I want to talk about performance versus leadership. ABC News reports that “a few Republican presidential candidates polling near the middle and back of the primary field say they have found a fundraising sweet spot: Cash flows in when they jab at front-runner Donald Trump, even if their voter support doesn’t jump the same way.”
Okay, so ABC News took that discovery and went in a certain direction with it. Mainly they argued that some sharp criticism of Trump could help candidates who are having trouble meeting the threshold requirements to appear in the first primary debate. To make the grade, a candidate must be at least at one percent in the polls and have 40,000 unique donors from 20 different states. In other words, ABC News chose to provide a complete horserace take, ignoring any possible meaning in favor of playing armchair campaign and finance manager. “Say bad things about Trump, win a boatload of new donors!”
A more interesting way to look at this is to ask what a politician should do with that kind of information besides fundraise off it. But to answer that question, I think we need to ask what role a politicians should play. Let’s think of the role of an entertainer, whether it be a standup comic, a musician, or an actor. Some entertainers try out material, see what gets laughs or sells tickets, and then they do their best to mold themselves into what the audience wants. Other entertainers focus on the process of artistic creation, and they hope what they bring forth will compel people to meet them where they are, to see things from their unique point of view.
Both are viable paths that require distinct skill sets. Not everyone knows how to find and give the people what they already want, and only the most skilled and original artists can create a new demand where none existed before.
Personally, I distinguish a bit among political offices in terms of what role should be played. People serving in legislative bodies should focus first on representing their constituents which necessarily means they should pay close attention to what they want. People serving in executive bodies have to govern, and they serve more varied constituencies. They should be focused more on making decisions and, if necessary, creating a demand for what they’ve decided. Having said that, presidents and governors should endeavor to keep their promises and legislators should be more than a rubber stamp for populist passions.
When it comes to Republican politicians, including the presidential candidates, if they focus on what the Republican base wants, well, they want Trump. The demand is strong and easy to discover. There’s still a (smaller) demand for criticizing Trump, but the best crowdpleaser for a Republican candidate would be to drop out an endorse the disgraced ex-president. This essentially cuts off the option to mold yourself into the people’s choice and leaves only the option of being original and compelling.
If GOP candidates want to beat Trump, they need to create a new demand, and the demand has to arise from within the Republican electorate. This is distinct from how Trump won the nomination in 2016. His primary method was through performance. He gave countless rallies and kept honing his act based on the kind of reaction he received. Through this process, he became the latent demand. The audience molded him into the leader they craved. To be sure, he got off to a good start because his original act on the escalator in Trump Tower, showed he had a good feel from the start. But his main leadership role was to simply give people permission to have transgressive thoughts. After he unleashed that demon, the demon led him rather than the other way around.
But Trump’s presidency and post-presidency has created new latent demands. Many people won’t even realize what they’re craving as an alternative to Trump until someone comes along and expresses that feeling an original and compelling way.
It’s the difference between, on the one hand, opening a new restaurant by having people do taste tests until you arrive at the optimal menu and, on the other hand, introducing a new cuisine that creates consumer demand that did not previously exist. In the first case, you’ll wind up with crowd pleasing sweet and salty dishes. In the latter, suddenly all of Grand Rapids, Michigan will be clamoring for new style of food.
To beat Trump, you have to be original. You’re not going to be sweeter or saltier, and initially you might not fit people’s palate. Your one advantage is that you know that a lot of people believe sweet and salty is bad for them, even if it pleases the senses.
The goal here is to defeat Trump because of the unique threat he presents, which means that a candidate shouldn’t criticize Trump simply because it makes fundraising easier. Moreover, Trump is the way he is largely because the Republican base molded him that way, so he’s a near perfect expression of the demand as it existed in 2016. He’s still wildly popular because the demand hasn’t changed that much, but it has changed.
A successful challenger to Trump will change it further still both by tapping into what’s already obvious (Trump is tiring to defend and possibly unelectable) and what’s laying undiscovered underneath ready to respond to a new attractive message.
A pop artist should study what is already popular and fill that need, but it’s unlikely they’ll suddenly become the most popular artist. An original artist has a better chance of arriving at the top of the mountain.
So, what to do with the discovery that poking Trump brings donors without moving poll numbers? One answer is to study the unexpressed feelings and beliefs that underly the action and then give people permission to express those transgressive feelings. Another answer is to create those feelings through an original message. In the end, people will only be led away from Trump by something they haven’t seen before. They can’t tell you what they want as an alternative because it doesn’t yet exist.
The job is to make it exist. The job is to lead the Republican base toward wanting something that is better for them.
I’m no political strategist, by any stretch of the imagination. But it would seem to me that until the transgressive desires of the base have been sated there is not much room for alternative messages. Their basic desires have still not yet been met. Until they are, anything that is not in the service of bringing into reality the spirit of the original message which came down that escalator is just white noise to them. They might not reject alternative messages, especially if they carry along with them the anger and the promised retribution toward the undesirables, but right now they are still clinging to the message of eliminationism on which the entirety of Trumpism is built. It was originally couched as a message specific toward Mexicans, but has been spread in the intervening years to include anyone who is not considered to be in obedient standing within the group. As long any people outside their group possesses any potential access to power, and are able to stand in the way of anything that Trump’s followers want to do, then the mission is still incomplete. Until opposition is silenced and invisible to them, nothing else really matters to them. History is replete with examples of what can happen when walking this path that Trumpism is on, and it also gives us indications of what is necessary to defeat it. They are not just going to turn away toward a different message. This is quickly becoming a zero sum game. It certainly seems to be the way they want it, and in the end maybe it’s just the way it has to be.
Right. There’s more than just a strain of apocalyptic thinking in the Trump/Q-Anon movement, expressed most prominently in the Flight 93 Election essay. What these people want is what Trump wants: permanent victory and acknowledgement from their enemies of that victory and indeed, praise from their erstwhile enemies that Trump and co. were right all along. None of this will ever happen and they know it. So they engage in eliminationist fantasies that if carried out would put them up there with the A list monsters of history.
All true. And yes, electoral politics is (largely) a zero-sum game. What I think Martin is getting at is that eventually *someone* is going to have to defeat Trump, and will have to do so with a *different* narrative. (No “beating the king at his own game”.)
A big part of this is on Republican politicians and voters. (Thus, much of the frustration on the left over the past 7 years; there are limited things we can do to affect them.) Some of this is on the legal system, and finally this summer we’re beginning to see what might be the fruits of years of work to hold Trump accountable legally.
The more successful that effort is, the more it will weaken Trump and his movement. People’s “transgressive desires” tend to diminish (or at least, be better controlled) when there are consequences for acting out on those desires. (See, for example, the near-total disappearance of Trump supporters from his various court appearances.)
One aspect I have been confused about: acceptance of people like Ali Alexander (Muslim father, and Black mother), and Brigitte Gabriel (born Lebanese) – are they useful idiots till they are not, or does that not matter?
Also it is unclear to me what happens when Agolf Twittler is gone (whether of natural causes, or incarcerated) – do these flag waving MAGAts simply melt away (as perhaps showing in few attendees for his arraignments), or do they find a new messiah who will be even more wild?
Hitler and Mussolini followed a different end game – as they were heads of countries that were defeated. Here the war is within!
I came in 1980 to this country, completely unaware of the deep strain of racism that was just lying beneath the surface in so many people!
Well analyzed and well said. If it’s easier for some of to imagine with a Democratic example, think of Obama’s 2004 convention speech and how he then built on that. It was both the soaring rhetoric, the vision of America he laid out, and what he expressed about and for the Democratic coalition. Add into that the substantive fact that he hadn’t voted for the Iraq War (because he was a state senator and able to straddle the issue, which he did skillfully) and he helped lead the Democratic party to a different place than it was before him (and in a direction it’s largely continued to go).