2020 Presidential Race: Trump As He Is

As expected, you could have cut the tension in Congress on Tuesday evening with a knife. At the Capitol, not exactly his favorite venue, Donald Trump delivered the State of the Union address, which, being tailor-made for both his right-wing base and his influential evangelical voters, naturally enraged the Democrats. The president addressed everything without making any concessions and without any grandiosity, reiterating word for word the campaign themes that helped elect him in 2016: construction of a border wall, the danger of “criminal aliens” and promotion of the National Rifle Association’s catechism on firearms, and framing the address as an indictment, rooted in victimhood, of all previous U.S. administrations which, he said, allowed the United States to be “abused” on the world stage.

Trump defended “the constitutional right to pray in public schools.” He denounced the Democrats, who want to “impose a socialist takeover of our health care system.” He flattered the right-wing media by bestowing the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom on the ultra-conservative polemicist Rush Limbaugh, who is suffering from lung cancer. And he bragged at length about presiding over an economy that “is the best it has ever been,” even though he owes much of these favorable circumstances, which are still quite fragile, to Barack Obama.

Reflecting his taste for reality television, Trump put on an entertaining show, something which is rarely suitable for this annual gathering. (For example, he pointed out Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó, sitting in the gallery among the Washington elite). It was mostly a speech that made one’s hair stand on end – pushing Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to conspicuously tear up her copy of the speech – as the president has made it clear that, from now until the November presidential election, he will be playing all the political and cultural polarization cards. Trump knows that his impeachment trial, which, as expected, concluded on Wednesday with his acquittal in the Senate by a Republican majority, will be a useful campaign strategy for this millionaire-populist-defender-of-the-people against those whom he redundantly calls the “extreme radical left.”

He needs political polarization because there is no other way for the Republicans to take power, according to political journalist Ezra Klein, author of the recent book “Why We’re Polarized.” There was a time when American voters were more likely to split their vote between the two parties. Now, a “negative allegiance” prevails, where people are more motivated by their antipathy for the other party than by affinity to their own. So it is with the Republican Party—and Trump is their shepherd. How else do you explain why Republican voters support Trump in such large numbers? Gerrymandering (the partisan division of voting districts) and suppression of the black vote do the rest.

As a result, according to Klein’s analysis, Republicans, whose voter base is permanently shrinking, can hold on to the presidency without winning the popular vote. In the long run, it’s a losing strategy—and profoundly undemocratic.

The Democrats also participate in this polarization, although to a lesser degree. Unlike the Republicans, who have become the vehicle for white and Christian voters, the Democratic Party attracts a more culturally diverse electorate: more urban, more secular and younger. If the Iowa caucuses that began the long Democratic primary season resulted in an embarrassing organizational fiasco, it nonetheless illustrated the extent to which the party has disintegrated given that four candidates (Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg) managed to do well.

It is standard practice to interpret tensions within the Democratic Party as a fight between its left and its center. A deeper read of the situation, wrote a New Yorker columnist, consists of considering that the party is torn between its future (the so-called “revolutionary” youth led by Bernie) and its current reality (the fact that Democrats can do less than Republicans to earn the support of centrist voters, represented until proven otherwise by Biden). Under these circumstances, which candidate (Sanders? Warren? Biden? Buttigieg?) will succeed in uniting the Democrats so they can beat Trump in November? That is an equation with several unknowns.