The American people see the Democrats take down Trump themselves

President Trump is a juggernaut. His shock and awe campaign against American democracy, the rule of law, civil society, the Constitution, and the norms and institutions has been extremely successful. Trump’s mastery of spectacle and mass media and his natural showmanship and charisma — in combination with the dark arts of politics and power that he learned from his mentor Roy Cohn — make him a formidable foe. The difficulty in trying to stop Trump and his MAGA movement is amplified by how the world is in the throes of an authoritarian populist era that is fueled by rage at “the system” and “the elites” and the existing order of things. In total, Trump and his MAGA movement are the product of much larger problems and disruptions both here in the United States and abroad that defy a simple solution.

What about the Democrats and the larger so-called resistance? They have been mostly ineffective — to the degree they have even been active and present. Since Trump has returned to power, the Democrats, for example, have decided that waiting for Trump and his MAGA Republicans to overextend themselves and for the American people to realize that they are victims of the Big (and little) Con is a viable strategy. Applying military strategy to the realm of “normal” politics, Trump is continuing his shock and awe campaign, and the Democrats are trading space for time.

Focusing in on Trump’s speech to Congress last week, the Washington Post describes the efficacy and result of this plan by the Democrats as:

The Democrats showed last week that presidential addresses to Congress are no place to formulate a resistance. Almost everything they did during President Donald Trump’s appearance highlighted weakness rather than strength. They had not one strategy but several. The sum was less than the parts.

Many Democrats came away worried that their party is even weaker than it appeared after Trump’s victory in November, and for now, Democrats might be left to hope that Trump and the Republicans will make enough mistakes to offer them a way back. But that is only one part of a comeback strategy if Democrats are to become broadly competitive.

The Democrats were handcuffed from the start Tuesday night as they sought to project the right amount of opposition. Too boisterous and unruly in their disagreements and they would embarrass themselves, playing into Trump’s hands and highlighting their powerlessness. Too passive and they would further anger their demoralized base that is looking for a spark of life from the leadership of the party. They were passive, yes, while trying to project mild resistance.

Winning by default and counting on one’s enemy to self-sabotage is not a viable strategy in an existential struggle. Such a strategy is also not very compelling for a public that is increasingly alienated, tired, afraid and mired in learned helplessness, as they see Trump and his MAGA movement and American fascism’s domination as inevitable and soon to be the new norm instead of as forces and outcomes that are contingent and still very much in doubt.

In an attempt to make better sense of the Democratic Party’s weak and passive approach to political battle in the Age of Trump and their ongoing failures of strategy and messaging — and potential ways to correct them and find victory — I recently spoke with M. Stephen Fish, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley. His new book is “Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy’s Edge.”

This is the first part of a two-part conversation.

How are you feeling? Trump has been back in the White House for eight weeks. His shock and awe campaign has been very effective. What are you doing to balance yourself and maintain some perspective — assuming you have been able to? 

His shock-and-awe campaign has been theatrical, but I’m neither shocked nor awed. Trump isn’t doing anything he didn’t promise to do, and his opening round has been more of a shit-show of bluster and flip-flops than an irresistible offensive. The key to remaining balanced is to focus on the fight and to give as good as we get. Trump’s high-dominance style has carried him this far, but he also has many weaknesses — if Democrats finally start to push their advantage.

If Trump really follows through on everything he’s initiated since January 20, the economy will tank, veterans will quit receiving their benefits on time, American kids will be crippled by polio and dropping dead from measles, and America will become a contemptible international pariah and wholly-owned Kremlin subsidiary. And if Trump backs down, he’ll look weak. Either way, I’m sure you’ll agree the Democrats will have a lot to work with. But no matter how bad things get, none of it will stick to Trump unless the Democrats make it stick. Otherwise, Trump will continue to smash through every disaster and maintain his hold on the political arena.

What are your thoughts on James Carville telling the Democrats to “roll over and play dead” in his recent op-ed in the New York Times? Carville said the Democrats should “roll over and play dead” and “allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us.” That does not seem like a winning strategy in an existential struggle for America’s democracy.

Carville is typically a fighter, and I know he isn’t proposing passivity as a long-term strategy. But, his New York Times piece does basically call for the same losing tactics the Democrats have been pursuing for years: Stand back, cede the narrative and headlines to Trump, and then wait for everybody to realize just how awful he is and rush to support the Democrats. That’s largely the way Biden ran his reelection campaign until he stepped aside; in fact, he explicitly said that he intended to make the election a referendum on Trump. Here we had a president who had been in power for almost four years and had racked up impressive accomplishments, including producing a roaring economy, but rather than make it about the Democrats’ triumphs, he chose to make it about Trump. That approach displayed timidity, pessimism, defeatism, and lack of self-confidence, which is why Trump was clobbering Biden in the polls even prior to voters realizing the extent of Biden’s weakness during his debate with Trump. Then, when Harris first stepped out as the party’s nominee-presumptive after Biden’s withdrawal, she offered a much higher-dominance act, but she then reverted to a low-dominance, let’s-make-it-about-Trump approach.

During the 2024 campaign, you and I had a series of conversations here at Salon and elsewhere. You also had an opinion essay in the New York Times warning that Trump is a high-dominance leader and that he had a high chance of winning if the Democrats did not adjust. They didn’t listen to you — or me or the others who were publicly warning about Trump’s popularity. Harris launched her campaign with a high-dominance performance but then faltered soon after her great debate with Trump. History will likely look back at that pivot as one that crystallized the Democratic Party’s failings and imminent defeat.

Absolutely. As you’ll recall, between the time Harris took over as the Democrats’ candidate in mid-July and the debate on September 10, she was a boss. She called attention to herself and her own great plans, projected exuberance, and limited her Trump-time to telling the truth about how horrible he is and not fit to be president. Armed with that approach, she electrified Democrats, put Trump on the defensive, and took the lead in the polls. But then her campaign reverted to ceding the spotlight to Trump, making the campaign a referendum on him and calling on everyone to be horrified by his appalling behavior.

The moment her campaign switched gears, which happened shortly after Harris shellacked Trump in the debate, you could hear the air hissing out of the tires and watch Trump get his momentum back. And as it turned out, all the groups the Democrats strove to stir to wounded umbrage weren’t much moved, and they weren’t impressed by the Democrats’ constantly being overcome by the vapors. The partisan gender gap between 2020 and 2024 actually shrunk, with Harris proportionally losing more women than men compared to Biden’s performance in 2020. And Trump made enormous strides with Hispanics and smaller but still substantial gains among Blacks and Asian Americans.

How much more evidence do the Democrats need that letting Trump be Trump and then hoping to pick up the pieces when he falters doesn’t work? Trump acts, and the Democrats stand back and wait for him to stumble. But Trump’s bungling has never been enough to bring voters over to us in sufficient numbers to stop him and rout Trumpism. Until the American people see the Democrats take down Trump themselves, he’s going to seem like a boss.

Trump and his MAGA movement are winning, and quite easily. They know that storytelling and showmanship are the keys to winning and advancing their agenda. Why are Trump and his propagandists so good at this? Why are the Democrats so bad at it?

Democratic operatives still seem to think that Jack and Diane Sixpack sit down to the kitchen table shortly before the election and calculate which candidate stands closer to them on “the issues,” offers them more stuff, and “cares about people like them.” But there’s no evidence that anything of the sort actually takes place, and you can’t make a compelling story out of “the issues,” promises to add a dental option to Obamacare and patronizing reflections on how much people are hurting. It’s especially ludicrous to focus on voters’ purported despair rather than your own great exploits and plans while your own party is in power, which was the case in 2016 and 2024.

While Biden was still running, he did finally try to step out late in the campaign and claim credit for the roaring economy, but he was far too impaired by then to offer a forceful, resonant message. Beyond that, he was shut down by fretful Democratic party operatives and politicians who told him: How can you talk about “Bidenomics” when polls say so many people aren’t “feeling the benefits”?!

When Harris first stepped out as the nominee, she was all jauntiness and humor/quick wit/cheek, but she then sank back into the party’s old habits. When asked whether people were better off than they were four years ago, Harris refused to answer. Why? Because polling showed that many people weren’t happy with the economy. When asked about immigration, she consistently intoned: “Our immigration system is broken.” No doubt that line played well in the Democrats’ focus groups. Never mind that her party had been in power for almost four years; the people were supposedly struggling to make ends meet and the immigration system was broken. Under her and Biden. And when asked how her policies would differ from Biden’s, she said she couldn’t think of anything. Why? We can’t be sure, but by some accounts, she was afraid of offending Biden. This is what poll-driven, fear-based, irrationally risk-averse messaging looks like. It thrills no one. It changes no minds. It leaves your opponent’s story as the one everybody hears.

Donald Trump’s story is basically: When I’m in power, you will enjoy the greatest economy in the history of the world. When the Democrats are in power the economy is horrible. Trump and his propagandists and other surrogates and messengers fill in his story with all kinds of facts and figures, many of which are not true, just pulled out of the ether. But Donald Trump does have a story, and it does convince a lot of people. Trump tries to shape public opinion rather than just respond to it. What would a more compelling message from Harris have sounded like?

Kamala Harris could have said something like this: You’re goddamn right we’re better off than four years ago! Back then, unemployment was 15 percent; under me and Biden, it’s lower than it’s been since the 1960s. COVID pushed inflation up, but Biden and I hammered inflation down to 2 percent — exactly where the Fed says it should be. Our economy is leaving other rich countries in the dust; it’s growing faster than all of them. America is the innovation capital of the world. Real wages have been growing for a year-and-a-half running. New business start-ups and corporate profits are surging. Every time I check the numbers, the Dow is setting records. When Trump left office, the Dow was 31,000; today it’s 42,000. Dream on, Mr. Trump! Fast growth, plunging inflation, rock-bottom unemployment — economists said it couldn’t be done. Oh, and by the way, the budget deficit is half of what Trump left us with four years ago.

This is what Democrats do: We come in and clean up the messes made by our Republican predecessors. Roosevelt did it after Herbert Hoover. Clinton did it after the first Bush, Obama did it after the second one, and Biden did it after Trump.

But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Under me, we’re going to make Biden’s good economy even better. Way better. No more kids in poverty in the richest, greatest country on Earth. Watch for the Dow to break 50,000. Why the hell not?

Today’s Democrats do not have a brand or compelling identity, and they are horrible political salespeople. Trump’s recent address to Congress is an example of Trump as the master of spectacle. For his audience it was perfect. Those outside of TrumpWorld and the MAGAverse thought his speech was a failure.

Nothing surprising there. Trump’s speech was grand theater. Vintage Trump, complete with all the props: The ranting about the Democrats’ supposed perfidies, the proclamation of a new Golden Age and the adoring families of the victims of violence perpetrated by undocumented migrants.

The Democrats’ responses, unfortunately, were also largely predictable, and altogether pathetic: Rep. Al Green getting thrown out for standing and waving his cane at Trump; the pink dresses (I still don’t get what that was supposed to mean); and the indignant flashing of the ping-pong paddles with their various messages. Then there was the flurry of Democratic responses on talk shows over the following several days. On Stephen Colbert’s show, Pete Buttigieg tore into Trump for not dwelling on people’s economic pain and for failing to lower egg prices.

But most abject of all was the Democrats’ formal response to Trump’s speech, delivered by the new senator from Michigan, Elissa Slotkin. American democracy is being dismantled by fascists and Trump is trashing a world order that has ensured American preeminence and prosperity for the past 80 years. Putin is very pleased. What did Slotkin have to say? “The Middle Class is the engine of our country…Michigan literally invented the Middle Class!… We need to bring down the price of things we spend the most money on: Groceries. Housing. Healthcare. Your car.” Of course, she hit on other points as well, but never did she offer anything other than the bromides the Democrats have been mouthing for as long as anybody can remember. Nowhere was there the slightest sense of urgency, alarm, anger, or fight. I’m sure Slotkin is a wonderful person, but it’s also noteworthy that she won her Senate race by 0.3 percent in a state where Gov. Gretchen Whitmer whipped her MAGA opponent by 11 points. Rather than turn to the harder-edged Whitmer — or, for that matter, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, Rep. Eric Swalwell, Senator Ruben Gallego, Senator Adam Schiff, or Gov. Josh Shapiro — to let loose on Trump, the Democrats chose Slotkin to make her heartfelt pitch for — what else? — the put-upon middle class.