by J.T. Young
Despite their best efforts, have Democrats begun an inexorable elevation of former President Donald Trump? For the better part of a decade, Democrats and the Left have thrown everything they could think of against the man they live to loathe. In the process, they have created a quasi-caricature that appears to be decreasingly believable to an increasing proportion of Americans. The question is whether these attacks have come full circle, accomplishing what Democrats most sought to avoid. Have they vilified Trump to victimhood and prosecuted him back into the presidency?
Since Trump burst on the political scene in 2016, Democrats and the Left have busted their guts laughing at him. When that didn’t work and he won, they burst all boundaries going after him. Their efforts have ranged from slights to a Russian dossier to two impeachments. Even after Trump left office, they refused to stop. Unquestionably, these efforts have had an effect — and equally unquestionably, Trump has given ample fodder to use against him: the result being that with Trump poised to win an unprecedented third successive major party presidential nomination (a feat last accomplished by Franklin D. Roosevelt 84 years ago), he has become a highly polarizing figure.
Yet amid their attacks, Democrats and the Left must confront a nagging reality. Trump is not simply continuing to win political contests; his popularity is growing. In 2016, Trump won the presidency with 45.9 percent of the popular vote. In 2020, he lost the presidency with 46.9 percent of the popular vote. Today, in the RealClearPolitics average of national polling, he stands at 47.4 percent in a two-way contest with President Joe Biden. The gains are not dramatic, but neither can they be ignored. For a politician so relentlessly attacked — in the establishment media, throughout entertainment, and across America’s elite — this is nothing short of astounding.
It is also counterintuitive. It raises the possibility of whether the attacks have reached the end of their effectiveness and are now having a positive effect. Instead of bearing the fruit they desired, are Democrats and the Left about to reap a harvest of the forbidden fruit they detest?
There are several instances in which it is possible to see Democrats’ efforts falling like dominoes in Trump’s favor.
The ham-handed attempt to bar Trump from state ballots comes first to mind. Only the biggest zealots could have seen this as acceptable: allowing states to unilaterally determine who could run on a ballot for the highest federal office. Clearly, none of the Supreme Court justices did. By the overreach of their own hand, Democrats now face the prospect that Americans will perceive that the other court cases against Trump are equally politically motivated, that they are equally invalidated, and that Trump is vindicated.
Collectively, these other court cases against present further instances for Democrats to feel a whipsaw effect. What if one — such as the one in Georgia where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has turned this into a sideshow worthy of TMZ — is turned away? Or, worse yet for Democrats, what if Trump wins in one of these cases? The risk is that such an outcome could, in Americans’ minds, extend to the other cases too.
Even if Trump does not prevail, the risk remains that Trump could be perceived as having been more persecuted than prosecuted. Sound far-fetched? Just look back to Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal. Despite being convicted in the legal process, he was acquitted in the court of public opinion. Although the scandal played out publicly for months in 1998, ultimately leading to his impeachment and being disbarred, Clinton left office in 2001 with higher approval ratings than he had during his first term.
Another example: high-profile Biden administration policy failures. Many of those most opposed by the public seem to have been pursued by Biden as anti-Trump knee-jerk reactions. The administration’s wildly unpopular illegal immigration policy stands out. Trump wanted to build a wall, so Biden bent over backwards in opening the border.
Ditto in foreign policy, where we’ve seen a precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan and then deliberately seeking reproachment with terrorist Iran in response to Trump’s abandonment of the nuclear deal. To Trump’s “drill baby drill” approach, the Biden administration went full throttle to expensive green energy initiatives that raise costs on working Americans. In each of these, Democrats let their anti-Trump mindset paint themselves into a corner with the American public.
Then there is Biden himself. Democrats and the Left coalesced around Biden for one reason: to beat Trump. While Biden accomplished that run, he has failed to succeed on his own. Only the most partisan can claim to ignore Biden’s failing performance, which has stretched from his refusal to campaign in 2020, to his refusal to face the press during his first term, to his rare, little-short-of-disastrous public appearances today. And now a demanding 2024 campaign, in which he must play catch-up, awaits. Again, the results of Democrats’ anti-Trump crusade.
And what if Trump should win in November? Democrats have set him up for early success. All Trump need do to look presidential is to not be Biden. By simply undoing Biden’s policies, Trump will reap immediate approval in simply doing his job.
Each of these dominoes is one Democrats have set up. And on each, Democrats could not keep from pushing in their pursuit against Trump. Certainly, Trump bears a substantial onus for his high negative ratings. But this raises the question higher: How has a president out of office for four years and under constant attack from Democrats and the Left not simply retained his high daunting support but continued growing it? For an answer, his opponents should begin by looking at themselves. Rather than eviscerating Trump, have they exonerated him to a growing number of Americans?
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J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987–2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001–2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004–2023.
Photo “Donald Trump” by Daniel Scavino Jr.
