August 27, 2019
On Sunday, after months after sharply criticizing Trump on Twitter, former one-term Congressman Joe Walsh announced a primary challenge to Trump. Unlike mild-mannered moderate, Bill Weld, whose primary bid was like a tree falling in the forest, Walsh’s announcement made a splash. The media-savvy radio talk show host teased the decision for a week before formally announcing on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” (Source: “Former Congressman and Talk Radio Host Announces Trump Primary Challenge,” by Bobby Allyn, NPR.com, 8/25/19). Never Trumpers and some progressives cheered his entry into the race on the theory that it would weaken Trump.
While that analysis is based in historical fact, it doesn’t sufficiently account for the 2019 media environment or the demographics of the 2019 electorate. It is certainly true that primary challenges from Reagan in 1976 and Buchanan in 1992 weakened incumbents Ford and Bush, causing them both to lose in the general, (Source: “No sitting president has survived a primary challenge in the past 50 years. Here’s why Trump should be worried,” by Joe Perticone, Businessinsider.com, 3/7/19). Consider the contrast between then and now. Buchanan and Reagan challenged Republican moderates from the right, offering a more isolationist, more racist and socially conservative platform than those incumbents. What does it even mean to challenge Trump from the right? What is more right wing than putting immigrant children in cages and torturing them? What is more radical than proposing an end to birthright citizenship, which would require overturning the Fourteenth Amendment? Is Walsh promising more competent cruelty. Walsh should not be allowed to use a year of “woke” Tweets and a half baked apology to whitewash his full throated embrace of birtherism and his repeated use of the “n” word on air. Make no mistake, Walsh is just as odious as Trump, only less original.
Progressives don’t realize that Walsh’s presence in the race may weaken Trump, but strengthen Trumpism. Walsh is merely a younger, smoother vessel for Trump’s most contemptible ideas. Having two presidential candidates espousing nativist hatred will only serve to push those ideas further into the mainstream. The strategy of using Walsh to peel off Trump’s most steadfast supporters discounts the extent to which Trump supporters are in a cult of personality undergirded by an almost religious fervor. It also makes the same mistake as the Democratic establishment, in thinking that the path to victory lies in a focus on the disaffected white working class voters seething with class and racial resentment.
The path to victory over Trump requires activating every one of the between 52 to 55% of Americans who disapprove of Donald Trump and making sure that they can vote. Republicans know this, which is why they spend all of their energy devising ingenious ways to suppress the vote. Meanwhile the toothless Federal Elections Commission was further defanged yesterday by the resignation of Republican commissioner, Matthew Petersen, leaving the commission without a quorum.
The truth is, if you want to weaken Trump, you should lobby for your state to require hand-marked, paper ballots and fight voter suppression in key battleground states. You can do that by donating to Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight 2020, which is mobilizing in 20 of those key states to fight voter suppression. The forces of intolerance are strong enough. They don’t need our help. Democracy does.
#Protectourelections.org
#FairFight2020.org