THE STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH AS ROADMAP

TRUMP PREVIEWS HIS 2020 CAMPAIGN  

    

President Trump’s recent State of the Union speech won’t go down in history as an oratorical masterpiece dripping in eloquence or as a marker of a great change in his style of governance. Trump’s feeble attempt at soaring rhetoric that would unify the country fell flat. His speechwriters gave him, especially at the end, the right words. The way Presidential speeches go over, however, depends on the

President’s credibility in delivering the message the writers put on the page. Trump lacks credibility for giving a unifying speech because he’s been so devoted to division. Still, his speech was significant. It laid out his 2020 campaign strategy and showed the nation his view of his path to reelection.

Trump presented three themes his campaign will feature: an attack on Democrats as “socialists,” an unending focus on illegal immigration, and painting himself as the victim of partisan witch hunts disguised as oversight investigations. The House chamber wasn’t Trump’s typical campaign rally venue, but the speech told us what we’ll see at his rallies in 2019 and 2020. 

The Socialism Boogeyman

Trump claimed, “America was founded on liberty and independence, not government coercion, domination, and control,” then said “we renew our resolve  that America

Sanders at Trump speech Jan2019

will never be a socialist country.” As the President spoke those words, the television cameras showed Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, a self-described “Independent Socialist” who caucuses with Democrats in the Senate and who took Hillary Clinton to the wire for the Democratic nomination in 2016. Everyone assumes Sanders will run again in 2020.

It wasn’t just Sanders Trump had in mind with his attack on “socialism.”  Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, California Senator Kamala Harris, and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, all announced Democratic candidates, have, to varying degrees, endorsed at least some of Sanders’s agenda – a single payer health care system, free college, a much higher minimum wage, and increased taxes on the wealthy. Aside from specific programmatic positions, nearly all Democratic hopefuls have signaled they will make income inequality a theme of their 2020 campaigns. 

Trump’s attack, now, on “socialism” likely means one of two things (or both). He believes impulses in the electorate will make even voters who don’t like him hold their noses and vote for him out of fear of something that naturally repulses most Americans. Alternatively, Trump understands the appeal of some of the “socialist” ideas Sanders and other Democrats support and he knows he must drive down public support for those ideas. Polls show, at least in the abstract, considerable public acceptance of a Medicare-for-all health care system, a higher minimum wage, increased taxes on the rich, and other left- of – center policy proposals. Whichever Trump believes – and the concerns are not mutually exclusive – he saw the need for starting that campaign theme now.

           

        

Hordes at the Border

Trump tried in the 2016 midterms claiming massive caravans of Central American immigrants threatened a stampede at

the southern border. The threat never materialized and Republicans lost the House, though they slightly expanded their Senate majority. Despite evidence to the contrary, in the State of the Union speech, Trump again raised the specter of massive assaults on a vulnerable U.S.-Mexico border. “As we speak,” he said, “large organized caravans are on the march to the United States.” Fear of those hordes makes, in Trump’s view, building a wall necessary. He shut down the government for a record 34 days (and might do it again) over wall funding.

The State of the Union speech made clear how much Trump will focus on fear of border intrusion during his reelection campaign. Trump said, “The lawless state of our Southern Border is a threat to the safety, security, and financial well-being of all Americans.”

Even if some of the country has grown tired of Trump’s

obsession with a wall and illegal immigration, no one should under estimate how much the issue means for his hardcore supporters. He hasn’t delivered on his signature campaign promise of a wall and his policy of dividing asylum-seeking parents and their children at the border appalled even some Trump backers. He must keep talking about immigration and keep suggesting the only way his base can realize its investment in him is reelecting him for a second term.

                

Poor Pitiful Me

In the immediate aftermath of the State of the Union speech, many commentators emphasized Trump’s not-so-veiled threat that he won’t work with Congress – especially

the Democratic House – on legislation if Congress investigates him. “If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation,” he said. “It just doesn’t work that way.” Leaving aside the utter untruth of that assertion, the fact he made this so prominent a part of the speech suggests Trump plans on attacking Congress about expected probes into his hotel ventures, his Russia connections, his inaugural committee, and other aspects of his scandal-plagued political and business life. Trump, it seems, intends on casting himself as a victim.

Running against Congress has been tried by American presidents, but it has seldom worked. Aside from Harry Truman’s reelection campaign in 1948 against a “Do Nothing” Republican Congress, the tactic has usually fizzled.  Never the less, Trump trotted it out this year. Given his usual practice of making everything about himself, there’s little reason for surprise that Trump’s trying this.

This State of the Union speech may well have served Trump’s purpose in pacifying his base. For the rest of us, it served as a preview and a guide for what’s coming in America’s political future.