Orange Man Bad

Is #resistance quietly ensuring a Trump win in 2020?

One of my jobs, as a writer, is to be an observer of people. As much as I’m in the word business, I’m also in the people business. When it comes to politics, I like to keep my ear to the ground. I don’t care as much about polls but I care far more about what people are saying. I like to read Reddit threads and even YouTube comment sections. I like to see what people are saying about a given issue or topic. It’s a good way to get a cross-section of America in a hurry. The popularity of Trump has been a topic that has been belabored since he was a candidate. However, despite his lack of popularity in the generation population, Trump still has his supporters. For example: among registered Republicans, he polls at 90%, a fact he mentions often. Nationally, Trump’s polls somewhere between 37-42%, in fact, his polling has gotten better recently topping out at 42% before settling back down at 41%. It might seem like Trump is not incredibly popular and that most people are ready for him to be out of office. But my observations paint quite a different picture.

#Resist

The resistance to President Trump began the moment he was elected. There are people who wasted no time in getting ready to hold the President accountable and to stop his every policy. The Republicans, in 2016, held all the cards. They controlled all of government and democrats were just simply out of power. In those early days, the #resistance movement was focused on getting back some power. This has paid off across the board in state elections and nationally by getting back the House of Representatives, leaving them able to start the current impeachment inquiry. There has been protest after protest and hot topics like immigration (asylum seekers and DACA) the selling off of national forest land and 3 government shutdowns have kept activists and many voters sharp on the goings-on of the national government.

Exhausted America

This has been exhausting. Many everyday people with jobs, lives, and things to do are tired of Trump but it is also my observation that they may be tired of the constant activism of the Left. There have been few moments where Trump has been able to get any support from Democrats or the broader left. Much like the Republicans during 2010-2014, the focus has been to stop, obstruct, and resist these policies. There has been little effort on either side for productivity. This has led to on-going government shutdowns and a complete lack of new policy at the national level. Mitch McConnell has enabled Trump’s worst impulses and has done nothing to move legislation forward. When the GOP had power, they didn’t fund the much-ballyhooed wall and they spent far too much time trying to find a way to erase everything Obama had done. This led to the 2018 blue wave. People wanted change but most importantly, they want results. this is an area where Trump just might have an advantage.

Don’t Underestimate Trump

Right now from our vantage point here in late 2019, it might seem like Trump’s proverbial goose is cooked. Literally any democrat outpolls Trump if the election were held today. However, that doesn’t mean 2020 is a slam-drunk. Far from it in fact, even in a high-turnout election, Trump can keep up. The only person who can reliably win against Trump in most places is Biden with Sanders and Warren missing some big states like Michigan and Wisconsin. The whole problem with Trump is that the media, including people like me, far underestimated him. No one thought he could survive the sexist comments. No one thought he could survive the endless lies and more. We all thought that between a blustering reality TV star and a highly qualified woman, America would pick the smart option. They didn’t and we all know why. It would be stupid to think that Americans, still filled with the anxieties they had in 2016 wouldn’t do the same thing again.

The bigger story here is fairly simple: Americans might be tired of the one over-arching narrative about the Trump presidency: Orange Man Bad. You see this phrase pop-up from time to time. Not super often but often enough to take notice. Trump has generated think piece after think piece. Thousands of hours of reporting and certainly impeachment is going to generate so much more. Podcasts like Gaslit Nation and Mueller She Wrote also fill the podcast space with content directly countering the Trump narrative and highlighting his on-going criminality. But could all of this be hurting the democrats’ presidential chances? I think it might be. Hear me out.

A Government That Works

Over the past 10 years, politics has been broken. More and more people feel disenfranchised or that government and society don’t work for them. Pile on things like demographic changes and the resulting nervousness and anyone offering to solve those problems can easily get people behind them. That’s how Trump got his start in politics. What’s the take away here? People want a system that works for them and their families, not a system that is made to benefit owners of capital. People want a good job, a chance to get ahead, a chance to be out of debt and to be able to live their lives in peace and the reality is that for many Americans this is simply no longer possible and hasn’t been for quite some time. Obama offered Hope and Change but not much else and people are so desperate that the first con-man to come along and offer to solve their problems and blame someone else for it was able to do whatever he wanted, say whatever he wanted, and never lose support.

Politics were partisan before Trump. The GOP was invested in making sure that Obama got very little done and Obama didn’t do anything to resist their obstruction. All the GOP had to do was say “No” and Obama with his advisers like Valerie Jarrett and the like simply stood around waiting for the republicans to come around and get things done. They didn’t go on the attack. They just waited for the GOP to come to their senses. This lead to 6 years of inaction. Obama promised a new America and instead, nothing really happened for the working person other than stagnant wages. People want a government that works. This is where the Left is making a mistake.

We Resisted…Now What?

By making everything about resisting Trump, they are making the same mistake the Republicans made to start with. As Lewis Black once said, “..the Republicans come up with an idea and the Democrats find a way to make it shittier.” When all you do is resist and have no message, it just seems disingenuous. Often, the Left is not adding to the conversation, they are simply freaking out about the latest tweet or the latest thing Trump has done. The media fuels this cycle of course because they have forgotten how to cover politics critically and merely pass along the government message without highlighting how the latest policy might be screwing regular people. With the constant news cycle of “orange man bad” moderates and people who aren’t regularly participating in politics are wondering if there is any real alternative to Trump or if there’s just Trump and angry resisters who have no real plan once they have power. The key to winning in 2020? To have a better idea than the Republicans. The democrats must articulate what they intend to do with actual power and how they are going to deliver on those ideas. Relying on unhappiness with Trump without a better idea will end up with more of the same and 4 more years of Trump.