. But if they were to be admitted it should be because they can find a way to workWho profits $$$ by this exodus. Hispanics as encompassing central and South American may be of any race and their native population also. The idea to label black and brown inferior should stop. California New Mexico Texas Colorado etc were Spanish territories.
What's more impressive is how progressives lost to him. And at the rate they're going, they may lose to him again. They're coming in to battle with him like the proverbial circular firing squad, with him on the outside. Also, the role of the media must be recognized. It's obvious that he's been a boon, far more than a blockbuster TV show. Both, the left and right media has been profiting by covering every one of his apparent ramblings.
2
Have you tried to discuss the merits or drawbacks of any particular policy with a Trump supporter? I have. Most scoff at the very idea of such wonkishness. They've been conditioned by social media and cable TV news to view politics as team sports. They believe their post-recession 401Ks are in better shape under Trump (they don't know why), and that the right-wing judges and justices he's installed will work to put women and non-whites back in their place. They don't need to hear any more than that.
They aren't entirely stupid. They do know not to believe a word Trump says. They just like his "tear-it-all-down" resentment and rage. While politicians like Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama appealed to idealism, Trump is an overt nihilist who says that believing in or caring about anything is a weakness and brands you a loser. His fans applaud a serial bankruptee who sees every encounter, every relationship, as a transaction, and who denies the manifest reality of climate change because he says it's not really his problem. It's the next few generations who'll face the consequences, not him.
The only way for Democrats to win in 2020 is to keep driving home the truth with the same relentlessness that Trump has mindlessly repeated his patent lies ("no collusion, no obstruction"): To protect yourself from poverty and bankruptcy if you or someone in your family get sick or already have a pre-existing health condition, you must defeat Trumpublicans across the board. It's that simple.
1
This is by far the best column I've ever read by Ross Douthat. I already agreed with the premise, but he offered so much more nuance and insight that I walked away thrilled. Nicely done, young man.
"transform Trumpism into something intellectually robust"?
Trump isn't a sinister genius; he's an ignoramus. There is no "Trumpism", which requires a coherent motivating principle. Trump just does/says whatever will keep him in the limelight. His position is a narcissist's dream come true.
1
That Trump is President at all can be attributed, however, to the fact that a good portion of white Americans fear that they’ll be in the minority in the future. Evil genius, no, but Trump knows what he’s doing. He possesses the master-manipulator characteristics of a pathological predator as Kamala Harris pointed out, and he uses it to push the Ann Coulter thesis that a breakdown in Eurocentrism is going to rob people of their privilege and destroy America. That does not make him a sinister genius, or even greatly strategic, but it has made him effective. It worked with those less than geniuses in Europe during WWII as well. The wrong jerk in the wrong historical conditions can do awful things.
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This is an awful article - but I will try to confine my response (for space issues) to two main points -
First of all, let's dispense with the notion that Trump's racist behaviour is just fun stuff on social media. While in office, he has rolled back every protection he could for LGBT individuals, curbed civil rights protection at the AG level - as well as in other offices, reinvented 'religious liberty' to mean implementing the views of evangelical christians in every policy possible, and uses legitimate concerns about immigration policy to disguise his desire to heavily curb legal immigration to the country. He is doing serious damage, heavily focussed on vulnerable groups.
Second of all, Ross's dismissal of Trump's racist shenanigans are infortunate...he didn't use 'birtherism' to "build a primary-season constituency" - he used it for years to delegitimize the US's first African American president. This wasn't an election strategy...it was a racist conspiracy he used his right wing media contacts to promote for more than 5 years!
1
No, he's just sinister.
1
the words "trump" and genius should NEVER be used in the same sentence under any circumstance and be punishable by law.
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Another mass shooting in ElPaso. Trump was in El Paso critizing that city and its Mexican border location. At that time, the citizens of El Paso said they had no problems with immigrants; theirs was a peaceful community. Now a 21 year old from Dallas has been arrested; he did it because he hates immigrants. Yes, Trump is truly sinister, and it is destroying this country.
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Trump certainly is not a genius; a sinister threat to nation perhaps.
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The Dems are on the road to losedom. Let’s see, how many ways can they put their feet in their mouths, shoot themselves on the foot.
The last debate was a good indication. why take on trump, when you can hammer Obama.
Who have the Dems hired as their strategist, Moscow Mandarin McConnell ?
1
Ah, yes. I'm surprised Mr. Douthat didn't throw in a scriptural quote or two in his advice to the Dems to re-run HRC's campaign of "I"m not Trump" vs. an actual change agenda on what most Americans will support. "Unpalatable" to a rightwing shill like Mr. Douthat should be a signal that overall the Democrats are on the right path once the primary smoke clears from the media circus of Jeff Zucker and Fox Noise.
Hillary Clinton was the polarizing candidate in 2016.
Donald Trump will be the polarizing candidate in 2020.
@Baba
Hillary was the best educated, most vetted candidate we ever had. Lies spread by Russia were sadly devoured by the right and further spread.
3
Agree with Douthat for once - but seriously, no one except Donald Trump ever thought Donald Trump was a genius.
2
I don't know what is more demented, Trump's behavior or "conservative intellectuals trying to transform Trumpism into something intellectually robust".
The attempt to transform Trumpism into something more robust is an exercise a that is every bit as dishonest as Trump himself.
1
Trump is indeed no genius. But he is not stupid and knows how to reap political destruction on his enemies. As the Democrats inexplicably and naively veer left and away from the winning issues of 2018, Trump pounces and twists those “woke” policies to fan the flames of middle class fear and xenophobia. Might not work, but why did we give him the opportunity? Much of America now identifies the entire Democratic party as socialist and led by four leftist freshman representatives. Why? Because the Democrats handed it to Trump on a silver platter for all to see and he was smart enough to kick it as hard as he could into the air.
Trump is actually a very skilled observer of other people's weaknesses, and he has no conscience so he exploits that skill endlessly. His "success" in life is largely the result of his abrasive demeanor, which drives most rational people away, leaving him surrounded by toadies who hope to secure some small benefit from living in his shadow. His race baiting is a deliberate ploy to infuriate and disgust, and it plays very well to the disaffected portion of our population that is eager to blame someone, anyone or everyone, for their miserable life.
If the Democrats decide to put forward another dry as dust policy wonk, or genial old geezer who has trouble with his diction, the Democrats are as culpable as the Republicans for the disaster of our democracy. The Germans did a similar thing in 1932 when they ran Hindenburg, who was already 84.
I've been a witness to the Republican party's race-baiting for over forty years. President Johnson said "if you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice your picking his pocket". Republican election strategies have employed welfare queens and Willie Horton to evoke white fear and resentment. Ironically, once elected they attach themselves to the corporate teat and then advocate policies and pass laws that actually harm workers. Lots of white workers. Today, there are millions of whites who are legitimately aggrieved because their pockets have been picked! And thanks to a corporate funded right-wing media echo chamber and political representation by the likes of the Freedom Caucus, guess who is getting blamed? The black guy or the Latino. There is nothing new here. Donald Trump didn't invent it. But based on his history, he seems to have contempt for non-whites. And he's politically sinister enough to make himself into the perfect fit for those looking for a white savior.
The 'never Trump republicans willing to switch sides for a moderate enough democrat' are almost entirely a fictitious creature.
Either way he is still responsible for what he says and writes.
Trump may not be a sinister genius, but the Republican party leadership (e.g. Moscow Mitch), Fox News, & the rich individuals & corporations that support the Repubs ARE evil geniuses.
The Repubs have duped the evangelicals & conservative Catholics that they are the God party & that they truly care about abortion. (They aren't, & they don't.)
They have been playing the Southern strategy (appealing to racists) since Nixon (because LBJ--Democrat--pushed through the Civil Rights Act & the Voting Rights Act, ending Jim Crow in the South).
They have used wars to rally Americans to patriotic support (W., Cheney, Rumsfeld with Iraq).
And, as for outright evil (from a democratic pov), they have engaged in suppressing the votes of people of color & other Democrat-leaning areas through gerrymandering, voter ID laws, state police pulling over people of color on election day, etc. The Repubs have stolen elections (in 2000, the biggie, but most recently the Georgia gubernatorial election).
I'm sure some well-to-do Americans don't approve of Trump's racism, sexism, etc., but will vote for him as long as their 401Ks keep growing. Self-interest trump's moral disgust most of the time.
So it's not Trump personally we need to fear with regard to election strategy for 2020, but rather the Koch brothers & other super-rich, the health insurance industry, big pharma, fossil fuel business, & corporations in general, plus Fox News who will all do their best to see Trump reelected.
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He is no genius. He is sinister. To me he is a harbinger of hate. He encourages followers to embrace their inner hate and release it. His actions to cause vindictive abuse, rabid violence, manifest misery, and humiliation thrill him especially when those results are obtained. He really enjoys infecting others with his hate plague and watching them get swept up in frenzy. LOVE Inoculates.
This column does not provide solace to those who fear another term of president Donald Trump. Why? Because Trump has always been pathetically transparent in his narcissistic ugliness, and almost the entire Republican voting base supports him. Mr. Douthat, that voting base that loves Trump, those rally goers who cheer him by the thousands at every stop, they are your people. They are your party. Those firm philosophical underpinnings that you may think important and relevant, they no longer matter. Trump is just a bad joke on the world, but he has power because your people - Republican voters - find in him the avatar they have yearned for. You and other conservative American writers have been twisting yourselves into knots for the last three years attempting to laud Republican "ideals" while distancing yourselves from Trump. Do you really fail to realize that Trump has simply given Republican voters permission to be themselves, or do you understand and simply want to maintain the mirage that Trump is the cause and not a symptom of your party's ugliness?
Right. But Mnuchin, Pompeo, Bolton, Abrams, McConnell and the rest drafting behind Trump *are* sinister, if not geniuses.
One non-word: "Covfefe" epitomizes Trump's behavior. Sinister genius? Not at all. He simply made a mistake, the way he often does, and rather than admit his error Trump ran with it like was intentional. It's a pattern repeated inexorably throughout his presidency. Random mistakes that Trump runs with as if they were intentional, rational responses. Currently we have his disgusting, racist, highly inaccurate comments about MD 7th district. Rather than concede his colossal blunder, instead he spews daily pablum about Baltimore, for no reason other than his defensiveness about his original mindless statements. Genius? Absolutely not. Just a man who is incapable of owning up to his own mistakes.
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@Tom
Hes been racist long before he stole presidency. My husband and i looked at trump tower apartment about 20 years ago and the realtor basically confirmed men signed the lease no blacks, especially black women or any women. It was confirmed in court re bigoted renting policy. Trump has always been and will always be a viscious bigot make no mistake.
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The king is naked! What to do when you have no plan for health care, the environment, income disparity, infrastructure, and especially Central America - which you use refugees from our history of bad policies for political theater. He uses the old divide and conquer toxins. His tariffs are like taxes on the working poor that will devour his attempt at cheap money through lowering the Federal interest rates. It is time to move onto the issues that matter. The king is naked! And the GOP sold its' soul to the devil in silence as they cowardly take their lobbyists hush money. Out with them all in 2020!
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That’s your president. People like you have prepared and primed the republican base for decades. For trump to win was like work in the park. So, spare me the new found moral rectitude.
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Race-baiting is a long-time deliberate, cynical strategy of Republican politicians. It has succeeded very well in distracting attention of white voters from the economic policies which have caused inequality to increase for the last 50 years. Trump is somewhat more blatant and may cause some backlash, but until other Republicans stop winning elections they will continue to use this strategy, if preferably in a less obvious way.
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Drum roll please...I agree with everything you wrote, Ross. My wife and I have had this good-natured argument since Trump became a viable, sinister candidate. Is Trump an evil genius or not? She says there is a method to his madness, while I see only madness. She thinks his antics have an underlying logic , while I only see the lying. She allows for the possibility that he's clever, while I refuse to allow that he's smart enough to be strategic. We have finally reached a compromise; we agree that he isn't a genius, he's just smarter than his sinister followers and that's not saying much.
Well, I agree either headline in part. Trump is not a genius.
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Ross again misses the point. It doesn't matter if Trump is a genius, if he is purposefully doing these awful things, or if he is just shooting from the hip. Trump is not the point which is what everyone seems to forget. It is the Republican party which has failed, and without a doubt they know what they are doing. The thing that is lost in all of this is that the Republican party, with their silence or support of Trump, have shown they don't care at all about this country. They have no desire for equality or fairness or justice. All they want is power and they don't care how they get it. Be it harboring racists or undemocratic ideals or demonizing the weak, they are all in support of whatever will get them the votes needed to further their agenda. And obviously that agenda has nothing to do with defending and supporting the Constitution.
Because of the Electoral College, Republicans know they don't need to appeal to the majority - just enough in the right states to allow a minority to decide the direction of the country. They could care less about the majority of Americans as it is abundantly clear that appealing to just enough in just enough states will deliver them the power which they crave.
This is not a game and yet we have accepted and allowed our elections to be mistreated as such.
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I continue to be gravely depressed that our national leaders and voters have given Trump’s lack of a moral center and not so subtle racism and sexism a big pass. If that is not disqualifying, then I don’t know what would be enough. Even Trump’s wife has a campaign declaring that it is wrong to “bully”, yet she conveniently leaves her husband out of the conversation.
I am ashamed that our nation of values has abandoned them on behalf of naked power and maybe riches for a few
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There are two questions revolving around the coming election that run deeper than whether the Democrats are drifting too far left, or whether they will nominate a candidate who cannot win the confidence of the electorate. The two questions are: what percentage of the population is willing to adopt authoritarianism (aka fascism) to placate their fears and need for scapegoats; and how much impact will outside (i.e. Russian) interference in the election process have on the results. The answer to these two questions will determine who wins the election, not Trump’s ignorant rants, or the Democratic platform. Trump is a symptom, not the actual disease, and I’m afraid the Republicans have now decided that rather than risk losing power, they are quite willing to undermine our democracy and allow Fascism in the front door. Whether conscious or not, the Republicans see a Russian style government as much more effective at dealing with those they deem undesirable, and at ensuring the wealthy stay wealthy while the peasants get just enough crumbs to stay quiet. An authoritarian regime, whether from the left or right is the end of our democracy as we think of it. But, with the US population so divided, many might see authoritarianism as the only way to get anything done. It’s all quite scary.
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@jz
This is at the heart of Trump Land. I guess reread Dostoevsky's "The Grand Inquisitor"?
I fear that all Trump will need, in furtherance of a strategy of divisive racist rhetoric, is a "Willie Horton moment" at some point in the early autumn of 2020. Even today's horrific mass murder in El Paso is likely to be spun by him and his enablers in the Congress and media to "mean" something it doesn't. In sum, Trump isn't the problem, the electorate is.
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If the president doesn't have a "sinister sort of genius about what will help him win," the crowd, Fox News, the reptiles in the senate and Russia do. Even if Trump flounders, his white-nationalist allies will spin his bumblings to keep the brain stems of his base activated by his noise.
Trump's impulsive lashing out will be made to work as if to plan.
Trump”s original race baiting-his fiction about Obama being born in Kenya-was bizarre and disquieting but what he has done and said since is cruel and disheartening.His racial extremism has become so alarming that the Washington Diocese of the Episcopal Church has chastised him for his “dangerous rhetoric”.His base appears to respond in an angry and negative way to anyone he calls out.Hilary Clinton was his foil last elections but this time he will expand his angry rants to socialists, traitors, and anyone of color.Trump is more extreme this time -he has installed his lawyer, William Barr , at the Justice Department and feels emboldened.Democrats need to denounce him at every chance because lots of voters are energized to see him defeated.A Democrat who has a plan to help those whom Trump has hurt or ignored has a good chance of winning.A candidate of inclusiveness and good cheer should have an easy path to a win.
2
The Donald is not a smart or intelligent person but he is clever in the PR sense, in the sense of someone who is a star on The Apprentice, as someone who is a clever con man or grifter. He is utterly shameless and brazen and good at seeing the weaknesses of his opponents. His only interests or principles are love of himself and the desire to win another term in 2020. He loves the Presidency because he is in the spot light.
It seems that The Donald plans on winning in 2020 as he did in 2016. That is by activating and energizing his base. A substantial part of the trump faithful are people who love him because he hates the people they hate. Then you have those who support him because he hates abortion, hates LGBT and transgender people, and supports Israel and Bibi.
Then you have his supporters who hate liberals and people who read the NYT.
The Donald hopes that those people who don't support him will stay home on election day; that through intimidation and belittling of his opponents he will get many democrats to stay home. That worked to some extent in 2016. There were many democrats who thought that there was no difference between Ms. Clinton and The Donald. That Ms. Clinton did not exhibit sufficient empathy. Can you believe it?
Can The Donald win in 2020? It all depends on the people who don't support The Donald. If they all go to the polls he won't win; if many of them stay at home he probably will.
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Over 65 years ago I discovered how deeply racist my grandparents were when I asked to have my friend come for a visit over our boarding school vacation. "He would get the sheets dirty." A few years later, I heard my Sunday School teacher say "they" would decrease the value of her home if "they" lived next door. Slums were encroaching like a ringworm from the center of Hartford, Connecticut. As then, racist fears also eminate from the fears of spreading slums as minority groups are exploited by slumlords like Jared Kushner is today in Baltimore. Racism is a cover for Trump-Kushner greed.
"Given enough time, he will alienate everyone." Pick up the pace, Mr. president.
Ross, how many Republicans in the House voted for condemning his "go back to where you came from" attack on their female colleagues of color? You should know the answer: 4. Out of almost 200. I know math isn't your strong point, but that's close to 2%, which means that close to 98% of the Republicans in the House go along with the race-baiting. That does not constitute rejection in my universe; perhaps you live in a different one. As for his platform, it will be "I have been the best president ever for the past four years, and you need me for four more if you want to make America great again." I will drain the swamp, etc. etc. etc. In other words, the same campaign.
1
He’s the greatest politician of our time. Someone who knows how to rally the people, catch the mood of the people. I hate him, but he is a political genius.
Sadly, and disgustingly, trump's race baiting and anti-immigrant rhetoric has to have played a role in the mass shootings and death of 32 souls in the last 7 days (Gilroy, El Paso, Dayton). There was a time we learned to reject this. It is that time again. We, as Americans, are much better than this. We need t call it out, call it what it is, and stop giving those that amplify trump a platform whether in rallies, commentaries, on radio or on certain TV networks.
Not a genius per se, but as an advertising con man, it does not get much better than Trump. All he has done since his election has been to run for reelection. His personality disorders force him to seek and command attention every hour of every day, thus he must tweet and talk constantly.
He says racist things and denies it; he says misogynist things and denies it; and just tells all manner of lies, now exceeding 10,000 by some counts since inauguration, and just insists that he is right.
Of course, he is talking to his base because it is a beast that must constantly be fed. He's made any number of unkept promises to them so he must constantly feed their worst values to retain them.
In order to attract more voters from even the center, he needs to back off his shameful rhetoric, but doing so could cost him significant parts of his base. Trump does not own his base; his base owns him. If he strays from his well worn path, enough could feel like jilted lovers and drop him. They could just not vote. That is Trump's problem.
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“…as opposed to appearing to offer an unpalatable extremism of their own.” WOW, Ross.
*Taxing wealth that doesn’t add value to general well-being.
*Free or affordable education
*Affordable or government subsidized access to healthcare.
*Livable salaries
Which one of these, Ross, doesn’t have moral support in your Bible? Or has that become too liberal a document for you?
If somebody believes that we can solve the problems by not adressing their roots then they are deadly wrong. The truth couldn't have been published for decades. The ads are not the commercials but braiwashing of the hundreds of millions people. Those ads have turned the people into the blind followers. If it were any different, nobody would spend a single cent on the useless advertisement. It's old fashion brainwashing on the industrial scale. Trump is just a consequence. You can elect somebody else but nothing is going to change.
Trump...think chameleon. He’s what he thinks he has to be from moment to moment. He may be totally worthless, but he knows how to play the game. The media trying to analyze what he does, is really funny. None of you have a medical degree...
Let’s keep this simple. He is not an evil genius. He is criminal and a danger to our democracy.
on one level I agree, and have thought about that fact a lot.
What has he really accomplished? All those photo op signings are of executive order -- which are merely law until another executive annuls it.
Tax cuts. Yes, as sure as the sun rises in the East, the Republicans made sure to get some tasty tax cuts out asap. But that was more than a year ago?
What has Donald done? Rant and fume and ... well, that is kind of it.
Granted, his constant ranting and fuming is not healthy for us. But if you take a step back, the whole show is rather pathetic. It is like the movie Network. Pretty quickly, the adrenaline wears off and you realize: this man makes no sense and is just an ineffective man yelling at the clouds.
We should consider ourselves lucky?
Trump has never been interested in running a government. He is obsessed with leading a cult.
3
He just hits the Dems in their weak points, which, as everybody knows, have been largely ignored by the media, such as: there are too many immigrants and hey, what about those awful corrupt cities the Dems run.
If there had been any competent treatment of these problems, going on for lo these many years, the Dems would not be so vulnerable.
Animating Trump's whole presidential project was a bone-deep, reflexive loathing and rejection of the idea of a black Commander-in-Chief. At least, in the beginning of his term, he was organized around overturning and reviling everything Obama did. But now, Trump is increasingly unmoored because the Obama past is receding into history. Trump flits from nontroversy to nontroversy, thinking he is controlling the debate and leaving even his allies shaking their heads in disbelief.
All of this is why I want Kamala Harris to get her act together and win the Democratic nomination. Wouldn't that simply give Trump something to focus his "legendary" counter punching skills, you ask? I think the prospect of losing to an African-American woman would drive his blood pressure through the roof and his attention span through the floor.
¡Go Kamala!
1
One can easily agree that he is not a genius, but he certainly is SINISTER.
But he is sinister. And a goodly part of his base likes it that way -- the fossil minds that shouted "send her back" the other day.
This obsessing over center-left vs. left makes good copy but it adds nothing to the national dialogue. Keep our eyes of on the prize, defeating the most racist Chief Executive since Jefferson Davis.
We are in our third Thermidor; the first two ended with the Civil War and Martin's "I have a dream." I hope we meet the challenge head on, but am not sanguine. Too much temporizing and not enough straight talk.
In column after column, you give advice to the left, Ross. You don't try to talk to Trump voters about their madness. You don't even seek an alternative for the republicans. Face it, you've given up on that party, too lost in the wilderness even for you to find anymore. So when will you convert? Or admit what you already believe? That democrats are our only hope, if there is one. But don't expect to run our party when you come over; we're a fractious bunch and you are new.
1
Douthat, like most other Conservative columnists. posits this column (and most of what he writes )as if the battle is between Trump vs the Democrats.
OK, but there's nary a mention of the Republicans. Where do they fit into the picture?
If they support Trump *because of* his evils such as race-baiting, then they're as deplorable as he is.
If they are disgusted by his racism but vocally support him in spite of it (in order to retain power) and make lame excuses and deflections, then they're just as deplorable as he is.
If they're disgusted by his race-baiting (and by everything else that he's done), but only speak out against Trump behind closed doors but still vote the party line in public, then they're still nothing less than deplorable.
If they're disgusted enough to speak out against Trump's most egregious sins but still vote the party line and do nothing to undermine his power, thn they're just as deplorable as all of the above.
And what about the Republicans who vocally oppose all that Trump stands for, and are working to limit his damage and prevent his reelection in 2020? They're practically non-existent. Kudos to Bill Weld! And kudos to Justin Amash for at least leaving the party!
In other words, to Mr. Douthat (and Brooks and Stephens and their ilk), I say: Stop putting all of the responsibility for squelching Trump and Trumpism on us Dems! It's YOUR fault we've got him; you also own half of the responsibility to get rid of him.
Can Trump control the well armed militia that he incites - WITH RACISM? He says he can't and more importantly he doesn't care if he wins one racist voters approval at the voting booth.
Argue and theorize all you want about Trump's motivations but in the end all that matters is the damage that Trump is doing to the nation.
We don't need data points to understand the damage that we see right in front of our eyes.
Send HIM back.
1
You're minimizing Trump's destructive influence on all of us,
those who support him, those who tolerate him for certain economic ends, and those who believe he is a constant threat to our democracy and the moral principles of our Constitution.
I wouldn't waste my time considering the use of the word genius with Trump. Whatever he is, he is talented at getting away with his lies and his widespread corruption (talk about a diverse portfolio).
He hit some real walls in business, but he managed to keep things going by faking his way onto the Forbes' Richest List, which led to more loans and more branding opportunities. And then there was Celebrity Apprentice. Trump would be golfing and trying to sell vodka right now if his birtherism lie and his tv show hadn't caught on. And even though Trump won the election in 2016, he would have been impeached within his first year if the GOP had not gone silent and cowardly.
As for sinister?
The FBI and local law enforcement agencies in some areas have reported an upsurge in white supremacists' "activities" and memberships.
This may not be detectable in voter polls, but take a look online.
Consider Charlottesville and the constant references to it online that try to JUSTIFY it.
So, once again, you're a Trump minimizer - bordering on a Trump normalizer.
We should remember that Republican's save their worst damage for the second term, because it's the last term. They don't need to be careful. Expect to see entitlement reform and the affordable care act attacked with renewed vigor. It's Trump who has inspired all these white nationalist attacks. I don't know why Democrats are not attacking him more for it. The Trump presidency is a horror movie called "The Lyin King"
Trump is no genius, to be sure. But he is cunning. Like most sociopaths, he recognizes weakness and knows how to take advantage of it. He is driven to impress himself upon others. He projects his feelings of distain and cannot believe that others are not as craven as he. He wanted the presidency for the power it represents, not because he has any sense of public service. He thinks if he says something it makes it true and that it should be listened to. And plenty of people in his fiefdom do think it's true or are frightened of it being true, thus thinking they have chosen the winning side. He is a danger to many, an accost to the pursuit of a more perfect union. I wouldn't like him as a man and I obviously don't like him as a president. That's because his character is reprehensible, unworthy, indecent. I don't wish him ill; I wish him out of the presidency. With all of my 74-year-old heart, I wish him defeat ed in 2020 in order to save decency and, perhaps, the entire planet. It remains possible. If not, we should at least go out doing courageous, decent things.
If the race-baiting works that's happening solely because the American media outlets have been brainwashing the children and everybody else on the industrial scale. The solution is to have advertisement-free programming. Anybody allowing its content to be mixed with the ads is voluntarily giving up its owner rights thus it's free for everybody else to use it without a pay. The massive brainwashing must stop now. If you are not willing to protect own kids then there is no future.
I rarely find myself on the same page as Mr. Douthat, but I think he's on to something here.
Look at Trump's record as a "businessman."
His casinos failed. His airline failed. His pro football team failed. His mortgage company failed. His steaks and vodka failed. His online travel site failed. His bogus "university" failed. Even his board game failed. And that's all after having been born on third base. Actually, if he had simply had taken the equity left to him by his father and invested it in an index fund, he'd be worth more than he claims to be now.
What's a lesson to be gleaned from this?
That Trump always overplays his hand.
Because he is unable to admit being wrong, instead of stepping back and learning from his mistakes, he always doubles down. That's what he's doing with racism.
More than anything else, racism brings him the cheers and adulation he craves. It was the opening note of this campaign, and he's going to play it—and overplay it—for all it's worth.
We can only hope it turns out to be worthless.
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The person who controls the biggest bully pulpit has a disproportionate impact on attitudes and behavior so it doesn’t really matter if Trump’s speech is part of a devious political strategy or the result of a lack of impulse control. Sadly, two murderous rampages by white men with long guns in one twenty four hour period is indicative of that.
96
Trump is all about the likes. He will do almost anything to get people to notice him and talk about him. There is no strategy.
1
Mr. Douthat,
"there’s no sign that Trump’s rhetoric has generally boosted white America’s sense of racial grievance. Instead, polls show that even among Republicans, let alone independents, racial stereotypes have softened under Trump."
Actually, there have been a number of mass shootings perpetrated by racially-aggrieved, isolated people - there was one last night in El Paso as your piece was being published.
The larger U.S. population might have evolving understandings about race, but the loose cannon in the White House is making hate-speech look like a normal, legitimate activity.
There will always be weak people searching for a scapegoat. To have their views echoed by a senior public figure - The Senior Public Figure - is the same hideous situation that inspired those hijackers to fly planes into the world trade center. Enabling violence from feeble minds is the worst form of child abuse - bad for everybody.
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@atutu And the vast middle might well be reacting to the perceived enabling of the nut cases. In other words, Trump is shooting himself in the foot. At least, on a good day, that is what I like to believe will happen. Mr. Douthat's thesis that The President is not an evil genius rings true after viewing YouTube videos of his old WWE gigs. The man obviously feeds on causing emotional reactions of any sort.
US voters became fed up with "liberal" slogans and practices, so in their desperation enough of them voted for Trump to get him into the White House. Since the Dems are determined to continue boring the electorate with the same GIGO talk, all Trump has to do is offer an alternative. His course does not have to be particularly attractive: If he only differs from the other party, that will be enough for him to keep his residence for 4 more years.
2
The “appearance” of what Democrats are offering may have to do with the political realities of presidential primaries appealing to a particular base of support. The general election normally exhibits more centrist appeals.
It would be gross false equivalence to suggest the extremism of hate, bigotry, racism, inhuman refugee and immigration policies, constant rhetoric of division, 19th century economic plans, raising false hopes and encouraging delusional thinking, denying science, and isolation are related in the extreme to ideas that attempt to address real problems and issues facing working Americans and the world.
I understand conservatives do not think government should solve the problems of the governed. Since the early 19th Century, progressives on both sides of the aisle have demonstrated a government of, by, and for the people has a responsibility to the governed to solve some problems the governed cannot solve on their own.
A government without a conscience, purposefully ignorant, and near-sociopathic only governs itself. This increases government and private sector corruption by permitting “unpalatable” greed, causing greater divisions in socio-economic realities, and essentially creating more problems.
As a conservative, Mr. Douthat may think any idea that attempts to solve problems through government is extreme. Ideas and policies to solve problems, though, are not equivalent to words and policies that create them.
13
This is way off the mark. Trump is not a genius: he is simply a street goon with gutter responses of a don to any thing or anyone who criticizes him. He lacks the value of civil appearances, not civility. He is course. Reminds me of many of the working class uneducated people I grew up with. Coarse bullying tactics like those of school yard bullies. He couples this with his value in money and power and control and is far from a non-interventionist. He interferes with Venezuela and Iran. He bullied and then bribed Ecuador to evict Assange. And tries to embarass the UK into submission by attacking their leaders while visiting their country. This is not genius. It is just brute force from a street goon.
As for his policies and goals? He is marching steadily forward toward the end of democracy. He is a Koch brother partner --remember them laughing about how they will used democracy to end democracy.
And remember the Project for a New American Century document that spoke of neo-con agenda to take over the country. One of the goals was to gain control of all the courts. And that is what we see. Centrism does not work but this article subscribes to the notion that real populist programs are extreme such as Single Payer Health or economic equity. Since when is a decent income and extreme idea. Only for people like this author and those who are lackies to the oligarchy and the GOP.
22
Ross, Trump may not be a "genius" (not stable for sure :).
But he sure is sinister.
However, Democrats would be wise to not beat the morality drum. Most people are focused on their everyday lives. Sure some of us vote on the basis of some intellectual exercise or strongly held sociological beliefs.
But most voters vote based on issues like jobs, healthcare and education - unless there is a long bloody war that needs to end.
It is quite easy for Democrats to display how the Trump created trade wars have hurt the American enterprise - farmers, small businessmen, factory workers. The broken promises are strewn across the country.
It is quite easy to display the lack of a Republican effort to improve healthcare - in fact they try to take it away - daily. Don't run on about Medicare for All. Just provide a path to universal care. We can refine the system later.
It is quite easy to display how student debt is crippling a generation. It is quite easy to display how unequal education spending is. Talk about ways to compensate for "zip code funding".
Don't dwell on immigration. Don't harp on the issues that divide us. Focus on the three above issues. We can get all wonky and recreate the American dream later. Back to basics for now.
13
Donald Trump is attracting support from a white "base" that sees a threat from foreigners. For many of them, their jobs have disappeared as corporations are granted visas to allow cheaper foreign workers to replace them. This also happens when manufacturing plants are closed here and their work is moved to countries offering cheaper labor. Donald Trump thrives on that white anxiety fueled by his lifetime of racism as his father redlined apartment seekers.
8
Ross, you write the following:
"Instead, polls show that even among Republicans, let alone independents, racial stereotypes have softened under Trump."
This is simply your employment of one of Trump's favorite ruses - to proclaim that, "Some people are saying..." - as if this utterly empty prologue makes it undeniably true.
Every superficial indication (hate crimes more than doubled in the last two years, an explosion of white supremacist rhetoric online, the tacit approval of Trump's virulent racism by 99% of GOP legislators, the enthusiastic and widespread hatred openly directed at "illegals", the ongoing spectacle of Trump's weekly Nuremberg-style rallies where dog-whistle racism abounds) points towards the unleashing of the inner Strom Thurmond across a wide spectrum of white America.
So I ask you, Mr. Douthat: Which polls? Asking what specific questions? Sponsored by whom?
Data, please. Or it's not true.
26
@Dave
Well stated and a crucial point!
Why do we talk about presidents as well as presidential elections as if they're kings that simply wave a magic wand to make their policies a reality?
There has never been a president that hasn't accepted their own impotency in regards to the congress, politics and the judicial system until Tantrum Trump.(This is why he breaks things ) There has never been a political body in our congressional history so feckless and fearful than our current congress on both sides of the aisle.
What do you all think about voting for the candidate and the policies we want rather than considering what can't be done before we even try. Let the GOP explain why they can explode the debt for their big money donors, but not for your medication, education, air, water, and transportation.
I'm tired of the hand wringing already. Turn off the TV, stop listening to pundits and decide on a wish list, cause that's all it is.
12
The policy status quo includes more than deregulation, tariffs, tighter borders, more deficits, and less international intervention. It also includes not filling top positions in government, filling top positions with temporary employees who are not subject to congressional approval, stonewalling Congress, ignoring experts, and not being interested in or careful about details. It includes not being checked by checks and balances or the rule of law.
Many Americans are indifferent to these aspects of the policy status quo. They accept Trump's view of reality that everything is a power struggle between various interests, with explanations and justifications as fake news to fool the gullible, and checks and balances as excuses and blocks to decisive actions. They know that with Trump, they are ruled by Trump's gut rather than the elite and their experts. They are distrustful of the experts and trust Trump's gut. The distrust of experts cultivated by businessmen inconvenienced by the experts has borne fruit.
5
Dear Mr Douthat,
Come on! Enough with the both-side-ism. While the president encourages repeated fascist terrorist attacks, the Dems are debating the merits of universal health care. These are not the same thing! And one is certainly more "unpaletable" than the other.
17
Donald Trump is his father’s son. His past, values, prejudices, sins, goals are no secret. My concern is the over 40 % of the electorate that give him an approval rating. These folks include religious leaders who embrace and anoint him. Have they “left no sense of decency?”
This brings to mind a hymn that we sing at church “they will know we are Christians by our love.”
13
Thank you, Ross Douthat, for pointing out what should be obvious.
Sinister? Indeed. Genius? Just think of the great geniuses in history, and then think of Trump. Try not to laugh too hard.
9
His knack is to commandeer attention for himself and regardless of that attention being negative it translates to unprecedented advertising sales for television and online publications.
The media is addicted instantly to any event that will glue viewers and spike revenue. This includes mass shooters, tornado outbreaks, strong hurricanes, fires, floods and the sitting president. Any disaster will do.
6
But aren’t these sorts of polls, asking these sorts of questions, very susceptible to a kind of preference falsification? I don’t doubt that Donald Trump’s rhetoric is nonstrategic and authentic, but I would strongly think it would be begetting at least some racist hydropsy in certain parts of the country—especially considering our history.
Particularly as the Left pushes ahead with “woke”ism, I’d imagine many whites will begin, or have begun, displaying white-identity, anti-minority feelings, seeing themselves cast as villains because of the color of their skin and as responsible, in some way, for the wrongs of their forefathers—which have bestowed privileges upon them that they certainly don’t see.
The Left and Right seem caught in a vicious circle, pushing one another, sometimes even unknowingly, to extremes. It’s not enough to be different from your opponent. You have to be very, very, VERY different.
1
“Instead, polls show that even among Republicans, let alone independents, racial stereotypes have softened under Trump. “
You must be joking, "softened?" Where is your evidence for this outrageous claim, "polls show," that's it? What polls? What questions did these polls ask?
You want us to believe that Americans who exploit racial divisions and extol white supremacy have had a harder time furthering their agenda because the stereotypes have become less rigid under Trump?
Nothing in our culture has "softened" under Trump, most particularly not racial stereotypes. On the contrary nearly everything has coarsened and become more polarized since Trump insulted his way into the White House.
16
Trump's presidency isn't safe any way you wish to slice it. An article in The Hill earlier this week dissected the impact of the third party had in 2016 - the protest vote was beyond telling. The percentage of popular votes for the two major parties dropped 4 percent due solely to the vitriol directed at the unpopular candidates. Since Hillary will not be the nominee this year for the Democratic Party and Trump will be the nominee for his rudderless Party, advantage Democrats. Especially since Trump is pinning his ears back and revealing his racist underbelly for all to see. While his negatives increase, Democrat positives will by default.
2
Trump's racial remarks are a tactic to keep the limit number of white votes he has, and he aims to win again by way of undoing the popular votes anew through exploitation of gerrymandering, the electoral college and campaigning in swing states only, that is, by exploiting trappings of a constitution which declares that are persons are born equal, and then raises barriers to it by unequalizing their vote.
5
Yes Trump is a simplistic genius--I know it's an oxymoron but his attitude reminds me of the Peter Sellers movie "Being There"
where he plays a person isolated from society and reality but is taken to being a genius as the media interprets his most banal
remarks into something coming from the Delphic Oracle and giving it a profound and creative meaning.
We must be careful in even referring to Trump as an evil genius
when his real narrative is an uninformed unschooled but having
a highly combustible mind-set that can be very explosive to
our nation and the world.
6
When a politician bases his candidacy on racism, sexism, religious bigotry, and superstition, he has a huge natural constituency. What happens in 2020 will tell us who we really are as a nation. There are no excuses this time.
15
Again, I see this as the anti-Trump naivety that gave him the 2016 election in the first place. I could care less about current polls unless they are taken using Electoral College districts. Doesn't anyone in the media learn? The people don't elect the President, the electors do!
Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, but I don't see Hillary taking a victory lap around the rose garden every morning. I see Trump waddling around killing flowers as he passes.
Right now, the Democrats don't have a single candidate that can go 15 rounds of body blows with Trump. From stalking the opposition on stage to creating unflattering nicknames Trump throws body blows with his opponents, he hits low and high and in the kidneys - he doesn't understand let alone know the rules. The Democrats need someone who can stand toe-to-toe and trade punches and I don't see that person among the current crop of candidates.
4
@William
More importantly, the base loves the circus!!!
Here in Canada we have two strains of conservative the tradition strain of conservative that believes in community, education and promises to maintain a strong social safety net where the strong help the weak and share the wealth and an American conservatism that seeks to divide us into tribes that fight against each other and want to be first at the trough.
There is no left in America the most extreme political liberal group in America is the Freedom Caucus.
The opposite of liberal is authoritarian and nobody is more anti authoritarian than the anarchists of the Tea Party and the Freedom Caucus.
Nobody displayed this better than William F Buckley Jr a zealot who hated liberals and libertarians and wanted less government and less taxes but was content with the privileges granted him as the son of an oil magnate.
There is nothing left wing in the Democratic Party. Their position on climate change is the same as that of almost all of our political parties and in 1947 our farthest right government instituted single payer government assured hospital care.
Dr Samuel Johnson the man who wrote the first English dictionary (1755) defined what it meant to him to be a conservative. Johnson's letter in 1775 to the American Congress on what it means to be a conservative.
https://www.samueljohnson.com/tnt.html
To be a traditionalist is to be a conservative only if your tradition is conservative. America is not a conservative country and was never meant to be one. It's the constitution.
5
"His race-baiting is impulsive and unpopular, not a brilliant strategy to win white votes." Very true. Despite that he won the presidency, even if it was barely, perhaps luck.
Donald Trump was probably born with a self-defeating streak. He's never happy. He's never satisfied. He couldn't relish, savor winning the presidency of the U.S., even for a moment. He had to make a fool of himself by his quest to falsely prove that his inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama's. When he looked at the crowd from the podium it looked huge and he just assumed it must be larger than Obama's. People will never forget what a fool he was.
In spite of his self-defeating antics, he turned out to be a huge success - his luck brought him that. He was declared a multibillionaire, despite his multiple bankruptcies.
Now he's doing "everything he can" to be defeated in 2020. I hope this time at least luck will not save him.
3
Race-baiting has been an integral part of Republican party electoral strategy since politicians such as Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater initiated the Southern strategy more than half a century ago. Strategists like Lee Atwater and politicians including Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush continued the relentless appeal to racist whites in the decades that followed.
Saying Trump's race-baiting is not a conscious strategy to win votes is a full-fledged denial of political history.
11
While I mostly agree with argument presented in the article, I also think that Ross fails to see what Trump's real intent is for going after the squad, which does several things: (1) just like he was willing to fight illegal immigration without worrying about being labeled a racist, he has gone after squad the same way - and there is a huge constituency that believes that one cannot criticize the squad without being labeled racist. (2) when he indulges in the kind of racism that he does, while proclaiming "there is no racist bone in my body", he ends up driving the libs crazy and in their outrage they start supporting medicare-for-all and decriminalization of border crossing, which is exactly what he wants. And, if democrats run on these things in the presidential race, I am happy to bet Trump will win the election. So, yeah, he might be a sinister genius.
1
You imply at the end that there is some valid comparison between Trump's vile discourse, and what you call extremism of the Democrats. De-criminalizing illegal crossings and medicare for all is in no way comparable to "send them back" and cities fit only for "rats" to live in. Your explanation for backing Trump because of practical concerns about a conservative agenda, one that will please McConnell for instance, also falls flat. The core of Trumps support is racist. Both from those who would loudly proclaim it, and their more well mannered and affluent allies who may whisper things to their friends.
4
After 3 years Trump is a known quantity, very predictable behaviors have emerged as a pattern to bolster his self-esteem and demonize whoever threatens his status. The media play into this pathology by over reporting every tweet, utterance and attitude he displays. This we know, almost without exception the Republican Senators offer no criticism or complaint, rather they support his behaviors no matter how destructive or abusive they are. If we want to fire this person next year high sustained pressure needs to be directed to reducing the manic reporting and Republican Senators and key Congressional Republicans need to called out by their constituents, voted out of office-Fired until then it is business as usual and bad for our country.
3
I agree that Trump could win next year in spite of his racial rhetoric, because that is what happened last time. He lost the popular vote by almost 3 million, and had he lost the electoral college, we would be remembering his campaign as a failure. He is president in spite of his 2016 campaign, not because of it. And since he has failed to win over anyone who voted for Clinton, it remains to be soon if he can do by design what happened by accident. But that way he keeps playing to his base and doesn't have to "wimp out."
1
Ross Douthat is correct that writers, pundits and Democratic politicians are wrong if they ascribe an instinctive political talent to Donald Trump for using a race-baiting tactic to improve his chance at re-election.
The rants by Trump against black and brown Americans and immigrants ultimately diminish his electability, because they appeal primarily to the white supremacists and offend most Americans. The verbal attacks by Donald Trump occur because he actually harbors the bigotry and cannot resist.
Yesterday, a white supremacist killed 20 people in El Paso, and Donald Trump will pay a political price for having encouraged such violence.
Today or tomorrow, Donald Trump will attempt to blame the tragedy on Democrats in a futile effort to mitigate the political damage from his past behavior.
Donald Trump watches television closely. He knows that decent Americans – Democrats, Independents and many Republicans – are furious at him.
3
Of course Trump isn't a genius, by anyone's standards. But he does know that racism gets votes. Mr. Douthat must accept reality here -- Trump gets votes because of his racism, not in spite of it. And this is why a man so bereft of intellect can display enough base cunning to know what motivates people.
But as I commented in this publication several days ago, Trump's racism, or even his use in getting votes, really isn't the problem here. The real problem is his incitement to violence. Today's shooting in El Paso is just one more example of a Trump supporter "exercising his 2nd Amendment solutions".
The danger is that as we get closer to the election next year, Trump will increase his incitement. He has tens of millions of heavily armed racist supporters, just waiting for him to say the word.
And any of us who are brown skinned Americans will be targets. Democrats must stop giving Trump a pass here. His racism isn't simply one more of his many character flaws. It is deliberately used to incite white nationalists to target the rest of us.
The situation for brown skinned families (and mine are all native born Americans) is no longer safe. My family has a home outside the country. We are extremely thankful that we have been able to arrange to do this. And I would urge any brown skinned American to think long and hard about staying in this country in the next few years. Families who have any ability to leave, should consider doing so, while we still can.
106
Yes, Trump has spent fifty years manipulating the media and white supremacists.
Now, as president, Trump keeps calling for violence against citizens without due process. Every time he does this it is a High Crime against the Constitution because the Constitution is supposed to replace political violence on the whim of a king with debate, voting, and due process of law.
90% of the 17,000 hate crimes committed in 2017 were committed by the Right. Most hate crimes are actually domestic terrorism because they are aimed at changing the economic or political behavior of large segments of the population.
The terms Left and Right started being applied to politics during the French Revolution when those that wanted a Constitutional Government sat on the Left and those that wanted a king sat on the Right. It's not both sides. One side wants Union, Justice, Tranquility, defense (not offense), Liberty, and Posterity, paid for with taxes, as the Constitution says. The other side calls Our Government their "enemy," and attacks checks and balances.
Trump is attacking all of the pillars of Our Constitutional Republic at the same time, so that the pillars can no longer support each other. It is only a matter of time before this brings down the entire structure, leaving Trump as "president for life," and leaving the rest of us unprotected by political violence from the Right.
The difference between left and right is whether you want to follow the Constitution or shred it.
CHOOSE A SIDE!
42
@James Tiptree, Jr. I am a white American who has considered a relocation outside the US. However, I would prefer to stay and help chart a new course. The biggest challenge for me is whether it is possible to continue to live with people who exhibit so much hate for others without losing hope. Let us join together to change the trajectory of our country!
42
@James Tiptree, Jr.
Your last paragraph is a sad commentary on the state of the country.
Perhaps you should consider moving to a college town, where people don't automatically assume that darker skin equals criminal tendencies. Or maybe rdelocate to one of the many northeast or northwest coastal towns where, in most, you would stand out, but not be assumed to be dangerous.
Better yet, move to Japan, where you would just be another foreigner, no more dangerous than somebody from Sweden or Senegal. As the Times reported recently, demographic collapse is a real prospect there, and a happy family walking together just about anywhere might be a welcome sight.
And best of all, stay in the U.S. and devote as much time and money as you can afford to the Democratic campaigns of your your choice.
25
A sinister genius is not required to control the votes of a Fox News-based reality crowd. Does it require genius to mix lying with race-baiting? Or does it simply call for a working knowledge of the intellectual skill-set of one's base? Very unlikely that more than a few hundred thousand of the Trump voters from the 2016 election will become rebels and either stay home or vote for the Democrat. Fox News-based reality is not the land of political rebellion and intellectual foment, it is the pastures and fields of fossil-fuel and pharma money. Don is simply the farmer, bringing in the sheep. Consider, if you doubt this, how many Trump voters understand why pharmaceuticals from Canada cost less than those available in the United States.
4
It is not incumbent upon Democrats to rid the world of the scourge of Donald J. Trump. The party platform not likely to be a progressive's dream. On climate and health care center left watered down versions of Bernie and Elizabeth.
Ridding the world of Trump begins at root level. First, the GOP foisted this unprincipled man off on the nation. Forgiving that mistake reasonable. Second, Republicans in Congress lost their voice, objectivity and courage when the party and country needed them most. Finally going silent a sin, but the far greater one involves the protection of Trump. Began with Nunes latest installment Moscow McConnell hemmed in by Trump refused to protect the 2020 elections. Republicans endorsed either a racist or approved race baiting as a path to electoral victory.
The GOP autopsy unnecessary. Died of self inflicted wounds.
Pundits, or in this case a gifted writer, under appreciate running against a man who will straight out lie on stage, in tweets and his tent revivals. Create achievements and policies divorced from fact and reality. Like trying to catch an eel with lard coated hands.
2
Let's imagine the following scenario: every week between now and the November 2010 election there is another mass shooting by a racist"He is not to blame." extremist. Let's imagine that the toll comes to about 700 deaths.
Will that be enough to cause a national reaction to the racist nationalism of Trump?
Not among his supporters. They will argue "He did not cause those deaths", "The right to bear arms is absolute." "He said that it was a horrible tragedy."|
Not even 7,000 deaths will cause them to drop their support for him.
2
Last night I was watching Mark Shields and David Brooks discuss Trump and his racist tendencies, and they said something that has stuck with me: Trump is incapable of formulating any kind of policy, and goes (tweets) with whatever he's feeling, which often - and serendipitously - matches what his base is feeling. Many of the displaced workers and angry whites feel like an endangered species (my words), and that somehow because they were born white and Christian, they should have been entitled to more. They value their white identity knotted together with their so-called patriotism and religious ideology.The two pundits suggested that Democrats' candidates need to quit talking policy, and start articulating what the Democrats VALUE. I think they're onto something, and that our next election will be more about how we're all feeling, what we value, and how we find ways to build bridges with others.
1
Trump's only concerned about one poll. In the latest Kremlin/RT poll, he's leading with 99.8 percent.
2
This election, like all elections, will be decided by the middle. Beating Trump is job 1. A progressive agenda can wait.
1
Racial stereotypes have softened under Trump? What polls show this? And don't you know that even people who will remain anonymous often lie to pollsters about controversial matters?
2
Quite right, he's no genius, but he is sinister, as are most of those around him.
2
Ross, That "unpalatable extremism" is what Trump ran and won on. You know, great healthcare for everyone for less money and also taxing the rich. Coincidently these are the things that you conservatives and centrists say won't fly. But it worked for Trump didn't it. In many ways Mr. Trump ran to the left of Hillary Clinton.
He will be destroyed by a populist Democrat in 2020 and we will have our first female President.
1
Although it doesn't say so, this column is not just assessing Trump, but the Republican campaign and Republican party.
Trump is running under the Republican logo, will speak at the Republican convention, will be campaign for Republican candidates, and accept pots of Republican money. He will demean and slime Democrats without cause.
So, whatever comes out of Trump's mouth every day is supported by the Republican party and a part of the overall Republican vision and campaign. Republicans are perfectly willing to accept any boons which come of it, and like Trump, enjoy Fox' utility as a propaganda tool. Republicans and Trump are the same thing.
Although he finally looks Republican side of the aisle, Douthat doesn't take them to task.
The certainty that Republicans will be supporting a candidate in a national presidential campaign that will cause vehement and ugly racism to invade each of our lives, is spoken of with less of a complaint than a policy a Democrat has, say, for insurance.
There isn't a reasonable way to compare the parties without acknowledging evil. Evil is a very powerful and dangerous. It should be spoken of, acknowledged and faced.
Trump is evil, and he is emboldened, surrounded by, and supported by people who join him in his evil work.
2
What happened in El Paso today is sinister. Let's see what the genius does about it, particularly given the racial make-up of the killer vice victims. My bet: nada, beyond the standard talking points (if that).
The Democrats will have to work long and hard to negate the sort of advantage that his ineptness in handling these situations and more (e.g., farm bankruptcies) provides them.
Of course, anything is possible with the Democrats.
1
Millions of us have never thought for a moment that Trump is any kind of genius, stable or otherwise. Francis the Talking Mule was a stable genius.
1
If the election is not about trump's character, we will have truly lost. His meager accomplishments are outweighed by his cruelty and fumbling policy "decisions". By now, everyone knows that he just wants to be the center of attention and will insult any person, destroy any value and say and do anything to stay there. Whether he gets anything worthwhile done as leader of the free world is purely an accident. Whether he starts another war, destroys our economy and China's, disrupts NATO or gives the Saudi's nukes is immaterial to his campaign to stay at center stage.
The democrats would be smart not to even debate issues with trump. Debate his character, his payoffs, his jailed colleagues, his foundation and his lies. There are no plans or policies worth discussing unless trump leaves the White House.
2
Trump's base and the Republicans are staying firmly entrenched in Trump's camp. Nothing has happened to change that - not the Mueller Report, not the Mueller hearing, not the arrests of out and out criminals working for Trump's campaign - nothing has moved the needle against Trump with his adoring fans. Anything the Democrats throw at him, slides right off. Unseating a president is difficult at best, no matter how odious nor vile, and this president is the worst of the worst. If it is to happen then the Democrats will have to present a united front against Trump.
They need to stop the attacks against each other, and offer their ideas for consideration without denigrating another candidate, They need to especially address what happened in the last election, when a shoe-in candidate went down to defeat that sent shock waves across the nation. They need to focus on the electoral college and why they lost the states critical to winning it.
Trump has an Achilles heal, and that is his vanity. Puncture his illusion of himself as the second coming of Christ. Put him in defensive mode. Make him have to publicly defend his lies and decisions. Make him squirm and make him sweat. Make him falter in front of his base, and crumble the image of the great white savior he has conned them into believing he is.
2
@Diana I think you have hit the nail on this.
I am not American living in Europe. Am appalled at what Trump is doing to your country and the world. He is dangerous to say the least. Pray that the democrats find a suitable opponent and alas, get rid of him in the next election. For the good of the USA and the whole world.
1
If Mr. Douthat really believes that Trump is such an unsavory representative of the Republican Party, then he should start writing every column about how Trump's vision is not the vision or policy of the Republican Party. He should start calling out Republicans like McConnell and Graham for straying far from the Republican standard set by Lincoln and Roosevelt. He would demand that Senators and Representatives express outrage at the endless hatred that spews from Trump's mouth and fingers.
But, in the end he will not and on election day he will pull the lever next to Trump's name. Because Party is more important than morality and patriotism.
3
At morning meditation practice we listen to silence.
One hears something true.
I recommend it.
All you have to do is shut up.
Let's encourage silent meditation be brought to the White House.
1
I hope that what just happened in El Paso will seriously damage Trump and his GOP enablers. This is their legacy. This is what they have wrought. Baby's killed at a shopping mall by someone emboldened by the Trump Doctrine.
This is what America is facing.
The problem is, the Fascists fully intend to steal yet another election, and they may well succeed.
The courts are stacked, this is how they do it. Military on the streets is not far off.
3
Trump is a genius of creating chaos...which is just what his foreign sponsors like Putin and his domestic corporate sponsors want.
2
A.G. Barr issued a manifesto that in no way could Trump be held responsible for mass shootings based on hate despite Trumps hate filled tweets vs brown folks on a daily basis. You cannot indict Trump or blame Trump for actions taken as a result of his hateful tweets. Trump has absolute immunity from any critique by anyone only praise is allowed by executive order.
It's not a question of giving "race-baiting impulses more credit as a strategy ...", but rather that they are a consistent part of his strategy and that Republican leadership is all too happy to accept the racist views.
So where does that leave the nation, and more importantly the Republican party. Never Trumpers keep up the hope that Trump loses and this all goes away?
Data points don't erase the racist legacy. The history of his twitter account, and lack of response by the Republican party is forever. Whether or not Trump's racist views succeed certainly have nothing to do with Democrats.
The very fact that Douthat thinks it's up to the Democrats to build the anti-Trump center is laughable.
Where is his Republican party????
3
Understand this.
Trump won with a minority of votes.
He has his 30+% base, which has not grown since day one.
The people who put him into office are voters who are registered as Independents.
Many of these Independents held their noses and voted for Trump because they could not bring themselves to vote for Hilary. Many of them will never vote for Trump again.
The economy has been booming since Obama. Under Trump, wages have stagnated and the jobs that have been created are low wage jobs. The middle class and below are no better off or worse off thanks to a tax cut that benefited only the wealthiest of Americans.
Healthcare is a major issue. Trump has done his best to destroy a system that was flawed but working for millions of Americans who never had coverage before the Affordable Care Act. If push comes to shove Healthcare will be a deciding factor even of it provides care for illegals. Coverage for all means just that. Coverage for ALL.
Many Americans, especially farmers are paying for Trump's reckless actions in regards to trade. And it is going to get worse. It is effecting the stock markets, and let's see what the average American has to say when prices start to climb at Walmart and other retailers. Trump is lying when he says the foreign countries are paying the tariffs. It is the American consumer. You and me.
You are delusional if you think is more popular than the far left media wants us to believe. He is a disgrace to the Oval Office and the country.
2
The main reason why Trump was elected in 2016 and might be re-elected in 2020 is white fears that they are losing their country to immigrants and hispanics. This explanation was telegraphed in Professor Samuel Huntington's last book, "Who are We?", published in 2003, in which he argued that America was losing its national identity because of the influx of of hispanic immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. He claimed that too many of these immigrants refused to learn English and they were not being assimilated into the American mainstream the way that Jews, Italians, and other white European immigrants were a hundred years before.
As a work of scholarship, the book is mediocre, but Huntington had a genius for predicting political conflicts years in advance, as he did in his earlier essay and book, The Clash of Civilization.
Whether Trump disappears from the political scene or not, these white fears will increase in the future.
1
"... even if he’s forced conservatives to excuse statements they once would have denounced..."
Ross, he hasn't FORCED anyone to do anything.
This point couldn't be more essential to maintaining a moral outlook on the world, something you frequently claim is important to you. Your use of the word "forced" here is, truly, the very definition of immorality. If you're inclined to defend it in terms like "well, in a perfect world sure, but in practical political terms..." — all the worse!
Let me repeat. Trump hasn't FORCED anyone to do anything. And in your heart you know it, and you know that it matters.
Why should anyone care about column after column elaborately tut-tutting at the many subtle failings of Democrats when you aren't comfortable acknowledging that Republicans even have such a thing as moral agency?
4
Ross and his party are morally bankrupt hypocrites who foisted Trump on us and now tut-tut his myriad failings. After all, Ross got his phony Christian conservative judges and his tax cuts for the filthy rich. What's not to like for a Republican apologist?
1
This conservative columnist can publish ". . . there’s no sign that Trump’s rhetoric has generally boosted white America’s sense of racial grievance" on the day when a professed idolator of Trump shoots approximately fifty random people in an act of hate against a racial minority that Trump unceasingly rails against.
3
Trump has been smart enough to stitch together a coalition of mutually independent single issue voter. hence his individual messages can be fragmented, virulent & simple: tax breaks for the wealthy, pro-life, guns, racism. no need to worry about offending any one group. each is getting the thing that is exclusively important to them.
plus the speaks like folks do on a construction job site. this is why the lower/middle class worker feels common cause with him.
2
As long as FOX perpetuates the lies he spews and the mainstream media give any credence whatsoever to what he does or does not do, he will win.
Further, when he goes to war with Iran (which he will absolutely do) he will do so 6 months before the election and then the Democrats will absolutely lose, no matter who runs.
The people who "looked the other way" and voted for Trump anyway have been thoroughly brainwashed. The people who see "extremism" in the policies call leftish or socialist are brainwashed as well.
The only way this country and this planet has a chance to survive is to be REALLY extreme on a number of fronts. To rest it away from the 1% or the 1% is to take a firm stand against those billionaires who would sell out the planet for profits and the people who struggle to live for the same reason. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and many others understand that. Biden, not so much, as he is more a part of those billionaires than not.
Trump is a circus act, a fake-reality reality star, a carnival barker, a snake oil salesman. Barnum was right about suckers, except that there are millions of them. Those who get all their information from FOX (and that's millions of people) or from Trump's Twitter feed (even more millions) are, sadly, suckers for being brainwashed.
There is no cure for unconsciousness. Only shock therapy will help and we are not going to go in that direction. In the very unlikely situation that Biden wins, nothing will change.
2
This is a goodbye corrective. Another really good point was made more recently on I think CNN by Trump’s coauthor on one of his past books, who pointed out that this guy feeds on the emotionally centers of the brain, and his statements are “designed” to prime the fight or flight reflexes to override the rational thinking centers. This affects not just those on the margin, but also the left, as they have to recognize they can’t knee jerk themselves onto his emotional traps. There’s a lot of documented neuroscientific evidence on how all this works by now. We have to find not just a political but also human-centered and scientific way to combat this scourge on democracy.
2
"The liberals are right that Trump is defiantly outside the mainstream — that every day, in a particular way, he proves himself extreme."
It's not only what you call "liberals" or, for that matter, " NeverTrump-conservatives" realize this fact, Russ. Any decent, educated person, no matter what party they belong to, realizes that Trump is a malignant tumor that needs to be extirpated as soon as possible.
The key is to find a steady-hand, moderate-minded "surgeon". Somebody appealing to decency and sanity, not pushing for radical change of the status quo (aka revolution).
2
I was sitting next to a group of North Americans who - based on their rather loud conversation in the Bellinghausen restaurant in the Zona Rosa over lunch - worked at the American Embassy.
As they extolled the great economy in the States, the invincible Market, how the Democrats running for president were a bunch of clowns and losers - and socialists - one of them opined rather ominously: "Nobody can beat Trump...he's too powerful."
Trump is powerful all right. But I hope - in the worst way - that the loud American was dead wrong about the election.
2
The most frightening supporters of Trumpism are the GOP Senators, led by Moscow Mitch. They are the classic story of "the emperor has no clothes" brought to real life.
3
The only way Trump will be unseated if EVERYONE votes for the Democratic Party nominee: NO MATTER WHO!! Anything less: third party candidates or voters not voting will lead to abject failure and T will be re-elected.
1
History will report that the real tragedy of the Trump presidency was the squandered opportunity to be a great president. With a Republican majority in both houses of congress willing to do anything he proposed, Trump was uniquely positioned to rebuild America’s infrastructure, solidify healthcare access, improve wages and jobs, increase the common good, attack opiate addiction, unite the population, support foreign democracies, engage the battle versus climate change, lead the world and limit the malign influence of autocracies and tyranny.... Instead he surrounded himself with incompetents, bigots, kleptocrats and extremists, unraveled treaties, uprooted free trade, increased the deficit by pandering to the wealthy and the corporate, appointed judges of low intellect and juridical quality and set a hideous personal example of inane and psychotic behavior. What a waste when the world is crying for the exact opposite.
2
Dump's polling numbers today are the same as they were on Election Eve 2016: 41-43%. He has 90+% "approval" from Republicans. Getting rid of him means getting more than 43% of the vote. It's a truly pathetic time to be sane in the United States.
3
Trump’s essential strategy is that the Democrats are weak and unfocused and won’t be able to effectively counter his lies and the vicious personal insults he hurls. The media will see a baffled or stammering opponent and conclude that’s an unforgivable weakness. Trump will replace Jerome Powell at the Fed with anyone who will lower interest rates to zero if that’s what’s required to keep the stock market booming. Republicans will march in lock step support while Democrats give every party member in elected office with a Twitter account an ample hearing. It’s the Dems election to lose and they’re fully capable of that.
1
" Trump" and " policy substance" don't belong together in the same sentence.
1
I totally agree that most of what Trump says is off-the-cuff and not some deep, devious plan. For that same reason the Russia collusion narrative was more conspiracy than a serious theory of events.
However, I think Ross underestimates how the constant tag of racism to anything Trump says plays to large numbers of white voters who otherwise find him repulsive. They shake their heads, mutter about how anything is racist the democrats and press don't like, and will likely vote for Trump again while holding their nose. The assault on Trump becomes an assault on all who live in fear of being labeled themselves at work, school or at the local Starbucks for the slightest non-woke comment.
Are there really people trying to “transform Trumpism into something intellectually robust”? Could such people really be referred to seriously as “conservative intellectuals”? How ‘conservative’ or ‘intellectual’ could any such people really be?
Those are the questions I find myself asking after almost laughing out loud at the line about transforming Trumpism into “something intellectually robust”.
2
The "tell" was Trumps' phrase, "Only I can fix it". And at least 40% of voters believe it (probably more, figuring that there are those who have enough wit for shame, and lie to pollsters).
He has some seriously anti-democratic, anti-constitutional notions and his "jokes" about deserving an additional 2 years or staying beyond his elected term ("we'll see what happens") and his constant undermining of vote results all point to an highly difficult transition to the next person in office.
Was Mussolini a genius? Or was he, via some intangible charm, able to catch the zeitgeist of the time and turn it to his own means? All the while supported by a legislative branch that was willing to go with the flow.
It really doesn't take much, just a persuasion that it is time for abandonment of the old ways that aren't working in your favor anymore.
I don't think that "genius" has much to do with it.
3
But it also includes ... a more anti-interventionist (for now) foreign policy than past Republicans, all of which are relatively popular.
Anti interventionist? Trump has intervened to undermine economies around the world with his tariff man activities, has intervened to back out of agreements like the Paris Accords, the the Iran Deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, has intervened with a frontal assault on the EU by cheering Brexit, and by his isolationist rhetoric has intervened to weaken NATO's ability to deter Russia's expansionist territorial aims. The world has suffered plenty from Trump's interventions, and his 'only do stupid stuff' approach to serious problems.
3
Mr Douthat, Sinister yes, but genius, hardly? Trump has proven that his behavior is mostly the result of an unstable personality who doesn't care about the impact he has on others. With his loyal supporters and the shameful sycophants in congress, he will continue to lie and divide our country, perhaps taking direction from the Russians. You can call him the candidate of the policy of the status quo, but know that the status quo from him is unbearable and destructive.
1
No one, not even Trump (probably), thinks Trump is a genius of any kind. But that doesn't make his race-baiting impulsive and unplanned. It takes no genius to stir up race hatred, especially when you feel it yourself, as Trump's record suggests he does. (Not prejudiced to every individual, but there is plenty of known stereotyped racism in his past and present.)
4
He is indeed a gifted troll, manipulative and bullying much of the time, sometimes bordering on rational. If he had been born to poor parents there would be a long list of orders of protection, bankruptcies and petty thievery following him. As a guy whose father was wealth there is instead a long list of affairs, bankruptcies, and slimy business deals following him.
4
There is a comeuppance for Trump supporters. History will be looking back "they were Trump supporters" in the same manner we always look back at such historical aberrations.
2
"Trump won many millions of voters who disapproved of him".
I have always thought,somehow, votes show approval. Maybe I have been using the wrong voting strategy all along.
Wasn't there a Commission appointed to look into all of those illegal voters? I wonder if they also found where all of those disapproving votes came from, and who the voters were?
Oh, I remember, the "Commission" found nothing. What is it they say? Liars figure, and figures lie. Better to stick to the truth.
3
The garbage was overflowing into the street and gutters of the city; rat infestation was everywhere; crime was rampant and reared its ugly head; policemen and firefighters were not getting paid, and watching this city verging on the brink of bankruptcy, Washington sent a message to the above, to the tune of drop dead.
Hard cheese, but city public officials rallied, rolled up their sleeves and united to save the city from going under. It was not easy. With combat boots and shouts on how better to implement a viable, solid and solvent fiscal plan, they rarely wasted time in wondering if the president would change direction, and to make a long story short, in return he served his country for one-term in office.
'Donald Trump Is Not a Sinister Genius' sounds right to some of his backers, and for those of us who feel that not only our cities are at stake, but our country in the once and future, we can no longer pamper and obsess over a president who appears to believe that he is 'America'. We might have a preference in seeing him safe at home, playing some rounds of golf, and surrounded by his doting family at his magnificent estate in the land of palm trees.
Whether he will be 'welcomed' with open arms by New Yorkers and beyond our regional state, or shunned by those of us in search of a better tomorrow, are not top priorities, but a forgiving lot as a whole, those willing, capable and fit can offer to remove his luggage from The White House, with a sense of progress.
Donald Trump's race-baiting has led to another mass shooting. Today in El Paso, TX, a 21 year old white Trump supporter has gunned down innocents in a Walmart Mall. Ross Douthat, however impulsive and unpopular Trump's strategy is to win white votes, he will win them. We weep.
3
He's neither a genius not even moderately intelligent. That plays well with a large swath of the country who are also neither of those things. Problem is, they all vote.
2
Last night our child told me how unsafe he felt in this world. After a long convo. I heard some things that I bet are pretty common, whether you’re red or blue. It got me thinking about messaging and what the Dems are doing wrong.
What every Democratic candidate needs to be saying right now is simple. Donald Trump and the Republican Party are making us less safe in every sense of the word.
It’s true.
Our world today is a minefield. Tough on crime? Yeah, right. When was the last time you felt safe at the movies? The mall? A concert? Your child’s school?
In fact.....
When we cut through the layers of self-delusion we all have about what party we belong to, you will find most people have the same concerns. From paying for a new house, a new child, college, our aging parents and our aging selves, there are pitfalls all along the way. Speak to that.
When we cut through the xenophobia and racism or maybe it’s self righteous leftist anger, you will find people worried about our relationships, our place in the world, our sense of belonging. Speak to that.
Our climate is melting and our future insecure. Speak to that.
....and when it comes to crime, or police brutality, or even hatred of the police, we’ll theres where you find your opening about guns. Perhaps the reason cops are trigger happy is they’re afraid to be shot. The rest of us are afraid to be shot too. See who the common culprits is?
Speak to that.
3
Ross, I've stopped trying to analyze the motivations of Trump long ago. As a human being, presidential candidate and now sitting fraudulently and pompously in the White House, he is as vulgar, arrogant, repulsive as ever, while being the most unworthy and ill-suited occupant of the White House in the history of our great country. We have had some real "losers" winning the Presidency legitimately before (without Russian help) but none as loathsome and unqualified as Donald Trump. I don't recall anyone calling his racist comments "a brilliant strategy". His defenders argue (preposterously) that he is not being racist. His critics claim his racism connects with a subset of voters who are also racist or at least willing to overlook Trump's racism because his unfiltered hate speech/tweets somehow prove his brutal honesty and sincerity (in spite of making some 10,000+ documented lies since 2016).
I am absolutely convinced the Democrat's "Medicare For All" policy initiative, if pushed in the general election, will hand Trump a second term, with or without the Russian government trolling for Trump. Once details, real and manufactued, of Medicare For All are released and debated, the opposition to it will be overwhelming it. Medicare negotiates lower rates (sometimes much lower) for services than private insurance. How will doctor's, nurses and hospital worker salaries not be adversely impacted? All those devilish details and the unknowns will be a hard sell for Democrats.
2
Voters are in a "Grit your truth and bear it" mode, until 2020. Until 2020 - unless Impeachment come, first.
Trump will not be re-elected. The GOP will lose both the House and the Senate.
Moscow Mitch will lose his race and place in the Senate.
Then, Trump goes to court like any other criminal citizen, and/or his followers will listen to him Twitter while under house arrest, claiming insanity.
THE END
1
Trump's method is to attack, insult and blame. It is to act strong and in command, and never to apologize or admit wrongdoing. This method has lifted him to the top of the political world, and is probably the way he will continue to conduct himself, but with even more abandon. This method plays to his natural strengths and personal tendencies, while shifting attention away from his glaring weaknesses and limitations. Expect a more aggressive Trump.
3
I don't get it. Ross Douthat begins by claiming that he is not going to write yet another column on the Democrats' lurch to the left. He then concludes by writing that, "The campaign may turn on how successfully the Democrats claim or build an anti-Trump center, as opposed to appearing to offer an unpalatable extremism of their own."
3
I do not see how anyone could call Trump a "genius", either with, or without, any modifying epithets.
1
Absolutely right, Mr. Douthat.
Trump is basically a classical psychopath: impulsive, a complete and incurable liar, a man incapable of feeling empathy and excellent at acting. His support among right wing white "fine people" reflects both his donning (and giving them permission to put on) the mantle of victimhood, which thus ENTITLES them to bully and abuse others, and his scapegoating helpless people.
He is, then, not calculating, but impulsive and extemporaneous. He cannot feel empathy and can only mouth words that a more genuine person would use to convey feeling. Instead, he simply always acts according to his momentary whims.
I sincerely hope your polls are accurate: that his antics have actually softened, and not hardened, racial boundaries.
It would be great if the Democrats, rather than focus on their fratricidal circular firing squad, could actually nominate someone capable of inspiring confidence in the stability and continuity of American government.
The key, however, is simpler: neither party has succeeded in enunciating anything like a coherent notion of what the FUNCTION of government is. Trump is incoherent, completely. The GOP is nothing but lies and hypocrisy.
It falls to the Democrats to actually come up with something resembling a raison d'être for government. So far, they're too disorganized to do that. Maybe by next summer ...?
2
In order to beat this man, the Dems are going to have to quit thinking of us as distinct groups and remember that we are the Lump, the Mix, E Pluribus Unum.
2
I hope Douthat is correct about Trump being more impulsive than ingenious. But it may be a moot point, if enough voters select Trump out of entertainment value, due to their enjoying how he rattles liberals' cages.
In this reality show scenario, Trump's impulsivity IS his genius.
2
Trump is treating our economy the same way he has treated his businesses, by impulse and bluster with no knowledge or advice or curiosity regarding his decades of failure after failure. After nine billion dollars in losses and six bankruptcies Trump is now the product of Deutsche Bank to the tune of three and a half billion dollars. He would bankrupt our nation to act tough and to appear superior to his Chinese counterpart. There’s no policy to his goofiness and no concern for working people of any color. His ego is too fragile to admit error or even that he may be less than stable and less than a genius. He inhabits a psychotic world for which there’s no pill. Soon reality will trumpet its thunder however and Trump will spend his remaining years and indebtedness trying to stay out of prison. Courage, brethren
4
I keep thinking about what the last 2 1/2 years could have been like IF this POTUS was actually: (1) not incredibly lazy and (2) had anywhere near some sound intelligence to work from.
The fact that all he wants to do is watch TV, tweet and play golf has actually helped America not become much worse than it has since 2016.
I consider us lucky at this point in time.
4
"Instead, polls show that even among Republicans, let alone independents, racial stereotypes have softened under Trump."
I'd sure like to see the poll citation on this. If it's true, it's hard to believe, given Trump's persistent race baiting. I agree that Trump has no genius plan, but he does understand that a significant percentage of the electorate is aggrieved by perceived white discrimination and deep-seated racism and xenophobia.
The question is, are there enough such voters in the key states to re-elect him? Lookin' at you Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
The historian John Meacham made a comment recently in response to the claim that Trump's race baiting and xenophobia "is not who we are as a country." Quite the contrary, said he. It's exactly who we are. Trump has just enabled it.
1
An intelligent column to be sure, but while in the middle of all this editorializing have you noticed that the foundations of this democracy are being challenged every day? Have you noticed that they are being challenged by someone who is singularly interested in his own survival ?
Your next editorial should be a little bit more to the point. All of this obfuscation misses the most glaring and dangerous issue of all, which is that our president , this president , remains a clear and present danger to our democracy and to our national security.
3
"Non-interventionist"?
* Extreme economic warfare against Iran
* Supporting equally troubling regime in Saudi Arabia
* Instigating Venezuela regime change
* Moving embassy to Jerusalem and giving "OK" to annex West
Bank
* Cutting aid to Palestinians to force capitulation
* Tariffs against China, EU, Canada, Mexico, etc.
* Bullying our neighbours south of the border and cutting aid
* Withholding aid to Puerto Rico
* Undermining PM May during Brexit negotiations
* Alienating European allies and supporting populist opposition
parties
* Sending love letters to Kim
* Sending hostage negotiator to Stockholm. What?
* Etc., etc., etc.
Right.
3
New York Times, try this:
Offer the President a chance to submit a text of the same length as Douthat's in which he states exactly what he, the president, knows about the man now in custody in El Paso, the weapon used, the number killed, how the man got his weapon(s) , and what was known about him from social media and anything the man may have written or said about immigrants.
Ask him to explain how preservation of his and Texas policy concerning weapon possession will keep such killings by Americans seen-as-white from occurring.
And finally, these two questions:
1) How would a wall in El Paso have prevented this terrorist act?
2) Can he point to any asylum seeker who crossed that border and remained in the US who has killed as many innocent people in a single act as this ordinary American young man?
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
1
Ross, please stop equating Conservatism, a time tested, honorable socioeconomic political philosophy, with anything being promoted by the current day Republican Party and their morally defective leader in the White House. White Nationalism IS NOT conservatism.
2
Duh. Obviously, whatever Trump does is not part of a brilliant strategy. He's a person of very average intelligence with three modes: self-promotion, self-gratification, and--sorry, just two modes.
3
New York State was aware of Trump's racism and did not vote for him. He had to be taken to court because he would not employ blacks. Has anyone listened to him speak? The only person Trump cares about is Trump. He is the worse President in my lifetime and I am 71 years old and lived through a lot of presidents. He enjoys turmoil. We need a calm, steadying influence. And where are all the Republicans? Cowering? It sure looks like it.
Mr. Douthat is very entitled to his opinion, and I respectively disagree with it. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so my exhibit A is the photo posted by the El Paso shooter (I will never say their names) of the word Trump spelled out with the shooters private arms collection. While one can't legislate crazy, what Trump does is give the white, male, young adults a message that it's OK to be angry at Mexicans ("Rapists") and that the White Aryan crowd consists of "good people". Sadly some disenfranchised Trump supporters see this as a coded message to perpetuate violence in the name of protecting their White rights. The President is playing to his base. He knows exactly what works. This is a Twitter Presidency and the media, sadly, must cover every Tweet as if's it's a pronouncement from the heavens. God help us.
3
The sleight of hand being played here is pathetic and sinister. By calling the strategy “genius” Douthat makes it sound exceptional and extraordinary. He conveniently omits any historical context : that this race baiting has been a Republican strategy for generations. Trump is hardly a genius but certainly given his father’s well documented racism and advisors like Bannon previously and Miller now, the strategy is known for what it has been : a very effective way to mobilize voters.
1
Trump is certainly not a genius. He does plan to use racism as a strategy because it is how he maintains his base. It may not help him win more votes, but you know, he is not a genius.
He will likely get about the same number of votes as he got last time. I doubt working class voters who voted for Trump were really voting for better economic opportunities. They liked that he was racist. They still do. Anyway, if there were a few who voted for better economic opportunity they will be too stubborn to change their minds now, even though Trump has delivered nothing.
1
Against Trump, Biden’s age wont matter: he’s only 3 years older, and looks younger too.
Biden will give more people a Medicare buy-in option, for people with chronic diseases like diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease and cancer. Not required, but a competitive option. This will make the price of insulin drop, and the expensive chemotherapies.
Biden will fight the carbon cartel — the Koch’s and Saudis. Use the carbon tax to pay for planting the 1 trillion trees that humanity has cut down, down from 4 trillion to 3 trillion, in the past 40 years.
infrastructure — smart roads that reflow traffic to avoid congestion— idle traffic jams burning gas going nowhere is the worst of all.
New nuclear — rather than the moon or mars—put Science to work on safer, smarter nuclear. Maybe even fusion! Use nuclear to give free electric power to smart electric cars in cities.
Guns — enough already. Make guns smart too —with James Bond handles that only fire if the owner is holding it, with a gps tracker, continuous webcam on the barrel, and an automatic call to the police as soon as the trigger is pulled.
Pro-rated payback for college loans, based on income for 20 years after graduation.
1
He's a walking train wreck. He's made the career of many a media personality. They will carry him to victory in 2020 as they did in 2016. They'll cover the train wreck 24/7. People love to watch a disaster unfolding before their eyes. It's good for everyone, he gets the attention, rating are up and people are entertained! Sleep tight America.
2
Good points in this column, but it is misguided to think of Trump as fundamentally an extremist. Trump not only lacks any real ideology, let alone any credible policy; he even more fundamentally has always lacked, and still lacks, any great desire to be president in the first place. His consistent modus operandi since taking office has been to defend the job he never really wanted to begin with.
It is exasperating to see almost every press story -for going on four years now and regardless of whether news oriented or opinion-based- needlessly and blindly helping to normalize this incurably abnormal disaster of a presidency. It is foolish to think in terms of some mythical political center to posit against Trump's "extremism"; His support is not really based on policy at all, or even on his rhetorical antics, but rather on his having successfully sold his misrule, to some 40% of the electorate anyway, as the antithesis of normal politics and normal governance.
Trump is the logical consequence of a morally bankrupt and functionally dead two-party wrecking machine. It is way past time for American media pundits, at least, to cease denying this obvious reality, and to finally start to focusing on the real root causes of Trumpism: the irreparably smashed, ruined and toxic political party machinery run by politicians with little clue, let alone real desire, of how to accomplish anything substantively positive for the country.
102
@Sage. I agree with everything you are saying. The biggest problem standing in the way of having a government that is responsive to we the people and who respect the constitution is to do away with all the bribery that we euphemistically call "campaign contributions." Until we have publicly funded campaigns we are just whistling Dixie."
24
@Sage, Trump had these opinions long before he was running for office. So if you want to see what is really inside, go back 10-20 years. He has been in the public eye for decades.
10
@Sage
Trump does have a political ideology. It is monarchy and he wants to be king.
Go back and watch the end of the first debate between Hillary and Trump. When the debate ends, Hillary goes out into the audience, shakes hands, and talks to people. But, the Trump family gathers together in the middle of the stage avoiding the peasants, floating above the rest of us, like royalty. Watch it.
In North Korea, a brutal dictatorship where failure to show enough love to the Kims can get you tortured or executed, Trump said that We the People of the USA should "sit in attention" for him, with "fervor." He keeps talking about multiple terms in office ("four years, maybe five") without ever mentioning Constitutional term limits, then talks about being "president for life" which he equates to being "king."
Trump is an existential threat to our Republic, and the establishment refuses to acknowledge that he is committing High Crimes daily, by making constant attacks on all of the pillars of Our Constitutional Republic, while centrist Democrats WAIT for 2020 as if Trump is not actively asking foreign governments to interfere in our elections ON TV!
The technical policies of Democratic candidates are not going to affect this election. This is far deeper than whether we will have Medicare for All.
This is about whether the "unitary executive," invented by the Right to make the presidency all powerful will prevail over our Constitution.
Trump wants to give the Right their King.
30
Mr. Douthat's description of Trump's staff trying to "retrofit" a strategy onto his Twitter outbursts is the most important point about Trump. Trump has no strategy. He has no political vision beyond the next 10 minutes, which is why outburst separated by more than 10 minutes are so often contradictory. There are too many liberal commentators trying to find a strategy in Mr. Trump's behavior who have missed his important and defining characteristic: that he is a bundle of uninformed, uneducated, untested beliefs, and nothing more.
2
It is clear that Mr. Douthat underestimates the power of identity politics (a weak effort at euphemism). Trump thrives on prejudice, fear, and hatred, an agenda that has every chance of succeeding in today's United States. Just ask the people living in El Paso, Dayton, and Gilroy, unfortunate targets of Trump's sort of politics.
6
Douthat's conclusion is another anti-Trump exercise in wishful thinking. The argument always ends the same. Trump's reelection hinges on whether Democrats nominate someone for whom alienated conservatives can vote. It's the frequent lament of a people without a party. Can't Democrats just be more like Republicans before Trump? Naturally, the conservative diaspora is therefore constantly arguing the center is the only way to defeat Trump.
The truth is far from that certain. Two data points don't make a trend line. There's still a very good chance Democrats can win on the left and, quite frankly, they need the left anyway. Democrats can't win with the center alone. If you alienate the leftward Democratic shift by nominating a Republican dressed in blue, you lose just bad if not worse than you wood otherwise. Democratic voters will stay home or vote third party.
A strong and principled Democratic candidate though can turnout the base and bring new voters to the polls. Disaffected anti-Trumpers can stay home or vote third party. Not voting Democrat isn't the same thing as voting Trump. Conservatives like Douthat still have a choice. Right now, either route seems a likely path to victory.
3
@Andy
"Not voting Democrat isn't the same thing as voting Trump.."
Sorry Andy. Not voting for the Democrat in 2020 - I don't care who that candidate is - indeed - a vote for Trump. It is a vote for the most dangerous human being who has ever lived. Ever.
2
@Bob Bruce Anderson
It's called math Bob. A suppressed vote counts as one. A persuaded vote counts as two. Democrats obviously prefer persuaded votes but there aren't enough persuadable voters out there. Would you rather have one vote or none?
Asking anti-Trump voters to stay home or vote third party is perfectly reasonable. That's how Bill Clinton got elected. Thank Ross Perot.
1
"...Trump is defiantly outside the mainstream — that every day, in a particular way, he proves himself extreme."
Whether Douthat realizes it or not, this kind of gross understatement about Trump, which has become common among Republicans in Congress and many Republican commentators in the press, culpably makes Trump seem not so bad. "Outside the mainstream?" Well that's about as condemnatory as the word 'eccentric'. "Extreme"? If you don't say in what specific ways Trump is extreme, this word need not even be taken as a criticism. Why is it so hard, even for some very smart people, to say the simple truth about Trump?
40
Two things of which I am reminded give me comfort in these dark days:
1) A writer (I don't remember who) once stated that liberals/progressives/Democrats always fear that the country is about to take a sudden rightward lurch. The results of 2016 suggested that might be the case, but the manner in which Trump won—a few thousand votes scattered across three essential states—was nothing sort of miraculous for him and will be almost impossible to replicate. It was a historic anomaly.
2) The 2020 campaign will be a referendum on Trump. Not Medicare-For-All, not student loan reform, not Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton. It will be all about Trump. And as the election gets closer and he realizes he is about to incur a loss as historic as his previous victory, Trump will be angrier and more erratic and more prone to his racist belches and diatribes. A stressed Trump in September/October 2020 will not be a stable or pretty sight.
To return to quotes: was it Churchill who said that Americans will always do the right thing after extinguishing every other possibility? Something like that.
Be hopeful; help your unregistered friends register to vote and go with them for the first time they cast a ballot; volunteer; vote for the Democratic candidate on the ballot.
That morning after the 2016 election, I was in a daze. The morning after the 2020 election, I expect to be on Cloud Nine.
33
@sdcga161
If only it were a referendum on Trump. Or even a vote of no confidence. Unfortunately, it is going to come down to a choice between candidates.
'he realizes he is about to incur a loss as historic as his previous victory, Trump will be angrier and more erratic and more prone to his racist belches and diatribes. A stressed Trump in September/October 2020 will not be a stable or pretty sight'.
I don't think 'Trump slips on a banana peel' is going to be the story. You need a candidate that will garner more electoral votes than he does. I think at minimum that means someone that a lot of different interests can work with.
If there remains too much adherence to narrow dogmas, well, maybe no problem, Rome wasn't built in a day. I can't say what fits into 'be wise as serpents and innocent as doves'.
I don't know about after the election, but until then, best off cloud nine.
1
I so hope you are right...I will do anything to make sure DJT does not win again .
Ross, you actually believe this?
“Instead, polls show that even among Republicans, let alone independents, racial stereotypes have softened under Trump. “
For Republicans, who overwhelmingly support Trump, they would obviously provide answers that favor him. As far as independents, myself included in that group, I have trouble believing most feel there has been a softening of racial stereotypes. Certainly none of the independents I know feel that way.
33
If I follow your logic, you’re saying that the sort of people who used to feel good about admitting their biases to pollsters are now pretending (at least to pollsters) that they are more racially enlightened so Trump, who is usually said to embolden racists, won’t look bad, and that the views of some independents you know are the better way to know what Republicans all across the country are thinking. This a very complex and creative theory.
"The campaign may turn on how successfully the Democrats claim or build an anti-Trump center, as opposed to appearing to offer an unpalatable extremism of their own" There are 20 people dead in a shooting yesterday Mr. Douthat, what part of the current debate about gun control among the Democratic candidates is unpalatable to the the families of those killed? What part of the climate debate is unpalatable to farmers and residents in the midwest whose livelihoods (and our food supply) will be permanently affected? What part of the healthcare debate is unpalatable to the 70% of Americans whose coverage is adequate to the point where a major health problem will end them up in bankruptcy court? These are the issue, there are more, and there is nothing extreme in trying to address them Mr. Douthat.
77
As usual, the facts are not what conservatives wish them to be. Most of the "radical" policies and proposals of the Democratic candidates are looked upon favorably by a majority of the electorate. People want universal health care. People want to save the planet. People want the plutocrats to pay more in taxes. People want rapacious bankers and corporate titans held back by regulation.
Whoever the Democrats select as their candidate need not fear the "radical" and "socialist" labels that conservatives so desperately want to make stick. There's a reason FDR won four terms - and Obama could have won at least a third, in not a fourth of his own, for the same reason. (It was the GOP's impotence in the face of FDR's popularity that led them to impose a two-term limit.)
Carrying the torch of FDR and Barack Obama will not hurt the 2020 Democratic candidate - it will carry him or her to the White House with a mandate for decency and reform.
64
I agree with Jim D. that a democratic candidate carrying the Obama torch can win. Unfortunately, the last democratic primary debate suggests that progressive candidates are more comfortable running against Obama than they are Trump. Douthat may have a point.
Throughout the long history of the USA even the most admired presidents felt it necessary to do things that did not conform to the proclaimed ideals of the country of fairness and compassion and equality and there was a sense that these admirable ideals still remained as firm basics that could always be counted upon to direct the goals of the country. What stands out in the Trump administration is hat the emperor is now revealed as without clothes and a large proportion of the country is enthusiastic over this open admission of cruelty and contempt and delight in the use of force instead of thoughtful attempts of social decency. This loss of admiration for the original ideals of the country, whether or not they were valid, is most disturbing to many of the people of the country.
47
People may think Trump has some kind of genius if he wins again, and write books about it, but it's pretty hard for a U.S. presidental incumbent to lose with a decent economy
5
@Jeff White This is very true. But will our economy be so decent in 16 months? The warning signs are on the horizon.
5
@Jeff White He just killed the 'decent economy' which, btw, he had zero to do with. But now, his tariff chickens are coming home to roost. 15 months from now, things won't be looking good at all.
I agree with Ross that Trump's nativism locks in his 40% but has little potential to expand much beyond that. Consistently about 55% of voters despise Trump and are poised to vote against him in 2020. We saw the beginnings of this in 2018 and it will only be stronger in terms of voter turnout in 2020. Trump's only chance of survival is if that 55% fails to stay united and starts squabbling among themselves. If the 55% fully understand the stakes and simply decide to vote D no matter what, Trump will be washed away in an epic landslide.
My fear is that too many potential voters do not seem ready to compromise on a candidate for President. Too many seem ready to flip over the gameboard if they don't get exactly the candidate they want. Anyone left of center will be infinitely better than Trump - all of our candidates meet this criteria. Positively support your favorite but be ready to coalesce behind the party's selection - maybe it will be yours, maybe not. If everyone just sticks to this, Trump will be humiliated and we can begin the rebuilding after this sad and disastrous chapter of American history.
How many Americans have sacrificed everything for this country in our many wars? How many have literally given their lives and limbs and futures fighting for the country? All you're being asked to do here is vote properly. It's a pretty small sacrifice to literally save your country.
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@Frank Roseavelt
There is a big percentage of the 55 percent who may choose Trump over some of the things Democrats are advocating for.
Especially amongst Latinos. Many Social Leftists have no idea how horrified those, especially those from South American nations like Venezuela and Colombia are by the very same proposals that backfired spectacularly in their own nations being championed as solutions in the very nation they came to escape the very same ideas.
Many Democrats even Black ones agree with many of the ideas proposed by the candidates, but the idea of open borders is one that will make the Black constituency just decide to stay home and not vote. It is such actions that will deliver Georgia, Pennsylvenia and North Carolina back to Trump.
7
@Frank Roosevelt
Thank you so much for all your comments,but especially the comments about those who fought in wars. Numerous people in my family did, and not enough current attention has been given to what they sacrificed in order to secure democracy. They did not do this so a Trump could come along, a man who never served a day in his life, and destroy it. Excellent comment piece.
11
Contrary to what the Republicans say, the Democrats do not want open borders. Democrats want an immigration policy to address the problem. Republicans under Trump are treating people inhumanly. That is not a solution to the problem. Congress needs to quit bickering & work together to come up with a policy.
4
Please, Mr. Douthat please don't give that man ideas. Don't play Machiavelli to this American"Prince". The Prince was a political strategy manual Machiavelli wrote to curry favour and re-establish his diplomatic connections with the powerful.
I know, I can just calm down. After all, "our" Prince doesn't read.
26
@Karen DeVito "princes" have advisors, yes, Karen. So explaining what mister Farage(UK) did not the other day. Namely how the so-called Squad is a specific use metaphor termed synecdoche. For Democrats. i.e. Democrats are the Squad.
I think of this as a way of making slogans. To fit tweets etc.
1
"The campaign may turn on how successfully the Democrats claim or build an anti-Trump center, as opposed to appearing to offer an unpalatable extremism of their own."
In all other advanced nation would what Mr. Douthat so endearingly calls the "unpalatable extremism" of Democrats be consider left of the political centre, while the majority of all Democrats would be considered smack in the political spectrum.
29
I find Mr. Douthat's comment that Trump's "re-election chances would almost certainly be far better if he talked like George W. Bush on race instead" to be an interesting exercise in ambiguity. Has Mr. Douthat forgotten that Bush became a serious candidate for the Republican nomination after his campaign sponsored a "poll" prior to the South Carolina primary in which Republicans were asked, "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain if you knew that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock," or is he suggesting to Trump that this is the kind of race-baiting in which he should be engaging? (John McCain had not in fact fathered a black child out of wedlock, but he and his wife had adopted a Bangladeshi girl, pictures of whom were apparently good enough for the Bush campaign.)
38
@Richard,
Ah, yes,
Amidst the current torrent of racism, how easily we forget the ugly insinuation, the code words, the "hey, don't worry, we like you and your bigotry" facets of the so-called "southern strategy" from Nixon to this very day.
1
I still find it hard to believe that Trump is president, even as the end of his first term draws near. Did this really happen?!
Anyway, Ross's observation that Trump is going to be a status quo candidate is worth noting. But it's not only Trump: everyone is going to be a status quo candidate. And that is because America is paralyzed in public policy. Nobody can do anything (except maybe cut taxes for the rich). Trump would probably like to do a lot of bad things. But he can't. Because virtually nothing can get done, for better or worse. Don't worry about the Wall. It will never be finished. Or even started. Climate change won't be reversed, but on the other hand the coal business is not making a comeback either.
Likewise, Medicare for All is not going to happen, no matter who is president in 2020. And Greenland will be a puddle before the Green New Deal comes into effect.
America is stuck. So, dear U.S. voters, your favorite plans for the country will, sadly, never be implemented. But on the plus side, your political enemies' plans won't either. That is life in gridlock.
28
@r a He's inflicted plenty of damage on the environment, the workplace, national parks, the judiciary, the Supreme Court -- the list goes on quite a bit. Not everything happens in Congress.
64
It will take a day or two for Trump's rolling back of environmental regulations and ignoring the proven reality of human caused climate change to imperil the lives and livelihoods of your great grandchildren, assuming they are now amongst us. Be patient. Even a monster like Trump can't do everything overnight.
1
@Jasper Slavens
You can easily answer your own questions with a little reading. Start with the Wikipedia page “Environmental policy of the donald trump administration” (or simply google “trump environmental” and follow your nose).
Many policies don’t have an immediately palpable effect; your impression that your local national park is unaffected by trump is a little like the guy who jumps off the tenth floor of a building saying, after falling five floors, “so far, so good.”
1
It is difficult to see how any kind of long-term mass immigration is consistent with a desire to lower Europe’s carbon output.
Or American carbon output.
6
@David Immigration (from poor, troubled countries to richer ones) won't increase the total number of people on earth. Just the opposite: As women's opportunities increase, the number of children goes down. Immigrants in the US are having fewer children than their sisters who stayed behind.
And people in better-off countries can live with more attention to environmental issues than people who are struggling to survive.
23
Trump is no genius.
But neither are his fans. As always with this malignant presidency, the issue is that the same people who made Trump a reality TV star are equally satisfied with his presidency.
The inability to discern reality from a fantasy TV show is the primary distinguishing characteristic of a Trump voter.
If we can figure out how to allow his fans to watch him on TV but prevent them from voting in 2020, we might still be able to save the country.
71
Considering that Trump probably thinks Machiavelli is a New York pizza joint, crediting him with having an actual strategy would be risky. But that just means the race-baiting and xenophobic hate speech stem from his genuine attitudes about minorities and foreigners. Hardly a comforting thought for those who don’t plan to vote for him next year, or a positive reflection on those who do.
59
@Richard "...the race-baiting and xenophobic hate speech stem from his genuine attitudes about minorities and foreigners..."
Maybe. But if he'd been that bigoted, wouldn't we have known about it decades ago? He worked with Black & other minority entertainers for a long time, with few if any complaints.
IMO he's not a racist, but he's worse than one. He's a narcissist and opportunist, who does what gains power for him regardless of the collateral damage. If it works for him to be a champion of some minority tomorrow, he'll do it; the only core value is What's In It For Me?
Unlike a true gut-level racist, he doesn't have the possibility of learning and changing; the narcissism and self-centeredness are deep-seated and permanent. And he's forever dangerous and toxic.
"But in recent 2020 polling, Trump is performing below his job approval rating in many head-to-head matchups"
Polls can't be trusted. We should know that after what happened in 2016. Everyone, including Trump, thought Trump would lose.
27
He did lose the popular vote, which is what the polls predicted.
31
@Susan
American presidential elections are not decided by popular vote. One would have thought high paid political consultants can figure that out but clearly not. So, prepare to lose elections when you pick a candidate like HRC who looked down upon half the country and preferred to fly over the ‘flyover country’ instead of campaigning for votes.
@FreeSpirit Wrong again. It was actually Jill Stein voters who threw the election to Trump. That and Vladimir Putin's hand in the ballot box.
“And here I agree with the left that there’s a media tendency to give Trump’s race-baiting impulses more credit as a strategy than they actually deserve.”
Well, I’m a long-time lefty, and I’m confident Trump & cohorts know what he’s doing. Overall, (I don’t have statistics on this; it’s just a feeling) that Trump’s purposefully increased the frequency and blatantly of his hate speech and open hostility ever since he began his presidential bid. As time passes, Trump and his cohorts have gradually been less apt to restrain him as they did in the initial days of his presidency. He intends his vicious onslaughts to numb opponents into feeling helpless while incrementally moving our society and culture to accept what he does as the new normal. If he succeeds it’ll be a new era, charactered by authoritarianism, nativism, and fear.
80
Mr. Grobman's comment's are so very thoughtful. It is, and quoting,"...his vicious onslaughts to numb opponents into feeling helpless while incrementally moving our society and culture to accept what he does as the new normal." This the press must item by item explain to the public this rapid adjustment of our "norms."
Trump promised to provide his tax returns, he promised that he would have the best and most affordable health care plan and now blames Senator McCain for his plan failing by one vote. The plan the Republican's proposed would not have assured that pre-existing conditions would be covered, it would not have had mandated coverage of certain conditions, nor would it have had expenses to exceed now mandated insurance limit.
Not sure what "draining the swamp" means to people, but Trump has filled the swamp with people in who oppose the very position defined as their obligation to protect.
What is so important in what Mr. Grobman's comments infer is the inability of the lack of intellectual dialog with our president. Again and again Trump says and "only I can."
22
Ross wrote:
“Instead, polls show that even among Republicans, let alone independents, racial stereotypes have softened under Trump.”
Maybe. But that doesn’t reassure me. At the same time, racially- and ethnically-related hate crimes have increased.
Indicating, perhaps, while Trump may have turned off some of his (relatively!) moderate base, he’s emboldened and energized his far right and nativist supporters.
43
Perhaps I am being far too simplistic but if the coming election is to be a referendum on the incumbent, any Democratic candidate should ask "What has Trump done for you lately?"
If Trump were asked "What have you done for America lately?" he would be stuck for an answer. For an extremely stable (sinister) genius, that is a very bad place to be. Which, for this president, may be a place that feels just like home.
20
@Tom Q
The stock market is at all time highs - unemployment across all racial boundaries is at all time lows - he is tackling our abusive trading partners - he has cut taxes for 80% of the middle class - that is what he has done 'today'.
I hope he loses and hope he loses big but it won't be because he has no story to tell.
Trump will be stuck for answer? I can’t stand Trump, but to figure he won’t brag about his supposed achievements is naive. Like it or not (and I don’t) he will claim low unemployment, great economic growth, an uptick in real wages, a thriving stock market, a conservative supreme court, border defense, business deregulation, defense of right to life, on and on and on.
To me, it doesn’t really matter if he is an evil genius, or just plain self-serving and sinister. What is a bigger problem is that the Republican Party continues to back him, and by the looks of it will do so into the next election. Despite all of the misdeeds that crawled out of the woodwork prior to the November 2016 vote and losing the popular vote he was able to become president due to an archaic and out-dated electoral college. The state of affairs have gone decidedly downhill since then with yet no protest stirring among the ranks of the GOP. They seem to want to win the White House back at any price, no matter how extreme the collateral cost.
71
Shame on you GOP Trump supporters.
If this essay was about a Democratic candidate, you would be outraged
“Sad”
1
Ross, I wish you and other conservatives would stop using the phrase "entitlement reform" as a fig leaf for plans to shred what's left of a tattered social safety net. Have the honesty to call it what it is.
140
@pj, Yeah, that phrase, "entitlement reform" is a code for dismantling the last shreds of Social Security, Medicare, welfare, and food stamps.
The truth is that the biggest give-aways, actual entitlements, go as tax breaks to the sectors of the economy that have the ear of the members of the House and Senate. There, those sectors get what they want over 90% of the time and over the obvious needs of the 99% -- that is, the rest of us.
Social Security and Medicare are gov't programs that we pay into through payroll taxes, in my case money was deducted from every paycheck I ever earned for those programs.
But special tax breaks and sealed deals for real estate developers, the sugar industry, big pharma, the makers and purchasers of yachts and private jets, the military industrial complex, and a whole lot of other folks (just look at who has buildings in DC housing their lawyers and lobbyists and you get the picture) get the most entitlements of all. But you would *never* see stuff about that sort of entitlement in the columns of Brooks, Douthat, and Stephens, or the corporate-owned media, now, would you?
4
Yeah, I’m with you on your last paragraph. At some point you have to quit working to “move the Overton window” and start working towards winning an election based on policies that people want that would be good for the country.
People seem to want to go back to affordable public universities; go back to better regulation of Wall Street and monopoly power; go back to building infrastructure; add a public option for health insurance and require a health care system with less paperwork and fairly priced medicines; do the right thing by the Dreamers; treat desperate people fleeing violence and famine fairly and humanely; and raise taxes on the wealthy, after decades of lowering those taxes, to help pay for what they want.
They don’t seem to want to abolish private health insurance and accept the disruption and much higher taxes on everyone that seems likely to bring; free public universities; an immigration policy that seems at best heedless regarding the needs of the domestic labor force and at worst one of the factors keeping wages down and jobs scarce; and infrastructure projects they can’t see the sense of.
Donald Trump is President. This is a representative democracy. Time to campaign on and then work to achieve the sorts of Democratic Party policies that would probably actually work and that people actually want. Sheesh.
17
@Jack
"Jobs scarce? Because of "illegal" immigration? Don't we have the lowest unemployment figures in at least 20 years? Aren't many quality jobs going unfilled due to not having the skilled labor force to fill them?
Let's get the narrative correct on how immigration affects the labor force.
https://www.marketplace.org/2018/04/05/what-role-immigrants-labor-force/
@Mattie
Thanks for the link. As the article points out, there is a demand for immigrant labor in some localities such as Portland, and in “specific industries like construction and home health aides, and in the tech industry.” But the US is a big country and there are many different jobs requiring different skill sets and different levels of physical capabilities.
The article you cite doesn’t address situations such as the parts of Trump country where textile plants were closing a few decades ago and during subsequent years one would read about immigration raids at places like meat packing plants in those areas.
I live in a part of the country that is almost surely more prosperous because of NAFTA and because of immigration. I don’t want to see some stupid wall running the length of the Rio Grande.
But that doesn’t mean I should be heedless about the situation facing blue collar people in other parts of the country.
When they passed NAFTA they should have done more than say “job churn” and the ability to “move where the jobs are” would take care of those folks. It may be too late to help a lot of them now but they’ll keep voting till they die. We should keep people like them in mind when we make and enforce the laws.
Yes, he may not be a "a Sinister Genius" but he is sinister. His never ending desire and effort to destroy, without in turn creating something good, proves that.
40
@Bursiek. I cannot get past the notion that Trump cast himself as a builder during the 2016 campaign. His expertise in this area would lead to infrastructure programs, success in many areas that the country needs. What the Dems should be demanding is evidence of this. What is evident to me is that he is a demolition candidate. He responds to suggestions with tearing down not only ideas but people and whole cities like Baltimore. He plays only to his so-called base, and the rest of us are left hanging. So much for being the leader of the whole United States of America. We are now a country of ins and outs. Mostly outs, I fear.
23
Mr. Douthat
Not a scientific research, but my observation in Massachusetts, a blue state, is that the number of homes flying Flags have gone up by 10 to 20% since Trump started his openly hate mongering speeches.
I am afraid his base has either increased or feels empowered to show openly their hostility to the non whites.
12
@RH I wholeheartedly disagree with your correlation between flag-flying and support for Trump. My town in North Jersey is solidly in the anti-Trump camp and yet many homes, including mine, proudly fly the Stars and Stripes. The flag belongs to all of us, regardless of our political views. To think otherwise is to give that lying con man in White House ownership of our great national symbol of democracy.
54
@RH It was close in time to 4th of July--many flags go up then, and many people leave them up for a while. I hope it was just 4oJ and not Trump's speeches. (And even if it were Trump's speeches, I hope the flags went up to reclaim America from him.)
13
@RH Here in Pennsylvania I see something similar, but in no way attribute it to a rise in Trump’s popularity. The “base” is digging in, defending its leader in the only way it seems to know how: co-opting the notion of “America” (not the USA) as a white stronghold by simply displaying flags, many of them huge ones on pickup trucks. It’s mostly just a reflexive gesture IMO and, from all appearances - other than the usual mindless sloganeering - they’ve little else to offer.
Part of me feels sorry for Ross. He is a man of ideas stuck with a bankrupt philosophy. He has had to watch as his republican brethren dropped their 'beliefs' as soon as convenient to sing hosannas to a truly despicabe being who seems to have no beliefs. Although it has always been true that conservatism's core tenants didn't work and were fake anyway (for example, 'less government' means getting everyone to pay for things only the uber-rich want; patriotism is something you accuse other people of not having, and show by wearing a flag pin), at least conservatives could put up a front. Now, it's not possible with this man of such self-absorption and selfishness who can never admit he is wrong about anything. Intelligent republicans just remain silent, for the most part; the others go on fox, it appears. It really shouldn't matter who the Democrats nominate. 2020 will tell us how far we have fallen.
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@Yetanothervoice
Yeah all that twisting himself into knots trying not to admit that his party, and the wing of his church that supports it, is a hateful bunch who at worst can’t stand immigrants, minorities, independent women, and LBGT people, and at best are content to look the other way to get anti abortion Supreme Court justices.
It’s gotta hurt.
1
There is much for me to agree with in this column by Mr. Douthat. Personally, I found it shocking that there may be some overlap in our values and thought processes.
However, “the fix is in” and alas, Mr. Douthat ignores the most probable scenario post election 2020. The personal lawyer/fixer for Individual 1 has warned America that a loss will not be received well. Surely, a loss will be carried to the Supreme Court where Moscow Mitch has installed his men to bring the total catholic (nothing matters except abortion) count to six. Can any rational observer of the Kavanaugh hearing think he would allow a Democrat, or worse, a woman Democrat to be president?
36
@Rob
I can understand why you think that even if Trump loses both the electoral and popular vote the next time around, he'll find a way to stay in office. (We citizens of the USA certainly seem to be inmates of Bedlam who signed ourselves in voluntarily.) However, the count will have to be very close to go to the Supreme Court a la Bush/Gore, and I suspect even pro Trump justices would be reluctant to precipitate a civil war. Bear in mind that when Reagan was shot and Haig appeared in uniform on television to assure the nation that all was well, we recoiled in horror. Americans have a bred-in-the-bone horror of the military imposing an official on us. The new Commander in Chief will have Trump physically hauled out of the oval office if necessary.
4
@Rob
I'm so tired of hearing that Trump won't leave the White House if his opponent wins. He's a coward. Depending on which part of his personality is dominant at the time, he'll feel a great sense of relief or he'll be dragged off crying. One thing is for sure: he'll take to Twitter immediately after. And he'll blame everyone else.
1
Trump presented himself to many as an instrument of destructive change, outside the constraints of the establishment, a maverick. If the Democrats want to win those voters should they promise a return to a safe center, or should they offer a dynamic alternative also outside the mainstream. If people responded to the promise of change should we promise none.
11
People, especially independents, tend to vote their pocketbooks, not their racial views. So much of this is irrelevant to the outcome. Moreover, you don’t need to be a genius to defeat a bad candidate. Trump proved that once already.
11
Is Trump impulsive or strategic? One thing that Trump is a master of is rhetoric. For the 2016 election it was his line Make America Great Again. For the 2020 election it is Keep America Great. Both are simple and resonate with his base. But they are not about America at all. They are both about Trump. The subtext of MAGA was "Elect me, for only I can speak for you." The subtext of KAG is "Re-elect me, for only I can speak for you." Of course, he hasn't made America great, he has diminished it. But making America great was never what he was concerned with. It was about giving him power. And, unfortunately, it worked. There's is more than impulsiveness at play here.
28
I agree there is no deep conspiracy to the race-baiting. Conspiracies of all sort--including the Deep State--are the creation of paranoids.
That doesn't make the race-baiting any less ruinous to our social fabric and comity. He may not be a calculating monster. But a monster he is for sure.
34
@Laurence Bachmann
My opinion of conspiracy theories has always been that those who are presumed to be in charge of the conspiracy are not smart enough, or disciplined enough, or consistent enough to carry them out.
However, the world has known many race, ethnic, or religion baiting campaigns that have succeeded well enough to kill millions of people and to destroy social fabric all over the globe. Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, Hirohito. A century ago. And many more since. Ethnic cleansing, for example. Just one.
The KKK was, and is, a deep conspiracy, and that's not my paranoia. There are others. I'm not paranoid.
@Laurence Bachmann - Decimation of Native American populations was of course true, nor paranoid conspiracy. Genocide of Armenians, a bit later of Jews, Roma, gays, etc. across Europe ditto true, not paranoid conspiracy, recent slaughters across Central Europe, Mideast, Africa, death squads across Latin America true, not paranoid conspiracy, persecution of Rohingya, Uigurs, Yazidi true, not paranoid conspiracy, KKK terror of US true, current race-baiting, persecution of political adversaries, of journalists, scientists, scholars, etc. all true, not paranoid conspiracy. Anyone who thinks "It Can't Happen Here" has not read the book.
I think the Republicans would be smart to dump Trump for 2020. Or, at least primary him; go for the loss and think long term.
In the event he wins 2020, the inevitable backlash that will result by 2024 would likely result in a Democrat supermajority in the WH and both houses of Congress.
Trump’s personality trajectory and administrative incompetence guarantee that no one on the Republican side would want to be seen waving his banner by 2024. And if a moderate Democrat losses in 2020, a hard left Democrat would likely take the nomination for 2024.
But if a moderate Dem wins in 2020, the inevitable inertia that traffics up Washington might just frustrate the Dems impatience for change and result in a primary on a Dem President for 2024. The party then goes for a more left wing Dem that year. With Trump gone and forgotten, This gives the Republicans a clean slate chance to challenge in 2024. Hello Nikki Haley.
If Trump wins 2020, then I think that guarantees a hard left Democrat President in 2024 for a least 8 years. This is the real generational change. The Republicans could back Trump in 2020, but I think they’ll then be locked out for up to 12 years. They should not discount the disgust people will feel for that man by 2024.
8
@Mike W
"If Trump wins 2020, then I think that guarantees a hard left Democrat President in 2024 for a least 8 years. This is the real generational change. The Republicans could back Trump in 2020, but I think they’ll then be locked out for up to 12 years. They should not discount the disgust people will feel for that man by 2024."
That's quite long term thinking, considering how fast the arctic ice is melting. We may not be here by then- or at least in any semblance to how we are now.
7
@Mattie
That assumes, questionably, that Trump will leave the White House after a second term, or, in the alternative, might gin up an Ivanka candidacy to succeed him.
Why wouldn’t Moscow Mitch continue to be his best enabler?
1
Our President has no policy agenda other than making himself rich. The rest of it is PT Barnum-style hokum.
87
@Mark
Not sure if he is making himself richer but I see plenty of millionaire politicos on the Democratic side. And their numbers seem to grow at an accelerating pace.
I’m not sure which thought is more concerning, that people may excitedly vote for a president that acts like he is trying to incite a race war, or that they may reluctantly vote for him. The Democrats only responsibility here is to offer a warm competent body, it is any patriotic Republican’s duty to pull us back from the brink and vote for that nominee. The US offers an easy hedge if you don’t like a presidential candidates particular policies, you vote for a Republican Senate and House.
6
Reading your "opinion" piece I am lead to derive that in fact your piece is a trojan horse, filled with clear bias towards the brave new generation of actually democratic "Democrats," who have embraced the responsible capitalism that came as a result of the morality, humanity, and pragmatism of great Americans like Eleanor Roosevelt.
Here is a sampling of your "dog whistle" like insinuations as to the nature of the new public service-oriented candidates running for office and the new members of congress. This is your language and it is found sprinkled throughout your "article."
"extremist Democrats"
"leftward march"
extremist Democrats
"And in the context of a strong economic expansion, a Trump re-election effort that rested on this record while warning against Democratic radicalism could be plausibly favored."
"become a referendum on Omar's anti-Semitic tropes"
"offer an unpalatable extremism of their own."
Public options are good for America. Public schools, public highways, public airwaves, public lands, and national parks, public libraries, public citizens, public service, public speakers and public housing. All of the above are public services Americans both need and want even as we are seeing the most sickening concentration of wealth and the wealthiest corporations paying virtually zero federal income tax. It is time for a change, and I'd say your thinking could stand a change as much as your language.
108
@Tom Paine Kind of you to think that a change to Mr. Douthat's thinking is even a possibility. I'm not that kind. The change I'd recommend is a wholesale sweep of this section of the paper, where, with the exception of Linda Greenhouse, insight and imagination have long since fled.
2
@Next Conservatism
I'd say there needs to be some editorial oversight and that such ambiguity and veiled and continued efforts to attack the best hope this nation has to obtain the moral high ground be stopped.
@Tom Paine, I wish I could “like” your comment a thousand times. Yes, exactly this —“public” means that everyone benefits. When did the strong public institutions I grew up with (schools, fire departments, libraries, etc.) come to be considered a bad thing for this country? How can we change that perception? I WANT good roads, bridges, schools, police & fire departments, safe food & other public benefits I grew up with. I don’t want those things whittled away because of some GOP mislabeling of the public good as the boogie man of “socialism”; most people don’t even know what that term means but it scares them. Why?
3
It's so funny that Mr. Douthat gets to draw a moral equivalency between Trump's racial "extremism" and the Democrat's "radical" idea to make sure health care is a guaranteed human right, as Bernie Sanders often says. Both are "extreme" in Douthat's mind; thus they are seen as equivalents. In other words, if it were between voting for Trump vis-a-vis his racism, and voting for a Democrat, Douthat would undoubtedly lean Trump. Racism is either less extreme or more palatable, or a close call, to him.
41
@Srose it’s not even just the conservatives anymore. Candidates like Delaney and Hickenlooper are singing the same tune against Warren/Sanders and it’s got to stop. The influence of money in our election system continues to creep into policy debate at an increasing rate.
18
@Pete By the same token, supporters of Bernie and Warren need to stop labeling candidates like Biden and Klobuchar (like the Sanders supporters did to Hillary in 2016 even after she won the nomination) as no better than Republicans, as shills for corporations. There were no objective policy differences to be discerned between the rightwing George W. Bush (with his chums Cheney and Rumsfeld at the helm) and the centrist and unifying Obama with Biden providing advice and, for example, shoving the president to a public acceptance of same-sex marriage? Or between the executive actions taken by Obama and those taken by Trump? Really? There would be no difference between a Klobuchar or Biden and a Trump? In that case, I suppose Sanders/Warren supporters should vote for Trump himself (or help Trump by voting for a Jill Stein), rather than what they consider to be Trump-lite, if Sanders or Warren doesn't get the nomination. Consider, however, that the number of Biden/Klobuchar supporters who would not vote for Bernie or Warren if one of them gets the nomination is minuscule. Like Republicans did in 2016, all Democratic-leaning voters have to recognize that any Democratic candidate would represent a gigantic change from Donald J. Trump in the White House, as big a change as from Obama to Trump, only in the other direction.
1
@Pete
Hickenlooper should be running against a vulnerable $enate Republican, as should Beto O’Rourke, Steve Bullock and Tim Ryan. Delaney should just get out.
Those Democrats clinging to a history as an “entrepreneur,” Andrew Yang excepted, should be forced to admit how much their businesses had to pay to provide “free” employer provided health insurance.
Speaking of which, how much does it cost the Times in employee health insurance premiums?
1
Genius? No. Sinister? Yes.
We could probably use a few other descriptions using terms famliar to students of abnomal psychology.
We may have to invent new words to describe voters who knowingly select such a flawed human being as their leader, and for legislators who aid and abet the detruction of the democracy that got them elected.
30
@Ralph Averill a genius...to his base.
Well.. obviously Trump is not a genius of any sort.. But clearly he sees his attacks on the Squad, Baltimore, etc.. as good politics.
.. Mr. Douthat seems to claim that since Trump's bigotry & race bating is counter-productive.. then clearly it is not intentional, and therefore not 'sinister' or harmful..
-- That's a simplistic & bizarre argument.. The effects of bigoted rhetoric coming from the White House can have repercussions that slither out far beyond its political objectives (whatever they are). The divisiveness & harm caused to people by bigotry & racism is clearly understood by now..
--Is there anything more sinister than having the President be the source of that harm?
30
@mike
"Repercussions of bigoted rhetoric (whatever they are)" ??? They are already here ! - count the mass shootings and add one more today.
You are right. Trump is just doing what he has done for decades. It just so happens that a lot of Americans are just like him so he gets their support. Sad.
58
You’re missing the point.
POTUS’s constant barrage of ‘insane’ remarks and seemingly irrational antics serve not to whip racial discontent and class anxiety but precisely as a disorientation tactic. POTUS needs to raise the tenor so high and so nonsensical so as to force the established order into a position of enunciation.
He oversteps boundaries so pundits feel forced to enunciate and reinforce the reasons why established norms were set in the first place. Playing unwittingly on the confusion, the established order is forced to defend what ought just be inherent — an embodied national ethos.
Once norms are forced into the political plane of ideological adoption, there begins a process of ideological purification. Once norms and mores become purified, they are cultivated into distinctive signs. Distinctive signs and symbols are subject to political antagonisms and divisive distinctions, thus rendering values to mere matters of debate among the ideological divide.
Ultimately, people lose all semblance with past virtues and are subject to the day-to-day woes of what they perceive to be righteous or disgusting on TV. Once this threshold is crossed, POTUS has near complete control over all political discourse since he dominates the debate/news.
The migrant camps serve not to stop illegal entry but to establish fear among the broad public. The raids serve not to empty the streets of immigrants but to force whites and blacks into fearful obedience under Trump’s rule.
33
You are correct, He just thinks he is and that is much more dangerous and damaging.
26
We do know one thing for certain: Republicans may hold their noses, but they always seem to come home and they do vote. I’m not so sure how bad it would have to get with trump world before they bolt. But, HELLO, were there yet.
17
"as opposed to appearing to offer an unpalatable extremism of their own " .
Great line . Sums it up for me.
The progressives and neo liberals need to figure out how they will come together ( if at all), or risk it all by relying on a middle left that simply won't be there if they don't.
Or something like that.
Great read.
4
The more Trump exploits racial divides, political gulfs and the more he denigrates his perceived opponents and dehumanize them, the more his followers begin to dehumanize those who do not think like them. Where will this lead? Look to our history. The initial set of consequences of his irresponsible behavior is already playing out in the festivals and Walmarts, the main streets of America.
If he is reelected, we will be back to the 1950's and 1960's except the executive branch will become dictatorial, embolden by his unconstitutional actions. Congress will be powerless. The Supreme Court will be paper tigers. After all, what real power does Congress have except a microphone and some papers? In the end, whoever owns the guns wins the day.
Think this is paranoia? Just look at history stretching from the 1900's to this very day. How do dictators seize power? How do democracies become totalitarian? Plenty of solid examples to learn from.
Those Americans who blindly follow him and vote for him shall reap what they sow. The rest of us will pay the price.
48
We are paying the price now. Your fears of what Trump is doing to our government and people are happening now, not in the future.
36
It would be stretching the point to say that Trump is some sort of evil genius.
But his mastery of broad and narrowcast media does involve a certain feral cunning, a sort of savant-like eptitude, even if it is doubtful he could articulate his process.
And this may be, in a sense, why he is so dangerous; he not only doesn't know what he doesn't know--he definitely is an exemplar of the Dunning-Kruger effect--he also doesn't know what he does know, which increases the chances of him creating a series of unfortunate events by both ill-informed design and accident, possibly even simultaneously.
But he has a very good understanding of the psychology of the undereducated and underinformed, and is able to control his presentation enough to appeal to those who are generally less than analytic, who respond primarily to images, memes, and aphorisitc sound bites. In fact, an argument can be made, given how many commenters have spoken of Trump being ADD, that he is therefore the perfect representation of a population that due to the influence of electronic media becomes more and more ADD every day.
All of this, of course, does not bode well for an election cycle in which Trump is far closer, in psychology and perceptual abilities, to the "average" voter than any wonky, policy delineating opponent would be. It may just be that any effective opponent would have to parrot his style and presentation (as depressing as that seems).
24
Trump might not be a “sinister genius”, but what he’s been doing is actually quite smart. As a lifelong con man, he’s attuned to finding out what people want to hear. At his multiple rallies, he throws several grievances at the wall to see what sticks. Whatever gets the crowd excited will be tweeted and will work at the ballot box.
Similar to 2016, the polls are likely underestimating his real popularity. A lot of people are still embarrassed to admit that they support him but will vote for him in the end. I really am concerned that he will probably be re-elected.
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@Tony S
I think you make a very good point and I also agree Trump should be odds-on to win the presidency, partly because I see that whichever side wins for the democrats (either the Moderates or the Sanders/Warren wing) there will be significant "pull out" from the other side. For example, if Biden were to win, there may be reduced turnout from the more liberal wing. And if Bernie were to win, I think that would cause the the more centrist toward Trump.
It is a tough pickle for the Democrats!
@Tony S This may be picky but accurate: Everything Trump "throws at the wall" sticks to his followers, because it is his personality more than his substance that is the magnetic force.
@Tony S the polls were accurate in 2016. On average they had Hillary ahead by two points, even after the Comey flip flop. Trump threaded the Electoral College needle last time. It won’t happen again.
Trump may not be an evil genius, but he does have an instinct for how people respond to his hate-mongering. For example:
With his recent aggressive tweets against blacks, Trump is clearly targeting neither the blacks nor his own base, but rather white liberals, hoping to stir them into such a frenzy of moral outrage that they will do something counter to their own interests, such as starting impeachment proceedings in the House. Such a response would almost guarantee his reelection.
The more outrage he can arouse in white liberals, the more likely they will respond in ways that drive away the swing voters whom the Dems critically need to win the Electoral College.
In the battleground states where the 2020 election will be decided, swing voters dominate the political landscape. In Wisconsin, for example, non-college-educated whites cast fully three-fifths of all votes in 2018. http://tinyurl.com/y56ssrl6
Some readers will reply that swing voters don’t exist. I will point out that the Dems flipped 40 Republican seats in 2018 to gain control of the House. The voters who tipped the balance in all 40 of those districts were largely suburban Republicans and white working-class voters disgusted with Trump—all by definition "swing" voters. If the Democrats lose them, they will lose the election.
What most voters want is an end to the chaos in Washington, and a government that addresses their urgent economic needs. The Dems have to be the adults, and focus on those needs.
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@Ron Cohen
Yes, average voters want:
1. A living wage
2. Affordable health care for pre-existing conditions
3. Job training for the new economy
And you are correct, when elections are so close, a few percent of voters in the right districts can make a big difference in the outcome.
15
@Ron Cohen
It is also generally believed that many people stayed home in 2016 because many people thought Hillary was a given. Flipping seats doesn't necessarily mean people changed their vote. Some lazy people may have just gotten out to vote.
Trump's actions are about one thing, and it is important to frame the dialogue in this light. His actions are about manipulating the greedy, emotional, less aware, and less intelligent to gain welath and power. He will also use unethical means for selfish ends.
It only takes an average intelligence, or a bit less, to manipulate people using unethical means.
The danger to a society is basically the structure of government that allows the masses to be manipulated or an unethical leader to use the emotions of the masses to win an election. Some of the Founding Fathers understood this danger and proposed a Republican form of government. However, the Senate elections and the structure of the Electoral College were not designed properly.
If one can remove partisan politics and the less aware and less intelligent from the elections of Senators and the President, a governmwnt will be of a higher ethic.
12
@baetoven Well summarized. Dump's target market is indeed "manipulating the greedy, emotional, less aware, and less intelligent." That's why evangelicals adore and worship him.
The most effective vote-getter including a push to get-out-the-vote that the democrats have is Trump. Bar none. Recall the groundswell of antagonism towards Trump and his simple- ism in the early days of post-2016. Rekindle and refuel that feeling. Yes... let Trump help to defeat Trump.
21
That may be true, but then what does that make him?
Read the book American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump. It might help you figure it.
What I think is that his election means the majority of American voters, or a big enough portion voted for him while the electoral college did the rest.
He was smart enough to get them to do that which means our country is in pretty desperate shape to have that disaster happen.
12
Democrats, here is wise advice from Douthat: "The campaign may turn on how successfully the Democrats claim or build an anti-Trump center, as opposed to appearing to offer an unpalatable extremism of their own." Seems sensible to me but, so far, not to the many crusaders among Democrats heading straight off the cliff.
14
Just because you disagree with some ideas doesn’t mean the people espousing them are going off your imaginary cliff. You suggest that people in general are impervious to listening to and thinking about new ideas. Instead of that cliff perhaps the people you seem to abhor are broadening the topics of public discourse?
so I assume from your closing statement, so to speak, that you will be praying, or rooting, for us Democrats to win in the end?
I appreciate this analysis. Thank you, Ross
14
I'm wondering if the last line of Mr. Douthat's piece can be regarded as an endorsement of Joe Biden who's been focusing on Trump itself rather than on policy proposals than can be seen as extremist by no one to the left of Attila the Hun.
6
I agree that Trump isn't a genius, sinister or otherwise. Everything he does, he does by shooting from the hip.
But the thing is, given how our political/cultural world works today, he looks like a genius because every move he makes turns into a win.
If he talks sensibly, then that naturally redounds to his favor.
But when he goes off the rails, and makes a clear political blunder, he creates such an hysterical reaction on the other side that he seems the more rational party.
The left and the media bear full responsibility for this atmosphere of panic. Why, for example, are they defending the extreme politics of The Squad? Why are they denouncing any form of enforcement at the border?
Trump didn't force them to adopt these bizarre, irrational positions. But since Trump criticized these ideas and people the left and the media simply can't stop themselves from rushing to their defense.
Trump didn't make that happen -- the left and the media just lost their minds.
11
@frankly0 what is so extreme about national healthcare or free PUBLIC higher ed? Do you consider Canada, Japan, UK, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Australia, and New Zealand to be “extreme” states?
@frankly0 nope. Trump caused Trump.
The left and the media are trying to save what's left of our democracy, as Trump goes off the rails a few times a day.
If you favor hatred of liberals as the one and only policy of government, then Trump is your man.
1
And here it is again, except Ross waited until the final paragraph to tell us he 'wants Trump to lose but only on his terms' which includes Democrats acting like Republican lites.
"The campaign may turn on how successfully the Democrats claim or build an anti-Trump center, as opposed to appearing to offer an unpalatable extremism of their own."
16
In your next column, Mr. Douthat, please tell us why the GOP is not considering a primary challenge of Mr. Trump; how the GOP defines Trumpism as a model for the American future, even if Trump cannot.
38
@DBR They’re only in it for the power. Some have already bailed. If Trump starts to go south, more will bail.
It would be unprecedented for Trump to be reelected with such high disapproval ratings. The only way he can win is if the Democrats nominate someone with as high disapproval ratings as Hillary Clinton had before the 2016 election.
13
@Doug Lowenthal
I think I'd like to read a Ross Douthat analysis.
Ross is just another never-Trump conservative warning us against "unpalatable extremism". Will these pundits never tire of these warnings? If Elizabeth Warren is unpalatable to you, imagine how we have feel after 40 years of Reagan conservatism. I hope that in November 2020 we will be able to celebrate the end of the Age of Reagan and say to our conservative friends "Welcome to the Age of Warren".
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@William Jefferson
Warren is far too left-wing for many moderate voters to support in the general election.
4
@Dave D
Is Warren more extreme than Trump? Is Trump more decent than Warren? Who will inflict more damage on American Democracy Warren or another term of Trump? Every should ask themselves these questions and many others before attacking a candidate like Warren.
46
@Hoshiar
Warren's advocacy of Medicare for All -- which would require significant tax increases at every level of taxpayer to fund its $3 trillion a year cost and would require 160 million Americans to give up their private insurance -- is a killer for Dems in the general election if she is the nominee.
2
Moscow Mitch might be forced into shoring up election security in order to survive his next cycle in Kentucky. Kentuckians aren’t big on moneyed outsiders driving their politics.
Why do I mention this here?
Because the NRA may have funneled $30 million of Russian money to elect Trump.
And that might not even be all of it.
Election security hurts Trump’s chances, and he knows it.
45
Trump doesn’t have to win the popular vote only the electoral college. He knows this,so shore up the base states.
10
@Marvant Duhon Yes, a solid 40-43%, which is not enough to get him elected. Out of that wimpy percentage, I expect that some will re-locate their missing consciences and will vote for a more palatable and competent candidate come Election Day.
6
@furnmt. Bill Clinton won in 1992 with 43 percent of the vote. Plus, there are a lot of people who will vote for Trump but who'd never admit it to a pollster.
9
@sthomas1957 The reason Bill Clinton won with 43% of the vote was Perot siphoned off mostly Republican votes. It was an Electoral College win then too. The way it looks now there will be only two candidates.
1
@sthomthere was a 3rd party candidate-ross perot. he would have won a much higher% -50+.
Remove the labels of far right and far left out of this equation. Let's take a moral test on values, if done we may find we have a lot more in common than we realize. The Democrats should do this polling, and they will find the sweet spot to victory. This is the center, and I believe the two parties don't know where the center is, it's not that far right, but has moved further left. I say this because if you take the temperature of world citizen who are more like us, this is where they are. They, do have health care, and their immigration problem like ours is mainly political, and they know who the bad people are in the world. I say to America follow your moral compass and see where it leads you.
21
@Steve
Don't believe everything you see on social media.
"The Democrats Aren’t a Left-Wing Party — They Just Play One on TV" By Eric Levitz
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/are-democrats-too-liberal-debates-pelosi-congress.html
Also by same author: "America Already Has a Centrist Party. It’s Called the Democrats."
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/tribalism-exhausted-majority-centrism-david-brooks-democratic-party.html
I’m beginning to think we Democrats need to organize a good old “smoke filled room” in which the top 10? 15? 20? candidates meet in private and come up with a candidate and a platform they all agree to throw their weight behind. I don’t think they will ever be able to come to a consensus in public.
Of course there is also the possibility that, like the gingham dog and the calico cat in the old children’s poem, they’ll just eat each other up.
12
@Nancy
Isn't it the educated voters who are supposed to decide which positions and candidates they want to get behind? (it's not the candidates' faults if voters wish to remain uneducated, only believing sound bites). Isn't it good to have an array of positions and a spirited debate on them? And aren't we still plenty far away from the election, even the primaries, to have such decisive cut and dried positions?
If anyone is so concerned with the "radical leftward drift" of the Democrats, and you don't live in MA, where independents can vote in either primary, or Maine, where they now have ranked choice voting, get your Republican friends to register Democrat in the primaries, and vote for their favorite "Republican lite" Democrat.
The only way Trump can win is how he won in 2016 by using lies about his opponent and relying on similar lies from the alt-right, Russia, and others. The Hillary Clinton portrayed by the far right and Russia in the 2016 was nothing like the real Hillary Clinton who is not a criminal and does not in any deserve to be locked up. But the far right believes she is a criminal who escaped punishment. Whomever the Democrats ruin is going to get the same treatment. The real candidate will be obscured by lies, often targeted on social media. Trump can't build himself up into a competent president. Anyone could see through that. But he can tear down his opponent. And an all-out effort will be made to prevent blacks and other minorities from voting, which Trump also will be counting on.
19
@Bob
The irony, of course, is that Trump is an actual criminal who needs to be locked up. A president who sold his country to Russian influence, who lied about his Russian connections, and who obstructed justice to cover up those crimes and lies.
1
I'm a simple foreigner, but the metric seems simple. Choosing a centrist Democrat robs the republican centre while the Democrat left must surely vote against trump irrespective. Open question.
3
@Walsh
There are not many Republicans who can be pulled away from Trump, centrist swing voters are a small group, and the Democratic left can stay home or vote for a third-party candidate if they aren't enthused by a centrist candidate. Centrism is a possible path to victory for the Democrats, but it's hardly guaranteed.
11
@Walsh how about a left leaning candidate that forces the enlightened centrists to make the “hard” choice between making sure that the lowest amongst us can finally see a doctor and supporting a white supremacist. Plus, a true progressive can also tap into a new share of that 50% of our voting-age population that doesn’t even vote.
Demagoguery works, sometimes. Mostly it works by convincing people that the demagogue is not above them. Time and again, the winner has been somebody who can at least keep the "common touch." It may be unfortunate, but policy and judgement will yield to a sense of belonging.
2
While we appreciate that Mr. Douthat denies the power of Trump’s antics and a society of spectacle that feeds off of passive spectators and feeds into the isolationism that has come to power, he continues to passively dismiss the fact that Trump is a criminal, evidence is out, and responsible media must be held accountable for the truth. Uhhhh, Donal Trump DOES NOT have a 2020 campaign—-he will face impeachment, and he will be indicted for the crimes he is guilty of once his term is up. That is the voice of justice and truth which every citizen in our media democracy should invoke and stand for.
23
@Cee E. Does anybody think that he will politely and quietly accept a defeat at the polls? What, then?
Trump will win in a landslide for two reasons:
1. Forget the polls. Polling is highly inaccurate. The people they poll, the way the questions are asked, the fear many Americans have of being a known ‘Trump supporter ‘ - all give a distorted picture of the race. What matters is what happens in the polling booth, not what a person says to a pollster,
2. The Democrats are so disfunctional with respect to policy their situation is hopeless. They gave Trump 4 more years when they raised their hand in response to the question, “would you support healthcare benefits for illegals?”
Wages are up, unemployment is down, pressure is being exerted on China, Iran, and North Korea to correct the wrongs allowed by previous administrations. Trump is far more popular than the far left media wants to believe.
15
And family farms are going bankrupt at an alarming rate because of trade policies. And wages are barely up in red States. I don't believe your arguments.
37
You are quite right about people telling lies in public opinion polls. Not only the people being asked the questions, but also the pollsters!
4
@Matt Williams
Policy-wise democrats have quite a range of proposals. Most of them are very good. They will be more polished, and selected for campaign, later in the Fall.
12
"But in recent 2020 polling, Trump is performing below his job approval rating in many head-to-head matchups, which suggests that voters who would be responsive to the “policy status quo” argument keep getting turned off by the president’s rhetoric. " - fairly weak and unsupported analysis. An easy rebuttal is the idea that the policy status quo is not resonating with voters. "The campaign may turn on how successfully the Democrats claim or build an anti-Trump center, as opposed to appearing to offer an unpalatable extremism of their own." - also a weak an unsupported claim. Characterizing Elizabeth Warrens' plans simply as a "liberal extremism" fails to capture the nuances
of the electorate and her personality/plans in the manner that characterizing Trump's 2016 agenda as "conservatism," failed to capture voters' desire for Trump's TV personality and show of "strength."
11
I think it is too far from the 2020 Elections to know for sure what will be the most concerning issues to voters
We can hypothesize all we want, but things change with warp speed because of Technology
We should all cool our heels for awhile.
24
Trump's approval ratings continue to hover above 40 percent, the most recent average of polls hitting 44 percent. He has higher approval ratings now than he did in the autumn of 2017. Those ratings continue to be strong even though his openly-racist rants have only become more blatant.
It is a serious mistake to imagine that ugly racism and xenophobia isn't popular with a very large swath of American voters. It is popular and it always has been, although it is more open now than it was for a time.
Americans should really stop fooling themselves about "who we are."
273
@Douglas
But you see; "who we are changes" constantly; slowly, but it changes. The changes count. Young people ALWAYS have somewhat different values than old people. Different groups are ebbing and flowing and their particular ideas gain and lose support. It's dynamic, my friend, dynamic.
12
@Douglas - it seems like the myth of America was largely constructed to avoid that kind of uncomfortable self-reflection.
"The Land Of The Free" sounds so much better than "the land of slaves until the 1860s and racially segregated for another hundred years after that".
28
@Douglas. Bill Clinton won his first race for the presidency in 1992 with 43 percent of the vote. He was reelected in 1996 with 49 percent of the vote. Stay vigilant.
3
The problem with the orange trumpet is that he appeals to the corporate and big money citizens because he gives massive tax cuts where they are entirely unwarranted and so they continue to pour money into ads, videos, lies and fake news for him because they are making oodles of money while the middle and lower classes suffer. In the same manner, he conjures up speeches and scenarios directed at the middle and lower classes in racist and bigoted speeches to rile them up, enrage them with the disparity of wealth inequality, promising the moon with provocative encouragement, which in the long run turns out to be mostly lies and creative fantasy but encourages violence.
With this background, his big supporters and the GOP are afraid to contradict or call him out in fear that they will lose faith with their constituents and not be re-elected. At the same time, he reaches into the dark side of those who struggle and blinds them to the reality of the economic destruction that is slowly building within our country. His tariffs, insults and impetuous threats inflame our current allies, understandably.
Those with whom we should be working towards creating better relations, he threatens, then makes nice, only to threaten again. This is the behavior of an ego-centric bully with no conception of what or how diplomacy is designed to ease its way through difficult issues. This is a picture of a very foreboding future as he is creating a global loss of faith in the USA.
53
I really hope we don't nominate someone who's dedicated to the notion of doing away with employer-provided health insurance, a real political loser in many, many places.
A robust public option might well attract enough customers to slowly move us off our irrational dependance on employers to provide medical insurance to their employees.
18
@Jack Toner
This is the real debate. I've agreed, until I heard Sanders and Warren in this last debate. There are several good points that they made: Don't be afraid to support the right idea, sell it. Present insurance coverage is not good because the companies torture people with paperwork and rules when they get really sick, and use that torture to deny coverage. We're not able to reach everybody with compromise solutions -- too complicated. Those compromise solutions are too expensive. Medicare for All is much cheaper. So, I'm convinced that we have to take the plunge and sell the idea. It's a cliche, but the fact is that the right thing to do is to be bold!
18
@Jack Toner, there was a time that my employer provided insurance covered pretty much everything. Now its copay's and deductibles to help cover the price gouging, bill inflating and general corruption that infects health care in this nation. They (the democrats) keep talking about how to pay, I want to know when they're going to get serious about why we pay so much to begin with. The ACA for all its benefits left this out too. No one is serious about the inflated costs, only passing them along, either within private insurance or the taxes to cover Medicare for all. I want the insurance / profit manipulation addressed, costs will fall accordingly regardless of who pays.
8
"as opposed to appearing to offer an unpalatable extremism of their own."
I'm trying to imagine the Democratic "extremism" Ross is alluding to.
Saving the environment? Expanding health care? Protecting Social Security? Helping consumers?
Tell us Ross, what do you object to?
406
Free everything for everyone is left extremism that could torpedo opportunity to get Trump out of office. Free college, free child care, free healthcare, heck even outright free money. Ditto for abolishing private health insurance.
I am a moderate voter. I have no strong affinity to either party. But I do have a strong aversion to extremism in any form - and many of the ideas being touted are extreme.
That said, I would vote for the Oscar Meyer Weiner over Trump. No question about that.
25
@Cottager Free everything for everybody is not an option, was never proposed by anybody, and is a Right-wing red herring. The only free thing on the horizon is free tax cuts for the wealthy.
129
@Cottager - there is no "free everything for everyone".
At present the largest portion of your taxes are spent on your huge military, and Trump is running up a trillion dollar deficit just to give tax relief to billionaires. Not to mention some $650 billion per year in fossil fuel subsidies; second only to China in that regard.
So don't be too quick to judge what you can and can't afford if priorities were different. Still, if you'll vote for anybody over Trump, right now that's good enough.
88
Good column. I think many people, like myself, yearn for a Less Drama President.
13
@Irate citizen:
Right. As I’ve said before, “A Return to Normalcy” might be a winning slogan for a Biden or Klobuchar in 2020, as it was for Harding in 1920, after the drama of the Wilson years.
8
@Irate citizen
I long for “No Drama Obama.”
@PL
Or “A Return to Decency”
1
I am shocked, shocked I say, to read that Mr. Douthat believes only a centrist Democrat has a chance of beating Trump. The problem with his theory is that the most extreme candidate in the history of the Presidency won the last election and there is regrettably a distinct possibility he can do so again.
Trying to nudge the voters slightly away from Trump could very well lead them to think that the Dems wouldn't be much different so, why change horses in the middle of the stream? Especially is this the case when we continue to celebrate the fool's gold of the cut taxes and spend like crazy Government.
16
@ACH
It's very important that candidates be exciting or inspiring in some way. Moderation and compromise just isn't going to do it!
10
@ACH:
In other words (to borrow a simile from Martin Luther), having fallen off the right side of the horse, we should get back up and fall off the left side.
“…if he wins again, it will likely be in spite of his own rhetoric, not as the dark fruit of a white-identitarian campaign.”
Really,Mr Douthat?
If any other President – any legislator generally – came out with just a fraction of Trump’s bilious tweets, they’d be long gone, but, as reported in many media outlets (e.g., see the latest article in The Atlantic), Trump has not only retained his favorability ratings, his supporters have doubled down on their enthusiasm for him.
Not to mention that every news cycle contains multiple instances of newly emboldened white people, no longer afraid to reveal their racist beliefs, threatening or targeting people of color. Many of us have seen this personally in our own communities. It’s clear that Trump is, as Dan Savage observes, a “disinhibitor.”
No, Mr. Douthat, whether it’s by design or not, President Trump has marshaled a previously shadowy element of American society and is counting on it to win him a second term. If he does so it will be due, in no small part, to Trump's abhorrent and racist behavior.
42
@gsteve Trump has also retained his unfavorability ratings at 53% with a favorability rating of 42%.
He’s marshaled a minority of deplorables. We know that. If the Democrats had a brain between them, Trump should soon be history.
Trump is a reality TV star. What he realizes is the effect of shock tactics on people. He says things that a lot of people think but wouldn’t dare say. That doesn’t mean it’s right but that’s the truth. He allows a lot of folks who would otherwise keep their civility to think it’s ok to say whatever they think. Ben Franklin once famously said (paraphrased): “The world would be a better place if no one spoke whatever was on their mind.” Civility requires a social filter where we don’t always say what we think. That’s not a bad thing. It’s called manners. But we’ve lost all sense of civility under this President.
20
"Instead Trump’s policy argument in 2020 will be, basically, let’s keep doing what we’re doing."
I'm not sure what to make of this column, frankly.
If Trump is promising "more of the same," doesn't that just mean dirtier air, speedier climate change, greater debt, higher prices, more unqualified judges, and an even greater exodus of government expertise? Not to mention the removal of healthcare, greater chaos at the border, and greater abuses of power.
The man has done nothing except sow domestic division, weaken our stature in the world, and make this country even more like its major patron, Russia--complete with gaslighting, income inequality, and a crackdown on civil liberties.
Which makes attacks on Democrats--that they're too extreme--seem ludicrous.
117
@ChristineMcM
Nailed it.
“More of the same” is equal to Dirtier air, speedier climate change, more debt, higher deficits, higher prices, exodus of government expertise, nepotism, revolving door of lobbyists, worse health insurance....
Yet, it’s the progressives that are too extreme.
Republicans have successfully shifted the center rightward each time (Dubya took our civil liberties and engaged in unfunded wars) and the centrist Democrats are so scared that they don’t want to rock the boat and go back to where things were before...
17
@ChristineMcM
Finally recognizing "Conservative Pundit Derangement Syndrome," Christine?
Between Ross Douthat and David 'Kumbaya' Brooks, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I can't even read Bret Stephens--'if you Democrats are not going to become Republicans to put an end to this travesty, well, then you are completely responsible for Donald Trump.' (Imagine hands thrown up in despair.)
The one tell-tale symptom of "Conservative Pundit Derangement Syndrome" is this absurd belief that Democrats are just as extreme. Let's review the 'unpalatable' extremism of Democrats: health care, a living wage for all Americans, addressing climate change, fixing income inequality, ensuring women's rights, gay rights, heck--civil rights in general, getting corporations to pay some taxes, compassionate treatment of people at the border, wondering why we're such big pals with the Saudi Arabians, thinking maybe we shouldn't have unilaterally pulled out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, maybe NATO isn't so terrible....what is so 'unpalatable' about any of that?
Desperation and stress often lead to mental instability. That's the only explanation I can come up with.
22
@ChristineMcM All he cares about is getting elected for the bragging rights. Governing does not enter the equation, AT ALL
2
Ross comes from the position of religious conservatism that finds anything “left” of conservative Christianity as extremism. So his columns continuously rail against moderate view points and policies that look conservative to most Europeans but “liberal” to the reactionary republicans that gave us Trump. I get it, people like Ross don’t want to own Trump & conservatives intellectuals want to put a patina of reason on Trumpism to disguise the bigotry, hatred and toxic nationalism underneath. Regardless there is method in Trumps madness and his ability to distract from his train wreck of a presidency. He’s counting on his “base” & it’s bigotry to get re-elected and behaves according. Ross and Trumps sycophants want it to be something else and not deliberate. But Trumps behavior is intentional and Ross like other conservatives get to own it and its consequences. Unfortunately so do we. Sad as the carnival barker would tweet.
28
@John Chastain
...as for carnival barker, check out the review of a book on P.T. Barnum in this week's New Yorker. It's his MO ...
@John Chastain Ross and all Republicans get to own Trump's hate spewing behavior.
All of Mr.Douthat’s analysis may well be on the mark. But as an elderly voter with very likely few opportunities in the future to cast votes in or observe Presidential elections, one of my favorite memories is the transition from smirking to disbelief to horror on the faces of the NBC panelists on election night 2016. The skeletal guy from Louisiana who was key to Clinton’s election (It’s the economy stupid) actually left the set. And the NBC political analyst was obviously stunned into an inability to speak by the results. Once in a while it’s nice to see the establishment take a back seat.
4
Thanks of thinking of future generations and climate change in your glee. Well done. Hope the satisfaction of electing someone who is actively destroying our ecosystems is worth it.
13
@JPE
How interesting. When I was ten years old (a long time ago on a planet that now seems far, far away), I asked my mother what the difference was between Republicans and Democrats. She said "Historically, the Republicans have been the party of the rich and businessmen, and the Democrats have been the party of the working class." Nothing that's happened in the last fifty years has disabused me of the notion that it's the Republicans who always represent the "Establishment." If you think NBC is the Establishment, just stay tuned constantly to Fox news and be happy.
3
@JPE. You've got a perverse and cynical take on this. Your ugly schadenfreude at seeing a grotesquely unqualified monster finesse (with Russian help) the Electoral College across three declining states is deplorable. And we have all been forced to live through the unrelenting nightmare of this train-wreck administration.
I'm not sorry that you see few elections in your future.
Young people are waking up to the reality of their physical world, our one and only planet, being irreversibly degraded and their future prospects thus permanently diminished. They see starkly that the economy is rigged, and that most of them won't live as well as their parents have unless a lot of things change soon. Turnout among the 18-34 cohort doubled in 2018, from the teens to the thirties. If they double it again to something north of 50 percent, there simply won't be enough nasty geriatric fools in MAGA caps to stop them.
For the record, I'll be 71 next month. More power to ya, kids.
It will continue to work until it doesn't work anymore but there are so many people who are "true believers" in this rhetoric. There is another large percentage who think that what is currently happening has no real long-term consequences for our country. They think it is just a speed bump. This is sadly a cross between the movies: " A Face in the Crowd" and "The Manchurian Candidate"...
12
You write, "polls show that even among Republicans, let alone independents, racial stereotypes have softened under Trump." What polls are these and how do you reach this conclusion? This is worth an entire column.
6
@R. Grant Steen
Yes, it's passing strange that I have not heard a bit of this. Not saying that it's not out there but hiding in the weeds perhaps.
2
It should now be evident, even to Republicans, that Trump speaks for the "concurrent majority" of racists and does not represent the rest of us.
2016 has come and gone. The Mueller Report determined that the Russian government messed with the election and that it did so to benefit Trump. Evidence shows that the Russians are still at it. National security and our sovereignty are at stake.
Anyone who does not oppose him is complicit.
36
Just as 2016 was Hillary's election to lose, 2020 is Trump's to lose. However, where Hillary felt entitled to it, Trump is desperate enough to do anything for it, including treasonous behavior with our most formidable sworn enemies. And when anything goes, everything goes. When one man puts himself above his party and his country, regardless of the destruction caused, our once strong democracy will have become our forever weak autocracy.
Vote.
29
This column basically asserts that Trump is speaking for himself and hearing the approvals from the old ‘birther’ audience with his racist message. Furthermore, that his message resonates with far from all of his supporters and is disliked by a large proportion of them, possibly a majority. That it’s not firming up his support coming the Republican base. In other words, it’s Trump indulging himself not working a political strategy.
If true, the assertions that white privilege, reassertion of white supremacy, and white fear of changing demographics depriving them of racial dominance is not what Trump is using to secure his political support.
It also would dampen the coverage by the mass media of the race factor in determining the 2020 election. Trump’s racist message and the reporting of so many police shootings with African Americans being shot has produced a narrative that a Jim Crow order still controls public institutions and all of the criminal justice system. The disparities according to race shown by so many social science studies despite over sixty years since the Civil Rights laws and the election and re-election of the first African American President, who retains great popular approval, is unexplained. The narratives attribute it to the first previously known causes, white supremacy and exploitation of non-white minorities. Due to Trump especially, that narrative has become popular.
If the real disparities are not due to re-emergent Jim Crow, then what?
2
Trump goes to the lowest common denominator in his statements to his base. And his base eats it up.
Senator Amy Klobuchar has the right stuff to take on Trump. She has a super resume (high school valedictorian; B.A. magna cum laude from Yale; J.D. University of Chicago; private and prosecuting attorney for years; U.S. senator for 12 years). Her stellar work on the Senate's important Judiciary; Agriculture; and Commerce, Science and Transportation Committees shows she can handle legislative minutia while working well with folks on both sides of the aisle to get things done.
Her questions during the Kavanaugh hearing revealed a lot in his non-response responses. Her impassioned statements during the first two debates on health care, immigration and other topics are important reminders that she cares deeply about all of America's citizens. And her midwest creds would help her grab battleground republican states.
Senator Klobuchar's smarts, cool under pressure, and keen abilities to get to the heart of the matter while treating others with respect and fairness seem to be the best antidote to Trump's pugilistic, hit before thinking approach.
Senator Klobuchar would take Trump down. Hopefully she will get that opportunity.
10
@Ed
I'm sure that the senator has her strong points but I see her as having made a serious blunder when she had her 5 minutes at the Kavanaugh hearing. Kavanaugh had just finished a long embarrassing rant about alcohol and then, finding himself in the middle of a meltdown, he asked Amy to save him by discussing what her alcohol use was like. Amy was not alert to what was happening and rather than to not respond at all and just leaving him sitting in his own mess she just had to respond about her fathers drinking. She had him fatally hooked and then took the hook and put it in her own mouth rather than just to stare him down and I assure you he would have disqualified himself during those final two minutes
This was a rookie mistake. These hearings are not just conversations and are best left to seasoned pros.
1
Both Trump and major factions in the Democratic party remind me of the proverbial generals who lose the current war because their strategies are keyed to the last war. Trump's re-election campaign so far has been a reprise of his fundamental tactics in 2016--truth-independent hucksterism garnished with dollops of race-baiting and name-calling. Yes it worked--barely--against an overconfident and bumbling Clinton campaign. But I agree with Douthat that what's noteworthy now--in the context of a favorable economy and the lack of any high-casualty foreign conflicts--is how historically anemic Trump's polls are in 2019. Scarily though, the lesson that the most leftwing faction of the Democrats seems to have drawn from the 2016 loss is that Clinton lost because she was too centrist and temperate. But after the endless turmoil and sewage backups of the Trump presidency aren't these qualities that are likely to win over the 2020 electorate?
4
I think you are correct that Trump is constitutionally unable to execute any disciplined or coherent political strategy to be re-elected. The election will turn on whether his democratic challenger can do so.
6
I'm originally from Venezuela and I feel that two years in, Americans don't understand what they're up against.
I don't know that you can call his tactic "brilliant strategy". But that's besides the point. His intelligence is feral and his connection with his voters is visceral and authentic.
Trump's unpopularity is his popularity. It's what proves he's willing to do the things that he promised his voters.
All I know is this: guys like this don't just step down. Once they get elected they're very hard to get rid of. History proves it: Chavez, Putin, Erdogan.
Close your eyes and try to imagine a 2020 Election Day in which Elizabeth Warren wins by the usual small margin of modern American elections. Now picture Trump conceding and gracefully exiting? Can you see it?
152
@midwestcentrist
In a word. NO! I can't see it.
Because conceding and exiting gracefully is not in Donald Trump's lexicon of socially acceptable behavior.
Just remember what his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen said: "I fear there will be never be a peaceful transition of power if he loses the election in 2020."
And given the fact that this is a President who has no problem accepting help from a foreign adversarial government like Russia in order to win the election -- there's no reason to doubt him.
29
@midwestcentrist - "Trump's unpopularity is his popularity." - very succinctly put.
Still, I can't picture a Trump coup lasting very long. Military brass hates him and wants him out; I can't imagine them supporting Trump over the president elect. I doubt even Moscow Mitch would be willing to cross that Rubicon with Trump.
20
@Anthony Flack
It will depend on whether Mitch himself gets re-elected, on whether the GOP keeps the Senate, and in particular, on how many judges they can manage to appoint and confirm in the next 15 months.
12
Douthat does not think big enough to understand that Trump has moved beyond electoral politics. Trump is now destroying as much of the Constitution as possible.
It doesn't matter if there is a master plan or if Trump (who has been manipulating the media and white supremacists for fifty years) is just going by instinct. The result is a sophisticated attack on on our Constitution.
By attacking all of the pillars of Our Constitutional Republic at the same time, each pillar is unable to support the others, and eventually the entire structure will collapse.
While corporate mass news focuses on each of Trump's attacks on the Constitution one at a time, they refuse to see the PATTERN of Trump's continuous High Crimes, including calling for violence against citizens without due process, refusing all Congressional Oversight, declaring that he can interpret the Constitution instead of SCOTUS, calling the Press the enemy of the People, etc.
What Douthat won't tell you, is Right and Left in politics was invented during the French Revolution, when the Left wanted a Constitution and the Right wanted their King.
Trump said that We the People should "sit in attention" for him, with "fervor," keeps talking about multiple terms in office without any discussion of amending the Constitution to extend term limits, and openly equates "president for life" with "king."
Trump is not interested in risking arrest in 2021 by leaving the Oval Office.
Trump wants to give the Right their King.
19
@McGloin:
Actually, both Left and Right of the Assemblée Nationale wanted a Constitution AND their King, when they first met and took up that seating arrangement in 1789.
@McGloin. Great. Nothing says dynasty like beginning the reign with a Mad King.
@McGloin
He will be 76 years old in 2020, and is starting to show the signs of stress of the office, as presidents do- notice the puffy eyes? We watched Clinton, Bush and Obama all turn much grayer headed over their 8 years. this won't be the case with the well coiffed orange headed one- but still, on the inside he is not a cyborg, made to last forever (I don't think...)
As we all know in "traditional campaign politics" candidates tend to slump toward the center as the campaign wears on. I expect this will be the case with the Democratic contender but as to trump he really has no policies other than to tweet, be obnoxious, divisive and hateful. That may have incited the worst in much of his base at one time but it has to be wearing thin given that he has failed to produce on his 2016 promises. Where is that cheap great health plan by the way Donald?
7
@Steve I have talked to some Trumpies that truly believe that he has delivered, and that obstruction from the rest of the country is the only reason that he doesn't have much to show. Bluster is mistaken for strength.
They really don't understand why so many people dislike him.
Trump’s rallies are absolutely central to his campaign. He needs controversy and villains to keep up the energy and enthusiasm at the rallies. If the rallies become boring and attendance wanes he’s toast and he knows it. This drives a lot of his tweets and ‘strategy”.
26
In his recent Ohio speech, Trump broadened his critique from Baltimore to numerous American cities afflicted by high crime rates and violence. The rural vs. urban trope was on display. That is no off-the-cuff remark. It points to Trump's general strategy of accentuating the conflict between rural, small-town America and the dangerous and out-of-control urban areas. Implicit in Trump's critique is the possibility of putting some cities in quasi-military occupation. After all, who doesn't want to live in a safe environment. We spend so much money on the military while pulling out of foreign conflicts. Maybe, Trump surmises, the military could come in handy in domestic situations during his second term. A permanent national emergency could also justify a permanent presidency until the crises pass.
14
@Dan First, rural America has experienced an explosion in joblessness, opioid addiction and suicide. Let’s see how much they appreciate what Trump has actually done for them. Second, no one considers Trump a genius except himself. Third, tariffs are unpopular or will be as we hurdle towards recession.
All this election is about is whether Trump can re-con enough voters in MI, WI, and PA by Nov, 2020.
19
@Dan
All you need to know is this. Donald Trump has neither forgotten nor forgiven New York City, his own home-town and the most wealthy, populous and diverse place in the U.S. -- if not on the planet for voting against him. OVERWHELMINGLY.
That's why he's had far more success farming his own particular brand of bigotry and white supremacy across a country that's still in deep denial when it comes to recognizing its own racist history.
We tried to warn America.
They didn't listen.
1
@Dan: that appears to be a popular meme lately -- that Trump could declare a national emergency (of....what?) and cancel elections.
Of course, he did not bother to do so in 2018.
The problem with this theory is that THE PRESENT has no power to cancel national elections. None. Zero. We did not cancel elections during WWII or the Civil War! so what would this "dire emergency" even be?
This reader has not seen any evidence that Trump has a "brilliant strategy" regarding any political or economic issues. Having a strategy requires developing careful plans and methods. Regardless of Trump's claim that "I'm very highly educated, I know words, I have the best words," does anyone seriously believe he has the ability to do that--i.e., develop careful plans and methods?
55
@Robert Stewart. He IS surrounded by a bunch of schemers and con artist, but he’s not smart enough to tie his own shoes without someone giving him instructions. He’s a reality tv star. He knows how to land on his mark. He thinks he’s in charge.
The guys behind the scenes propping him up are the ones we should worry about.
18
@Robert Stewart "I have the best words." is the most shocking thing that he says. All reference to truth, service, or honor is gone--not even nodded to.
8
This POTUS won in 2016 and will prevail in 2020 simply be cause he reflects the monied essence of the US. The GOP dogwhistles of immigration, racism, and abortion mobilize the red state electoral college votes necessary to prevail. But more importantly, unlimited campaign donations by the wealthy, massive tax cuts to the wealthiest, unfettered election meddling by foreign governments, voter suppression, the easy buying of red taker states electoral votes, and gerrymandering have essentially ended democracy. The US is owned by the few. It is lost to plutocracy.
57
See President Jimmy Carter, July 28, 2015.
What you call Democratic extremism Mr. Douthat, I call offering real solutions to real problems of real people. The ones that the "center" created and neglected for about 40 years now.
238
@sapere aude
Yes the center seems to be okay with 28 million uninsured Americans, wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen, a trillion dollars in student debt, impending climate doom, seniors who cant survive on Social Security and a minimum wage that cannot support a mouse. Heaven forbid someone has plans to mitigate these problems, how unconscionable of them.
73
@sapere aude
Exactly, Trump ran against the center and will run against it again because he knows that no one believes the establishment center anymore except the Democratic Party Leadership.
The Left wants to go back to enforcing the rights of We the People enshrined in the Constitution and the Right wants Trump to be king.
Anyone thinking about voting for Trump has a deep personal decision to make about whether they are brave enough to live as an equal citizen in a messy Constitutional democracy, or if they need the illusion of security of a strongman dictator who they think cares about them because they are white. (They never ask themselves why Kanye is at the White House but they are not.)
That's the center!
Hiding in an unpopular center trying not to offend these people is a waste of time. Worse, it chases away the 60% of the population that works for a wage plus their families. Offer workers what they need so that we can get as many of them to the polls as possible, so that we can overwhelm the Trump base.
If Democrats do not offer workers "their interests," centrists will be whining that they didn't vote for Democrats, yet again.
Let the Party of Trump tell workers "there is no money," for their children because of trillions in tax cuts for global shareholders.
By the time 2021 is over, either Trump will be newly invigorated in the destruction of the Constitution or Democrats will control the government.
This is not a center election.
Grow the base.
23
@sapere aude Name one "real solution" to "real problems of real people." Just one! Tax cuts for the wealthy? Children in cages? North Korea disarming? China caving on trade because of Trump's tariffs? Iran giving up its nuclear ambitions? Setting an example of democracy for the rest of the world to emulate? Raising the level of political discourse? Setting an example for the young?
10
2020 will not become a referendum on Omar's anti-Semitic tropes or the Baltimore crime rate. It can, however, become a referendum on other things, like left-wing identity and purity warfare and de facto open borders.
Trump was never close to a genius. Republicans already had a host of advantages because of the non-representative nature of our elections, and because Trump had lots of help, both foreign and domestic.
Sadly, Trump's getting help again, yet now it comes from Democrats, and especially the Democratic left. You correctly argue policy matters, yet we've seen Democrats adopting the platforms of the Justice Democrats which is ripping them to shreds, and none is more dangerous than adopting Justice Democrats outrage culture and their de facto open borders, when the opposite of Trump horrific, and as you correctly point out, highly unpopular immigration policy, is most definitely not open borders.
You say "in 2016 Trump won many millions of voters who disapproved of him. But in recent 2020 polling, Trump is performing below his job approval rating in many head-to-head matchups", however, among likely voters Trump is statistically tied with everyone Except Joe Biden. It begs the question: What if most voters disapprove of the Democrat who runs against Trump?
Democrats can adopt progressive policies on say taxes and win, but de facto open borders, or Democrats making the election a referendum on identity and purity, will help Trump, definitely no genius, win again.
13
@Robert B
No, if Democrats turn out to vote in numbers this time as they did for Obama but didn't for Hillary trump will lose.
2
@Robert B
"de facto open borders."
Do you know anyone who could explain "de facto" to you?
@asg21
Thanks, as yours typifies a contemptuous post-truth attack I referred to.
You, like Trump, think you're a genius even as you lie.
I'm a career federal appellate and civil rights attorney and know full well what "de facto" means. It means that on paper only civil penalties exist for illegally crossing the border, yet they're no different than a parking ticket you never intend to enforce, meaning the borders are, in reality, De facto Open Borders.
I'm hardly alone in having said it. Mother Jones (hardly a right-wing publication) analyzed Warren's immigration platform and found it "de facto open borders". (Yes, they used those exact words) in: "Are Democrats Now the Party of Open Borders?"
Mother Jones wrote:
"It recommends no actions to improve border law enforcement in any way...No one will ever be deported-except, presumably, for serious felons, though Warren doesn’t even say that. Expedited removal will be ended. The Border Patrol (can only) focus their efforts on homeland security efforts like screening cargo, identifying counterfeit goods, and preventing smuggling and trafficking."
"(We've) previously criticized Republicans who accused liberals of wanting "open borders." President Trump tweets about this endlessly. But it’s hard to see much daylight between Warren’s plan and de facto open borders. CBP will not be permitted to patrol the border looking for illegal crossings; if border officers happen to apprehend someone, they’ll be released immediately."
1
The President is by no means a genius - we all agree.
He is also a great many other things, but the FIRST thing that comes to mind is that he is a th1ef. He is stealing our Democracy (with help from foreign powers) right out from under us.
He is also stealing our futures by financial and ideological means. On the financial side his administration, trade and financial policies are running up debts and deficits that may never be able to be paid. His trade and financial policies are destroying whole sectors of the economy and ways of life, while making us all work harder for the same amount of recompense.
He is stealing our futures (and possibly leading to all of our destruction) by ignoring and doing everything to speed up climate change. The policies enacted now, may never be able to be rolled back in time to undo the massive damage done.
A th1ef is a th1ef is a th1ef.
412
@FunkyIrishman
And its puzzling that with foreign power’s fingerprints all over this, the public seems disinclined to place the blame squarely on those bad actors. Why is it easier, or preferable to blame ourselves?
I guess all hate is self hate , fundamentally.
5
@FunkyIrishman
The truth hurts....that is... that there are enough people who are tRumped by his phony, fake rhetoric. The strength of a democracy is built with an educated informed electorate. This may not turn out well.
6
@FunkyIrishman: there is no "our" or "us" here, unless somehow Norway became our 51st state. (If so...YAY! all that North Sea oil!)
When was the last time you WORKED in the USA? how can you know any of this from so far away? Also: it was Obama who added $11 TRILLION to the national debt...Trump has added a fraction of that. Why weren't you worried about how we'd pay all that off BEFORE Trump?
I'm not a statistician, but the evidence Douthat points to here for Trump's race baiting being unpopular seems very weak. It was popular enough to get him elected to the most powerful position in the world, and I think it will help get him re-elected (unfortunately).
33
"...an unpalatable extremism of their own." True enough, if it's in fact both extremism and unpalatable. But most of what even "left-wing" Democrats are proposing is stuff that polls say most Americans support. Is it extremism to offer what most people want? Is health care for all extremist? More extremist than Trump's tax cut for the billionaires and corporations?
Anyway, we don't want extremism, but we want answers to longstanding problems. A Biden-as-Obama-reincarnation isn't credible and, even if it were, isn't enough.
32
Even if Ross Douthat is correct that the President's race-baiting is unpopular, I think it has become more normalized and people are becoming desensitized to it. And not sure it helps matters when I read a 7/31/2019 NY Times article (with subtitle "A newly released recording from 1971 was the latest reminder of the long history of racism by American presidents") revealing comments by some of our most highly ranked and beloved former presidents.
11
Let's keep it simple.
Donald Trump is no more a sinister genius than he is a "stable" one.
And he has proven this time and time again by making the same mistakes in thinking that no one is catching onto his M.O., and the fact that he's basically doing a '50s re-tread of a Cold War and white supremacist mentality.
The fact that he has only seen it fit to surround himself with subservient-types and acolytes who do not differ with him or dare not speak up is just further prove of how far we're drifting away from a free and democratic society where American's basic and constitutional rights also include the right to dissent.
No. Trump is not a sinister genius.
Because even that requires a modicum of thought and intelligence -- neither trait which he has proven to possess.
But what Trump has in spades is the ability to manipulate and lie. Perhaps something carefully bred into him at an early age, but nevertheless perfected by a life splashed across the bright media lights and in every tabloid.
And all for the wrong reasons.
Of course, he'll use the old razzle-dazzle to get his red-cap wearing crowd roaring at his red-meat race-baiting rallies in the belief that his message is new and everyone in the country is on board.
But the reality remains that they still don't represent the MAJORITY of the American electorate.
And his vision of an all-white, immigrant-free, Christian, and conservative Republican will never make America great again.
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@N. Smith
Just asking: does manipulation require intelligence? Somehow I thought it did, but I could be wrong.
@N. Smith
Sun Tzu said, Understand your enemy and understand yourself.
You are still underestimating Trump.
Trump has been manipulating the media and white supremacists for over fifty years. That is his genius. Look at how he turned questioning Obama's citizenship into winning the presidency.
Trump is very dangerous, This is not Bush, Clinton, or even Reagan. Trump admires and studies despots and follows their strategies and tactics.
I've seen this movie before and it often ends with mass graves in a park near you.
Don't wait for the 2020 election to actively oppose the Party of Trump.
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@N. Smith
“And his vision of an all-white, immigrant-free, Christian, and conservative Republican will never make America great again.”
Make no mistake. He cares nothing about a Christian America. They are just a huge bloc of voters he manipulates to get votes by throwing them bones. Conservative judges which they think are against abortion, but which are really against people, workers, and the environment. The foolish of those people is amazing.
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Trump only has to win a plurality of votes in states with a majority of the electoral college. That is the reality.
By running a full racist campaign, he may just win enough electoral votes, especially if he (and his supporters, domestic and foreign) use social media and other means to discourage Black and Latino voters from showing up, to convince progressives to vote third-party, and to get moderates (whomever they may be) to skip the presidential line on the ballot.
Trump is not a genius. But he is fighting for his survival.
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It won't take much more drama for the great majority of voters to utterly shun Trump.
I agree with Warren who states that we are bordering an economic crash; a recession that might well pull us down worse than 2008. The indicators are there. And DJT just makes things worse with his proactive micro-managing lurching around, huffing and puffing on trade tariffs that are sinking us little by little.
I suppose that soon enough his meddling vengeful ways will finally get exactly the results he does not hope for.
Of course, "racial stereotyping" has "softened" under Trump because he has made race an issue in our day-to-day lives and folks simply won't go there in an effort to set themselves apart.
Another thing is that ordinary people are afraid of DJT and his retaliatory nature. They are afraid to voice their opinions. But when that voting booth curtain closes and each of us is alone with our conscience the end result will be DJT buried by a landslide.
Then I think he will move most if not all his remaing wealth into family hands and flee the country to avoid prosecution.
Let him continue to show his true colors; orange and pink
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@Discernie And then, he politely walks away?????
Ross, there's no doubt that we're living through an 'attention deficit disorder' presidency. Trump tweets any old thing that comes into his mind - no matter how hurtful, unconsciously bigoted, contradictory, or politically unwise it might be; and this lamentable tendency has only become more pronounced due to the reality that he routinely pays no price for these erratic outbursts with his numerous GOP enablers (Fox, Senate Republicans, etc.).
But the continuing presence of a Steven Miller also suggests that there is a logic behind these outbursts.
The 'southern strategy' always involved coded appeals to racial resentment, like white resentment over affirmative action; Trump has merely done away with the code. And Miller and his ilk have expanded the code to everyone who doesn't share a milky white complexion.
I further submit that Miller's style of racism is cut from the very same cloth as Roger Ailes' campaign against Barack 'Hussein' Obama. When Ailes insisted that Fox anchors use 'Hussein' when uttering the President's name, he was preparing the way for Trump and Miller to do their thing.
Furthermore, when Fox refuses to tell the story of the current disorder of Central America, or explore how various wrong-headed American interventions in the region helped destabilize it, they too help to contribute to the sinister narrative of Trump, Miller, and friends.
Yes, Trump is not any kind of genius; but there is a sinister political component underlying all of it.
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@Matthew Carnicelli
The logic behind Trumps continued outbursts is simple... he wants to control the news cycle. And for Trump.. and this has been true of him for decades... bad or awful news is as good as pleasant news... as long has he has control of the days news cycle.
Any day Trump is the center of the news cycle.. he feels he has won the day... no matter what the news topic is. He just detests negative news cycles where he is not in control of the cycle.. it's that simple really.
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@Matthew Carnicelli
So what you are saying is there is a deep state. It is, however, controlled by the very ones who are screaming about it and accusing others of it. Once again the strategy of deflecting and redirecting.
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@Chuck
Right! Any kind of attention is oxygen to Trump.
He will do and say anything to get it.
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No one will ever accuse Trump of being meticulous. But he is cunning, crafty and a master of the dark arts.
The fact is, Trump’s candidacy in 2016 had very little to recommend itself - yet he won the Electoral College. It’s more than a little likely that his fear-mongering over immigrants and refugees, his years-long treatment of President Obama as inherently unworthy of the title, his talk of standing for “law and order,” his caricatures of African-American communities, his promises to restore America some unspecified glory of yesteryear did in fact speak to enough people’s prejudices to get him elected.
For that matter, there is the question of why Trump still has steady support, no matter how poorly he conducts himself. Probably most of his fans would deny being racist. But Trump speaks to biases on a level that some might not even recognize intellectually.
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@NM
"It’s more than a little likely that his fear-mongering over immigrants and refugees, his years-long treatment of President Obama as inherently unworthy of the title, his talk of standing for “law and order,” his caricatures of African-American communities, his promises to restore America some unspecified glory of yesteryear did in fact speak to enough people’s prejudices to get him elected."
And don't forget the associated but ultimately important boost provided by the Russian oligarchs. They love Trump's message most of all.
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@NM-"Winning" the Electoral College was part of the GOP strategy put in place after Obama became president. Karl Rove and others went after state seats, dark money poured into vulnerable states and made it east to win. Operation Redmap was launched to gerrymander states and ensure Republicans gained office even when Democrats received more votes, "Operation Crosscheck" and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act along with other tactics succeeded in disenfranchising tens of thousands in key states and millions of voters of voters overall.
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@Ann: what does it say that Democrats DID NOT realize the importance of the Electoral College? or thought they had a "blue wall" there -- without bothering to campaign in critical states?
And how could the GOP have JUST started this, when the Electoral College issue decided the 2000 election??? How could Democrats have NOT realized the importance of the EC when they lost a heart-breaker of a tie vote there so recently?
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While I find it reassuring that Trump can't win on the issues, I'm still worried about Russian interference in the presidential election.
If we only had a non-partisan, senior government official warn us about the threat in a formal setting such as a Congressional hearing, we might still have time to protect our vote.
"They say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
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As early 20th century Progressives grew in response to the horrific abuses of the Robber Barons, so will 21st century Progressives as a response to the considerable abuses of Trump's GOP. History is repeating itself. The only difference is that today, because of climate change and nuclear weapons, the very fate of the living world is at stake.
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@mscan Another difference between now and the anti-robber baron period is that now, REpublicans have twisted the voting system so strongly in their own favor and are blocking all efforts to make elections fair and open again. There was no Moscow Mitch in the old days with as much power.
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@mscan - so you're equating the orange disaster to McKinley? the timing is just about right. and we all know how that turned for America (good) least the mountain named for him is cool.
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@Election Inspector, back in the 1880s and 1890s, there was a system of spoils in place. It is not that different than now and that practice is now just out in the open with this Republican administration. There isn't even a pretense of "qualified".
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Just the other day Trump casually referred to a phone call he’d just had with Vladimir Putin.
These totally private conversations suggest that Trump gets ideas and/or validation from Putin on his tactics and strategies. Putin is winning all around the world with his KGB inspired interventions in elections, society and culture. Future cultural anthropologists will write this phenomenon into their textbooks for future students to study.
Are we too weak and unwilling, or just too lame to turn it around before it’s too late?
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@RjW
"Putin is winning all around the world."
Russia's GDP is now equal to 8% of that of the US.
The top 5 economies are now the US, China, Japan, Germany and India. How and where is Putin "winning" in these countries.
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Half right: Donald Trump is not a genius. But he is sinister. HIs strategy us to cede the House to the Democrats but hold the White House and the Senate, which he can do by controlling the Electoral College. By controlling those two the Republicans control the nation through appointments to federal courts. This is more likely McConnell's than Trump's tactic.
Trump's tactic is to cement right wing control of the Republican Party using racism and nationalism, appealing to the lowest common denominator. The rationale appears to be that white males may not be a majority but as long as he can get them to vote in a block his wing will pick up enough other votes from "marginalized" constituencies to win enough elections by demonizing the Democratic opposition.
The only thing that can defeat these twin Machiavellian strategies is a good recession. That's a very painful way to restore sanity to a nation that seems hellbent on self-destruction.
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@Tom
Nope, "a good recession" is not "only thing that can defeat" Trump. The Democrats might try avoiding electoral malpractice plus a good candidate this time.
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Trump will just keep raising the national debt. Unfortunately the recession will occur during the next administration. Blame will unfairly fall on whoever # 46 is.
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@Tom Right on...I've been saying this since Day 1. And really, it's a big stock market meltdown that's needed. We're probably already in the recession that Republican-dominated Wall Street keeps pretending won't happen.
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Mr. Douthat's analysis is based on the premise that Trump will allow his fate (including the certainty of prosecution), to be decided by the electorate.
I wouldn't bet on it. America may already have had its last presidential election.
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So a President who yields to the courts every time and survived and cooperated with multiple investigations is not going to accept the next election?
Actually it appears many in politics and government who opposed Trump have sought to Nullify his election by trying to remove him from office and impede him with an invented collusion investigation.
Remember the Peter Strzok / Lisa page texts? Andrew McCabe?
You may soon find out there are many who oppose Democrated election results and abuse DOJ and Intelligence agencies appropriating them as political weapons. John Durham is quietly and professionally investgating issues with the investigation as is the I. G.
If there was an effort to overturn Trumps election through conspiracy, I hope you will be among those stand up for Democratic elections.
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@John
Remember the Peter Strzok / Lisa page texts? Andrew McCabe?
Because, as we all know, during the Obama administration there was no one who opposed or communicated anything negative about our last POTUS.
thanks to trump, it look like the future plan, for republicans at least, is to purge all agencies of any members of the opposing party from all agencies.
This is making America great again?
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@John
"many in politics and government who opposed Trump have sought to Nullify his election"
Trump's election is already null, because the majority of voters chose his appointment. He got into office through a Constitutional flaw, and his opponents are perfectly justified in limiting his power.
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"But in recent 2020 polling, Trump is performing below his job approval rating in many head-to-head matchups, which suggests that voters who would be responsive to the “policy status quo” argument keep getting turned off by the president’s rhetoric."
Just the opposite. Voters don't like the policy; it isn't what Trump promised, just what Republicans use him to sign.
Trump is under performing because voters who do like what he says still dislike what Republicans use him for.
Douthat so wants these Republican policies that he can't see they are widely disliked, even when he says it of trade and borders right here in this article. Voters also dislike the tax cuts for the wealthy, and the failures to build infrastructure and end wars.
Anybody who actually likes him also likes what he says. They scream and cheer when he talks. It is what he does that is the problem.
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@Mark Thomason
I don't see any distinction between his "policies" and his "rhetoric". They both represent a fascist attitude toward democratic norms.
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@Charlesbalpha -- In the broadest sense of course you are right.
However, on many things Trump says one thing then does another.
For one example, he hasn't spent on infrastructure, but has instead spent on tax cuts to the wealthy funded with loans, while saying we can't afford infrastructure.
Trump's words are not McConnell's actions, even if Trump is a populist version of fascist while McConnell is a more corporate fascist, the rabble rousing speech maker vs the heavy industry titan getting his payoff.
I largely agree with Mr. Douthat here. As Jamelle Bouie pointed out in one of their Argument podcasts, 2016 was Trump's first election, and he won with a combination of racial resentment and a widely disliked Democratic opponent. He doesn't know how else to win elections, so he is going back to what worked the first time. It is far from certain that it will work again.
This is why, Democrats, please please please do not nominate someone super far-left. The country does not want 100+ million people kicked off their health insurance. They do not want to decriminalize illegal border entry. Don't do this to yourselves, and nominate someone like Biden or Buttigieg (maybe Harris if she tracks back to the middle). Just... please. I can't take another four years of the Orange Menace. Get us out of this national nightmare.
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@Batt
Not sure you understand that Trump’s ascent to the White House represents a rejection of the status quo by many. A Biden candidacy would ensure Trump’s second term.
Democrats need to champion solutions to issues of the 21st century, not the last. The party of the people needs a leader like Warren. Intellect trumps emotion and we get this, especially now after the corrupt disaster of 2016.
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@Batt
"Super far-left." That phrase always tickles me. Today's crop of Democratic candidates (actually- beginning with Bill Clinton) could never be considered Far Left in the true since.(Yet, the GOP continues to wind the clock counter-clock wise.)
These folks are what once-upon-a-time Republican Moderates were. In fact, the only real "Left-ward" president this nation has had in terms of long-range policies benefiting the "common man/woman" is FDR.
We're so afraid of offending virtually everyone, we'd rather have a candidate who speaks like a Republican without the vitriol yet has a "D" after their name: 3 steps forward and 10 steps back; reminding me of that old Three Stooges skit: Step-by-step-inch-by-inch....s-l-o-w-l-y were turn...
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@Batt
What? Biden too left? Not likely my fellow commentator. Agreed that the issues you enumerated can be a dangerous trap. Surging left seems to be a recent trend in political competitions that does not end well.
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Goodness! Mr Douthat STILL believes that the electorate will reject Trump. His repeated 2016 columns to that effect, and earlier columns that the majority of the Republican Party, so good and utterly non-racist, would reject him for the nomination, were wrong. And the evidence from hundreds of polls this year shows that his support has lost no ground, but has instead become more solid.
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@Marvant Duhon
Optimistic column.
When I was in the Marines, there was a saying that is appropriate to Mr. Douthat's column: "Optimism is a (Bangladeshi, Ethiopian, Somalian - whichever country is currently having a terrible famine) in a sinner jacket. "
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@Marvant Duhon I don't really remember the columns you allude to; I recall a more nuanced attitude about Trump's chances. Since you're so certain, it would have been helpful if you'd cited at least one such column.
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@Marvant Duhon His support has not become more solid. He’s got the same racist base as before. He has been stuck at 43% approval, on average, for his entire Presidency. Given the market’s reaction to Trump’s new tariffs, GDP growth should continue to decline. This will not win him any new votes.
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