The Biden campaign should be focused, for the most part, on that slice of voters who still might go either way. (I.e. those neither fully committed to supporting Trump nor to opposing him.)
And while a positive message is important, in this election -- even more than is usually the case when the incumbent is running for re-election -- what will be the main driver of voters is how they feel about Trump.
Which means that a central question for the Democratic campaign is: What will move that slice of voters to want Trump out of the presidency?
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Trump’s remark has been often cited, “I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters.” It has been often cited because one of the astonishing things of this age has been how stable Trump’s support has been over his years in office even while everyone was witness to the most extraordinary ongoing sequence of Trump’s wrong-doing, Trump’s unprecedented record of criminality, corruption, and betrayal of the nation.
Until very recently, it seemed that nothing Trump didwould cost him support.
And then came the pandemic. It turned out that a fair chunk of Americans – who didn’t care about misdeeds that didn’t affect them personally – could be moved by something that Trump did, when it devastated their lives and livelihoods.
But Trump’s failure on the pandemic seems to be the only thing in the category of Trump’s actions that chipped away at his popular support.
But even with the pandemic, that slice of voters who still might go either way – i.e. might still vote for Trump – can be assumed to be pretty impervious to being turned off to Trump because of anything Trump does.
So what would turn them off on Trump?
I’d like to venture this possibility: that those people who cannot be turned off to Trump by his misdeeds could be turned off on him if they saw Trump for who or what he is.
I’m positing that if the first powerful motivator that strips Trump of support is direct injury to those voters (by Trump abysmally failing to protect them against the pandemic), a second powerful motivator would be the voters’ revulsion at the nature of the man.
And the nature of Trump is revealed in the most extraordinarily many-dimensional ways his character is defective. Trump is a liar and a bully; he is completely selfish; he is a cheater; he is a betrayer; he is deluded, badly out of touch with – incapable of comprehending – important realities. Etc.
The central reality of this moment in American history is that the man wielding the powers of the presidency is a monster. That Trump-as-Monster image is not propaganda. It’s the reality. And the reality people need to see.
Could any voter who truly saw Trump for what he is – perhaps more fully a “monster” than anyone we’ve seen on the world stage in our lifetimes – vote for him?
While many of Trump’s misdeeds are somehow abstract – violation of “norms,” assault on “the rule of law” – and many people are not attuned to their meaning, we human beings are wired at the most basic level to respond to the basic nature of the people we encounter. A disgusting person will disgust us deeply. A dangerous person will motivate us to want to protect ourselves from him.
(Such feelings about the nature of a person, I would say, are almost as powerful motivators as feelings about someone’s having injured us—e.g. by botching a pandemic.)
It might be objected that -- just as this slice of voters has not disqualified Trump on the basis of his copious wrong-doing – neither would they disqualify him on the basis of his monstrous character. After all, just as so many of his misdeeds have been performed right before our eyes, so also has Trump not revealed his character for all to see?
Perhaps that’s so. But people might need help in seeing it.,
It is clear, after all, that in Trump’s base there is considerable misapprehension of Trump’s nature. (In my area, I’ve witnessed Trump supporters proclaiming what a deeply “Christian” man Trump is, and others declaring that Trump is someone to be trusted.) Which suggests that such lack of clear perception is to be found also on the fringe of Trump-support – i.e. those in the slice that might be swayed to reject Trump depending on the Biden campaign.
Perhaps an effective Democratic campaign can nudge such people toward a better apprehension of the reality of what Trump is.
All of which leads to my recommendation: that the Biden campaign work to get people to see Trump as the monster he is.
By that, I don’t mean to go straight at it; I don’t mean to say anything like “Trump is a monster.” As they say, “Show it, don’t tell it.”
In other words, an important component of the Democratic campaign should be presenting what Trump does in a manner designed to lead people to see what Trump is. The focus being not on the action per se, but on what kind of person would act that way.
To convey to the American people who and what Trump is, is to light a fire that will help save American Democracy.
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NOTE: Here’s a tiny illustration, in this case not for a politician but for a good reporter. (In a separate posting, I will present a more extensive illustration. This will be in the form of a challenge that Mr. Biden himself could pose to Trump— a challenge that engages with Trump’s fraudulent questioning of mail-in-voting in a manner designed for exposing Trump’s abominable character.)
A reporter could ask Trump:
“You have been in frequent disagreement with the public health experts. What leads you to think that you would know better — on [list of major areas of disagreement — than the people who have spent their lives learning about these things?
“How is it that you know more than the experts on this pandemic?”
Such a question points to one small part of the Trump-as-Monster picture. In this case, it takes the form of a man who insists he knows a huge amount -- even though he knows nothing and sometimes less than nothing – and refuses to respect the superior knowledge of people who with genuine knowledge. All with disastrous consequences for the nation he’s supposed to protect.
