There is an important lesson amid all the handwringing over premature polls showing Donald Trump outperforming Joe Biden in hypothetical 2024 matchups. It’s a lesson that has received remarkably little recognition or acknowledgement, but it may ultimately turn out to be the most decisive factor next November. It’s not the state of the economy, which by virtually every measure is better now than when Trump left office. Nor is it President Biden’s age, which is not that much different than it was when Americans elected him to replace Trump in the first place. And it’s not the fact that in expressing his (somewhat qualified) support for Israel, President Biden’s statements since the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas may be at odds with the sentiments of many younger Americans, whose enthusiasm arguably secured not only Biden’s victory in 2020, but also subsequent Democratic successes in the 2022 and 2023 elections.
It’s the simple reality that given the passage of time, people tend to forget. In the case of Trump, who was rejected in 2020 by mostly the same people who’ll be voting in 2024, many people have simply forgotten just what was it about those four years of Trump’s noxious Twitter habit and his multitude of behavioral pathologies that so repelled them.
Brian Beutler is the senior editor of The New Republic. Writing for his Substack “Off Message,” he explains how this tendency by Americans to forget actually may be the singular factor that explains current polling. But more importantly, he lays out a convincing case that this is a reversible phenomenon.
As Beutler writes:
We spend a lot of our time around here talking about the tactics and strategies that might beat Trump, but I think we can best evaluate them not by testing how well they poll or whether they align with median-voter preferences but by assessing whether they’ll effectively slow or stall this process of forgetting. Trump has already disgraced himself 100 times over, the key is to make those betrayals, or even just a handful of them, feel raw.
Democrats might lose this twilight battle to drive Trump out of the body politic, and if they do, they’ll scour the devastation for the governing failure or political error that did them in. Was it inflation? Was it “wokeism”? Was it Biden’s age? But if it happened today, my money would be on this explanation: Their choices and emphases allowed the human process of forgetting to proceed as normal. And that in turn has allowed Trump to gain advantage, or narrow his disadvantage, on things like temperament and fitness for office that should be his defining liabilities.
Beutler’s point is that the constant stream of bile that Trump has exuded since his 2020 defeat has become dangerously routine, to the point that, for those Americans who are paying attention, ”over time and in silence, atrocities grow foggy and our anger over them dulls.” What is necessary to reverse that process is a deliberate campaign premised on reminding Americans just how awful Trump’s performance in office was, so that “re-lived, they can become indelible, like they just happened yesterday.”
Beutler observes that after President Biden’s inauguration the narrative naturally shifted from Trump’s awfulness in office, as Democratic voters in particular breathed a sigh of relief from what was, quite honestly, a harrowing and traumatic four years of malfeasance. He references “the petty corruption, the lying, the caged children, the injecting bleach,” and above all, the malignant response by Trump (and his fellow Republicans) to the COVID-19 pandemic, which irrefutably demonstrated Trump’s unfitness for office. He notes that immediately after Biden’s victory, the political right sought to sow doubts about Biden’s physical and mental acuity, and that narrative has become the primary reason why current polls reflect doubts about Biden’s capacity for a second term in office.
The administration has unwittingly fostered this false narrative by (sensibly) focusing on Biden’s successes, but failing to simultaneously counter it with repeated reminders about Trump’s own demonstrated incompetence and vileness. That vileness may be self-evident for those of us who closely follow politics, but its lack of emphasis has contributed to the natural process of forgetting that occurred with the rest of the American public who aren’t similarly attuned to Trump’s failures and are more concerned with the latest cost of groceries, their high rents, and the price of consumer goods, for example.
But the reality is that for most Americans the economy is doing pretty damn well. Yes, inflation is still present but it, along with gas prices (the perennial measure, apparently, of Americans’ discontent) is receding. Consumer spending is up. Employment levels are at unprecedented levels in blue and red states alike, and have been for quite some time. The stock market is doing well. Some Americans continue to struggle, of course, but the simple truth is they are not the majority. Beutler’s point is that through fear of being seen as insensitive to the valid concerns of a minority, Democrats can fall into the phony narrative being pushed by the GOP. As Bueller theorizes, “politics is more about information warfare and less about governing excellence than we might like.” In the current environment the Republicans are succeeding by pushing a line that is basically “bullshit” (such as the myth of the “$90 turkey” for example).
But, as Beutler observes, elections often turn on bullshit, and that is why, in 2024, the Democrats need to collectively reshape the information narrative. The way to do that is to remind voters very simply, very concisely, of what the process of time has caused them to forget, and not to get caught up in fears about how Republicans will react. The message, as Buetler puts it, is that ‘We’ve built the best American economy in 70 years, after Trump destroyed the last one,’ but it could just as easily be “Trump brags about overruling Roe v. Wade.”
And as 2024 approaches, Trump has shown he will provide Democrats with many, many opportunities that speak to his own unfitness of office. Beutler notes that when Trump characterized those who oppose him as “vermin,” virtually all in the media swiftly rose to condemn him as echoing Nazi propaganda. And that’s relevant, but the more important point is that those statements are wholly disqualifying for anyone who wants to occupy a position representing the needs of the American people. Just say that, over and over. Because, as Beutler notes, comparing Trump to Hitler feeds his need to create a sense of menace, and Trump relies on cultivating his menace as power.
As he writes:
He and everyone in his orbit derive juvenile pleasure when good people flinch at their provocations. They are much less happy when they get caught taking things too far. That’s when the artifice falls away, and they clam up like bullies who realize they’ve antagonized someone who can kick their asses. That’s when they start turning on each other.
Imposing across the board tariffs will destroy the U.S. economy and sink economic recovery? Just say it. Creating a system of midnight arrests and concentration camps to deport undocumented immigrants by the millions will tear the country apart? Just say it. Pursuing health policy that led to nearly 400,000 dead Americans? Just say it. Trump managed to destroy an economy whose success was due to the efforts of President Barack Obama? Just. Say. It.
Above all, remind your fellow Americans over and over again what Trump did in presiding over the most corrupt, malignant administration in our nation’s collective modern memory, culminating in an unprecedented attack by his followers on both our system of government and the idea of free and fair elections. That he tried to erase the considered verdict and votes of everyone who dared to call out his failure in the first place. Remind them what it was like to live every day in sheer dread of what this unbalanced pathology of a man had tweeted in the middle of the night, while doing nothing whatsoever for the vast majority of Americans. That his followers and those that support him have transformed into a vicious mob of hate-spewers pitted against everyone else.
And don’t waste time worrying about what Republicans will think or say when you do.
Dartagnan
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