Don’t make trouble. Pretend Trump doesn’t exist and everything will be ok.
by digby
We are all worried that Trump’s race baiting will get his Fox viewing deplorable voters off their couch in November to push back the Blue Wave. This article from Amy Walter at the Cook Report indicates they are getting very excited unlike their reaction in 2006.
But my God, this via a piece by Susan Glasser in the New Yorker is insane:
I asked Merkley what his spotlight-loving Democratic colleagues had thought of his viral moment exposing the Trump Administration. The story had exploded, Merkley recalled, but not everyone was happy about it. Some of the other senators were shocked, telling him, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe that they’re really doing it.” But others, Merkley told me, quickly saw political peril. “There were folks saying, ‘My goodness, shifting the attention from health care to immigration is a huge political mistake.’ ”
The story goes on to handwring about how this is the one wedge issue that really works for Trump and how dangerous it is for Democrats to stray from their positive message of health care and the minimum wage. The implication is that talking about Trump’s incompetence and malevolence will just make his voters love him so we need to complain about the Republicans trying to repeal Obamacare and pretend it’s 2008 and say “yes we can!” (Don’t say si se puede, though. That might rile up the Trumpies and we need to keep them as happy as possible at all times.)
Trying to appease these people and motivate the Democratic base by re-running their old campaigns and presenting a sunny vision of America is delusional. Republicans can’t be appeased by Democrats because they are completely delirious that their Dear Leader is holding a national hatefest. That’s what makes them happy. Meanwhile, Democratic voters will think these Democratic politicians are as depraved as Trump if they don’t describe this grotesque insanity for what it is.
Pretending that what is happening isn’t happening will simply not work. Trump is going to spend the next few months doing what he always does: spew racist to thrill his racist base. The only thing Democrats can do is get their own base out and acting like a bunch of cynical cowards isn’t going to get the job done.
This is a fight whether we like it or not. If Democrats can’t even show enough courage to make an argument to a majority of the American people that taking babies away from their mothers is a bad policy then we might as well surrender to Trumpism and get on with the re-education camps. This isn’t even a close call.
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