USA TODAY International Edition
‘ Blame China’ is new ‘ Build the Wall’
Biden won’t beat Trump on substance
In 2016, Donald Trump fueled his improbable presidential victory with an arsenal of catch phrases designed to incite and excite the Fox News and Breitbart audiences who live in fear of America’s diversity and inevitable demographic changes. “Make America Great Again” and “Build the Wall” were staples of Trump’s road show. As the 2020 campaign comes into focus, Trump is looking to recreate his success by refreshing his xenophobic rhetoric and channeling it toward China.
The coronavirus has presented the president with an adversary unlike any other he has confronted. It cannot be intimidated by angry tweets. It cannot be dismissed with a nickname. It cannot be diminished by calling it a “hoax,” as he did in February. And as the death toll rises while Trump’s poll numbers fall, a new, old strategy is taking shape.
Candidate Trump declared that Mexico was “sending people that have lots of problems” to the United States. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” he claimed. He declared that “they’re taking our jobs. … They’re taking our money,” creating an “us- vs- them” dynamic to justify his foray into anti- immigrant hate speech.
Trump and his Republican enablers are now offering the country what amounts to a remix of 2016, this time replacing Mexico with China. On April 18, the president tweeted, “China wants Sleepy Joe sooo badly. They want all of those billions of dollars that they have been paying to the U. S. back, and much more. Joe is an easy mark, their DREAM CANDIDATE!” He has kept it up with a barrage of Chinathemed attacks on Biden, Democrats and the media, including a tweet Sunday about his “very early BAN of people from China” vs. the “Obama/ Sleepy Joe disaster known as H1N1 swine flu.”
Blame, fear and ‘ Beijing Biden’
Following Trump’s lead, the campaign arm for Senate Republicans circulated a 57- page memo that instructed GOP candidates to “attack China” and to attack Democrats for being “soft on China.” The memo pointedly says, “China caused this pandemic by covering it up, lying, and hoarding the world’s supply of medical equipment.”
During her first White House news briefing, spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany reiterated the president’s “displeasure with China” and defended his statements that he has a “high degree of confidence” that the coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, directly contradicting an onthe- record statement from his own intelligence community.
The Trump campaign has even started referring to the presumptive Democratic nominee as “Beijing Biden.” Trump’s China rhetoric went to the extreme during his Fox News town hall event last week, when he falsely attacked Biden’s son, Hunter: “China just had a field day with our country. And then you look at his son, walking out with $ 1.5 billion — give me a break on that.” To date, there is no evidence of Hunter Biden accepting money from China.
The Republican playbook for 2020 can be summed up in two words: blame and fear. It’s the same playbook as 2016. The message then: Mexico is to blame for taking jobs and flooding our country with drug dealers and rapists. They believed this message would create enough anger and fear to get Trump elected president of the United States, and it did. The message now: China has stolen millions of American jobs and is to blame for creating the coronavirus pandemic.
If former Vice President Biden and the Democratic Party are going to avoid a repeat of 2016, they need to understand that the Republican messaging machine is simple, ruthless and disciplined. This election, like the one before it, will not be won or lost on who has the best plan for education, climate change, debt, housing, social injustice, income inequality, affordable housing, national security or any other important policy issues discussed in the Democratic primary. If the general election were about substance, qualifications and details, Trump would not be in the Oval Office right now.
Thoughtful can’t win 2020
Much to the agitation and exasperation of the political pundit class, Trump’s appetite for lying and espousing utter nonsense has only intensified throughout his first term. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard my fellow commentators ask aloud, “When are people going to figure it out and dump this guy?” The answer is, they won’t, unless Democrats are willing to become as aggressive, vicious and consistent as the Republicans are.
Let me be clear, I am not suggesting that Democrats adopt the Trumpian tactic of outright lying to the American people about everything. What I am saying is, Democrats need to hone a message that is as easy to communicate as “build the wall” or “blame China.” Being thoughtful, deliberate and measured is nice, but we tried that in 2016 and look what happened.
If we are going to ask the American people to change the channel in 2020, we need a direct and succinct appeal that cuts through the noise and reaches them on a human, personal level. Say what you want about the politics of fear and anger, more often than not, they work. What is our counter to that?