Reporters are always complaining that politicians never tell you what they’re really thinking. They tend to be slick and calculating. They always have something up their sleeve; we just never know what that thing is.
Donald Trump is the opposite.
He’s so crude and blunt that when reporters see him in action, it’s as if they’re staring at the sun. It burns so bright it stings the eyes.
I guess you’ve heard that the Orange Man is back at the center of the political universe, and, yes, he’s already burning everyone’s eyes.
He has moved so fast since being elected on Nov. 5 it’s hard to keep track. He’s filling cabinet posts as quickly as CNN and MSNBC are laying off staff. Whether one agrees with his moves or not, this frenzy of activity contrasts sharply with the sleep-inducing rhythms of the Biden-Harris years.
“Four years of the somnolent, garbled, and often out-of-sight Joe Biden, accompanied by the vacant and aloof Kamala Harris, had dulled the senses,” Matthew Continetti wrote in National Review Online (NRO). “By dawn Thursday [Nov. 14], some of us were beginning to recall the unrelenting nature of Trump’s first administration: a near-constant gale of news, hot takes, controversies, scandals, policies, personalities, and surprises.”
Say what you will about Trump, his return to the White House will certainly not dull the senses.
One of Trump’s character flaws that draws so much attention is his absence of any verbal filter. He’ll say whatever pops into his head, seemingly oblivious that his words will come back to haunt him.
And boy have they come back to haunt him:
“He said he’d be a dictator on day one!”
“He said there were fine people on both sides!”
“He said he’d punish his enemies!”
“He said there will never be another election!”
“He said there’d be a bloodbath if he loses!”
Now that he’s the president-elect, it will be his decisions more than his words that will rev up his opposition. Indeed, it’s already started.
“Donald Trump is planting the seeds of his own political demise,” David French wrote in The New York Times. “The corrupt, incompetent and extremist men and women he’s appointing to many of the most critical posts in his cabinet are direct threats to the well-being of the country, but they’re also political threats to Trump and to his populist allies.”
In a sign perhaps of wishful thinking, French warns that “if [Trump] can’t govern well, his populist partisan realignment will come apart before it can truly begin.”
Whether he governs well or not, one thing we can be sure of is that Trump’s tenure will continue his never-ending drama. Given this certainty of craziness, how should the Democratic party respond?
The easy answer is to continue the focus on resistance. Trump is sure to feed the media beast with daily servings of outrage. With control of Congress and a majority of the popular vote, he’s already showing signs that he plans to break things.
This is a trap for Democrats. Simply put, they cannot allow their revulsion at Trump to overtake their #1 priority, which is to rebuild their party.
The planets have not aligned for the Democratic Party. A confluence of events has led to a party in tatters. As things stand, they have no leadership and no unifying vision. The party of FDR, the beloved political home of so many American Jews, has lost its way.
It will be tempting for the Democratic ecosystem to spend the next few years bashing Trump– in the hope that there will be enough anti-Trump voters to put their party back in power, or at least help it win the mid-terms in 2026.
But that still won’t answer the essential question: What do the Democrats stand for in this new era of consumer anxiety and social disruption?
Can they take back the mantle of “the party of the people,” which used to be theirs until they came to be seen as the party of the elites and of identity politics?
Democrats can continue their resistance to Trump and hold his feet to the fire, but that won’t be enough. What America needs is a resurgent Democratic party supremely relevant to the mainstream needs of the nation.
What the party needs is its Rosh Hashanah moment, the time of year when we take stock of our lives, when we look back honestly at what we have done wrong and make goals for the year to come.
This is what our tradition calls heshbon hanefesh, a deep reflection, literally “an accounting of the soul.” That accounting will be wholly independent from the blinding drama that is sure to come out of the White House.
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