The Reality Show Presidency

Say what you like about Trump but the fact is that he's transformed government.  No longer is it a dry, boring affair where serious policies are crucial and conflict of interest can ruin you.  Now, you can be as smart, as honest, as empathetic, as telegenic as you like.  If you're not entertaining, you're out.

You can be perplexed and offended by this.  You can point out that millions of lives are deeply affected by what the government does.  You can insist that governing is a serious business and needs to be done by serious people - people with expertise, compassion, experience and vision.  I agree with you but that clearly isn't what people expect anymore.  This is an era of memes, pet videos, bizarre pictures and emoji.  If the government isn't entertaining, people's attention will shift in an instant.  It isn't just young people, either.  Plenty of Xers and boomers now have the attention span of gnats as the digital age drowns us all.

Twenty years ago, Trump would have single digit approval and would have been dumped by his own party.  Twenty years ago, Trump would never have won the nomination.  Twenty years ago, he could have been the Ross Perot of his day, a crank; a joke.  He is a joke but the joke is now on Americans and on the world.  Make no mistake.  What's happening is deadly serious.  Nationalism and its ugly twin racism are engulfing the US.  The myriad of links from Trump and GOP to Russian money are not, as Glenn Greenwald and Tulsi Gabbard might have you believe, baseless conspiracy theories. Authoritarian regime expert Sarah Kendzior's warnings that Trump and his minions are using well-understood tactics to move America closer to authoritarianism are not completely ridiculous notions.  It's time for people to pay attention.

Unfortunately, most of the people who are paying closest attention seem to come from the old era of boring government.  They aren't learning.  Consider this tweet posted yesterday by Kurt Eichenwald:

1. Messages from@RadioFreeTom,@JRubinBlogger,@WalshFreedom and others are the key to the survival of America. If we have learned anything from the Trump era, it is that we MUST end the personal invective of politics. Politics is about governing, and governing is about policy..

Trump has been running circles around these folks by the last three years by doing the exact opposite of what he proposes.  Does anyone think that the ~120 million Americans that, judging from the polls, still support Trump and have no intention of abandoning him, are going to have their minds changed by that?

So, what to do?

1. Stop chasing Trump's every crazy tweet.  The one yesterday about buying Greenland is a great example.  It's not going to happen so ignore it.  If the press and progressives do this and leave Trump's base to talk about it among themselves, he will look as weak and foolish as he is.
2. Focus on issues that matter to Trump's base like conflict of interest, his Russian connections, lack of wage growth and the way tax cuts have benefited the wealthy.  Use House investigations to dig up dirt.
3. Impeach.  Maybe Nancy Pelosi is a genius who is dragging her feet to make sure impeachment hearings can become an election issue.  Maybe she's timid. Maybe she's compromised. Maybe she's a genius and I just don't understand. But if Trump isn't impeached, this will be a message to future presidents. There will be no consequences for anything you do as long as your base doesn't abandon you.
4. Learn from the last election.  The Democrats need a populist, someone who can draw a crowd and make people care enough to show up and vote.  Someone like Bernie.
5. The Democrats need to firmly address the elephant in the room - the spiraling gap between the poor and the rich.  For decades, they've been promising to help the poor but pursuing policies that make the wealthy wealthier. Universal health care is a good start but it's not enough.  Bernie or or Elizabeth.  Not Joe. 

The game has changed.  If the Democrats and progressives don't change with it, they will always lose.