Seriously, Democrats. You sent out a Kennedy?
Donald Trump gave a pretty good State of the Union speech. He’s still Donald Trump, of course. But if you’re wondering how the Democrats could do so badly against such a man, their response to his address suggests it’s partly that they practise a lot.
My purpose here is not to discuss Trump’s remarks, which have been thoroughly assessed from all sorts of angles. Except to cite an observation attributed to Abraham Lincoln that a pioneer woman watching her husband fighting a bear outside their cabin need not shout alternately “Go husband” and “Go bear” to have a good idea how the fight is going.
Lots of people so dislike Trump that they cannot notice or acknowledge that he has done a thing right, let alone done the right thing. People sought a more conciliatory tone and he delivered, perhaps hypocritically but surprisingly effectively. You don’t have to applaud it to admit it. But you have to admit it to respond effectively.
The Democrats did not. Their formal response to the president’s speech was of course written beforehand, inauthenticity being a contemporary political art form, and made no effort to match his tone. Trump’s detractors have yet to grasp that part of his appeal, even among some who disagree with what he says or how, is precisely that he is one of the increasingly rare public figures who isn’t slickly and predictably packaged.
Moreover t hey picked a Kennedy to deliver this canned, grating response. Which is also a problem, because even if Massachusetts Congressman Joe Kennedy III is a brilliant, sensitive rising star with gleaming lips, part of Trump’s appeal was draining the swamp, and going with a dynasty may not be the most “woke” response. Certainly Kennedy’s speech wasn’t.
The first thing he did, after saying hello, was praise immigrants. And hey, my mother was one. But ( a) it was blatantly partisan and ( b) Trump’s opposition to uncontrolled immigration helped him win the presidency. I’m not asking Democrats to hide or abandon their convictions. But they need to understand what is and what is not popular about their party, and try to persuade where a majority is not with them. Berating and smugness on the wrong issues sure didn’t work in 2016.
Kennedy then claimed it was hard to face the state of the union when “Many have spent the last year anxious, angry, afraid” because “We see an economy that makes stocks soar, investor port-
IN SHORT, IF YOU LIKED TRUMP’S DIVISIVENESS, WE HAVE MORE.
folios bulge and corporate profits climb but fails to give workers their fair share” and “An all- out war on environmental protection. A justice department rolling back civil rights by the day. Hatred and supremacy proudly marching in our streets. Bullets tearing through our classrooms, concerts and congregations …”
Dude. People rightly condemned Trump’s inaugural address “American carnage,” his bleak and discouraging wasteland of i nner city poverty traps, rusted-out factories, failing schools, crime and drugs. So now you go there, and blame it all on the rude moron you somehow booted an election to?
Even more importantly, Congressperson, people did not suddenly become anxious, angry, afraid when Trump was elected. Your Bernie Sanders base may have. But Trump himself rode a long wave of anxiety and sense of exclusion that gathered force during the Obama years, rightly or not. Including among voters who delivered Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to the GOP for the first time since Reagan’s handoff to Bush Sr. You need to hear them, to restore your political fortunes and help heal the nation.
Instead Kennedy pounded the progressive drums for gay marriage, Muslims, the transgendered and Black Lives Matter, addressed the “Dreamers” in Spanish and said “today that ( American) promise is being broken by an administration that callously appraises our worthiness and decides who makes the cut and who can be bargained away.”
In short, if you l i ked Trump’s divisiveness, we have more. But if Trump is as bad as you say, you should beat him easily and scorn to imitate him.
Again, I do not ask Democrats to forget their principles or obscure the outlines of their own American dream. But especially on this occasion, which is meant to be unifying and to which Trump incongruously managed to rise at least some distance, it was the wrong speech, partisan and bitter.
Perhaps its most alienating flaw was its reflexive, unreflective, unrelenting embrace of identity politics, inherently divisive however phrased and a massive political liability to the current left. As Janet Daley wrote in The Daily Telegraph, giving only qualified praise to Trump’s State of the Union, “the cleverest line of the speech” was “Americans are dreamers, too.”
If the Democrats cannot articulate that idea, and understand that you can be progressive without obsessing over skin colour or sex, they can rely on many more opportunities to practice emotionally satisfying opposition addresses.