A GHOST OF A CHANCE
A GHOST OF A CHANCE: I’m posting this on the morning of inauguration day. A good and decent man is about to be replaced by the Lord of Misrule (hat tip to David Brooks, NYT, link below). “Give him a chance,” Trump supporters say. They’ve been saying it a lot, as controversies that piled up during the transition continue into his presidency.
When people ask you to give Trump a chance, the sensible response is to ask, “A chance to do what?” A chance to abandon traditional allies in favor of a long-time enemy? A chance to destroy public education? A chance to subvert democracy by making it harder for minorities to vote? A chance to accelerate rather than reverse climate change? A chance to ruin the lives of millions of people by taking away their health insurance?
No thanks. I’ll be part of the Democratic opposition. Here’s my eleven point wish list for the Democratic Party over the next four years.
1. Fight back on behalf of the victims of Republican policies. In Congress, vote no when Republicans propose damaging legislation. Voting no isn’t hard. Republicans did it for eight straight years. Show some discipline, for crying out loud.
2. Let some leaders emerge. I don’t mean presidential candidates, necessarily. I’m just looking for a few prominent men and women who can talk sense without sounding stilted or pompous.
3. Don’t abandon traditional Democratic values and voters to chase Trump’s base. It’s a lost cause in the first place, and we don’t need them in the second place. Focus instead on winning back some of the voters who went for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016, especially those who live in strategic states (Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina). Some of those voters are already having buyer’s remorse, and that number will increase as time passes.
4. Similarly, work on recruiting Left-leaning anti-Clinton defectors who voted third party or sat the election out in 2016. The “both parties are the same” crowd will soon realize their mistake, if they haven’t already. Give them a reason to vote Democrat next time. Don’t be afraid to be progressive.
5. Prioritize your issues. Figure out which of Trump’s mistakes Americans find most disturbing. Move those issues up to the top of the list. “This is how Trump screwed up, and this is how we’ll fix it in 2020.” Within the bounds of Democratic principles, I want to see pragmatism, not ideology.
6. Figure out smart ways to counteract Republican tactics. We know what they’re going to do. Trump will bully everyone he can, and when things aren’t going his way, he’ll say or tweet outrageous things to distract his opponents until the current controversy blows over. The Republican Party will rely on its tried and true tactic of blaming the problems of poor white voters on minorities – Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, LGBTQ, whichever group is the handiest scapegoat.
7. Figure out effective ways to counteract vote suppression, especially in battleground states.
8. Stop over-analyzing the 2016 presidential election. Everything mattered, from the Electoral College to Wikileaks to James Comey to the failure to campaign in Wisconsin. It wasn’t any one of those things, not even your pet issue. Not even my pet issue. But if, hypothetically, you think the problem was that Hillary Clinton was a fatally flawed candidate, take heart. She won’t be on the ballot next time. Let that go and look for other areas to improve.
9. Nevertheless, Democrats need to figure out how to resist Republican attempts to Clinton-ize the next Democratic candidate, whoever it may be. You can bet they’ll orchestrate a smear campaign. They won’t have twenty years’ worth of slander to fall back on, but they’ll make stuff up. They’ll fight dirty.
10. Figure out how to attack Donald Trump’s vulnerabilities. All those perfectly valid observations about Donald Trump’s ignorance, laziness, and deplorable personal life? They didn’t matter in 2016, and it’s hard to imagine that they’ll matter in 2020. The most impactful true thing you’re likely to be able to say about Donald Trump in four years is that he failed to do what he promised to do. Make the 2020 election a change election, and paint Donald Trump as a failure. Ask the question Ronald Reagan asked about Jimmy Carter in 1980: Are you better off than you were four years ago?