Playing the Victim to Trump Is Not Always the Best Tactic

At the end of the first, turbulent semester of Donald Trump’s presidency, a new consensus has started to emerge within the media in the U.S.A.: It is time to stop obsessing over the latest tweet or attack against the press and instead focus on the political action — or inaction — of Trump. It is possible that the war against the media could right now be his most powerful weapon. Denouncing whatever adverse news or negative journalistic judgment as fake news is in Trump’s domain — the invectives and accusations against a liberal elite far removed from ordinary working people. And the president’s supporters continue to be particularly susceptible to those arguments, which are emotional and fervent and yet very acceptable. For this is a particular demographic, and an era in which it is more important to unite together in the face of what is perceived as a common enemy than to figure out the reality of events and analyze and assess them, as used to be the process of making decisions in previous democracies. It is time to restore this process; Americans are increasingly thinking this way and scaling down the tone of blind passion that began before the 2016 election.

If the moment has arrived for journalism to dig deeper into information and analysis and less into editorials, it seems that for the Democratic Party the moment to get on with it, politically and psychologically, has still not arrived at all. Not everything needs to be focused on denouncing whatever abuse or favoritism is coming from Trump and wherever it may be directed. Now should be the time to start reconquering lost votes with some structured, intelligible and positive proposals for the working and middle class electoral demographic, and to convince more voters that these proposals will benefit them more than aid for coal, cutting medical insurance or a wall with Mexico.

This is where the Democrats run into a problem similar to that of many other representatives of what, in general terms, could be described as social democracy in the West: The formula for high spending and taxes, within a vaguely reestablishment drift, continues to be unconvincing for many. This, along with the experience of the crisis which began in 2008, has made disenchantment with the system grow in all areas.

It remains, therefore, a matter of pursuing the road forward in the construction of a more regular, rational, political and informative environment surrounding the Trump phenomenon. The concern is that if this road is not taken far before the midterm elections in 2018 … then the Democrats could end up scalded again.