Do Democrats Need Their Own Trump?

Part 1:

Yesterday, I read a recent guest essay from the New York Times titled “Why Democrats Need Their Own Trump,” written by Galen Druke, the host of the GD Politics podcast and the former host of the FiveThirtyEight podcast. Unfortunately, I can’t share the article link because it’s paywalled. However, here is the link to the podcast episode where Druke discusses the main point of his piece:


According to Druke, Trump was able to win the 2016 GOP primary by outflanking his opponents, who were all stuck in the traditional Conservative vs. Moderate paradigm. Druke writes, “The innovation of Mr. Trump was to reject the choice between these two camps. He ran to the right of his party on immigration (proposing mass deportation and a border wall) and to the left of his party on government spending (proposing no cuts to Social Security or Medicare, more money for infrastructure and universal health insurance). This allowed him to shore up a key portion of the primary electorate for whom immigration was the most important issue, while appealing to a broader electorate for whom the economy was the most important issue.” Druke also argues that another winning strategy for Trump was to attack Republican Establishment figures like George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney and decisions such as the Iraq invasion. These tactics allowed Trump to appear “moderate” and non-ideological to primary and general election voters while engaging in extreme rhetoric; ergo, the genius of Trump’s approach wasn’t that he modeled himself a Centrist but as a maverick “outsider” who eschewed the traditional Left-Right divide. Although Druke mainly focuses on Trump’s 2016 campaign, much of what he says could just as easily apply to Trump’s successful 2024 campaign. Although he maintained his hard-right positions on issues like guns and immigration, Trump ran as a moderate on abortion and entitlements and called himself the “peace” candidate when it came to foreign policy.

Part 2:
Druke argues that a successful Democratic candidate in 2028 should copy Trump’s playbook and run to the Right on immigration and run to the Left on healthcare while attacking the Democratic Establishment. Here’s the funny thing though: The Democrats already HAD Druke’s dream candidate: It was Bernie Sanders prior to his first presidential run in 2016. As a congressman and senator, Sanders took a Conservative position on cultural issues like guns and immigration. As a matter of fact, Sanders voted against the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 that was put together and sponsored by Establishment, Corporate-friendly Republicans and Democrats like George W. Bush, John McCain, and Ted Kennedy. But when Sanders entered the 2016 Democratic primary, he abandoned that position (along with his pro-gun stance) in favor of giving a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens, thus ceding that ground to Trump. And Sanders still got beat in the primary. Had Sanders kept his Conservative positions on immigration and guns while pushing his Populist Progressive economic agenda and managed to win the Democratic nomination, he would have been exactly the type of candidate that Druke writes about and could have beaten Trump. But it is difficult, if not impossible, to defy Leftwing activist groups on issues like immigration and trans sports and become the Democratic nominee. Any successful Democratic candidate will have to have a Sister Souljah moment, and at this point, it’s not clear that anybody potentially seeking the nomination will be able or willing to do this. And that’s why Druke likely won’t ever see his Democratic version of Trump.

One more thing: There’s a huge gaping problem with Druke’s thesis, which is that he ignores what might just be the biggest factor in Trump’s 2016 and 2024 victories, which is sheer dumb luck. In 2016, Trump was facing a Democratic Party that was attempting to win a rare third consecutive term in the White House with a deeply unpopular candidate. And yet Hillary Clinton beat Trump by 3 million ballots in the popular vote and only lost the Electoral College by 77,000 votes in three battleground states. One can point to any number of factors to explain Clinton’s loss, but one the of biggest must surely be the email server scandal that dogged her right up to the end of the race. Had she chosen not to set up a private server in her home, Clinton would almost certainly have won the presidency. And if Joe Biden, who enjoyed support from working-class voters and was far more mentally and physically fit than he would be in 2020 and 2024, had run in 2016 and won the nomination, he would likely have beat Trump despite his status as an Establishment Democrat. And when he ran in 2024, Trump was fortunate enough to face an unpopular incumbent Democratic Party and administration that struggled to deal with the effects of the Covid pandemic. Had he won a second term in 2020, Trump, not Biden, would have been saddled with inflation, the supply chain crisis, and the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. And given Trump’s personality, one could easily imagine a situation where American voters were completely fed up with him and his GOP after eight years in power and hungry for a change. Meanwhile, the Democrats would have had a competitive primary to choose a good candidate and an eagerness to get back into the White House, and so a Democrat victory in 2024 would have been all but ensured.

Mark

I could shoot someone on West Hollywood Blvd. and not lose a vote?

Yeah, we need more Trumps.

Trump was never a good candidate. His approval rating was underwater every single time he ran for president, and still is. He just had the good fortune to go up against three opponents who were also quite bad, two of whom he was able to defeat.

I think Kanye West would be a bad idea. That’s about as close to Trump I can think of.

Would he get people to vote who only do so because he is on the ballot like Trump? Possibly. But it’s still not worth it. Most of all because he might win.

How Indian-origin Zohran Mamdani used the Trump playbook to beat Andrew Cuomo - and become Democratic Mayoral Nominee

"Armed not with a party machine but a ring light, Mamdani channeled the Trump playbook—minus the racism, plus the rent freeze—and turned vibe into victory. But it wasn’t his platform that won. It was the performance. The myth-making. The energy. He understood what Trump knew early on: politics is entertainment. Elections are theatre. Content is king.

He studied Trump’s script and flipped the ideology. Donald Trump didn’t just break the political mould—he shattered it with a Twitter feed and a MAGA hat. He turned every rally into performance art, every scandal into a storyline, and every insult into a headline. Mamdani took that same understanding—that politics is now pure spectacle—and swapped the anger for aspiration. Like Trump, he didn’t drown voters in policy. He made them feel something. Trump had chants and nicknames. Mamdani had reels and subway beats. Both knew that in an attention economy, coherence is optional—what matters is dominance of the feed. One built a wall of grievance. The other, a montage of hope.

Mamdani just gave it a Brooklyn accent and an Instagram filter. Policy? Sure. But Make It Viral. Yes, he has an agenda. A very left one. ...But the real success? He didn’t explain all this. He vibed it. Like Trump, who never published a white paper but made you feel something, Mamdani crafted mood more than message. ....And when it came to the issue of Israel—a potential Achilles heel for Mamdani—he did what Trump would do: deflect, distract, and deliver just enough ambiguity to keep everyone guessing. The Times clutched pearls. The Post clutched its usual megaphone. Mamdani? He uploaded a Reel with the caption: “I’m here to fight for dignity. Everywhere.”"

Read more at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Gatsby said:

Trump was never a good candidate. His approval rating was underwater every single time he ran for president, and still is. He just had the good fortune to go up against three opponents who were also quite bad, two of whom he was able to defeat.

Click to expand...

He's also the beneficiary of the zeitgeist. We're a hyper-polarized democratic republic whose institutions are struggling to survive under the relentless assault of divisiveness and crap information.

Mamdani has the benefit of a jungle primary..

OP, yes, the Democrats do need someone with populist appeal who is comfortable using current and evolving media technologies to promote a platform that exposes the corrupt system and its players and how it's hurting most people in this country, even if they don't realize it yet.

One thing that struck me recently is how a lot of Republicans and conservative-leaning political figures and activists are generally more comfortable appearing on popular podcasts and how adept they are at creating their own content. A lot of the Democratic leadership just seems to be stuck in the year 2000 or 2004 and not really up on how people are getting and processing information, or what moves voters.

Gatsby said:

Trump was never a good candidate. His approval rating was underwater every single time he ran for president, and still is. He just had the good fortune to go up against three opponents who were also quite bad, two of whom he was able to defeat.

Click to expand...

Trump is an amazing candidate. As bad as his opponents might have been, he is clearly considerably worse. When he left office 80% of those polled thought he was taking the country in the wrong direction. Its his campaigning abilities that have enabled him to win.

Trump was an outsider who successfully hijacked the Republican party. It didn't go without a tough fight from status quo Republicans. But it's more than a man, its his message and policies that hit the sweet spot of America's political undercurrent. Suddenly thing that can never happen (because of established politics), can infact happen. Quite empowering. Due to the structure of the Democratic party and the fact that they're the furthest from actually being Democratic it's impossible for an outsider to inject itself into the party. Bernie was the closest thing to that.

anatta said:

Mamdani has the benefit of a jungle primary..

Click to expand...

I think you are confusing jungle primary,mwhicjph this was not, with ranked choice voting, which it was, and did benefit him.

dmpi said:

Trump was an outsider who successfully hijacked the Republican party. It didn't go without a tough fight from status quo Republicans. But it's more than a man, its his message and policies that hit the sweet spot of America's political undercurrent. Suddenly thing that can never happen (because of established politics), can infact happen. Quite empowering. Due to the structure of the Democratic party and the fact that they're the furthest from actually being Democratic it's impossible for an outsider to inject itself into the party. Bernie was the closest thing to that.

Click to expand...

Trump has always had a keen eye for bankruptcy entities.

I don’t know what “our own Trump” even means. He backed into the wh in 2016, lost, and then won again when magically he want against a black woman in what was a very close election. What we need is more AOC types who will speak past the absolute bullshit the national dems fall into. We need people willing to make lots and lots of noise, go into congress and wreck shit. Do what the GOP does, yell and yell and yell until you drown out the other side. What dems need is once in power, to use that power the same way the GOP does.

markdc said:

Part 1:

Yesterday, I read a recent guest essay from the New York Times titled “Why Democrats Need Their Own Trump,” written by Galen Druke, the host of the GD Politics podcast and the former host of the FiveThirtyEight podcast. Unfortunately, I can’t share the article link because it’s paywalled. However, here is the link to the podcast episode where Druke discusses the main point of his piece:


According to Druke, Trump was able to win the 2016 GOP primary by outflanking his opponents, who were all stuck in the traditional Conservative vs. Moderate paradigm. Druke writes, “The innovation of Mr. Trump was to reject the choice between these two camps. He ran to the right of his party on immigration (proposing mass deportation and a border wall) and to the left of his party on government spending (proposing no cuts to Social Security or Medicare, more money for infrastructure and universal health insurance). This allowed him to shore up a key portion of the primary electorate for whom immigration was the most important issue, while appealing to a broader electorate for whom the economy was the most important issue.” Druke also argues that another winning strategy for Trump was to attack Republican Establishment figures like George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney and decisions such as the Iraq invasion. These tactics allowed Trump to appear “moderate” and non-ideological to primary and general election voters while engaging in extreme rhetoric; ergo, the genius of Trump’s approach wasn’t that he modeled himself a Centrist but as a maverick “outsider” who eschewed the traditional Left-Right divide. Although Druke mainly focuses on Trump’s 2016 campaign, much of what he says could just as easily apply to Trump’s successful 2024 campaign. Although he maintained his hard-right positions on issues like guns and immigration, Trump ran as a moderate on abortion and entitlements and called himself the “peace” candidate when it came to foreign policy.

Click to expand...

Democrats are not going to win another election in this country, regardless of the candidate, until they learn to become more openly and proudly bigoted and anti-science. They're just not reading the room. The country has put all that nonsense well behind them.

markdc said:

Part 1:

Yesterday, I read a recent guest essay from the New York Times titled “Why Democrats Need Their Own Trump,” written by Galen Druke, the host of the GD Politics podcast and the former host of the FiveThirtyEight podcast. Unfortunately, I can’t share the article link because it’s paywalled. However, here is the link to the podcast episode where Druke discusses the main point of his piece:


According to Druke, Trump was able to win the 2016 GOP primary by outflanking his opponents, who were all stuck in the traditional Conservative vs. Moderate paradigm. Druke writes, “The innovation of Mr. Trump was to reject the choice between these two camps. He ran to the right of his party on immigration (proposing mass deportation and a border wall) and to the left of his party on government spending (proposing no cuts to Social Security or Medicare, more money for infrastructure and universal health insurance). This allowed him to shore up a key portion of the primary electorate for whom immigration was the most important issue, while appealing to a broader electorate for whom the economy was the most important issue.” Druke also argues that another winning strategy for Trump was to attack Republican Establishment figures like George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney and decisions such as the Iraq invasion. These tactics allowed Trump to appear “moderate” and non-ideological to primary and general election voters while engaging in extreme rhetoric; ergo, the genius of Trump’s approach wasn’t that he modeled himself a Centrist but as a maverick “outsider” who eschewed the traditional Left-Right divide. Although Druke mainly focuses on Trump’s 2016 campaign, much of what he says could just as easily apply to Trump’s successful 2024 campaign. Although he maintained his hard-right positions on issues like guns and immigration, Trump ran as a moderate on abortion and entitlements and called himself the “peace” candidate when it came to foreign policy.

Click to expand...

You mean a low IQ moron who lacks morals and wants to be a mob boss?

Gawd, I hope not.

dmpi said:

Trump was an outsider who successfully hijacked the Republican party. It didn't go without a tough fight from status quo Republicans. But it's more than a man, its his message and policies that hit the sweet spot of America's political undercurrent. Suddenly thing that can never happen (because of established politics), can infact happen. Quite empowering. Due to the structure of the Democratic party and the fact that they're the furthest from actually being Democratic it's impossible for an outsider to inject itself into the party. Bernie was the closest thing to that.

Click to expand...

The Trump phenomenon will be studied for years. I think he tossed the idea of running for years, partly because he had an interest in politics and felt he was more of an alpha than any political figure he'd ever met, and partly because he just liked the attention he got every time he ever mentioned it. People forget that he actually ran as a third party candidate in 2000 and barely made a peep. This was also after his real estate collapse and before his reality TV career began.

I think he sensed weakness in the Republican party's leadership long before Republicans did, but he was still recovering from his 2000 flop. But then came the Iraq war debacle and the housing crisis, and he sensed that people were getting fed up with the establishment in both parties. What saved Democrats in the 2000s was Barack Obama. He was the change candidate. But 5-6 years later, the country still had problems was increasingly polarized along a lot of lines, and Trump eventually discovered the power of social media and the way it could be weaponized. I think the whole Birther thing is what convinced Trump he had a shot and he now had a way to rebrand himself.

Dem potus’ first week in office should look like this:

-Erase Trump’s entire admin by reversing every last EO. This is the one silver lining in that Democrats can essentially erase this entire regime in one week upon winning. The damage will take a long time to fix, but we can start there.
- Rehire all fired fed workers.
-Shut down ICE
-Arrest every member of trump’s regime for their attack on our country.
-Arrest all ICE agents that participated in these kidnappings. Everyone - from heads of departments to admin.

This is just the start.

ataraxia said:

Democrats are not going to win another election in this country, regardless of the candidate, until they learn to become more openly and proudly bigoted and anti-science. They're just not reading the room. The country has put all that nonsense well behind them.

Click to expand...

So we should copy Trump.

j brown's body said:

So we should copy Trump.

Click to expand...

It may well come to that. This is a about the audience more than the performer, so to speak - a significant number of Americans are poorly educated, have short attention spans, and even shorter memories. They aren't looking for competence or character in their leaders, they want someone entertaining who talks like they do and makes them feel good.

So maybe what's needed for Democrats to win is their own lowbrow buffoon.

j brown's body said:

Trump is an amazing candidate. As bad as his opponents might have been, he is clearly considerably worse. When he left office 80% of those polled thought he was taking the country in the wrong direction. Its his campaigning abilities that have enabled him to win.

Click to expand...

He speaks to the growing dissatisfaction with our country's political and economic systems and because he has no filter, he has a way of appearing authentic. I think people believe he's corrupt but no more so than everyone else in the system. A lot of people believe reality TV is real, too.

The Brad Dad said:

Dem potus’ first week in office should look like this:

-Erase Trump’s entire admin by reversing every last EO. This is the one silver lining in that Democrats can essentially erase this entire regime in one week upon winning. The damage will take a long time to fix, but we can start there.
- Rehire all fired fed workers.
-Shut down ICE
-Arrest every member of trump’s regime for their attack on our country.
-Arrest all ICE agents that participated in these kidnappings. Everyone - from heads of departments to admin.

This is just the start.

Click to expand...

That smells a bit like the French Revolution.

Democrats definitely need to learn how to fight, but the answer to a misused immigration enforcement system is not throwing out the immigration enforcement system and jailing everyone who worked in it...

Even if you wanted to replace them all, it'd probably be a good idea to keep a knowledge base around for some period of time.





And more generally, a chaotic future of reprisals and counter-reprisals depending on who is in power would be just about guaranteed to generate systemic collapse

Mr Person said:

And more generally, a chaotic future of reprisals and counter-reprisals depending on who is in power would be just about guaranteed to generate systemic collapse

Click to expand...

Maybe. But this business of "when they go low, we go high" is clearly not working. The American people have shown that their eager and enthusiastic appetite for going low is apparently endless. Just when you think Donald Trump couldn't possibly go any lower before finally getting some popular backlash, he finds a way- and gets a bump in the polls for it. There seems to be no bottom here.

Mr Person said:

That smells a bit like the French Revolution.

Democrats definitely need to learn how to fight, but the answer to a misused immigration enforcement system is not throwing out the immigration enforcement system and jailing everyone who worked in it...

Even if you wanted to replace them all, it'd probably be a good idea to keep a knowledge base around for some period of time.





And more generally, a chaotic future of reprisals and counter-reprisals depending on who is in power would be just about guaranteed to generate systemic collapse

Click to expand...

ICE serves no purpose. We don’t need them. They’ve been used as a secret police force.

disagree with your last paragraph. If the Biden admin had done the right thing and prosecuted all of the Jan 6 criminals, including any GOP reps involved, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Allowing criminals to crime in the name of unity has made a civil war more likely.

Michael Cole said:

I could shoot someone on West Hollywood Blvd. and not lose a vote?

Yeah, we need more Trumps.

Click to expand...

I lived in West Hollywood many years ago when I worked out there, and what you say was also the truth then. There were also knifings, stakeouts and heavy drug activity.