For his unexpected surge in the nascent contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, Pete Buttigieg, 37, can thank his formidable intellect, his considerable poise and political instincts that have been close to flawless so far.
But his greatest debt of gratitude goes to Donald Trump.
Ask Buttigieg-besotted voters whether his youth gives them pause and they’ll say that extra seasoning sure didn’t improve the taste of Trump. Question whether serving as mayor of a small Indiana city is adequate preparation for being the leader of the free world and they’ll say that it’s infinitely preferable to a background in reality television, casinos and beauty pageants.
Kamala Harris’s fans like her smarts, toughness and flashes of warmth. But you know what some of them like even more? The idea of Trump’s presidency being bracketed by a black predecessor and a black, female successor. That casts Trump’s values as outliers, untrue to America. It shrinks him to a costly one-off, a wretched asterisk.
Every incumbent president looms large over the contest to determine his opponent, but the shadow cast by Trump is bloated beyond measure. He’s not just influencing the Democratic race. He’s perverting it. It looks and sounds little like 2016, 2012, 2008 or any other year that I can easily recall, and the main reason isn’t rising progressivism, increasing diversity or metastasizing social media. It’s Trump.
He’s altering the standards by which candidates are judged. He’s warping the lens through which they’re viewed. Everything is a response to him, a reading of him, a repudiation of him. He’s the reference point, as omnipresent in Democrats’ motivations and calculations as he is on cable news. The Democrat who wins the party’s presidential nomination will be the Democrat who fits most felicitously into a Trump-stamped and Trump-ravaged landscape, and if that Democrat goes all the way, it will be a destiny decreed largely by Trump.
[Get a more personal, less conventional take on political developments, newsmakers, cultural milestones and more with Frank Bruni’s exclusive commentary every week. Sign up for his newsletter.]
Trump, for example, gets credit for the Democratic primary’s defining aspect, which is the sheer number of candidates — 23. They assessed his underwhelming approval rating, factored in his combustibility and decided that if ever a sitting president looked vulnerable and if any year appeared ripe for a Democratic takeover, that president is Trump and that year is 2020. The many long shots among them weren’t dissuaded by their odds, because Trump took an unconventional route to a victory that stunned him as much as it did anybody else. It suggested that the old rules were out the window and you never really know.
But the congested field is suffocating qualified aspirants who would otherwise find oxygen. It’s putting an extra premium on viral moments and supersize conceits. It’s privileging celebrity. All of that will factor into who prevails, and all of that is because of Trump.
“Electability” dominates Democratic voters’ thoughts, because many of them are more horrified by four more years of Trump than they were by four more years of his Republican predecessors.
And every Democratic candidate’s theory of the race is a theory of Trump, reflecting his or her analysis of how Trump pulled off his astonishing upset.
Did it indeed rest on embittered and economically vulnerable white men in the Rust Belt? Then his challenger must be able to speak to that demographic group. That’s an argument made for and by Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Tim Ryan, Steve Bullock and John Hickenlooper. Note that they’re all white men themselves. By this thinking, it’s potentially reckless, after Hillary Clinton’s defeat, to stage a rematch against Trump with a woman or a member of a minority group.
Did Trump prevail in 2016 because too few young people, progressives and voters of color cast ballots? Then the key is a candidate who can supposedly energize one or more of those groups. Cue Harris, Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Julián Castro and Elizabeth Warren.
Has Trump’s grossly misogynistic behavior and assault on reproductive rights set the stage for a woman-powered rebellion at the polls? Then Harris, Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand deserve serious consideration.
Was the lesson of Trump that you must be able to saturate the media, social and otherwise, and become a compulsively watchable character in a narrative of your own invention? Beto O’Rourke obviously thinks or at least thought so, and that’s partly why so many Democratic voters saw such promise in him.
“On stylistic and even substantive grounds, Trump is arguably exerting more gravitational pull on Democratic politics than the party’s most recent president, Barack Obama,” John Harris, a founding editor of Politico, recently wrote. Harris also asserted that the Democratic primary contest thus far “is over which candidate can most credibly claim that he or she will not just beat Trump but repudiate all he stands for.”
That’s the essence of Biden’s strategy and message, which boil down to this: Electing me would mean that the past four years were a bad dream, like that kooky season of the 1970s television series “Dallas.” It would restore Obama (in absentia), resume the arc and renounce this dance with the devil, who could no more drain the swamp than tell the truth. Nostalgia is the new revolution.
Funnily, Biden is taking a page from Trump by promising a return to some idealized epoch gone by. It’s just that Biden’s remembrance of politics past includes robust bipartisanship (news to Bill Clinton, who was impeached) and much greater civility (news to Obama, who watched Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court die on the vine).
Like Trump’s 2016 bid, Biden’s 2020 effort is more backward- than forward-looking — which, under normal circumstances, is a Democratic no-no. But Trump obliterated normal circumstances. Any yesterday is preferable to his tomorrow, the prevention of which is the most seductive promise any Democratic presidential candidate can make.
Campaigning in Iowa on Tuesday, Biden was fixated on Trump and delivered a searing, sweeping indictment of him. He called Trump “an existential threat.” He said that the cashiers at Target “know more about economics than Trump.” Referring to Trump’s splenetic tweets, he noted that the president “gets up in the middle of the night to attack Bette Midler. He attacks the mayor of London. He attacks the American speaker of the House.”
And with all of that, he has put Biden on the attack, turning a politician known warmly as Uncle Joe into a hectoring presence. This new look may or may not be the right one. But its tailor, indisputably, is Trump.
Other incumbents have certainly influenced the mood of the opposing party and the pitches of its leaders. Jimmy Carter, so painfully deliberative and earnest, set the stage for Ronald Reagan, so swaggeringly decisive. George W. Bush, scion of New England blue bloods, led to Obama, son of Kansas, Kenya and Hawaii.
But Trump will out-and-out sire his successor. Even if he leaves the White House shortly after November 2020, his DNA will linger.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter (@FrankBruni).
Frank Bruni has been with The Times since 1995 and held a variety of jobs — including White House reporter, Rome bureau chief and chief restaurant critic — before becoming a columnist in 2011. He is the author of three best-selling books. @FrankBruni • Facebook
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Home » Analysis & Comment » Opinion | How Donald Trump Has Perverted the Democratic Primary
Opinion | How Donald Trump Has Perverted the Democratic Primary
For his unexpected surge in the nascent contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, Pete Buttigieg, 37, can thank his formidable intellect, his considerable poise and political instincts that have been close to flawless so far.
But his greatest debt of gratitude goes to Donald Trump.
Ask Buttigieg-besotted voters whether his youth gives them pause and they’ll say that extra seasoning sure didn’t improve the taste of Trump. Question whether serving as mayor of a small Indiana city is adequate preparation for being the leader of the free world and they’ll say that it’s infinitely preferable to a background in reality television, casinos and beauty pageants.
Kamala Harris’s fans like her smarts, toughness and flashes of warmth. But you know what some of them like even more? The idea of Trump’s presidency being bracketed by a black predecessor and a black, female successor. That casts Trump’s values as outliers, untrue to America. It shrinks him to a costly one-off, a wretched asterisk.
Every incumbent president looms large over the contest to determine his opponent, but the shadow cast by Trump is bloated beyond measure. He’s not just influencing the Democratic race. He’s perverting it. It looks and sounds little like 2016, 2012, 2008 or any other year that I can easily recall, and the main reason isn’t rising progressivism, increasing diversity or metastasizing social media. It’s Trump.
He’s altering the standards by which candidates are judged. He’s warping the lens through which they’re viewed. Everything is a response to him, a reading of him, a repudiation of him. He’s the reference point, as omnipresent in Democrats’ motivations and calculations as he is on cable news. The Democrat who wins the party’s presidential nomination will be the Democrat who fits most felicitously into a Trump-stamped and Trump-ravaged landscape, and if that Democrat goes all the way, it will be a destiny decreed largely by Trump.
[Get a more personal, less conventional take on political developments, newsmakers, cultural milestones and more with Frank Bruni’s exclusive commentary every week. Sign up for his newsletter.]
Trump, for example, gets credit for the Democratic primary’s defining aspect, which is the sheer number of candidates — 23. They assessed his underwhelming approval rating, factored in his combustibility and decided that if ever a sitting president looked vulnerable and if any year appeared ripe for a Democratic takeover, that president is Trump and that year is 2020. The many long shots among them weren’t dissuaded by their odds, because Trump took an unconventional route to a victory that stunned him as much as it did anybody else. It suggested that the old rules were out the window and you never really know.
But the congested field is suffocating qualified aspirants who would otherwise find oxygen. It’s putting an extra premium on viral moments and supersize conceits. It’s privileging celebrity. All of that will factor into who prevails, and all of that is because of Trump.
“Electability” dominates Democratic voters’ thoughts, because many of them are more horrified by four more years of Trump than they were by four more years of his Republican predecessors.
And every Democratic candidate’s theory of the race is a theory of Trump, reflecting his or her analysis of how Trump pulled off his astonishing upset.
Did it indeed rest on embittered and economically vulnerable white men in the Rust Belt? Then his challenger must be able to speak to that demographic group. That’s an argument made for and by Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Tim Ryan, Steve Bullock and John Hickenlooper. Note that they’re all white men themselves. By this thinking, it’s potentially reckless, after Hillary Clinton’s defeat, to stage a rematch against Trump with a woman or a member of a minority group.
Did Trump prevail in 2016 because too few young people, progressives and voters of color cast ballots? Then the key is a candidate who can supposedly energize one or more of those groups. Cue Harris, Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Julián Castro and Elizabeth Warren.
Has Trump’s grossly misogynistic behavior and assault on reproductive rights set the stage for a woman-powered rebellion at the polls? Then Harris, Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand deserve serious consideration.
Was the lesson of Trump that you must be able to saturate the media, social and otherwise, and become a compulsively watchable character in a narrative of your own invention? Beto O’Rourke obviously thinks or at least thought so, and that’s partly why so many Democratic voters saw such promise in him.
“On stylistic and even substantive grounds, Trump is arguably exerting more gravitational pull on Democratic politics than the party’s most recent president, Barack Obama,” John Harris, a founding editor of Politico, recently wrote. Harris also asserted that the Democratic primary contest thus far “is over which candidate can most credibly claim that he or she will not just beat Trump but repudiate all he stands for.”
That’s the essence of Biden’s strategy and message, which boil down to this: Electing me would mean that the past four years were a bad dream, like that kooky season of the 1970s television series “Dallas.” It would restore Obama (in absentia), resume the arc and renounce this dance with the devil, who could no more drain the swamp than tell the truth. Nostalgia is the new revolution.
Funnily, Biden is taking a page from Trump by promising a return to some idealized epoch gone by. It’s just that Biden’s remembrance of politics past includes robust bipartisanship (news to Bill Clinton, who was impeached) and much greater civility (news to Obama, who watched Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court die on the vine).
Like Trump’s 2016 bid, Biden’s 2020 effort is more backward- than forward-looking — which, under normal circumstances, is a Democratic no-no. But Trump obliterated normal circumstances. Any yesterday is preferable to his tomorrow, the prevention of which is the most seductive promise any Democratic presidential candidate can make.
Campaigning in Iowa on Tuesday, Biden was fixated on Trump and delivered a searing, sweeping indictment of him. He called Trump “an existential threat.” He said that the cashiers at Target “know more about economics than Trump.” Referring to Trump’s splenetic tweets, he noted that the president “gets up in the middle of the night to attack Bette Midler. He attacks the mayor of London. He attacks the American speaker of the House.”
And with all of that, he has put Biden on the attack, turning a politician known warmly as Uncle Joe into a hectoring presence. This new look may or may not be the right one. But its tailor, indisputably, is Trump.
Other incumbents have certainly influenced the mood of the opposing party and the pitches of its leaders. Jimmy Carter, so painfully deliberative and earnest, set the stage for Ronald Reagan, so swaggeringly decisive. George W. Bush, scion of New England blue bloods, led to Obama, son of Kansas, Kenya and Hawaii.
But Trump will out-and-out sire his successor. Even if he leaves the White House shortly after November 2020, his DNA will linger.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter (@FrankBruni).
Frank Bruni has been with The Times since 1995 and held a variety of jobs — including White House reporter, Rome bureau chief and chief restaurant critic — before becoming a columnist in 2011. He is the author of three best-selling books. @FrankBruni • Facebook
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