The Populist Election Strategy for 2020

A number of sources argue that the President is intentionally being insulting, divisive and racist in his rhetoric as a campaign strategy. His bad rhetoric inflames the opposition and leads to endless reactions in the press and other media. That helps keep political opposition distracted from Trump's corruption, lies, propaganda and failures. Sometimes it actually divides and weakens the opposition.

In 2017, The Hill wrote this:

White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon condemned white nationalist "clowns" in an interview Wednesday but continued to hit Democrats over "identity politics," saying if they talked about race every day he could ensure Republican election victories.

“The Democrats, the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em," the former head of Breitbart News told The American Prospect in an interview. "I want them to talk about racism every day."

"If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats,” he added.

In the wake of Trump's racist remarks about Baltimore, reactions are pouring out. The Washington Post reports: “Better to have a few rats than to be one,” the Baltimore Sun’s editorial declared in its headline . . . . The Sun’s scathing piece, which drew responses across the country and even as far as Senegal, highlights Baltimore’s strengths and accuses Trump of deploying “the most emotional and bigoted of arguments” against a Democratic African American congressman from a majority-black district.”

A political analysis piece in yesterday's Washington Post comments:

President Trump launched another broadside Saturday on a Democratic political opponent, calling a prominent black congressman’s Baltimore district a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and saying “no human being would want to live there.”

“Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States,” Trump continued in another tweet. “No human being would want to live there. Where is all this money going? How much is stolen? Investigate this corrupt mess immediately!”

That Twitter attack on Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) plunged the nation into yet another anguished debate over the president’s divisive rhetoric. And it came just two weeks after Trump called out four minority congresswomen with a racist go-back-to-your-country taunt.

The assault on Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, prompted immediate condemnations from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Baltimore Mayor Bernard C. Young and several other top Democrats.

But Trump’s advisers had concluded after the previous tweets that the overall message sent by such attacks is good for the president among his political base — resonating strongly with the white working-class voters he needs to win reelection in 2020.

This has prompted them to find ways to fuse Trump’s nativist rhetoric with a love-it-or-leave-it appeal to patriotism ahead of the 2020 election, while seeking to avoid the overtly racist language the president used in his tweets about the four congresswomen.

Campaign advisers and party officials, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that an appeal targeted at Trump’s white working-class base will not necessarily cost him moderate voters.

“The general assumption with everything Squad-related is this helps shore up our base. It definitely helps with white working-class voters,” said one person close to the campaign, using the term that refers to the four congresswomen. “I think that shows that this can be turned into a positive, in terms of a very political viewpoint.”

Publicly, campaign aides and advisers have sought to shift the conversation away from race and toward the less explosive territory of ideology. But they have also pushed back aggressively against charges of racism, seeking to make common cause with supporters who also feel they are too quickly branded as bigots.

“Usually, when they are faced with charges of racism, Republicans hide a little bit. And the president’s not hiding,” he said. “And I think that’s what the Republican voters like about him.”

“Republicans, for as long as I can remember in politics, we’ve all been called racists just because of our policy ideas,” said Kelly Sadler, a spokeswoman at America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC. “The Republicans who have been struggling with these criticisms want somebody to fight back. And the president now is reversing the game on the Democrats.”

Some Republican moderates have warned that Trump’s red-meat attacks and divisive rhetoric could turn off those voters, but party leaders point to polls showing Ocasio-Cortez and other liberal lawmakers as toxic among Republican voters.

Whether one considers the President's supporters as racist or not, it is clear they vehemently reject the label. Even if his rhetoric is racist it seems that in the minds of some people that by calling Trump's rhetoric racist amounts to calling his supporters racist.

And, some Trump opponents do openly call his supporters racist. That is a huge mistake. Trump opponents have to figure out a non-alienating way to deal with Trump's insulting, divisive rhetoric. Without wanting to downplay racism, which does exist in the US, it seems that the opposition needs to ramp up the sophistication of its messaging and responses to Trump's campaign strategy.

If the opposition fails to rise to this challenge, the incumbent might be re-elected in 2020.

B&B orig: 7/28/19