Trump’s antic, distracted, seat-of-the-pants presidency blusters on, making news on so many fronts that the result is not really news, but a sort of anti-news — in the sense that it could be reversed or cancel itself out at any moment.
Tariffs come and go; the deal to end all deals with Russia over Ukraine came and went; the vow to end the war in Gaza is as if it had never been made; Canada, Panama, Greenland, an Iran “deal”: whither? Musk is riding high, he’s withdrawing, he’s back, he’s gone; he and Trump are over, the media and social media convulse in sound and fury, all of it signifying… what exactly? Cabinet secretaries prove their authenticity by their lack of merit, then don white coats of anti-expertise and proceed to euthanise the “deep state”.
After months of turbulence, the sensation of being tossed about in a heaving sea gives way to the feeling of being rocked insensate. Behold the new American dynamic: the frenetic-anesthetic. And yet it seems that behind nearly every outrageous policy announcement is one ultra-mundane goal, cruel as its consequences often are: to save money. Has there ever been an autocratic regime whose principal instrument of terror was to withhold funds? Isn’t that what parents do?
Cecil Rhodes declared: “I would annex the planets if I could.” Trump would monetise them. To hell with even the pretext of la mission civilisatrice. Civilisation merely gets in the way. So do politics and policy. When Max Weber observed the disenchantment of the modern world, he had no idea a Trump would rob science and reason themselves of their power and replace them with business. Trump’s deals, after all, require little wit, culture, intellect, knowledge. Or politics. Or policy. That’s all liberal elite stuff. The President’s diehard supporters, convinced they have been swindled for generations by puffed-up eggheads with no vitality below the waist, are delighted.
The only constant in Trump’s scatter-brained reign is his self-promotion as he sells the American presidency off, bit by bit, in cryptocurrency. His face now appears on a giant banner hung over the front of the Department of Agriculture (of all places). More banners, to be draped over other public buildings, are said to be in the works. He posted a picture of himself as Pope. He is throwing a nearly $50 million military parade to celebrate his birthday this month. At a recent Oval Office meeting, the President of the United States was hawking hats that said “Trump Was Right About Everything!” Enthralled by the idea of war, though averse to an actual war, he is, incredibly, sending thousands of troops, spy planes and two warships to the border with Mexico. But don’t generalissimos take land, like Putin, instead of keeping people out of it? Well that’s where Greenland comes in.
And yet it seems that the massive military presence on the border, like the illegal deportation of immigrants to other countries, and the abduction of foreign students off American streets, and the threat to suspend habeas corpus — that it is all simply meant to fascinate Trump’s followers, and to terrify his critics. You could be next, citizen status or not. Thuggery with a policy-face.
Trump straddles America in the manner of an erotic asphyxiation. The choke-release-choke-release rhythm of his tariffs characterises the dynamic of his regime. He brings the country close to some type of crisis that will bring relief through clarity, releases, then tightens his grasp again. Just when you fear Trump is going to come through on his administration’s threats to suspend habeas corpus, the cornerstone of American liberty, he posts an insult to Taylor Swift, then follows that with a threat to Bruce Springsteen, who had been critical of Trump. What is the word for disgust mixed with relief? There is no word for that. All the cascading historical analogies aside, there has never been, as Trump himself might say, a phenomenon like this: malevolence, ignorance, greed and open corruption moving together in seamless harmony in a still-functioning democracy.
At this point, the question of opposition to Trump is moot. The Democrats hold powerless minorities in Congress. Sanders and AOC rallies attract mere low tens of thousands of the faithful. The civil rights March for Jobs and Freedom on Washington in 1963 drew hundreds of thousands of people; so did the 1967 March on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. Today, everyone is on their screens. And the media would rather obsess over the former president’s afflicted prostate than seriously and steadily address the current president’s corrupt and unstable mind.
“The media would rather obsess over the former president’s afflicted prostate than seriously and steadily address the current president’s corrupt and unstable mind.”
Something has to give, and it’s this: the Democratic and democratic opposition has to abandon its educated reserve, its decorous outrage. It has to adopt a post-apocalyptic strategy. It has to begin, as Trump began, outside norms, beyond bounds, and from scratch, “lie down where all the ladders start”. Heaven knows, the Democratic Party has unlimited wealth, as Kamala Harris’s candidacy showed. They have the means to start from scratch.
The first thing they can do, then, is act like what they have become, a government-in-exile, and not like a gaggle of atomised, disconnected elected officials. They need to hold a weekly, if not daily, press conference that mirrors the form of those mind-blowing news conferences led by Trump’s fealty-bot, Karoline Leavitt. They need, first of all, a press-secretary-in-exile who will present a perfect counterpoint to Leavitt: earthy, unscripted, independent, funny, honest, open and not on the verge of exploding.
Now, the opposition’s press secretary has to be the face of something. Obviously the Democrats are not about to choose the representative of their party at this juncture. There is too much ambition, too much rivalry. And that’s what primaries are for. Let them, in lieu of that, settle on a quorum of a few figures whose steady presence will establish itself, regular press conference after regular press conference, in the mind of the public. Let them start with Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor of red Kentucky, a promising hybrid of (seemingly) true Christian morality, broad and deep liberal sentiments, and almost earthy American rectitude. Bring in Tim Walz, Ruben Gallego (and try to win back Hispanic voters from Trump) and Connecticut senator Chris Murphy.
Naturally our quorum will insist that they would never question the authority of an elected president. This will establish the morality of their challenge to the authority of this American president. The goal is to fascinate, as Trump has fascinated. You do that by making the act of watching you, and listening to you, an original experience.
Jettisoning any association with celebrities will help — how depressing that for liberals the fact that Biden didn’t recognise George Clooney at a crowded dinner is the definitive proof of his mental decline. The Left needs ordinary-seeming figures like Trump — but with substance and principle — to outperform Trump’s self-burlesquing swagger and rise to the outsize audacity and originality that celebrities are so good at counterfeiting.
Most crucial — and controversial — of all: at a time when the least powerful people are in danger of losing access to food, medical care and basic income thanks to the big, beautiful bill, this is no time for empty symbolism. No time for another Kamala Harris. The fact is that Trump and his white MAGA legions are the response to black Obama. It’s almost as simple as that. So, appalling and even repellent as it might sound, in 2025, the Democrats are going to have to steel themselves and keep it, mostly, white. For now. If you want to defeat the MAGA obscenity that regards blacks as inferior, Jews as sinister, immigrants as “vermin”, women as wombs and housekeepers, run circles around it. It’s not pandering. It’s what the Chinese call “Chi Sau”, the trick of using an opponent’s force against them. (They do it surpassingly well, especially when the opponent obliges at almost every turn.)
I write — or so I flatter myself — as an Old Left, cosmopolitan Jewish intellectual who would want nothing more than to see a Ras Baraka/Elizabeth Warren — or vice versa — ticket. (Baraka, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, is, to my mind, the most original and authentic politician in America.) I also write at a time when Harris, who lost both the electoral and the popular vote to Trump is, mind-bogglingly, leading in polls for who should be the Democratic candidate for president in 2028. This will only lead to certain defeat again. So make like the Trojan Horse, and find a white candidate who will empower America’s diversity instead of a token candidate who will pay lip service to the “rainbow” and betray it in the end. See what happens. If the Democrats sweep the midterms, then, by all means, open the doors to politicians of every stripe. Just be sure to elevate the content of character over the self-flattering pieties of identity politics. Harris didn’t lose because she was a woman of colour. She lost because that’s all she was.
Liberal pundits repeat, ad nauseam, the cliché that what people want from the Democrats is “ideas” and “vision”. They want to know what Democrats “stand for”. But in this moment, people want nothing of the kind. People want big, baggy, flattering and unthreatening concepts like “make America great again” that they can fit all their ordinary feelings and frustrations and aspirations into. They don’t want “ideas” about what other people “stand for”. If people wanted “ideas” showing what other people “stand for,”, they’d be forming human cordons around Harvard and Columbia. They want stories bursting with vivid, clarifying, and, yes, entertaining sentiments. They want people in government they can imagine relaxing with. Give them someone they can relax with who isn’t an unhinged buffoon.
“Give them someone they can relax with who isn’t an unhinged buffoon.”
Trump once spoke of his intention to make every day of his presidency an episode in a TV drama. He has succeeded at that, brilliantly. The Democrats must do the same. They must start pouring all their dollars into the one strategy that will save the republic: an ongoing story that will reflect Americans’ ordinary feelings, frustrations and aspirations. A story that will, all at once, refute Trump’s, push it into the margins, and offer a riveting, satisfying alternative.
Here is an idea for a timid time of no ideas: an epic campaign commercial to end all campaign commercials. Something, unfolding in episodes, that will run, day after day, for months. It will have a representative American personality at the heart of it. An everyman for our time. It will tell an ongoing story, episode after episode, about this fictional, exemplary figure as he passes through his days and nights on earth. Screen it on TV, cable, TikTok or somewhere new, and show him suffering from illness, striving to make a living, worrying about his children, sacrificing for his children, confused and concerned about the future, celebrating life’s small triumphs and enduring life’s setbacks. Make the exemplary figure a male because, well, that is now the decisive segment of the American electorate.
Construct this episodic epic the way a great story is constructed: conflict, suspense, resolution. In this mad, unfocused time, give people the inherent rationality of a tale; make them focus intensely on something that will be dear to their own experience; that will gather up and order the loose ends of these chaotic days. In every respect, structure it like a simple, straightforward story. A tale that anyone would tell anyone else at a bar, in a park, on a train.
Amid the narrative arc tell other stories: show Trump boasting, Trump spewing middle-school insults and abuse, Trump hawking Teslas on the White House Lawn; Trump cavorting with the wealthy and the powerful; Trump contradicting himself; Trump barking at Zelensky; Trump’s regime fawning all over him; Trump allowing his insecurity to erupt when asked to respond to the charge that “Trump Always Chickens Out” (the fragility of his ego is breathtaking); Trump golfing, golfing, golfing — all of this as the Main Character struggles, suffers, grieves, endures.
A mortal life is a tale; the opposition has to return to life and tell a simple, undogmatic, non-didactic, existentially gratifying tale.
D.H. Lawrence wrote about the power of novels to tell stories: “They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.” Like it or not, a tremulating tale got America into this mess. A better tremulating tale might help get us out of it.
