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.           

Donald Trump: How We Got Here

How did Donald Trump win the Republican presidential nomination?  A combination of personal and political factors permitted his ascension. The personal relates to Trump’s unique status in the public consciousness. He began with universal name recognition because of his real estate career, his bestselling book, The Art of the Deal, and his time as a reality television show host. Everyone knew Donald Trump.

Beginnings  Politically, Trump took advantage of a fertile field of resentment plowed by years of Republican-generated anger aimed at particular groups and at unnerving social and economic developments. Name recognition, and his unrepentant spouting of positions and ideas that appealed to voters frustrated with those trends, quickly put Trump at the top of the GOP primary polls.

Trump laid the groundwork for his rise well before he started running by becoming birther-in-chief. He led the chorus challenging President Obama’s legitimacy, intimating that the President had been born in Kenya and, therefore, wasn’t constitutionally eligible to hold the office he won in 2008 by nine and a half million votes (and an electoral-college majority of 365-173).  Trump’s pursuit of the baseless birther claim gave him instant credibility among nativist voters who disliked Obama, first and foremost, because of his color.  This represented race baiting without directly going after the black electorate.

Primaries  Trump otherwise premised his candidacy on attacks on disfavored groups and on individuals who, for one reason or another, didn’t appeal to him. When he announced for President, he proposed building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to keep out “rapists,” “drug traffickers,” and “criminals.” The wall idea, astounding in scope, ambition, and outrageousness, became Trump’s calling card. He even claimed he would make Mexico pay for it.  Before long, he targeted Muslims, proposing a ban on their entry into the United States, regardless of national origin.

Trump offered disparaging remarks about women’s looks, including one of his primary rivals, and made tasteless comments about a female news anchor and where she might be dripping blood.  He attacked U.S. Senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain for having been shot down and captured in Vietnam. Political analysts assumed at least one of these statements transgressed political possibility and that Trump would fade. It didn’t happen.

Now that Trump has the nomination, previously hostile Republicans have coalesced around him because he’s the GOP standard bearer.  Many traditional, establishment Republicans have little use for Trump, but can’t bring themselves to support Democrat Hillary Clinton.  Those people may make Trump President, but they didn’t get him nominated.  The people who thrust Trump into his current role occupy a unique position in American politics and bear study because of the power they’ve shown to influence one of the major parties.

Trump Voters  The people who nominated Trump are overwhelmingly white, predominately male, resent changing demographics (which the Obama presidency brought home to them as nothing else could), and believe themselves left out of an economic landscape shifting under their feet. They feel betrayed by politicians they have reflexively supported for years.  As Thomas Frank’s brilliant book What’s the Matter with Kansas?  made so clear, corporate Republicans have long used the social grievances of the white working class in enticing them to vote against their economic interests in service of their bias against minorities and cultural change (think, gay marriage).  Now, the global, service-based, technology- dominated economy doesn’t produce the manufacturing jobs on which the white working class has long relied. Trump rallied these disaffected souls to his cause in the primaries and the corporate GOP donor class paid the price. Trump won by promising to undo the trade deals many blame for their economic woes and by saying he wouldn’t succumb to “political correctness,” code for dispensing with the demands of women and minority groups for greater sensitivity in public discourse and for greater inclusiveness in the national political and social calculus.  Trump would make it okay for angry white men to be crude again.

Make no mistake, race-based nativism lay at the center of Trump’s appeal in the primaries. His campaign aimed straight at disaffected white people who see the country’s economic and social situation as a zero sum game. If minority group members advance, whites lose.

Trump also capitalized on the low information level many Americans have about politics. Relying on conservative talk radio, FOX news, and internet-inspired conspiracy theories, many Trump supporters knew almost nothing of his extensive business failures, his hiring of illegal immigrants in his enterprises, or the falsehood of his claim to self-funding his campaign.  They cared little about the emptiness of his policy proposals.  It was enough that he promised to make America great again, bludgeon China into submission in trade talks, and restore manufacturing jobs.  The details didn’t matter.

In the general election, Trump will get the votes of those who supported him in the primaries and those of other Republicans who don’t like him much, but still see Democrats as the party of the “others” from whom they believe they must protect themselves and the country. Little likelihood exists of persuading members of either group to change their minds. They will prevail only if the larger group of Americans who don’t share their fears stay home.       

Have a different take or why Trump is where he is?  Let us hear from you.