Yeah, it's temporarily fun for us political junkies to watch the other party have a meltdown, but we need to think seriously about what Trump is doing to the national dialogue, and how we hurt ourselves in the long run when we support the extremists of the other party.
"Anchor babies" used to be a slur that was rarely heard outside of right wing hate radio, and now, thanks to Trump and the rest of the party trying to outdo him, it's a mainstream phrase. This isn't something that we should be cheering. Normalizing hate speech is dangerous; having a candidate give credibility to the hate-mongers is even worse.
We know, or should know by now, that rhetoric rarely stays in the realm of speech only. Rhetoric leads to actions, and the actions that we're already seeing from Trump supporters is scary; hoping it continues just so we can win an election is morally wrong.
That's my case for the moral side of the argument, but there's an electoral side of this, as well.
There seems to be this belief that if we let Trump keep talking, we'll strengthen our standing with the Latino/a vote. I'm not going to argue against that point, but I will point out that if we want to remain a viable party, we need to strengthen our standing by having the best policies. Being the "not crazy" party is great temporarily, but it doesn't keep voters long term.
This brings me to the Overton Window part of my argument against Trump specifically and fringe candidates in general.
It is true that the crazies have taken over the republican party, but it's also true that they've gerrymandered themselves into safe elections all over the country.
On the left we've been amused by how crazy their candidates are because, again, it assures our electoral wins. Yet lost in that calculation is how it weakens our candidates if they're elected. They don't have to take strong, progressive stands on anything because their opponent will most certainly be a far-right candidate. They can take center-right stands and still get the Democratic base, and over time we come to accept this.
On the other hand, if all of our candidates were running against moderate republicans, we'd have more progressive candidates. Differentiating our party from the furthest right candidate doesn't get us more and better Democrats. If we had to differentiate ourselves from the moderates of the other party, we'd have to take stronger and more left-leaning positions.
On the left we blame Democrats for shifting the Overton Window to the right, yet we cheer on the most fringey candidates as our opponents. That's a calculation that doesn't work.
If we want progressive ideals to become more mainstream, we cannot continue to push the furthest right candidates into the mainstream. Both cannot prevail.
So I don't support Trump. It is morally wrong for us to cheer on someone who uses such hateful and racist rhetoric. It is also a counterproductive way to get more and better Democrats. If the bar for our side is that we aren't Donald Trump, that's a pretty low bar.
And I think we can all agree that raising the bar for our party is an important and worthy cause.