This piece in the Atlantic notes Democratic voters’ concerns about the ‘electability” of their candidates, particularly since their top issue is trying to find someone, anyone, who can beat Donald Trump. The arguments have been mostly centered around who can form the right mix of policy and assemble the broadest coalition. But maybe the question really is, who can best counter the cheating?
How can Democrats run against a candidate who will simply deny his unpopular positions and make up nonexistent accomplishments? No amount of fact-checking can counter his constant stream of mendacity, which has become white noise in our political culture.
Lying, of course, is only one challenge. The Democratic nominee will also have to contend with cheating. After the 2016 election, the journalist Katy Tur offered an applicable analogy. She said that what made covering Trump as a reporter and running against him as a candidate so difficult was the way that scandals stuck—or didn’t stick—to him. Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state was like a stain on her shirt that people couldn’t get past, because it was the only mark on an otherwise clean shirt. But Trump had so many stains that “you couldn’t tell if it was a stained shirt or if it was just supposed to be that way.”
The many ways Trump pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable political behavior, breaking norms and maybe even laws along the way to get what he wants, are so varied and numerous as to be blinding.
Sometimes his cheating is obvious, the equivalent of the kid in math class who leans over and copies your answers to the test. For example, he was impeached for tying aid to Ukraine to that country’s investigation of the Biden family—that is, for trying to hurt his then-likely rival in the 2020 election. He was nonetheless acquitted by a Senate Republican majority.
Vindicated, Trump will only get worse. He and the whole Republican Party seem intent on using the power of government to assist in the president’s reelection. Republican senators have already announced that they plan to look into the Biden family’s dealings in Ukraine, despite absolutely no evidence that Hunter Biden committed a crime or that the former vice president did anything but carry out U.S. foreign policy. Anyone who thinks these investigations are sincere should note that there is no comparable probe planned into the blatant corruption of sitting president Trump and his children.
Trump and members of the White House staff, meanwhile, are violating with impunity the Hatch Act, which prohibits executive-branch employees from using their position to influence an election. The president uses his personal Twitter account both for official business and as an arm of his political campaign; nobody bats an eye … Perhaps the most troubling form of cheating is the most diffuse, and therefore the hardest to grasp. Trump’s reelection campaign, abetted by right-wing media and companies like Facebook that have absolved themselves of any democratic responsibility, is waging a disinformation war modeled on the efforts of dictators and unprecedented in its scale. As reported by this magazine, the campaign is prepared to spend $1 billion to harness digital media to the president’s advantage, including bot attacks, viral conspiracy theories, doctored videos, and microtargeted ads that distort reality.
The Trump campaign’s efforts are also bolstered by foreign actors. We know, and a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report confirmed, that Russian hackers meddled in the 2016 election, and cybersecurity experts say that we should expect more and worse attacks in 2020. They could be as subtle as social-media accounts that stoke partisan differences or as blunt as software attacks on voter databases…
At the same time, his campaign is fomenting distrust in the very system he is undermining. Using guerrilla tactics, his supporters jammed up the Iowa Democratic Party hotline on caucus night to sow chaos. Then, when the results indeed yielded chaos, Republican trolls, including Don Jr., tweeted out conspiracy theories about a rigged election. Worst of all, congressional Republicans are shamelessly blocking election-security bills, including two that would specifically fight foreign interference in American elections.
And, of course, there’s every reason to believe that he will not accept the results of the election. In the old days, I would have said that the Democrats have to win big enough that the Republicans can’t steal it. With Trump, I don’t think it will matter how big the Democrats win. And frankly, there’s little evidence that they will win that big anyway,
I think this is key, though:
The cumulative effect of Trump’s efforts, of all the stains on his shirt, is to disorient the media and the electorate. Democrats, meanwhile, are fighting about how aggressive to get on climate change or whether debt-free college should be means-tested—bless their hearts. These are worthy questions, but not the question of the moment: How should they fight against a president who has no moral or legal compass, and who will use the full might of the executive branch to win?
Nobody knows the answer to that. But it IS the right question. Regardless of who ends up being the nominee, the assault on our sense of a common reality is going to be overwhelming. And as much as I like to think the American people are capable of seeing through all that, I’m honestly just not sure.
And I have no idea which candidates are best placed to guide us through it. Some have armies, both loyal and mercenary, who will be out there fighting fire with fire. Maybe that’s how it has to be in this political environment. Others will be appealing to common sense and logic which sounds appealing but I have no idea if that has the kind of power to appeal to people in a time when demagoguery is in such vogue.
But whoever winds up being the nominee will be faced with an unprecedented mountain of bullshit. And I see little evidence that anyone is adequately prepared for how to deal with it, least of all the media.
