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I’m here with my treasured colleagues Ruth Marcus and Megan McArdle to discuss whether Democrats need a shift in tone.
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David Von Drehle: Is it fair for Trump to place blame on Democratic rhetoric? In what sense, if so? And what should be done?
Ruth Marcus: So many thoughts about this. First, we all need to be mindful of our rhetoric — not necessarily to tone it down if we believe, as former vice president Dick Cheney does, that “in our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” but to couple the urgency of that appeal with the reminder that the solution is at the ballot box, not in violence.
Second, Trump’s extreme rhetoric — which is often way more extreme than what emanates from his opponents — is no excuse for irresponsible language on the other side. Fundamentally, tensions are high for good reason, which is that the stakes of the election are so large. We need to be having a robust debate, and chilling speech is not the answer. There is a long and lamentable history of political violence in this country that predates social media and the internet and all the other factors that may be contributing to the current climate. And of course, easy access to guns is equally lamentable. The Secret Service — and thank goodness it acted to stop this possible would-be assassin — obviously needs to recalibrate how it deals with nominees in the current climate.
Megan McArdle: I think Democrats should tone down the heated rhetoric, as should Republicans, because it’s bad for the country. But not because it inspires assassinations. The more direct cause is social contagion: things like suicides, assassinations, school shootings and so forth are “contagious” because seeing these events in the news gives others the idea to copy them.
I do think it is fair to say that Democrats are quick to blame Republicans whenever there is even a tentative, implausible link between something a Republican has said and a violent madman’s behavior. For example, the shooter of Gabby Giffords has paranoid schizophrenia and his “political motivation” was his odd ideas about grammar, but Democrats condemned Republicans for inciting him. The Pulse nightclub shooter was a follower of the Islamic State, but his attack was blamed on conservative homophobia. The guy who shot up an Asian business was a massage parlor customer who was wracked with guilt, but the left pinned it on Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. And the list goes on. Democrats should not blame Republicans for things they can’t control unless they want to be blamed themselves.
Ruth: Megan, this is what I was trying to get at with the reference to Trump’s extreme rhetoric. No one should leap to causal connections that might or might not be present. But I’m honestly not sure about the call to tone things down.
Megan: I’m not arguing that Democrats shouldn’t say “Trump is bad.” But the hyperbolic rhetoric where the dark night of fascism is about to fall is not helpful to our politics.
Ruth: Do you think Dick Cheney was hyperbolic and therefore inciting?
Megan: I don’t think it’s inciting!
Ruth: Well, then where do you draw the line? A lot of people looking at this election sincerely believe the dark night of fascism is about to fall. (I don’t go that far, but I am in Cheney land.)
David: How can it not be a little inciting to say someone is an existential threat to the nation?
Megan: I just think it puts everyone in a frame of mind where their opponents are the most evil people in the world, and cannot be tolerated or compromised with. Trump is a uniquely bad president, but he’s not Hitler.
Ruth: Let’s make this a Hitler-free zone. I think Cheney is a really good example of setting out the stakes in a way that is so stark and, as David said, could be inciting to a disordered individual. How do we cope with that as a democratic society in the midst of an election campaign where political speech is essential?
Megan: Ruth, a lot of Republicans sincerely believe that Democrats are trying to use their institutional power to crush the opposition, economically and socially as well as politically. There is a grain of truth to that, in that there really are powerful people in establishment institutions who view their job as stamping out wrong-think. But it’s exaggerated, and treating politics as a vehicle for destroying your opponents before they can destroy you — rather than a way to do things the country needs done — is a disease.
That said, I don’t think anyone who says “this is really bad” is responsible for someone who expands that to “this is really bad, I should kill someone to stop it.” But also, people who commit these crimes tend to be unstable. Drawing a clear logical line between someone else’s speech and their actions is imagining a coherence onto these people that usually isn’t there.
Ruth: Your discussion of Democrats trying to use their institutional power to crush the opposition is a little hard to swallow, since Trump is the one who describes the media as enemy of the people, describes opponents on the left as “vermin,” etc. We do agree about the coherence and the lack of cause/effect. So we may both agree that the Trump line of attack is unfair even if we differ about the precise details of why and what that suggests.
Megan: Ruth, I think you and I both know a lot of journalists who think that it is their job to get Democrats elected, to tell stories in ways that flatter and promote left-wing ideas about sexuality and culture, etc. We know academics who view their job as justifying and advancing progressive policy and causes. The same is true of other cultural institutions. There is a grain of truth to Trump’s belief that the media is out to get him, just as there is a grain of truth to the progressive worries about Trump’s authoritarian instincts. But in neither case is that the whole story.
David: To go in another direction — Democrats should stop with the existential threat language because it’s not working. They’ve been saying it for almost 10 years and America’s still here. I felt Harris-Walz and company started down the right path during the convention, when they said Trump and JD Vance are weird, ridiculous, inept, exhausting, etc. Drop the mortal threat language and play up the worn-out clown show angle.
Ruth: Trump-Vance could be both laughable/weird and dangerous to a near-existential degree.
David: I think it is also worth noting that while Trump was blaming Democrats for the actions of this long-time crazy felon in Palm Beach, he managed to find time for a two-hour launch event for his new cryptocurrency grift. So he doesn’t appear too rattled.
Ruth: David, I don’t think I’d go down that road. It doesn’t matter whether he is sincerely rattled or not. It doesn’t matter if he’s gonna keep on grifting. It matters that these terrible things are happening and it is imperative to have a national conversation about why even if his easy, go-to blame-Democrats instinct is not fair or accurate.
David: A Democrat, Rep. Ro Khanna of California, called in a Post op-ed for emergency funding for the Secret Service to expand protection for Trump. That struck me as a highly constructive response.
Megan: Yes, David, that’s a much better response.
Ruth: One-hundred percent. If they need money, they should get it. But it strikes me that they also need a change in mindset. Which is: It matters in our politics if anyone is the victim of political violence, whether they are the president or someone vying for the presidency (at the level of general election nominee). There should probably be a similar level of protective cover.
Megan: So here’s where some Democrats have been at fault and unhelpful: trying to strip Trump’s Secret Service protection. Obviously that happened before the attack on Trump in Butler, Pa. But it was profoundly wrong to try to leave a former president open to assassination because you believe he was a bad president.
David: It’s a shame, in my view, that the answer seems to be an even greater distance between would-be presidents and the voters. We are doomed to an ever-greater unreality and government by TV stars.
Ruth: Agreed on the irresponsibility of stripping Trump of protection. And while I’m being so agreeable, the distance between candidates and voters is terrible. But we are not in the good old days when people could wander into the White House to chat with the president. Distance is a cost of modern society.
