Populism: Trump's Best Bet
FABRIZIO GOWDY | OPINIONS | September 6TH, 2020
President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign faces an uphill battle, as he trails former Vice President Joe Biden in most swing states according to various polling averages. The Republican National Convention, which concluded last week, was a key opportunity for Trump to change the trajectory of his campaign. So how did the GOP do? On one hand, the imagery and production value were smoother and higher quality than the Democratic Convention. But the issue was not the optics of the event, it was the inconsistent messaging.
The RNC seemed to be split between two irreconcilable lines of attack. Republicans claimed Biden is secretly a radical and a “Trojan horse” for socialism, while simultaneously attacking him for his record on trade, China, and manufacturing. Either case could be made separately, but when they are both pushed they just undermine each other. While it is fair to ask whether Biden will stand up to the progressive wing of his party, Republicans would be crazy if they did not double down on the latter message.
To start, just consider the effectiveness of the different speakers making these two cases. Speeches by Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and Nick Sandman, a conservative high school student who recently settled a defamation suit with CNN, railed against the dangers of “cancel culture” and the threat to free speech posed by the “radical left.” Continuing on this theme, businessman Maximo Alvarez made the absurd comparison of Biden to Fidel Castro in an emotional but exaggerated speech. While this hyper-partisan, trench warfare message may resonate with die-hard Trumpers, it does little to sway the blue collar voters in the Rust Belt who put Trump in the White house four years ago.
Eveleth mayor Robert Vlaisavljevich from northern Minnesota’s iron range; the iron range and the state of Minnesota, once a Democratic bastion, may now vote for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time since 1972.
In contrast to Kirk, Sandman, and Alvarez, the convention also featured a slew of working class mid westerners who made a far more effective case for Trump. The Democratic mayor of Eveleth, a small town in Minnesota’s iron range, a logging union leader in a “Make Logging Great Again” cap, a dairy farmer, and the owner of a small Wisconsin metal manufacturing company all spoke about how Trump’s policies have helped revitalize their industry and region. These speakers did not mention socialism or “radical leftists” once. Rather, they focused on the steps the administration has taken to bring manufacturing jobs back home and address perceived imbalances in our trade relationship with China.
As effective as these speakers were, the split messaging observed at the convention as a whole was present in Trump’s acceptance speech. Trump dropped overused cliches, warning Biden was nothing more than a puppet for “wild-eyed Marxists like Bernie Sanders.”
But the President also hammered home his populist “America first” message, saying Biden, “took the donations of blue-collar workers, gave them hugs and even kisses, and told them he felt their pain — and then he flew back to Washington and voted to ship their jobs to China.” Trump also attacked Biden for his support of the Iraq war and sought to draw contrasts on foreign policy, touting his own efforts to bring troops home and boasting that he is “the first president since Reagan not to start a war.”
Former Republican Ohio governor John Kasich (left), was given a prime time speaking spot, while current Democratic Ohio senator Sherrod Brown (right) was not.
A week earlier, the Democratic National Convention’s speakers focused almost entirely on casting Biden as a man of the highest character and a nice, relatable grandfather-like figure right for the current tumultuous moment. But while the DNC was relentless in contrasting Biden and Trump’s character and demeanor, it was essentially substance-free, with little to no discussion of the policy issues important to the working class. In a very telling move, Republican John Kasich, the union-busting former governor of Ohio got a prime time speaking slot to vouch for Biden’s compassion and leadership. Current Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, a populist Democrat who was just comfortably reelected in a state Trump carried by eight percentage points, was relegated to a brief daytime appearance. With the Democrats unabashedly pursuing moderate, affluent white voters, the Republicans could pick up the slack with the working class voters who formed the backbone of the Democratic Party for decades. Instead, they spent half their convention preaching to the choir with fear mongering, partisan speeches about socialism and radical Marxists, alienating the socially conservative, fiscally liberal voters Trump needs to sway.
The Trump campaign needs to realize it is far better off painting Joe Biden as the “Loch Ness Monster of the D.C. Swamp,” as Congressman Matt Gaetz put it in his RNC speech, then it is trying to pretend that Biden is suddenly a secret radical with a Marxist agenda.
In August 2016, Trump gave a speech in Wisconsin in which he called Hillary Clinton, “the personification of special interest corruption.” Four years to the day after that Wisconsin speech, Trump called Biden a “Trojan horse,” in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Given Clinton and Biden’s similarities, it is puzzling that Trump seems to be moving away from his 2016 line of attack.
Much like Hillary Clinton, Biden has real vulnerabilities; he is an aging, white “career politician” with 47 years in Washington. As the chair of the Judiciary Committee during the Anita Hill hearings, the author of the 1994 Crime Bill, and a supporter of the Iraq War, he struggles to excite younger, more progressive elements of his party.
Trump ought to recognize this better than anybody. In 2016, he bashed the “corrupt establishment” and defied traditional Republican politics by going all-in on non-interventionism, economic nationalism, and anti-globalism. His appeal with the disaffected white working class, especially in the Midwest, propelled him to the White House and redrew the electoral map in the process.
If President Trump wants four more years, he doesn’t need to keep exciting those already in his own corner. He doesn’t need to scare affluent white suburbanites in Colorado and Virginia into voting for him by labeling everything that moves socialism. He cannot win those voters and those states; that ship has sailed. But he desperately needs to win the Midwest and he cannot let Biden rebuild Clinton’s “blue wall.” If Trump leans into economic populism and runs the same “forgotten man'' campaign he ran four years ago, he can win the blue collar Democrats and two-time Obama voters he won in 2016. Populism is Trump’s best bet in November.
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