Yes, after 3 months of radio silence I’m here with 3 pieces in 24 hours. Maybe this tells you how nervous I am about the election.
In June I wrote a piece about Trump’s strategy against Biden in the June debate. I took it down the next week, but I find it to be refreshingly relevant even to the current campaign, with the basic connective tissue being: Kamala is just a continuation of Joe Biden.
So, here is that piece, which I wrote the day after that June debate.
After the first presidential debate last night, the chorus clamoring for Biden to step down resounded across much of the Democratic establishment and reverberated around the walls of almost every big opinion room, from the NYT (here and here and here) to the National Review (here) to the Daily Beast (here).
There might yet be a systematic purpose to these calls to action — perhaps there’s been private pressure/tribulation on Biden’s fitness that hasn’t amounted to anything. Journalism has always served as a useful crutch to give the clamoring a loudspeaker and a public audience reacting to a very public disappointment.
One year ago Joe Biden was more of a certainty than Trump, who faced impending trials that had the Democratic party wishing for what in retrospect would have been a miracle — that Trump’s legal woes would preclude him from running. Now, it is Trump who is the certainty. Like it or not, he’s here.
The media has chosen the “is Biden fit to do this” narrative as their focus in the day after the debate, and this has taken attention away from what I thought to be a masterclass in messaging from Trump. Forget about the Biden or not Biden conversation within the Democratic bubble — in Trump we have qualities (yes, qualities) that the Democratic party could only dream of with their current candidate. That is, someone who knows how to tell a story and stay on message, no matter the circumstances. Even when those circumstances include impeachments, cheating on his wife with a porn star, an insurrection at the US Capitol, an inability to tell the truth (I will discuss this later), and so forth. There’s not a better pressure test than that — this is a list that is disqualifying for practically anyone else running to be the most powerful person in the world.
Trump had some clear goals going into tonight’s debate — show he was fit for the job, stick to his talking points.
Presentation of fitness
Trump principally needed to show himself as more fit for the presidency than Biden. He accomplished this in two ways:
First, Trump needed to restrain himself and not come off as the same insufferable asshole that was his brand during debates last election cycle. He did just that. He did not interrupt Biden. He did not interrupt either of the CNN moderators. For the most part, he did not lob unprovoked personal attacks on Biden. CNN did him a real solid by muting the mics, because Trump really had no choice but to accomplish this goal.
Second, Trump needed to frame Biden’s performance around his age. He was far more deft at this than many will give him credit for — I remind you this is not an inevitable characterization. The question of age appears in every debate, and there are generations of strategists who have made livings off of contemplating one side or another. Ronald Reagan’s quip comes to mind:
“I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience”
In debates like these, we often talk about old age as wisdom, smarts, and experience — just as much as the occasional stumbles.
So what did Trump do?
Trump was agreeable to Biden when it served his purposes. People chastise Trump for his outlandishly simple arguments — but their simplicity makes them accessible to his audience and easy to remember for his own sake. He knows exactly what he’s arguing, so he knows when it is appropriate to agree with what Biden is saying.
“The only thing he was right about is I gave you the largest tax cut in history.”
“Well, he’s right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death.”
(for this piece I’m taking quotes from the CNN transcript, FYI)
When Trump does this, he makes Biden look like someone who said something for the wrong side, which plays into the message the Trump side has hammered into our heads for about a year now: this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Additionally, Trump simply waited for Biden to say something that didn’t make sense and then pounced.
“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either”
The CNN moderators took a long time to bring up age directly, but that question was asked as soon as Biden stepped on stage for the debate, as soon as his uncharacteristically raspy voice hit America’s eardrums.
Clear, simple talking points
Trump has some obvious talking points rehearsed down to a tee, and he knew how to manipulate any debate situation to hit them home.
Immigration
Immigration seemed to conclude the arc of almost every answer that Trump delivered at the debate:
Economy: “The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounce-back jobs, they’re bounced back from the COVID”
Tax cuts: he ended with such an obvious pivot that Jake Tapper, in a rare moment of moderator discretion, said, “President Trump, we will get to immigration later in this block”
Black economic health: “His big kill on the black people is the millions of people that he’s allowed to come in through the border. They’re taking black jobs now and it could be 18. It could be 19 and even 20 million people. They’re taking black jobs and they’re taking Hispanic jobs and you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re going to see something that’s going to be the worst in our history.”
Addiction: by the time he was fielded this question, everyone knew exactly what he was going to talk about. Like lyrics at a concert. Predictability is a huge asset here.
In Trump-land, immigration is a narrative with a simple, clear-cut antagonist, and a wide array of choices for the protagonist, depending on his audience. Today, the protagonist, reprehensibly enough, was America in its entirety.
Inflation/COVID
These were the two blunt tools Trump broadly used on economic matters. Inflation was the sword — Trump deployed this as an attack against Biden’s economic record, talking relentlessly about rising grocery prices. COVID was the shield — Trump used this whenever pressed on his own economic record, saying that all was good and dandy until a pandemic that was out of his control. He repeatedly said the phrase “the COVID” — giving COVID a level of agency and centrality as to disarm him of any control, to paint this as an external force (from China, as he has noted before) that derailed an otherwise great presidency. See? The story isn’t hard to follow.
Biden is bad for democracy
One of Trump’s oft-repeated lines sounded like it should have come out of Biden’s mouth, which is exactly why it’s so powerful:
“it’s a guy that’s after his political opponent because he can’t win fair and square.”
By blurring the contrast Biden himself is trying to make with Trump, Trump strategically positions himself on the democracy question not by calling himself some sort of beacon for democracy, but rather by pulling Biden into his orbit. It’s completely disingenuous but also really smart, because the pro-democracy frame has been Biden’s toolkit this entire time.
America is dying. Biden is thus a criminal guilty of mass murder
Trump has always struck me as someone who is stronger as a challenger than an incumbent because the challenger can paint a starker picture that thrives off fear-mongering. But Trump’s language here was especially particular, given that he wants to obfuscate his own association with crime (as a convicted felon — we saw him nod and glance downward when Biden brought it up). So he simply painted Biden as a criminal as well, with his crime being the mismanagement of America. He used all sorts of downstream rhetoric to support this as well — problematic, but effective.
We’ve become like a Third World nation, and it’s a shame”
“What we’re doing for other countries, and they do nothing for us. What this man has done is absolutely criminal.”
“This place, the whole world is blowing up under him.”
“Joe could be a convicted felon with all of the things that he’s done. He’s done horrible things.”
“We call it migrant crime. I call it Biden migrant crime.”
“This man is a criminal. This man – you’re lucky. You’re lucky. I did nothing wrong. We’d have a system that was rigged and disgusting. I did nothing wrong.”
This isn’t a fluke, and Trump gave what I thought to be one of the most notable riffs I’ve ever heard from him. If you focus on the roleplaying and performative aspect here, he’s completely knocked it out of the park:
“Did you fire anybody? Did you fire anybody that’s on the border, that’s allowed us to have the worst border in the history of the world? Did anybody get fired for allowing 18 million people, many from prisons, many from mental institutions? Did you fire anybody that allowed our country to be destroyed? Joe, our country is being destroyed as you and I sit up here and waste a lot of time on this debate. This shouldn’t be a debate.”
What a way to completely sum up your campaign and articulate your position of strength. In less than 30 seconds.
Exploitation of falsehood
A day after the debate, it looks like the Biden campaign strategy is to emphasize that Biden at least told the truth. From a rally in Raleigh this afternoon, Biden declares:
“Folks, I might not walk as easily or talk as smoothly as I used to. I might not debate as well as I used to. But what I do know is how to tell the truth.”
This is absolutely true. But it’s not much more than that. Truth alone will not win Biden the election in November.
Yes, Trump was lying all over the place last night. And these lies are what make his simple storytelling and consistent messaging possible. Truth and facts complicate his narrative, because they complicate any narrative. But especially his narrative.
Trump knows that his campaign has deliberately allowed truth to be the sacrifice. We can complain and whine that that means he shouldn’t be re-elected and it’s ridiculous that a candidate can lie this much and it’s super unpresidential, but there are several real substantive advantages to his strategy:
No one tells the truth in these debates anyway, and it is easier to measure the unprecedented nature of Biden’s age than it is to measure the unprecedented nature of Trump’s lies.
We’re normalized to his lies at this point. Leading too. . .
Trump’s media strategy has mainstream media in a no-win situation politically (which they’re not supposed to think politically, so speaking for them for a second). They can choose to not cover the lies, which green-lights the rest of Trump’s messaging strategy. Or they can focus on it, which emboldens the characterizations he subsequently makes about fake media and media propaganda. We can reasonably point out the authoritative tendencies behind this, and no amount of moral consternation will negate the fact that it’s working.
Trump often sacrifices factual truth in favor of emotional truth and relatability.
Spotting falsehoods and calling them out is not a skill that we inherit, it’s something that is spoonfed to us example by example. We have fact-checker websites like Politifact (and CNN did their own fact-check) with armies of fact-checkers who were paid to stay up late doing their long lists of fact-checks of the debate, and yet the very reality that this whole thing has become institutionalized says something. It says that we are not very good at fact-checking ourselves, full stop. But the fact checker websites don’t tell us how to spot a lie next time, they glance backward and tell us what was a lie last time.
These are five pillars that make the lies a normal part of the modern campaign process, that make the Trump doctrine so systematic: simple stories, stay on message.
I promise you I’m not writing this because it makes me happy to gush about Trump’s campaign strategy. It really doesn’t.
But for whoever is going to be facing off with him in November, whether it’s Biden or anyone else — it will be a disservice to everyone on the Democratic side who does not take Trump’s strategic capabilities seriously.
These debates have recently become races to the bottom — ugly rhetoric, lies over truth, personal attacks. In debates that are races to the top, the two sides acknowledge the best versions of each other’s arguments. So yes, it is worth analyzing what Trump does best — and almost none of his strategic advantage depends on the other side of the race.
It is true that Biden’s age has helped Trump tremendously.
But it’s also true that Trump’s own strategy regardless of his opponent’s age won him a crowded Republican primary in 2016 and allowed him to easily fend off primary opponents once more 8 years later. Only when Democrats give some credit, as disgusting as that feels and as ugly as his arguments sound, do we have a chance to emerge victorious. Because as soon as we proudly declare that we are above engaging with his arguments, we will have lost the millions of disaffected voters that fuel his campaign.