The resistance to Donald Trump has failed. He has now shaped American politics for nearly a decade, with four more years — at least — to go. A hard truth his opponents must accept: Trump is the most dominant American politician since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
This dominance unsettles and destabilizes American democracy. Trump is a would-be authoritarian with a single overriding impulse — to help himself above all else.
Yet somehow he keeps winning.
Trump's political opponents must change course. The time for emoting your way through the Trump era is over. It's time to be rational, to earn credibility with swing voters, to win elections. It's time to stop helping Trump’s MAGA movement and, instead, to stop it in its tracks.
There should be four key features of Trump Resistance 2.0.
First, don't overreach. Despite Trump's legitimate electoral victory in 2016, many wanted him removed from office — one way or another — even before he was inaugurated. This impulse led Trump’s opponents to coalesce around Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump's ties to Russia. There was a simple problem: The evidence wasn’t there. The idea that Trump colluded in cyberspace to help Vladimir Putin hack into the Democratic National Committee’s email servers was always a triumph of partisanship over reason.
Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter
Then came Trump's first impeachment. Trump shouldn’t have misused his office to seek dirt on the Bidens in Ukraine. But the impeachment process — led by arch anti-Trumpist Adam Schiff — was never about seeking the truth for the American people. It was only about removing Trump.
And, finally, there was District Attorney Alvin Bragg's prosecution in New York. Bragg wasn't blindly pursuing justice with this case. The underlying facts happened seven years earlier and his legal theory was highly controversial, even outside pro-Trump circles. Bragg, like Schiff, had only one transparent goal — to hurt Donald Trump.
All this anti-Trump overreaching backfired. It had the opposite of its intended effect. It helped Trump. It mobilized and grew his base. Trump's narrative that he fought the machine and won powerfully resonates with many Americans.
Second, be accurate. Misusing the legal system isn't the only way to help Trump. Making highly inaccurate assertions does, too.
Take the widespread narrative that he's a dictator. The American people watched Trump be president for four years and come nowhere near establishing a dictatorship. He can't even get his choice for attorney general (Matt Gaetz) a confirmation hearing. He'd rather be golfing than plotting the takedown of our democracy. Are swing voters really supposed to believe he threatens to plunge America into dictatorship?
Third, respect American democracy. The myopic quest to resist Trump has led many to reject American democracy's essential principles. Many of Trump's opponents haven’t just cast aside the rule of law. They've suppressed speech. They've tried to defund the police. They've opposed incremental and rational immigration measures.They've railed against numerous hallmarks of American history and tradition. As the presidential election resoundingly reaffirmed: that is not a winning strategy.
Finally, to effectively resist Trump, anoint the right champion. The Democrats need a leader who's in tune with the American people. Politics isn't about forcing what you want on other people. It's about winning elections so you get more of what you want than if you lose. It was a startling error to put forth Joe Biden as Trump's alternative until a few months before the election. Going forward the Democrats must rally around a strong, vibrant leader with a mainstream message that resonates broadly with the American people.
Otherwise they’ll just keep losing.
The hearts and minds of Trump's opponents have come from an understandable place. But we need more mind and less heart. It's time to be rational and effective. It's time to stop losing elections and start winning them. It's time for something new.
Cooper is the author of “How America Works … and Why it Doesn’t.”
