There are people who think that Donald Trump is stupid. Well, yes and no. A stupid person doesn’t care about the deteriorating climate in the world. A stupid person doesn’t want people at the lower end of the social spectrum to have health care while claiming that they themselves are religious. A stupid person rapes the arts and humanities in America. A stupid person is a divider who tears America apart and lies like a rug. From that perspective, Donald Trump is stupid.
But from another perspective, Donald Trump is anything but stupid. Politically shrewd, he has figured out the American psyche and he is on his way to winning a second term. Like a very good chess player, he thinks six moves ahead. He watched the massive turnouts on what were certainly anti-Trump marches and struck back by announcing that he was running for President from the day of his inauguration. It is a brilliant strategy. We can expect to see thousands and thousands of Trump supporters filling giant hangers around the country on a regular basis. He’s still running against Hillary Clinton. We can expect to hear them yelling, “Lock her up” in unison. The networks will question the individual Trump rally participants from among those who Hillary once called the “basket of deplorables.” They’ll say predictable things like, “He’s bringing hope back to our country.” They’ll also say, “He’s making us safe.” They’ll also say, “He’s making America great again.” Naturally, if you gave them a lie detector test, you’d get that flat line showing that they actually believe what they are saying.
This technique of the never-ending campaign is brilliant. It may be evil but it is brilliant. That’s because the Democrats have no equivalent. Where are their airplane hangars? Indeed if they are going to fight a second Trump term they will have to put on their own rallies. But to do that they’ll have to develop a unified message and that means finding surrogates who can attract crowds. Some of the egomaniacs on the Democratic side who are not so subtly angling to run in 2020 will have to subsume their political needs to the greater good. If you know some of these characters you will know that they just ain’t gonna do that.
Okay, so assuming that they will not be able to get their act together, what should the Democrats do? If they are to compete with Trump they will have to stage rallies on the level of the Trump productions. So, here’s what I think. They could put some top people together and have them do a joint lollapalooza or they could find certain individuals who will surely draw the crowds. The Democrats have such people but a number of them won’t agree to do it. Certainly Bernie Sanders could put on such extravaganzas all over the country and the crowds would come out for him. Ditto, Hillary Clinton and maybe Elizabeth Warren.
Barak Obama would be hard to convince but he could certainly do it. He might argue that former presidents should not interfere with their successors but since Trump has done everything to malign him, it would be the natural thing to do. Similarly, we know that Michelle Obama says she doesn’t want to engage in politics but when you appeal to her patriotism she would do it, just as she did during the campaign.
The last thing they should do is haul out the same Democrats you see on the CNN or MSNBC panels. If they are going to do this, they really have to go with their best people and not the farm team. John McCain recently said that Trump’s war against the press is where dictators always get their start. This is deadly serious and the antidote to the approaching Fascism has to be put in place before it’s too late.
