Stop Sanewashing Him
Normalizing Trump is not a good strategy to win voters back.
On Tuesday, Trump proposed forcibly relocating the Palestinian population of Gaza and having the United States take over and develop the region. Today, a New York Times piece described Trump’s approach as unusual and far-fetched, but noted that he still deserves some credit for addressing an important problem.
“President Trump took the world aback with his declaration that the United States was going to ‘own’ Gaza and move out the Palestinians there to build ‘the Riviera of the Middle East.’ As unrealistic and bizarre as it may seem, Mr. Trump was pointing to a serious challenge: the future of Gaza as a secure, peaceful, even prosperous place.”
Translation: Trump proposes ethnic-cleansing-for-profit as the solution to the devastation in Gaza and we’re supposed to hand it to him for accurately observing that Gaza has been obliterated. The author goes on to quote an emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London who notes that “Trump picks up on a real problem, about how to reconstruct Gaza. The important thing with Trump is to pick out the real issues and deflect the stupid ones.”
I disagree. I’d argue what’s essential when dealing with wannabe autocrats who disregard the law and the rights of human beings is not to sanewash their fascistic solutions simply because they are framed as a response to real problems. Ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Gaza is not a legitimate way to secure peace in the region. Ransacking USAID and illegally freezing funds already approved by Congress is not a legitimate way to limit government spending and inefficiency. Focusing on the “real” problems, rather than the fact that the proposed solutions range from morally reprehensible to completely illegal, is dangerous. I also don’t think it’ll win us any elections.
Too many consultants and strategists in the Democratic Party have spent the past three months recommending that electeds not steer into the skid. Stay laser-focused on voters’ “top issues,” treat everything else as mere distractions. Several Democrats have publicly expressed willingness to collaborate with Trump on those top issues where possible. My argument as a pollster is to do the opposite. Stop legitimizing the stated goals and start resisting the tactics, especially because the stated goals are a farce. He and his cronies don’t want to reform, they want to break things.
Cooperating is an especially ill-conceived tactic when the argument is rooted in polling and what is or isn’t popular with voters. Poll numbers aren’t shelf-stable, they capture moments in time. When the numbers do move, it’s not in a vacuum. Media coverage drives salience, and political elites work to make things popular or unpopular. The vast majority of voters are not ideologues with coherent belief systems, they’re moveable based on framing. All of this means we should use polling strategically; none of this means we should act like hostages. We’re also way too quick to assume that because Trump won the election, most of his stances must be popular. It’s just not true. I dug into voters’ perceptions of his agenda in a recent poll fielded at the end of January among registered voters nationwide. Only 38% voters support banning transgender people from serving in the military. Only 37% support ending birthright citizenship. Only 32% want to make it illegal to send or obtain mifepristone, the abortion pill, through the mail. These ideas are popular with the MAGA base, and no one else.
When I conduct polls, I commonly ask voters to choose from a list what they think are the top problems with politics these days, and what solutions they think we need most. The two solutions that consistently rise to the top?
Leaders who are not just playing for their political team, who can move past labels like Democrat or Republican to deliver real results for American families
Leaders who will truly prioritize regular Americans over corporate profits
Trump violates both of these core values, but Democrats and media alike would do well not to misunderstand the first one. Making concessions to Trump and offering to partner in good faith with a fundamentally bad faith actor will not convince the voters we need to win over that we are putting them first. It’ll further entrench their cynicism that all politicians are the same and that all of our warnings about Trump were hyperbolic and disingenuous. It’ll also mean we’re failing to give voters a reason to choose us instead. A better place to start? Stop sanewashing him.