If Trump Had Won the Democratic Ticket
Understanding the 35% that will never abandon him
It’s April 2011, the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, and Donald Trump is sitting stiffly while the leader of the free world mocks him before an auditorium full of celebrities, politicians, and power brokers. As Obama rolls through one eviscerating punchline after another and the laughter reaches a crescendo, Trump’s emotions reach a breaking point. “I’ll show him. I’ll show everyone! I’ll become president, and then we’ll see who’s laughing.” Later that night before going to not-sleep he calls his buddy, Nixonian dirty trickster Roger Stone, to announce his decision, wherein Stone replies, “Finally! Now we can get to work putting you in the White House on the DNC ticket.”
Now, bear with me for a moment.
I admit that since 2011 or so, the notion of Trump running as a Democrat is far-fetched, but after the political reality of the past two years, we’ve had day after day of the unthinkable, of the new low, of the disqualifying gaffe (remember that word?), and now here we are. The unthinkable is very much fully possible, and perhaps even more likely if we never allow for its possibility. But more salient here is to experience how a celebrity con man can blindly grasp his way into the world’s most powerful office and lock you (or maybe your less well-informed friends) into supporting him. It happened to half the country, why can’t it happen to you? So let’s get started.
Here in the bright and sunny summer of 2017, in real reality, far-right conservatives slam Trump for his worst attribute. No, not his misogyny, not his racism, not his short attention span, not his tenuous grasp of reality, not his treasonous collusion with an enemy power or a dozen other gravely serious issues. No, the far-right is most upset that Donald Trump is… not even a real conservative! And they’re right. After all, for quite a while Trump was happy to play both sides to his advantage. He bragged about giving money to the Clintons. He has pictures hanging out with them. And politically, he has gone on record advocating for pretty much everything and its opposite, whether abortion, taxes, American military intervention, or Rosie O’Donnell. Trump’s only interest is in playing to his audience. He’ll say anything, and we know this because it was his political strategy. Basically he says different things until he hits on something. Like a stand-up comic, he sticks with it while trying out new material. Then he tries out new material and, if the audience starts to slip, he reverts to the thing that worked before. He doesn’t have a deliberate platform that anyone actually thought about. His points are the result of evolution with generations as long as a sentence. This is why nothing he says makes sense or connects with anything else. And this is how he would have captured the DNC ticket.
So let’s bounce over to our flipped reality’s 2014. Roger Stone, salivating over the opportunity for some prime ratfucking, advises Trump to hit up the Rust Belt and go on some rallies. The crowds are filled with laid-off factory workers, the sons of former union men. They used to be solid Democrats but now they’re on the fence. Hillary Clinton espouses the usual neoliberal free trade lines and throws in a few wonky bones that no one goes for. Bernie Sanders is invisible to the press. What Trump says, meanwhile, sounds a lot like what he says now, but with a few adjustments. No more crappy trade agreements! Screw those paper-shuffling Goldman Sachs types and their tax breaks! Here too, Trump asks African-Americans what they have to lose, but this time the message lands. Immigration gets a wink and a nod, depending on the crowd. Guns go unmentioned, but he calls up Wayne LaPierre and reassures him something good is coming down the pike, like national concealed carry or lifting restrictions on full autos or God knows what. Religious extremism gets a smackdown, and Middle America reads it as a Muslim ban while the coasts desperately want to hear it as a stand against fundamentalism in general. Obamacare is suddenly a good thing, obliquely referred to now as “that Care Act”. In this flipped reality, Actual Conservatives continue to lose their minds, further bolstering Trump’s cred with the left. He tries out more lines. Some stick, some don’t. Trump continues ad libbing, getting a bite on legalized marijuana, losing the crowd on bombing Syria, and generally feeling out his audience while being incoherent enough to not actually be held to anything. Scrupulous leftist column writers call B.S. and, never great with a phrase, label themselves the Trumper Dumpers. No one cares.
Meanwhile, the establishment right has a full-on freakout. In both realities, they see this madman for exactly the threat to the species that he is. But unlike in real reality, in our flipped reality the right actually tries to do something about it. Not to be outflanked on the nuttiness spectrum, the RNC gives the nod to respected statesman Sarah Palin. She promptly pulls Ted Nugent for the ticket while giving little hints of Santorum for the Supreme Court bench. Dan Savage fans everywhere giggle.
The trap is now set. The left is faced with an obvious madman who actually talks about issues they care about and, who knows, might be crazy enough to carry them out. “But at least he’s our madman,” they rationalize, and in any case the alternative somehow is worse. Sympathetic producers of Access Hollywood, sensing the gravity of the moment, burn their tapes. The vast majority of coastal leftists fall into line, voting for the lesser evil and overlooking pretty much everything Trump has ever done. A harder core populist-leftist contingent coalesces around His Orangeness, the group being made up of an uncomfortable coalition of Black Bloc types and ex-union dudes who are suddenly remembering their red roots. The two groups admire each others’ improvised weaponry while swooning to Trump’s hang-the-bankers harangues. Cheap beer is enjoyed by all.
The election can’t come soon enough, but when it does, Trump makes it over the line. Everyone outside the US and Russia is floored. The left looks forward to the jobs coming back and the washing of the streets with bankers’ blood, maybe metaphorically, maybe not. Of course, due to gerrymandering the GOP still owns Congress (anything less would make this story too implausible). Trump petulantly begins issuing directives. He assembles a tight team designed to immediately self-immolate. Nothing gets done. Trump blames the media, turns inward, and starts rattling off bizarre tweets.
And that brings us to the present in our flipped reality. If you’re on the left, maybe you stayed home on Election Day. Maybe you actually did the right thing and voted the Palin/Nugent consensus reality ticket. But more likely you held your nose and voted for Trump. Why? Because for a certain contingent of America, voting for the other side is unthinkable. It’s just not in the realm of possibility. The other side is evil and hates freedom. The other side wants to tell us what to do, wants to deprive us of our rights, wants to destroy the country. The other side wants to take all our money and give it to people who don’t deserve it. The other side wants to create special rights for a special class of people. No matter how bad our side gets, no matter how detached from reality or incompetent or unfit for office our leader clearly is, allowing the other side to win would be the literal death of our country. The political fight is a cold civil war, and that dastardly other side is willing to lie as much as necessary through through a colluding, biased media to bring the whole country down.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Those on the left who want to understand how anyone could continue to back Trump now, here in real reality (such as it is), would do well to remember how they felt during the Clinton “scandals” of the last three decades. The relentless attacks, the investigations, the accusations of cynical and unethical behavior, all of it leading to nothing substantive. The left understood the sole purpose of these attacks as an attempt to impede their goals. Meanwhile, the right wondered for so long how the left could possibly see what the Clintons were doing and continue to support them. But it’s the same thing now: how the left and right felt then is how the right and left feel now.
Why is this important? This was a fun exercise but it leads to a crucial point: having empathy for the other side is absolutely essential to getting what we want. This isn’t merely an abstract, hand-wavy concept, nor is it a huggy-feely attempt at excusing the actions of the other. Rather, this is the deep concept behind Sun Tzu’s exhortation to know your enemy. Sure, it allows you to anticipate their moves, and it informs you as to which strategies pry upon their weak points. But most important is that it enables you to prevent the other from resisting in the first place. The point is not to overpower your enemy but to get them to realize that their goals align with your own. This is, of course, the highest form of excellence in warfare.
Bringing this back into the realm of the practical and specific, consider for a moment the following. Everyone loves the environment. After all, everyone lives in it, and without it everyone would promptly die. So who would you expect to be the stronger environmentalists? City dwellers stuck in their cars and offices? Or rural types who go into the fields and rivers, hunting and fishing and eating what they catch? Would you expect secular materialists with visions of science and space to care more about the earth, or creationists who believe the Lord made them stewards of the land? Conservative values hew so closely to conservation, and yet actual conservatives side monolithically with companies that would level every mountain in West Virginia if it could net them a profitable quarter. Why?
It’s because the leftist environmentalist movement comes off as a bunch of hippy-dippy know-it-all douchebags. They do not appeal to conservatives on their own terms. And to do that, leftists need to see things from the conservative perspective. Instead of going on about Gaia and tree-hugging, the left needs to remind the right that the Lord put the earth in their care. Instead of telling the right they cannot drive big trucks or use lead in their guns, the left should be emphasizing American-made biodiesel and ammo that won’t poison bald eagles. And instead of keeping coal miners and lumberjacks out of work, the left should be talking about all the great jobs in forestry maintenance, conservation tourism, and wildlife culling.
This is only one example, but the principle is broadly applicable. Approaching people with respect and understanding their values and needs is absolutely crucial. Talking to people on their own terms and within their own logic is really the only way to get people to want to work with you. The alternatives to persuasion are coercion and force. Instead of wasting energy in a political shoving match, how much easier would it be to simply jiujitsu your way to the desired result with nice, cheap words? This is the power of empathy, and this is the only way we will be able to keep our country together while facing the many grave challenges of the 21st century.
