Trump tries to turn the tables — but swing voters won't be convinced by his "war on democracy" remix

With his latest tribute to the late great Pee Wee Herman, former president Donald Trump unveiled a new "I know you are but what am I" campaign strategy over the weekend by attacking President Joe Biden as "the destroyer of American democracy." 

The crowd loved it, as they love all things Trump. The Des Moines Register interviewed one rallygoer who explained why: "Teens have rock stars that they follow like Taylor Swift. Grown-ups have Trump." It doesn't really matter what he says."

Trump's senior campaign adviser explained the real reason for this new campaign slogan: "To watch the lefties heads explode":

The Washington Post reported that a "senior Trump adviser" told them, “President Trump is turning the tables, We are not going to allow Joe Biden and the Democrats to gaslight the American public," and it's clear from what LaCivita wrote that it's yet another of their juvenile attempts to "own the libs." 

I don't think I saw any lefties heads exploding over this but many people did explode with laughter. The claim is ludicrous, of course. Trump's the one who attempted to overturn the election and incited a violent mob to storm the capitol and stop the certification of the election. There is no greater example of democracy destruction than that. But he said it and it wasn't off the cuff. They passed out placards before the rally that said, "Biden attacks Democracy" and flashed the words on a big screen above him as he said it. 

The New York Times characterized this move as the Trump campaign "going on offense" to counter accusations by Biden that he is a threat to democracy. But I'm not sure this marks much of a change in strategy. After all, Trump has been saying since 2016 that any election he loses is rigged. He even says it when he wins! Recall his "commission" to investigate voter fraud in the election against Hillary Clinton in which he sought to prove that he really won the popular vote because of all the illegal votes. That investigation didn't go anywhere but his claims helped set the stage for his Big Lie in 2020. 

This weekend he made an even bolder claim that the elections are “rigged” if he doesn’t win in California, Illinois, and New York: 

He further commanded his troops to go to Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit to "watch" the vote count next November to make sure they don't cheat. I think we know what he's telling them to do, don't you? "It will be wild...."

All of his talk about electoral fraud for the past five years is essentially saying that the Democrats in general and Biden specifically are destroying democracy by stealing elections. This has been the central message of his ongoing campaign. Why anyone thinks that this is a new tack is beyond me. 

Trump does this to get his followers all excited and angry so they'll send him money and come out to vote. It's a fundamentally dishonest but rational approach and it's one that's kept the Republican Party under his spell for the last eight years. In that respect, it has been a great success. But if swing voters haven't been convinced that Biden stole the election from Trump by now, all this bellowing about Biden "destroying democracy" is going to fall on deaf ears. Everyone in America has heard it all before. 

It can be powerful in a different way, however. It serves to neutralize the topic as just more political "tit-for-tat" and some people may just dismiss the entire argument that the Democrats are making. Witness how Trump and his Republican henchmen have managed to persuade a majority of the American public that Biden is involved in corrupt activity with his son, as an AP/NORC poll from October found:

Most adults say President Biden has at the very least acted unethically in his handling of the international business dealings of his son Hunter, including about a third who say he did something illegal. Only 30% of the public think Biden has done nothing wrong regarding Hunter’s business dealings.

They have even managed to convince 40% of Democrats that Joe Biden acted unethically or illegally based solely on lies and innuendo. It's a stunning result that proves the power of repetition and propaganda. The AP reported that result and then added this, proving that Trump has gotten exactly what he wanted:

A similar percentage of adults (67%) said former President Donald Trump acted unethically or illegally in his interactions with the president of Ukraine according to an AP-NORC poll taken in October 2019, with 38% believing he acted illegally. 

 

Trump is at this very moment pushing hard for the House of Representatives to impeach Joe Biden over all of this and the new speaker, Mike Johnson, said that he thinks it's just about ready to go. Everyone knows that it's dead on arrival in the Senate but that doesn't matter. All Trump wants to do is ensure that Biden is impeached to neutralize his own impeachments.

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Trump's claims of Biden "weaponizing" the government against him, despite no evidence that Biden had anything to do with the Justice Department's decisions, is now serving to open the door for his authoritarian agenda of retribution which he portrays as legitimate:

That's really rich coming from the man who told Hillary Clinton on a debate stage in 2016 that she would be jailed if he won:

He tried and couldn't get it done. He knows the ropes now.

As you can see, the Pee-Wee Herman strategy isn't springing from Trump's Mar-a-Lago brain trust. This is Trump's one true talent. He instinctively understands the power of turning his own flaws into his rivals' and then criticizing them for it. Psychologists call this "projection" and it is. But it's more than that. Trump is corrupt and incompetent and he's projecting that onto Biden to be sure. But he's also feeding the cynicism that has overtaken our political culture. 

His own followers may believe that he is an innocent martyr being persecuted unjustly, but all those swing voters or "low information" voters who may be unhappy about other things can be persuaded that "they all do it" or even "they've always done it" so what's the big deal? He knows that all he has to do is get his fan base out and convince a small sliver of the rest of the voting population that there's not a dime's worth of difference between him and Joe Biden and he could pull off another win like he did in 2016.