What Democrats Should Have Learned from Trump (but probably won’t)
One of the major lessons Democrats should have learned over the last four years is that the resident of the White House isn’t the last word on what work actually gets done for the country. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has shown that his office is the place where bills go to live or die. Whether it’s McConnell’s rallying of the Republican base to avoid Trump’s removal after impeachment or the glacial pace of negotiations about a coronavirus stimulus package, the Senate Majority Leader wields huge legislative power.
This kind of legislative bottleneck isn’t good for Americans or even for politicians themselves. To understand why, consider that the House of Representatives has seats parceled out by population, meaning the heavily populated state of California has 53 congressional seats while the sparsely populated Wyoming has only one. To balance out the fear of mob rule, the Senate gives all states two senate seats. In theory, the system is supposed to balance the desires of the urban areas with the voice of more rural areas. In practice, the Senate can hold legislation hostage regardless of how much the House wants a bill to pass and vice versa. So, when the chambers of Congress are held by opposing parties, negotiation is the name of the game. Usually.
McConnell has shown that an obstinate refusal to move forward on an issue (take the Merrick Garland nomination) has no remedy in Congressional protocol. McConnell decided that Garland wouldn’t be nominated, and he wasn’t. A senator simply told the President, “No” and everyone had to deal with it. Let’s be clear, this would be awful no matter which party did it. Petty acts of revenge and gamesmanship are no way to run a country, but they are, unfortunately becoming the norm and not the exception.
Shame and public pressure mean nothing against a fired up base. Public pressure to act on issues has been a politician’s bread and butter since politicians first passed laws in America. The tone set by the Trump administration, however, showed that the verbal equivalent of a strongly worded letter means nothing if a politician believes he or she can get away with whatever they are doing. Trump’s extremism and erratic actions were celebrated by his base as 5D chess that would eventually expose liberals for being the anti-Americans they truly are. As a result, Trump didn’t need to care about what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said about anything. His refusal to budge from intensely racist, sexist, or xenophobic tweets and statements exposed how impotent Pelosi’s words truly were.
During the Merrick Garland debacle, for example, many Democratic lawmakers took to the airwaves to point out the hypocrisy of the Republicans when it came to the “Biden Rule” about nominating Supreme Court justices during election years. Their supporters understood the hypocrisy, but they wanted to know what the lawmakers would actually do. Turns out, the answer was very little. When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away within two months of an election, there was condemnation of Trump’s decision to nominate Amy Coney Barrett. Rumors of tying up Congress with additional impeachment articles swirled as Democratic voters waited to see how Pelosi and her Senate counterpart Chuck Schumer (D-NY) would keep this injustice from happening. The answer came in the form of a weakly worded condemnation in a press release from Pelosi. Pelosi’s ineffectiveness is either a product of weak will or a broken system that doesn’t have the actual checks and balances it is so famous for. Brief talk of replacing Pelosi as House Speaker did little to light a fire under the California lawmaker.
Pointing out problems doesn’t solve them. Widespread condemnation doesn’t matter. It is no longer enough to condemn bad behavior or injustice. Gone are the days where shining a light on the terrible acts of people will shame them into repentance or at least into pausing. Now, the light is free publicity, and the Trump base feeds on the outrage of Democrats as a sign that their tactics are working. Increasingly, liberal voters are demanding action. The last four years have shown that even impeachment isn’t a real punishment as it does nothing to deter lawbreaking in the White House. It is an official scolding and little else. For Trump, he wears his impeachment like a badge of honor. It makes him “Liberal Enemy №1” — to the delight of his supporters. In a very real way, Democrats have handed Trump more credibility with his base by ineffectively attacking his policies. Every failed attempt to stop Trump’s policies or actions only fuels the idea in Trump’s base that Trump cannot be beaten unless you cheat. It turns the Democratic Party into a hapless group of hall monitors who can’t stop the cool kids from doing what they want.
Not only have they lost the public relations battle as they waggle their fingers and talk about how this isn’t fair, they ignore those within their own party that offer tangibly different solutions than what they’ve been trying. Whether it is Bernie Sanders (I-VT) or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the people who are proposing answers and actions are pushed aside for being too extreme. To be clear, no one is saying that either Sanders or Ocasio-Cortez have all the solutions or even that their solutions will work as wonderfully as promised. All Democratic voters are asking for is some sort of substantive action to be taken. Move forward, move to the left, but move. The stagnation of the old guard Democrats turned a popular two-term historic presidency into a party that, in 2016, was on the verge of insolvency.
What can the Democrats take with them from the Trump era?
- Listen to your base. The people on the ground are the ones who cast the ballots, no matter how much money a super PAC pumps into a campaign, people will always be the best investment. Shake hands, encourage volunteers in local offices, use more than celebrities to encourage voter turnout in communities.
- Give people something to believe in. It’s not enough to be anti-Republican. Stand for something that makes your supporters want to vote for you and not just against the other guy
- Focus on the down ballot races. So much effort was placed into defeating Trump that the Democrats in 2020 failed to flip a single state legislature and lost seats in the House. Build the party from the ground up.
- Don’t abandon momentum because you won. Campaigns win this election, action wins the next one. Keep up the momentum by solving actual problems instead of talking issues to death.
Will the Democratic Party capitalize on its victory over Trump? Time will tell, but if history is any indication, voters in 2024 need to be ready to face a terrifying possibility: a Republican politician who is smarter, more savvy, and more extreme than Trump.
Sources:
https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/102620-0
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/10/what-happened-that-blue-wave/
Image Credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Our_Rights%2C_Our_Fight_Rally_on_Capitol_Hill_%2839677445604%29.jpg
