Having watched most of the GOP convention, I’m sad to say—and contrary to the opinion of some pundits—that it seems likely to be unusually effective in achieving its goals—namely consolidating Trump’s voter support in swing states and getting his approval back to the 46 or 47 percent mark at which the Electoral College skew and some targeted voter suppression can do its work.
The third night, it is true, was largely a predictable snoozefest—though it showcased the understated and sinister effectiveness of Mike Pence’s lies—while the post-Trump Republican Party is likely to be led by Josh Hawley or Tom Cotton, Pence’s Christian nationalism is the bedrock of the party and with Barr’s backing and the DeVos money he is a perpetual threat.
I’m referring largely to the first two nights, when the kinder, gentler GOP made a cameo appearance alongside the regularly-featured Fox News dystopia of American carnage. It’s vanishingly unlikely that Nikki Haley or Daniel Cameron will be the future of the GOP unless Biden/Harris win, and even then it is a long shot. We should be pleased, at some level, that Trump’s desperation has led him to this fakery, and that it is still true that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.
But their testimony, along with that of former NFL running back (and Georgia hero) Herschel Walker and others, is designed to make enough conservative-leaning suburban moms—who are the key to this election—feel that voting for Donald Trump is not tantamount to supporting racism. Just as the whitewashing of Trump by his wife and daughter are designed to make them overlook the rampant sexism of virtually the entire elected Republican party. The point of this faux diversity isn’t really to peel off any significant number of African-American voters, though that would be a bonus from the standpoint of the GOP.
I don’t know what post-Convention polls will show, although I expect a further tightening in key swing states. No one should take comfort—as I’ve seen on this site—from what may well be statistical aberrations from outlier polls.
What I do know is that I’ve watched the Southern strategy largely work now for fifty years (see below for the exception)—while volunteering in and working on several presidential campaigns--and while there is no alternative for Democrats but to sail head-on into the storm—justice and the nature of the party’s coalition demand it—no one should underestimate the magnitude of the task. The Democrats are united like rarely before and we’ll need every last voter to pull this one out.
You can call this “pearl-clutching” if you want but it is based on practical experience and personal contact with thousands of actual Trump voters and a handful of independents who are persuadable. Supporting gay marriage, by contrast, was consistent with the growing libertarian streak of the country. Achieving real racial justice will require the kind of sustained federal government action that far too many have lost the appetite for.
It is a huge step forward, given the deeply ingrained racism of the country, for white people outside of left-wing strongholds even to be embarrassed and conscious of what life looks like for Black people. But it remains a far cry from actually doing something tangible about it, like honest reparations, shaking up housing policy, paying higher taxes, overhauling police departments, engaging in overdue wealth distribution. Even many Democrats aren’t willing to do these things, yet. As the historian Godfrey Hodgson once put it in his history of the postwar era, Americans wanted change, they did not want to be changed.
[Obama was an exception because the bottom fell out of the economy, he had an unexpectedly decent opponent who was out of step with where his party was headed, and Obama won reelection through a more traditional incumbent machine operation against an opponent who had his own “issues,” from a GOP perspective, of Mormonism, policy sanity--having inaugurated his own version of the ACA--and—again—basic decency.)
There used to be credible policy reasons to vote for the GOP, though time has shown them to be increasingly a mirage. There was a semblance of a party beyond worshipping anything Trump proclaims. Now they’ve got nothing. Except racism and sexism— the abortion issue having been cynically manipulated for the same fifty years to exploit male terror of independent women. But that may still be just enough.
As I feared after the George Floyd protests, and as we see now in Kenosha, the unprovoked shooting of Black men will lead to protests in which violence—carried out predominantly by white “militias”—will be blamed on the left and presumptively on Biden and Democrats. Pence’s outrageous claim that riots led to the death of a protective services officer in Oakland, who was actually killed by a right-wing extremist, is an example. Eroding support for Black Lives Matter is a sign that this framing is working. It is a classic example of downwardly mobile people being receptive to authoritarian distractions and blaming minorities for their plight, as well as the age-old American trope of dividing the working class for the benefit of plutocrats.
Trump is no political genius. His exploitation of the “law and order” strategy is ham-handed. Now, as in 2016, he is fundamentally a weak candidate in conventional terms. But he has the superpower of lying without shame, on full view as always at the convention. And with the solid support of 41 percent of voters, many of whom believe he is literally anointed by God, his “rope-a-dope” strategy only needs a few things to break his way to eke out a win. The coronavirus ebbs. Likely check. Protests and violent clashes continue? Also likely. Alternatively: bottom falls out of the market, the recovery stalls entirely. A generation without a raise? Plausible, indeed likely, but he is trying to defer these things past November 3rd.
Here’s what I’m trying to do personally to counter this Trumpian onslaught, for what it is worth:
--Joe Biden puts it perfectly—“Just stay focused.” Donate like never before if you possibly can, to Biden/Harris and races up and down the ballot, including state legislative races. The media takes financial strength as a proxy for winning, which is probably why the Trump campaign is conserving money on TV spending to show it is “ahead” at the end of August. Even if state polls are chain-linked and nationalized, keeping Biden’s excellent ads on the air and making Trump compete on every front will stretch his resources thin and potentially lead to a loss in a state he can’t afford to lose—Florida is the best bet.
--Make sure people know about the sensible and progressive policies of Democrats. In 2016—I exaggerate only very slightly—only GOP voters seemed to know how truly progressive the Clinton platform was. Democratic voters I canvassed overwhelmingly thought she was the candidate from Goldman Sachs, a person without credibility, actually “evil,” and indeed every manner of Fox News stereotype. And that was from people who by and large ended up voting for her!
At the end of the day, the election is a referendum on Donald Trump, but knowing what you are voting for is still important. I thought this was one area in which the otherwise stellar Democratic convention could have improved upon. Few voters are “persuadable” in the sense of changing their vote outright, but I’ve found for years that even many Democratic voters believe shockingly wrong things about their candidates and believe GOP frames (such as COVID-19 being created in a Chinese lab). You can bolster wavering support, create more enthusiasm, and get non-voters off the fence by having these conversations about Democratic goals and pledges.
--Remind people that Donald Trump inherited a relatively strong economy from Obama/Biden and that Trump’s claims of his previous genius as a business leader are so much BS. I’ve found that pointing out the direct transfer of money from donors into the coffers of Trump-related businesses, though (mostly) not illegal, is a better way of making this point than focusing on his being born with a silver spoon, taking money from Russian interests, and his endless other griftathons.
--Keep pointing out that Trump’s words and his stunts (like the shameful use of the naturalization ceremony) are completely at odds with his deeds.
--In every venue you can: letters, op-ed’s, social media, point out that the drivers of violence are not the boogeymen of the left but rather “militias” and the permissiveness of Trump and his allies, along with the actual indefensible actions of the police.
--However, stay clear of and repudiate the “defund the police” slogan, which is jarringly at odds with the way most people, even sympathetic ones, experience the world. “Demilitarize the police” is a far better alternative. If you want to see the problem in depth, read the well-meaning and largely well-reasoned piece in a recent NYT magazine article, which calls explicitly for defunding the police but is completely silent about what would be instituted in its place. This is a huge political loser and an unneeded unforced error. Replacements for police departments will not evolve “organically” nor will most people have the patience for this.
--Don’t allow Trump to normalize the death toll from COVID-19. Among the endless distractions that Trump’s inaction and sabotage have caused are the thousands of agonizing fights over school openings and closures, all of which deflect from his large role in making this catastrophe so much worse than it had to be. Remind people that Trump is someone who literally said Barack Obama should resign over his response to Ebola, which resulted in two deaths—neither of whom contracted the disease in the US.
--Don’t fall for the trap of worrying too much about the means of voting (suppression) over the ends (voting). To be sure, as with the Post Office, it makes sense to raise a ruckus when the machinery (literally) of voting is being compromised. And to plan personally with an awareness of the monkey wrenches being thrown in the way. But the whole point of Trump’s talking about not accepting outcomes, serving extra terms, and so on, as with the first time around, is to mess with your head, waste your time, and distract you from defeating him at the polls.
That doesn’t mean he won’t become even more autocratic if circumstances allow. But fundamentally he’d rather have the aura of a winner, with a convincing grievance and explanation, than to really drag out the process. If Trump loses, even in overtime, he will leave. Anyway, and sadly, unless you are a constitutional lawyer or Congressional staff or working directly for Biden this is not something you can do much of anything about. We have enough of these folks and they have enough resources. Candidates need that money, and your time spent on their behalf, much more.
--Push back on the (mis)appropriation of religious language and the rejection of religious pluralism. Trump has ironclad appeal to the large corps of Christian fundamentalists/ dominionists who believe that the only way to secure the future of Christianity is winning and keeping power, at the expense of democracy.
There are many Christians in the country—I know lots of them in person-- who are persuadable and are not in favor of theonomy but who respond badly to the ridicule of religion that is unfortunately so prevalent in some quarters of the secular Left. Their decision to vote for Trump or not to vote or to sit on the sidelines could determine the election.
-- Be nice to a Trump supporter today, and every day. Yes, really. The leaders of the GOP and the prominent Trumpists are opportunists, con artists, grifters, and enablers. They deserve your full contempt. The majority of Trump voters are, by contrast, not bad people. Many are literally pre-modern. I mean this in a non-perjorative way. They are terrified by change and deeply uncomfortable with ambiguity. It is natural for them, as they see their worldview under siege, to retreat to expressions of tribalism. People ask—“Why should we try to understand them when they don’t make any effort to understand us?” The answer is: they can’t! (in general). If they were critical thinkers and capable of juggling competing claims about the nature of the self and identity they wouldn’t, on the whole, be susceptible to voting for Donald Trump and his ilk. Many of them are backdoor Social Darwinists through their belief in a watered-down version of Christian theology combined with cockeyed self-help notions taken from Norman Vincent Peale, Tim LaHaye novels, and bestselling books like The Secret.
This said, liberal contempt for them—as hundreds of posts, articles, cartoons, and commentary on this site and others express—is a big element of the rocket fuel that powers Trump and all pseudo-populists and demagogues. If you can break the ice with most Trump supporters (and I have been personally spat upon and physically threatened, so I know it isn’t easy), you can reach a place where they respect your integrity even if they can’t agree with or even fathom your premises—like aliens achieving détente rather than conflict. I think this helps from the standpoint of winning the immediate election—as the enthusiasm for many Trump voters is closely tied to their belief that this is their last stand, culturally speaking—and it is vitally important to lowering the temperature and staving off violence whatever the election results hold.
