Considering David Axelrod helped guide one of the most brilliant presidential campaigns in history, it’s a little jarring that he’s offering 2020 Democrats probably the worst advice of the season.
In an op-ed for the New York Times on Wednesday, Axelrod lays out a strategy for the party’s nominee that comes straight out of the failed 2016 playbook.
“Mr. Trump’s serial assaults on the decency and the decorum upon which civil society depends are enraging — and meant to be,” Axelrod wrote. “It is only natural to respond to his every provocation with righteous indignation. My advice to the Democratic nominee next year is: Donʼt play.”
Axelrod reasons that it doesn’t really matter all that much whom Democrats nominate or whether their candidate has an inspiring message for the general election, because “the person most capable of defeating Donald Trump is Donald Trump,” and “if Democrats are smart, they will let him do the job.”
How come Hillary Clinton hadn’t thought of that?
The idea that a corpse can beat President Trump in a race is a ridiculous, but it remains a lasting -ism of the Democratic Party. They quite nearly did run a corpse in the last presidential election, and she got thumped.
In his op-ed, Axelrod cautioned Democrats to avoid “wrestling” with Trump, because it’s his “preferred form of combat.”
Wrong. Politics is a fight by nature, and Trump just happens to be very good at embracing that fact and engaging. Presidential candidates are expected to have a clear, winsome direction for the country and the ability to demonstrate why electing that other guy would be a tragedy.
It’s not simply a matter of hoping people see for themselves how awful the other guy is.
“When they go low, we go high,” may have been aspirational, but it was equally delusional. It’s easy to “go high” when you’ve convinced yourself that it’s not necessary to actively defeat your opponent, as opposed to hoping that they somehow defeat themselves.
Axelrod’s advice for 2020 Democrats is bad. So here’s my advice to 2020 Democrats: Take it!
