“If you’re not pissing ’em off, you’re not doing it right”
Joe Biden’s strongest performances pissed off Republicans big time. One was his September 1, 2022 speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. “On the Continued Battle for the Soul of the Nation” called out “MAGA Republicans” for their anti-American beliefs and behaviors. Did it turn the November 2022 red wave into a red ripple? Maybe. A second performance was Biden’s State of the Union speech on March 7. It was “Fiery Biden” (Washington Post). And “In-Your-Face Biden” (New York Times). Republicans were pissed. Viewers approved.
Digby (March 8):
Biden came out swinging and knocked the Republicans so far back on their heels that they had to completely abandon the image of him they’ve been building since 2020 — that he’s so old and feeble that he can’t even feed himself — and instead whimper like a bunch of little old ladies that he offensively aggressive.
More than not looking feeble, Biden looked like a leader in command. Biden needs more of that. Yes, it is protocol to refrain from commenting on the Trump trial, but Biden’s “make my day” taunt about debating Trump is more snarky than dominating. Like it or not, many among the electorate measure their leaders by perception of strength. It’s a gut thing, not a head thing.
Salon’s Chauncey DeVega interviews UC Berkeley professor M. Steven Fish on his book, “Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy’s Edge.” What crowds find attractive about Trump, a blithering idiot, is his “high-dominance political style.”
Fish:
Donald Trump is all dominance, all the time. My research finds that his dominance game, much more than his policies or appeals to racism, is his most formidable political asset. He largely ignores the polls and tells you what he thinks, while low-dominance leaders tell you what they think you want to hear. His disdain for optics and polls isn’t a sign of real courage. Instead, they’re products of his narcissism combined with a lack of impulse control. But his congenital political gift is that the way these character defects manifest what looks like bravery, at least to a substantial minority. It’s what creates the perception that he’s his own man (however sociopathic) and acts on his own convictions (even if they’re nothing but ego-driven ambitions and resentments).
Trump’s dominance style is what separates him from every other politician and explains the ardor he elicits among those who thirst for strong leadership. And it’s what’s enabled him to retain his grip on his party, even as he’s proven to be a liability in elections. To many people, it makes him look indomitable—and other politicians like panderers by comparison.
The problem is that the Democrats don’t unmask Trump’s essential cowardice and overmatch his dominance game. Liberals often seem to think that people just need to evolve past their need for dominant leaders and get on with creating a world in which everyone gets along, and nobody seeks to dominate anybody else. But as the eminent psychologist Dan McAdams notes, our desire for commanding leaders is baked into our DNA. It isn’t all we seek in our leaders, but seek it we do, and that isn’t going to change anytime soon. McAdams argues that no American president has tapped into what he calls “the primal psychology of dominance” as effectively as Trump has. In fact, McAdams suggests that Trump has little but dominance going for him.
We like to think ourselves evolved, but deep down we are still animals that respond to subtle cues about who’s dominant in any social situation. In Trump’s case, he’s never subtle.
Biden needs to show he can be forceful without being an asshole. When he does, his poll numbers jump. He just doesn’t sustain it. When he backs off, so do his approval ratings. Aggressiveness doesn’t come as naturally to Scranton Joe as it does for, say, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, the Democrat from Dallas.
Fish says, “If Democrats can beat Trump on dominance, his area of greatest strength, we can crush the Trumpian menace before it crushes our democracy. This does not mean they have to emulate Trump. Our greatest liberal heroes have been high-dominance, but in distinctly liberal ways and to liberal ends, whether it be Frederick Douglass and JFK, or Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa and Eleanor Roosevelt.”
I’m not buying everything in Fish’s criticisms of Democrats, but “when they go low, we go high” does seem naive in the Trump era. Biden needs to be more forceful more often, and willing to upset Republicans. It works for him when he does it.
“If the master narrative doesn’t alienate about 30 percent of the electorate, it isn’t a good narrative,” Drew Westen wrote in “The Political Brain” (2007) about Democrats’ messaging. “About a third of the electorate won’t turn left under any circumstances, and if the Democrats’ story doesn’t make them angry, there’s something wrong with it. A substantial minority of Americans hold authoritarian, intolerant ideologies driven by fear, hate, and prejudice that are fundamentally incompatible with Democratic (and democratic) principles. They are the antagonists of the Democratic story, and if they aren’t antagonized by it the same way liberals are antagonized by listening to George W. Bush’s storytelling, the Democratic story isn’t getting its message across.”
That was 2007.
Westen chuckled when I told him a key lesson I took from his book came down to: If you’re not pissing ‘em off, you’re not doing it right.
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