Ever since Donald Trump announced he was running for president in 2015, American politics has seemed to resemble the dream sequence in Christopher Nolan’s “Inception,” in which a large city street bends, buildings turn upside down, and then stack themselves on top of each other. That is, the political world has behaved in ways that have defied long-held assumptions of experts about what’s possible.
As much as they hate Trump, Democrats are not behaving as if they want to return to a more normal, pre-Trump political universe. Instead, the lesson they’ve taken from Trump is that they, too, should reject old rules.
As is well documented, Trump blew up every bit of conventional wisdom during his presidential campaign. As GOP political consultants argued that Republicans couldn’t win nationally with a demographically changing electorate if they didn’t change their tone, Trump talked about Mexican rapists and banning Muslims from entering the country, and on an old video, boasted of groping women.
Like a political equivalent of Lieutenant Jessup from “A Few Good Men,” Trump at every turn was screaming, “You’re goddamn right I ordered the code red!”
Trump was not bogged down offering detailed policy prescriptions or explaining how he was going to achieve some of his wildest promises.
Despite all of these things, Trump proved that by appealing to the id of a portion of the electorate, a politician could develop a dedicated following large enough to swing a critical mass of states his way against an unpopular opponent.
At the same time Trump was proving he could say anything and still get elected president, many liberals were confronting the legacy of former President Barack Obama. Though he was and remains broadly popular among Democrats, for many activists, there was a sense of frustration by the end of his presidency. Though conservatives see Obama as a president who declared war on the opposition, liberal activists reached the opposite conclusion. To them, Obama came in trying to be a post-partisan president and went out of his way to compromise with Republicans, only to face lockstep opposition at every turn, stymieing his agenda.
Healthcare is a perfect example of how this thinking has changed Democrats’ approach to politics.
As liberals see it, Obamacare was a compromise because it tried to work within the current healthcare system to expand coverage. Obama promised over and over again that people who liked their healthcare plans and doctors could keep them. It was still attacked as a government takeover of healthcare, and when some people inevitably lost their plans, it caused a fierce political backlash.
Yet in the infancy of California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, when asked at a CNN town hall whether people who liked their private coverage would be able to keep it, she said, “Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.”
By doing so, Harris was making the calculation that being unapologetic, she could come across as stronger and more confident, appealing to the base without damaging her in a chaotic general election against Trump.
She of course is not the only Democrat who is embracing this strategy. Throughout the country, among many office holders, on a litany of issues, Democrats are embracing maximalist positions, often without stating how they can achieve them. Those have included abolishing ICE; moving to 100 percent renewable energy in a decade (even as 83 percent of power currently comes from nonrenewable sources); giving everybody universal basic income; creating a federal job guarantee; providing free college; or supporting abortion right up until birth (or even after birth, in the case of Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam).
It used to be that conservatives would attack Democrats for things such as wanting to eliminate private insurance or supporting late-term abortions. Now Democrats are collectively yelling, “You’re goddamn right we ordered the code red.”
The problem for liberals seeking to adapt Trump’s brand of politics for their own ends is that for as much as Trump changed politics, he has not changed reality. He was unable to get Congress to finance a border wall (even when his party ran things), let alone get Mexico to pay for it. He was unable to repeal Obamacare, let alone replace it with a wonderful plan that brought lower taxes, lower premiums, lower deductibles, and better coverage. His vows to eliminate the debt didn’t materialize as he cut taxes, increased military spending, and left entitlements untouched.
Trump may have challenged the laws of political physics, but he didn’t change them.
