Will Enough 2020 Voters Care That Trump’s a Horrible Human Being?
“What’s going to beat Trump—and undo the damage he’s done—is a candidate who reminds people, without even seeming to try too hard, that the presidency was supposed to be a thing of honor and can be again.”
MICHAEL TOMASKY, DAILY BEAST
I don’t get how Trump supporters can overlook what a horrible human being he is. He’s a total thug, and his people don’t seem to care.
There are two broadly possible explanations here, and I suppose each is true for some percentage of his supporters. One, they genuinely don’t recognize what an awful person he is. Two, they do recognize it on some level, but they just don’t think it matters much. The way he sticks it to liberals, or the way he speaks for and defends a lost culture for which they yearn, is more important.
----------------
If the Democrats retake the House, they’re going to issue subpoena after subpoena and launch investigation after investigation. I’ve heard talk of Democratic House members who will be subcommittee chairs if the chamber flips who already have briefing books full of matters they want to look into and administration officials they want to grill. This will drive Trump totally bananas, and he’ll get even pettier and more hateful than he is now.
So suppose Mueller issues a damning report—an 8 or 8.5 on a scale of 10, say—but Republicans won’t vote to remove him from office and he’s down to around 30 percent approval as the campaign nears. He and the right-wing propaganda network that will seek to reelect him will have one play: Make the Democratic candidate seem as awful as he is so that enough people decide to stick with the awful person they know. I guarantee you this is what they will do. It’s going to be their only option, especially if the economy has gone a little south on them. And it won’t be easy to beat.
The Democrats need a candidate who rebuts this just by standing there. I don’t mean a good Christian or a good family man or woman, although I suppose those things can’t hurt. I mean someone who exudes that antique but beloved (by me!) quality of small-r republican virtue. Go Google it. I’m not gonna bore you with it. But it was of first-order importance to the men who founded this country, and I think it’s becoming more important to more and more people as they watch this goon try to destroy the presidency, the Justice Department, and whatever else gets in his way.
The Democrats are going to spend all their time debating left vs. mainstream, single payer vs. Obamacare, class warfare vs. not class warfare, and so on. I guess they have to. But that’s not what’s going to beat Trump. What’s going to beat Trump—and undo the damage he’s done—is a candidate who reminds people, without even seeming to try too hard, that the presidency was supposed to be a thing of honor and can be again.