Even in the nearly silent snowbound countryside here in North Carolina this December ninth, I think I can hear you scoffing.
”What ‘strategy’? The man’s an idiot, clearly flailing about blindly in this own fantasy land. Exhibit A: his ridiculous tweets. Surely, you jest about a strategy, right?”
I’d suggest we sober up a bit, stop laughing for at least a few minutes, and consider reality. I’d suggest we not underestimate this man’s cunning, or his lack of shame, or his willingness to use any means to keep power.
While everyone seems pretty certain that Trump is both stupid and disconnected from reality, and both may be true, I think he’s simply adhering to the same strategy he’s used since the very beginning of his campaign for the presidency.
That strategy may seem insane — and it may be insane — but it’s a strategy nonetheless, and when you think about it, at this point in the game it’s about the only one that has a prayer of saving him short of a coup d’etat. So it may not be so stupid or irrational as it appears on the surface.
Trump has risen throughout his career by crudely but effectively leveraging power. The power he’s used in his amateurish but amazingly successful political rise is to win and then keep the faith of the vast majority of the Republican voter base and use that as the club to hold over the heads of all Republican politicians. It's really about that simple.
When Trump tweets or speaks he doesn't care what you think about it, or what various legal and political experts think about it. He only cares what his base hears. And right now, if he says he’s in the clear they believe it.
He knows the house can impeach him once the Republicans cede control. He knows how exactly guilty he is. But he also knows that so long as he can keep that vise grip on the base the Senate will never dare to convict him. That hold is kept by the messaging coming from him, from the White House, talk radio, Fox News; and from his rallies. It’s all his base listens to. All.
He calculates — perhaps semi-consciously but from somewhere deep in the reptilian survival brain that if he can just survive it will be a great victory, or perceived as such, and he then can resume leveraging that power for re-election. It’s not an implausible scenario, is it?
When you realize this fact then his tweets don’t seem quite so “dumb” anymore.
I’m not disputing that he's on the ropes right now and in deep feces, and the fact that this is about the only viable strategy left on the board is telling, when a year ago there were so many more open to him. I don’t dispute he lives in his own fantasy land (like all malignant narcissists) and that’s a huge liability but any way you slice it so long as he can sell that alternate reality to enough Republicans, he can potentially survive.
So how do we defeat this?
I submit that plowing blindly ahead with impeachment is playing to his strength. He relishes the fight. “Never mud wrestle with a pig, you both get filthy and the pig likes it.”
Proceed, but not blindly. Truth is our strength, facts are our ally. Leverage them, like he leverages the power of his lies.
Some seem to believe that the base of Trumpist support is a monolithic block, but I don’t see it that way. True, there’s a core percent that will never hear, see, or accept reality. But I’m certain there are many more that are even right now outwardly supportive but inwardly doubting or fearful that the investigation will turn up evidence too clear to be denied.
The steady march of facts has had a slow chipping effect. You might not see it in the numbers yet, but it feels like the edges of faith in this president are starting to crack. And the steady march of facts is intensifying, and it’s so compelling that it’s penetrating the smokescreen of distraction that he throws up day after day.
The key is to never let up, and intensify the march of facts. I’m old enough to remember the Senate Watergate hearings and the effect they had, cumulatively, on public opinion. It was devastating. Not at once, but over time. It was devastating to me as a young 20 year old who started out believing that while Nixon wasn’t honest he was smart, too smart to have been involved in this clumsy affair. But by the end of the Senate hearings I knew deep inside that he was guilty as charged. It was undeniable.
Republicans can no longer block hearings in the House. Once the special prosecutor finishes his report a carefully planned series of hearings can reveal a steady march of facts presented by real people before live television cameras, and this will surely will wear away the deluded resistance so many of the faithful still hold. It will be the kind of show that’s irresistible even in this celebrity-obsessed culture. If done well it will capture and hold the country’s attention.
There is a magic number. I don’t know exactly what it is, but it exists, and we will feel it when we get there. There is a magic number and once Trump’s support falls below that percentage the fear is gone. The fear that currently allows him to hold in thrall enough Republican politicians to stay relatively safe.
Nobody even bothers to pretend to like or even respect this guy. All he has is fear, but he knows how to use it.
Once that fear is gone, it’s over. Not that it won’t be ugly, but it will be over; swiftly and finally.