Donald Trump is the ultimate shyster. The Electoral College strategy that he stumbled into worked out for many reasons on all sides that does not bear re-evaluating. Suffice it to say, it can work again if we forget the definition of insanity: doing things the same way and expecting a different result.
The media gave Trump a pass early on by not explicitly calling him a racist. It seems, though, that his latest racist tweets hit a nerve with the traditional media.
Recently The Beat DC co-founder and managing editor Tiffany Cross appeared on MSNBC and mocked the media for taking as long as it did to explicitly call him out. "This is the first time that the media have been so bold to say the President made racist comments," Cross said. "Oh, not comments of racial undertones, not things that some people found racist."
And she continued, "I think had we called a thing a thing two years ago when this President kicked off his campaign by calling Mexicans rapists and drug dealers, had we called a thing a thing in 2011 when he talked about Obama being a birther, had we called a thing a thing decades ago when he called for the murder of the Central Park Five, the now Exonerated Five."
In effect, had we made sure that Trump's behavior made him persona non grata on TV and everywhere else, the normalization that he has brought to overt racism would be less vogue.
Even as the media are being more explicit in calling out the president for his overt racism, they still leave openings for whataboutism and false equivalence. It is like they feel a need to balance the deserved harshness regarding the president with the sacrifice of an innocent being. Recently, MSNBC pundit Zerlina Maxwell had to check host Steve Kornacki on a panel where he had created a false equivalence between Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and the president. As I wrote on my website,
When addressing Zerlina Maxwell, Steve Kornacki attempted, in a very subtle manner, to create a false equivalence between the President's personal attack and pettiness with Ilhan Omar's statements. Maxwell did not allow the slight to get very far.
"What did she say that was a personal attack on the President," Zerlina Maxwell asked. "I don't see impeachment, just to be clear, as a personal attack on the President. That is their constitutional obligation to hold this administration accountable for perceived crimes which were outlined in the Mueller Report. She didn't come out and call the president names. ... None of them attacked the President personally. ... None of them called out his patriotism. What I saw today was four patriots come out and represent the country."
The normalization of Trump has already occurred. That is why no amount of negative news has been effective in moving his polls substantially. In fact, his attack on the four congresswomen of color, nicknamed The Squad, resulted in a bump in his poll ratings among Republicans.
As the election nears, many will be tempted to go after the president. That would be futile. Those who hate the president hate him. Those who love him love him. Getting down in the gutter with Trump is at best a neutral endeavor. But that is the sensationalist content that the traditional media want.
So what are progressives to do? We know that Trump's poll numbers won't budge as a result of negative revelations about him or negative acts on his part. By the same token, we know the media want progressives to comment on every childish tweet or utterance he gives. So we change the narrative. We give a quick answer about the president's behavior and then we immediately pivot to the jobs that will be created through the progressive policies we will pass when elected.
Congresswoman Katie Porter illustrated recently how one grabs the narrative irrespective of the subject.
- She immediately answered the question with just a few words.
- She then went on the attack, pointing out the opponent's lie.
- She then took over the narrative to put out the message she wanted to. Ultimately, she specified how she would get the people's work done to counter the administration's failures.
While the president fixates on race, we must admonish his stance and then immediately pivot to what Americans will get when they elect us. We must not ignore the battle. We simply must not allow it to consume the space. We must ensure that space remains for Americans to see the failures and the potential solutions. Even racists want jobs and security.