Democrats Should Be Very Quiet And Let People Get Mad At Trump On Their Own

Also: a personal announcement.

John Krasinski in the film Be Quiet Or The Aliens Will Hear You

I will never vote in another election where Donald Trump is on the ballot. None of us will. He’s going to be president for the next four years, unfortunately, and then, mercifully, he’s not going to be president ever again. There is certainty and finality in this.

I’m not optimistic about his presidency, but a mistake that bedeviled liberals the first time around was the belief that if we just were outraged enough, and marched enough, and tweeted enough, then he’d stop being president. When it dawned on everyone that that wasn’t the case, they turned their frustration to institutions that they expected to be responsive: the NYT, Facebook, Congress, etc…None of that was productive.

It seems to me that the story of American politics for the last few decades is one of thermostatic backlash. There is a backlash, and then a backlash to the backlash, and then a backlash to the backlash to the backlash, and then one day, you look back on your life and wonder where the time went? The smartest thing anyone can do politically is be as quiet as a mouse and wait for everyone to get mad at the other guy, as they invariably will if you don’t get in the way.

Many MSNBC-types are eager to make the case against Trump, but people don’t like them either. It seems like the better thing to do is for Democrats to wait for Trump to do something bad and unpopular. Then, they should say, “That was bad. “ In a few years, they should run against all the bad things. Throughout this process, they should do their best not to act hysterical.

If Trump doesn’t do anything bad and unpopular, this strategy won’t work, but it seems very unlikely that he will avoid doing bad and unpopular things, given every single thing we know about him. If he somehow does avoid those mistakes, while it might be a political problem for Democrats, it seems like a good problem to have because it will mean that the country is doing fine.

Democrats don’t need to wake the sheeple up. They are not capable of that. No one in the last decade has said, “You know, I used to like Trump, but then I saw a really compelling John Oliver monologue, and now I realize he’s bad.” The only person who can hurt Trump is Trump. Trump has done things himself over the years that have made people turn on him. But the #Resistance just reminds people that they aren’t terribly fond of the alternative to Trump, either.

A lot of Democrats think that conservatives are constantly convincing people to sell their souls to MAGA. I see no evidence of this, either. Biden became unpopular in the summer of 2021 when Trump was still in exile for January 6^th, and those numbers basically didn’t change for 3 years. When they did drop in June 2024, it was after a debate where he self-imploded and had brain fluid leaking out of his brain.

That debate is fascinating to revisit because, though Trump said a bunch of stupid things in it, he also demonstrated, for perhaps the one time in his entire life, the self-control to let Biden knock himself out. He saw that Biden was flailing, and there were lots of moments when he didn’t get in the way.

You can get in the way. Conservative pundits on social media constantly get in the way with me. I don’t like a lot of right-wing loudmouths online, and when I am exposed to their rants, I recoil. When they aren’t trying to convince me of stuff, I basically forget they exist, and return to my natural state of being frustrated by the left.

Nobody likes being told that the best thing they can do is be quiet, but sometimes you need to say, “Please proceed, governor,” and let your political opponent wander into a minefield.

Obama got it.