One Last Closing Argument

My pitch for a final pitch

I’ve urged Democrats many times, over three elections, to use a very particular strategy of anticipating and articulating what Trump will say before he says it. He is famously predictable, and yet he always manages to shock, and the rubber-necking camera jerks backs to him, time after time. I contend that it would have stymied him over and over if we articulated the next onslaught to come. For example, if Hillary had said: “Now, I’ve just voiced some hard truths about my opponent, and this upsets him. So watch, he’s about to call me ‘nasty,’ because that his favorite adjective for any woman who disagrees with him.” Can’t you see Trump sputtering around for a different insult, furious at his mind being read, this man who imagines himself a brilliant off-the-cuff wit?

What we have done an even worse job of is articulating what’s going on in the mind of his supporters. There is an enormous amount of resentment from those who consider themselves overlooked and looked down upon by the bi-coastal elites who don’t understand them or their lives. This is partially true, in that most of us have real trouble grasping how they could be attracted to anything at all about a charlatan as obviously incompetent as Donald Trump. What we failed to do is imagine the emotional mindset that drove them to that point, and show them that we understood their thinking…