Volume 5 Number 192
The Democrats are faced with a somewhat pleasant dilemma, coming up with a communication strategy to unseat a vulnerable but wily president in the upcoming 2020 election. They may be beaten to the punch by an impeachment, but the prospects seem unlikely. The likelihood of President Trump running again increases with every wrongdoing that comes to light during his administration. Knowing that he is unlikely to be impeached during his presidency makes running again a strategy to postpone those likely indictments for four more years.
So this is an outline of the kind of message Democrats should use against President Trump in the 2020 elections. It can also be a roadmap for how to go about charging the president, in a long-shot impeachment proceeding
The strategy is a key component, as any charge or charges should be most carefully crafted. Not only that, this should be a unified message used by all who are running on a Democratic platform. The failure of the Hillary Clinton campaign to come up with such a united message was one of the important reasons her campaign failed. She didn’t come up with a reason why, or reasons why, voters should select her, except that she was a woman. That wasn’t enough. President Trump did not make this mistake. His “Make America Great Again,” resonated with plenty of voters, enough to give him a victory.
Pointing out the president’s weaknesses won’t do it. He was well known as a business cheat, a philanderer and a consummate liar even before the 2016 election. Surely the countdown on the number of times he has lied makes Pinocchio look puny. But this public count over the last two years hasn’t changed his advocates’ opinion. That figure of around 35-40 percent of the voters who will follow him to the bitter end seems frozen. Most of these people must feel that despite all his shortcomings, he is better than a Democratic alternative. Whether he can build off this rock-solid core to win an election is what this is all about.
To his admirers, the president is the consummate outsider who shook up the establishment to achieve many of the benefits he promised. Rightly or wrongly, he claims credit for business growth, lower taxes, decreasing unemployment to an all-time low, eliminating many of the regulatory mandates laid down by the previous administration, stifling Medicare and abortions, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, getting us out of unfavorable treaties, attacking unfair tariffs, freeing up our national parks for business growth, creating a more favorable atmosphere with long term enemies such as Russia and North Korea and doing away with restrictive climate control regulations.
For every one of these, his critics could come up with rebuttals, but President Trump’s advocates will cite these as examples of the progress the country has made under his leadership. It would be foolhardy to waste messaging attacking the president for these policies directly, or for his personal shortcomings.
There is an ”unless” as an addendum to this. That is, “unless” it is shown how the president’s actions have hurt voters individually, or their families. That will resonate. The key is to show what the Democratic candidate will do for you. It always gets down to being personal, “What will you do for me and how has the “other” failed to protect me or hurt me?”
And any attack on the president should be indirect. He should always be identified as “a Republican president.” This makes it more impersonal, though all the audience knows who is being identified. And it leaves the impression that it could be any Republican president. It is a subtle denunciation of the whole party.
For example: an obvious one is “A Republican president” lowering taxes for the rich while those with a limited pocketbook pay more. This tax cut has led to a higher deficit, and for a call for cuts in entitlement benefits to make up the shortfall that negatively affects the average Joe or Mary. Fix this by voting XXXX for president and a straight Democratic ticket for Congress.”
“A Republican president’s” weakening of Medicare can be used to show how people get less coverage when they are sick. “Fix this by voting XXXX for president and a straight Democratic ticket for Congress.”
“The failure of “a Republican president” to bring forward a bill that minimizes college costs and debts affects many. His Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has even made the student debt situation worse, and emboldened the disastrous for-profit colleges. “Fix this by voting XXXX for president and a straight Democratic ticket for Congress.”
Then there is patriotism. This deals with personal attacks but can’t be put aside in the effort to unseat “a Republican president.” While the majority of the campaign should be on the issues, some of it must get personal. Forget all that lying stuff. Everyone knows he is a liar.
What is needed is to show how that behavior has weakened the country. After all, not since Benedict Arnold has an American leader been suspected and perhaps accused of betraying his country. The Mueller investigation is already indicating impeachable offenses regarding” a Republican president’s” dealings with Russia. Some Republican advocates may feel that is okay, since the Russians helped the candidate they favored to win.
This looks very different when the act is described as a “betrayal of you and every American citizen”, that he and his advocates conspired with the premier enemy of our country to steal an election. Further, there are indications that in return for Russia’s help in the election, “a Republican president’s” associates were promising reductions of the sanctions against Russia. That is pretty close to treason. The only difference is that this term is only used when we are at war with a country. No president has had to withstand such an accusation and it can be damning.
If the Democrats truly wanted to play the president’s game, they could probably win the election by identifying the president with two words “Benedict Donald.” It has a certain memorable ring to it and says it all. This could be used as a substitute, when appropriate, for “a Republican president” when discussing the Russia entanglement.
Another memorable picture is depicting the president as a new version of a Mafia gangster, which will also cause heads to spin. Michael Cohen was unwittingly making such comparisons before the House Judiciary Committee in his February 2019 testimony. He described the way “a Republican president” issued orders and requests without directly saying what he wanted. It was like he studied The Godfather to determine how to lead his underlings. Even the way he staffed his administration with members of his family was straight out of The Godfather. One will have to look far to find another president likened to a Mafia don.
Still the Democrats will have a hard time in putting together any cohesive message because the Party is splintered, if not in disarray. The 2018 mid-term elections were surely quite favorable, with the Democrats gaining control of the House and only losing a net count of two seats in the Senate. In all, 24 Democratic seats were up for grabs.
The House in now just about evenly split between Congressional Progressives and more moderate New Democrats. The newly elected progressives, championed by Alexandra Ocasio Cortez of New York, want to bring about the Green New Deal. This resolution is co-sponsored with Senator Edward Markey and calls for a massive government overhaul of the U.S. economy.
It provides for, among other things, drastically reducing climate pollution in coming years, Medicare for all, free college educations, elimination of ICE, a $15 minimum wage and guaranteed incomes for those who want to work. A radical thought, that is considered less controversial, is placing millionaire incomes in the 70 percent marginal tax bracket.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, wants to bring the resolution to a quick vote, knowing it will not pass in the Senate. This would put on record the Democrats who vote “yes”, to use as campaign fodder in 2020. Taken one at a time most of the items in the resolution would be popular. In totality, viewed as a party plank, they are scary and threaten to “break the bank” if initiated as national policy. That is why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.), want to postpone the vote in order to provide more time to fine-tune the resolution and sell it to the American people. As now formulated, Rep. Pelosi views the resolution as a “poison pill”.
As the major message of the Democratic Party in the 2020 election, this resolution would be an uphill battle. The Democrats would be wise to follow the example of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who when he initially ran for office in 1932 took a modest, centrist position. However, in the first 100 days of his presidency, he introduced sweeping new legislation which his newly minted Democratic Congress quickly enacted. This New Deal, notice the name Green New Deal, brought about changes to our government that still reverberate today. That might be a good example for the Democrats to follow before barging ahead with the Green New Deal.
Already the Republicans are blasting away at Democrats for being socialists because of the Green New Deal. They are even starting to go into “pinko” Communist type denunciations, one step to the right of socialism. This harkens back to the 1950s and McCarthyism. This socialism claim will surely be a central part of their message in 2020. After all Bernie Sanders, a leading Democratic candidate, calls himself a Social-Democrat.
Along with that comes the demonization, by the president, of the Democratic candidate, whoever that may be. The republican president, of course, excels in that kind of demagoguery. It is not to be under-estimated. Ask Hillary Clinton if you doubt the power of this type of attack. Whoever the Democrats nominate will have to have a thick skin to go head-to-head with a nasty Donald. Probably the best the Democrats have to offer in this arena is Elizabeth Warren who, despite her Pocahontas label (by ”a Republican president”) excels in countering such attacks. The Benedict Donald label should be effective in silencing these presidential invectives.
There are plenty of Democrats who have put their name into the arena. When all is said and done there will probably be around 20 of them. Most of them probably would prefer to run on the issues, but it is doubtful this is possible with a president who surely will turn this into a personality and personal test. Chances are the ultimate Democratic winning candidate will be a relatively unknown political entity, as were some recent office-holders such as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and even Donald Trump. They didn’t have a lot of historical baggage to get in their way.
The one who catches fire will be the one who most voters think will win. That is what the electorate wants more than anything. And that one will be the one who puts together the most compelling message.
Political promises are much like marriage vows. They are made at the beginning of the relationship between candidate and voter, but are quickly forgotten.
–Dick Gregory
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