Saying “We Told You So” Won’t Win Congress Back. Here’s What Might…
Trump’s Still Delivering Every Day For The People Who Wanted Him To Simply “Shake Things Up”
Adam Davidson’s piece in the New Yorker, provocatively titled “Michael Cohen and the End Stage of the Trump Presidency” is an enjoyable read. Disturbing too, because it reflects a trend we’ve noticed among Liberal pundits recently (especially during this past week and this weekend): a certainty that Trump’s proven to be such a disaster that all we need to do now is sit back and watch him fall…
It’s just not going to happen that way. Or even if it does, settling into a new posture of self-satisfied certainty risks giving up too much ground if it doesn’t. (How’d that work for y’all back in 2016?) Thumbing noses at Trump supporters and saying “you see, there’s no doubt now that we were smarter than you, and our way is better”, is neither a path to Trump’s demise, nor victory in the Midterms.
All of a sudden, we’re finding the reemergence of huge blind spots.
What if that “miracle” many of us seem to have come to expect from the Mueller investigation, from the Cohen investigation, from (somehow, some way) Republicans in Congress coming to their senses, or something we don’t know about yet, never materializes?
The only thing that’s for sure is the fact that nearly 50 Republican Representatives are not running for reelection, and Democrats need a net gain of 23 to retake the House. Those numbers look promising. Especially if people don’t take the investigations for granted, get excited about voting, and work hard to make sure everybody who’s eligible to vote and wants to vote, can.
The surest way to beat Trump is, was, and will always be to serve him up a good old-fashioned shellacking, fair-and-square (and it’ll have to be more than fair-and-square due to Republican gerrymandering). No, Trump himself is not on the ballot this year, but Trumpism is.
And some of our Trump supporter friends have soured a bit, mainly because they find his way of running the country too chaotic, or find him just plain cruel. At the same time, if they get too worried about freedoms (guns) getting taken away or see an opportunity to repeal Roe vs. Wade, they may still vote for him and his party.
Since we hate when people just talk about what’s wrong with stuff without offering solutions, here are some things we’re doing, or are going to be soon, that you can do too, if you’re so inclined:
- Find a candidate who really inspires you. They don’t have to be from your district. The 2018 elections will be a national election, a coast-to-coast referendum on Democracy, not your typical Midterms. So if you’re a Democrat in a “safe” district, find a spot that’s competitive and start supporting a candidate there. It might not be as far away as you think.
- Ignore all the BS academic reports that keep coming out about how campaigning doesn’t change anybody’s mind. Of course it doesn’t. But that’s not what campaigning is about: it’s about getting people excited about getting out to vote!
- If you have a yard, put up a yard sign. This is something we might be a little obsessed about, but we think it’s an undervalued motivator. (Seeing tons of Trump yard signs in Pennsylvania and almost none for Hillary is one of the main reasons we predicted Trump was going to win). Because taking the trouble to put up a yard sign means you’re 100% going to vote for your candidate. A whole bunch of yard signs shows a whole bunch of momentum, and people like to back a winner.
And here are some resources you can use to start finding people and causes to support:
Let’s go out and do this!