#WTH Democrats ❤️ Trump

They just can't quit that "resistance" high

Apr 12, 2024

We’ve talked endlessly about why Republican voters support Donald Trump. Now let’s turn the spotlight on the Democratic Party, and its love affair with DJT. We had the Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim to talk about his piece on the topic.

LISTEN

Obviously, we can’t reduce the D-DJT love affair to just one element. But why choose? Like every lasting love affair, there are many dimensions to this beautiful marriage.

The feel good factor: You know how that certain someone gives you a little — forgive me Barack Obama — tingle? Donald Trump makes Democrats feel honest, worthy, virtuous, and yes, small “d” democratic. Once you’ve had a taste of that “resistance” high, it’s hard to give it up. Don’t underestimate this factor… Trump was a boon for D fundraising and party solidarity; and there’s nothing like someone else’s dysfunction to remind you that you’re good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. (Thank you Stuart Smalley.)
The narcissism factor: Let’s face it, Donald Trump likes to be the center of attention. And let’s also face the fact that Joe Biden does best when he isn’t the center of attention — in his basement, so to speak. As Marc likes to repeat, Joe Biden is the least popular president in the history of modern polling, beating the second least popular president, you guessed it… Donald Trump. Who better to have as your opponent than a man who cannot shut up, even when a judge tells him to?
The criminality factor: Sure, Hunter Biden looks to have some ethical problems. Yep, the Biden family seems to have traded on the name, the White House, the status, and all that grifty stuff. But you know who has real legal trouble? Donald Trump. 91 charges > Hunter selling influence to the Chinese Communist Party etc. You may not agree, for the Ds, Trump’s legal woes mean that Bidenco’s corruption is less of an election issue.
The beatability factor: It may not be a word, but you know what it means: The only Republican poor grampa Joe can beat is loony uncle Donald. This is solid, polled truth. In poll after poll, Biden lost to every other viable Republican (sorry Asa), and needs this particular opponent to have even a chance of keeping the White House.

There’s more here, but you get the picture. There’s a lot for the Ds to love in DJT. So much so that there’s a growing consensus that many of those Trump indictments were less about rule of law, and more about elevating Trump to the martyrdom status he so enjoys. Otherwise, why would the Dems be pouring so much money into MAGA races, seeking to elevate the Trumpiest of Trump’s allies into races across the country? Here’s the kicker, as Swaim tells us in the pod:

What I can't abide is Democrats then turning around and telling us that Trump and Trumpism mean the end of democracy and freedom and all that's good in the world. Which is it? Is helping Trump worth the risk of a few short-term political goals? Maybe. Or does helping Trump amount to a crime against democracy? I mean, it can't be both, right?

Then again, what’s a little hypocrisy among friends?

HIGHLIGHTS

Why do you think the Democrats miss the Trump years?

BS: The Trump years were pretty good for the left. During the first couple of years at least, I think donations to progressive nonprofits went up by tens of millions of dollars. That's one thing. Trump's admittedly idiotic rhetoric, I think, gave many people on the left -- activists for sure but politicians themselves, academics, entertainers -- a kind of moral license to break the rules, to break norms. And let's admit it, that's kind of fun. I mean, in some ways the left had the best of both worlds during the Trump years. On the one hand, they had significant political power and 90% of what I would call cultural power, the universities, the bureaucracies, the entertainment industry, all the rest.

On the other hand, they could make a plausible case that they were the embattled minority. The dictator had taken power. The progressives were on the run. He was going to crack down on press freedoms. Remember all that? He was going to turn federal agencies into arms of the Republican Party, et cetera, et cetera. And I think it was all very satisfying on a gut emotional level for many people, especially those in the political class.

What do you make of the Democrats funding MAGA candidates in GOP primaries?

BS: The sort of funding your opponents in this backhanded way of making it easier on you in the general, I'm not super offended by that. It's a little bit icky, but it's fair. If Republican voters are going to fall for it, that's on them.

What I can't abide is Democrats then turning around and telling us that Trump and Trumpism mean the end of democracy and freedom and all that's good in the world. Which is it? Is helping Trump worth the risk of a few short-term political goals? Maybe. Or does helping Trump amount to a crime against democracy? I mean, it can't be both, right?

How does this play into larger American distrust in both the media and politicians?

BS: I know people, and you probably do too, who are ordinary, prosperous, well-educated, upper-middle-class people. They've been successful in life. But something happened, and in some cases it happened in the Obama years, with regard to the media especially, and they no longer believe anything, any claim made by the media or the political class at all. Even stuff that's pretty easy to believe, and it is shocking to me.

Are people who don’t believe the media just dumb?

BS: They're not dumb, but they have concluded, not without reason, that everything being told to them by a term I don't like, commonly called the corporate media, is a complete lie. They're left without anything to believe except what looks unbelievable, looks outrageous. They figure that's probably true, and it's being covered up.

I think there are more people out there like that than anybody is appreciating at this point. That's why I think that RFK Jr. is maybe tapping into a component of the electorate that we have no idea is happening. That happened with Trump himself.

Amy Walter has an interesting article where she shows that, unlike Trump, Biden has not been able to convert anti-Trump voters into pro-Biden voters. Why do you think that is?

BS: I didn't read the article, but my first thought is that Trump is funny and Joe Biden is just not. There's not anything remotely funny about him. Even when he was on top of his game, he was more of a weirdo blowhard, whereas Trump has an amazing sense of timing with his jokes.

Years ago, I wrote a piece that I thought a weirdo, off-base piece that I thought would be embarrassing, but people loved it. Trump has a way of when he speaks, he will rearrange the words of his sentence so that in order to make the funny word the very last word in the sentence. If you listen to him, he does that a lot. It's a comedic timing thing.

Democrats, especially, constantly debate the primary system and whether there is a better way to nominate people to the general elections. Do we need a better way to nominate our leaders?

BS: Yeah, I think there's a tendency on the left to, as you say, they debate about the primary system more than Republicans do for a variety of reasons. So they have all these theories about how we can rearrange primaries. So for example, we could like a jungle primary, which they interesting. Liberals don't really like that term because they want it to be because a jungle primary is not a partisan primary in the traditional sense. If listeners don't know, all the candidates go into on one ballot and whoever gets the first, second or third or whatever the rules are, get to be in the general election, even if they're all three Democrats or all three Republicans.

So another reform is, what do you call it? Ranked choice. And that's another really complicated one where you have to not only say who you want to vote for, but who's your second choice and your third choice and your fourth choice. And then there are different rounds and people get eliminated and no one knows what's going on. And eventually you wind up with some candidate… And you wind up with some winner and only people who understand the primary system understand why they got it. And to my mind, these are all attempts to address a problem caused by an excess of democracy by piling on more democracy. I think that, so there's just a step back a second. There's an inherent problem with democracy, and that is who gets to be on the ballot? Democracy doesn't really answer that. And so we have a system of political parties and primaries to sort of decide who's on the ballot. Only in the 20th century did we start having everyone vote to put their favorite candidate on each party's ballot.

And before that parties decided who would be on the ballot. And people didn't like that because it was like smoke-filled rooms and cigar-chomping party bosses deciding who got on the ballot. But that system had one advantage over our current system, and that is that the party bosses tended to know who was more electable and who was less electable. And so we got rid of that system and now it's just a free for all.

Why couldn’t Nikki Haley beat Trump even though Trump is so unpopular?

BS: Nikki Haley's real problem was that she was too little of an ideologue. She just didn't have a coherent political message that she really needed to form and she had plenty of time to do it, but it still was just, hey, look at me. I am normal, I am not Trump, but that was almost it. I believe in traditional Republican things, but somebody is going to have to formulate a coherent message on the right in order to give these ideologues a go.

Read the transcript here.