Defeating Trump and the MAGA Movement

Since Donald Trump descended the escalator in 2015 he and his movement have been defined by lies, grievance, racism and hatred towards anyone and anything that challenged Trump and/or the MAGA movement's hate and rage based agenda.  After nine years, many Americans are simply exhausted and want both Trump and his movement to simply shut up and go away.  True, Trump's most loyal base of haters and those motivated by grievance and bigotry will never reject him, but by some accounts the other 67% of the populace long for something uplifting and providing a basis for hope for a more positive future.  Trump and MAGA are always looking backwards and seeking to move the country backwards in time to a period when racial minorities and gays were either subordinate to whites or remained largely invisible.  Enter Kamala Harris and Tim Walz who provide a cheerfulness and sense of optimism that is devoid in Trump and the MAGA base. Moreover, their platform does not look backward and calls for unity rather than division.  A column in the New York Times speculates that the majority of voters are ready to put Trump and MAGA in the rearview mirror.  Here are excerpts:

There is a difference between beating a candidate and sidelining a movement. After nine years of confronting Donald Trump and facing a MAGA movement that has remade the Republican Party I once belonged to, I believe that fear may be sufficient to beat Trump, but only joy can push MAGA back to the periphery of American life.

Let me begin with a confession I suspect many of us could make: I did not expect Kamala Harris to do so well, so soon in her contest with Trump. I did not expect the overflow, exuberant crowds, and I definitely did not expect to see such an immediate and effective pivot from the Biden message of “save democracy” to a Harris campaign that is so plainly emphasizing optimism and hope.

When evaluating American politics and culture, you can sometimes feel the mood shifting before it’s reflected in the data. That was certainly true at the beginning of the Trump era. . . . . He had paid actors in Trump Tower in case no one else showed up. His speech was strange — it didn’t just include the now-famous claim that Mexico was sending its rapists across the border, it also included bizarre asides, like a claim that other candidates “sweated like dogs.” The tone and the content that are familiar to us now seemed disqualifying in the moment.

I’m wondering if the mood is shifting again. I wonder if we’re on the front end of a change in national temperament that could be fatal for MAGA — if we’re leaving the era of the nasty snarl in favor of the broad smile. And it’s not just the Harris surge that’s made me wonder about this.

I’m struck, for example, by the spirit of joy that surrounded the Olympics. The opening moments of the games threatened to pull us down into the divisive mud. . . . . But the fight fizzled, quickly. The rest of America was too busy watching Snoop Dogg.

I felt a spirit of fun and exuberance around the Games that was qualitatively different from what we experienced in Tokyo in 2021 or Rio in 2016. Ratings were up 82 percent from the Tokyo Games, and Americans were neglecting work to watch the events.

It’s also interesting that traffic to political websites is in steep decline. . . . . traffic is much lower than it was at the same time during our last presidential cycle. Yes, 2020 was a dramatic year, but so is 2024, and public interest in the news just isn’t the same. It’s not even close.

Partisans aren’t really shifting their mood, but the exhausted majority of Americans is, and right now the Harris campaign is much closer than Trump’s to capturing their desires and reflecting that mood. . . . . The term “exhausted majority” comes from More in Common’s seminal “Hidden Tribes” survey of American life.

While the partisan 33 percent of America is engaged in the political equivalent of trench warfare, the exhausted 67 percent are tired of polarization, feel forgotten by the political parties and long for some degree of compromise.

For most of the last nine years, the polarized wings have tried to reach these exhausted and alienated voters largely by grabbing them by the lapels and demanding that they wake up to the imminent collapse of the American republic. The messages have been relentless . . . If the two parties continue on this path, a grim fight between two apocalyptic parties’ visions could result in an election outcome — in either direction — that doesn’t alter the fundamental political realities of American life.

But there’s another potential outcome. If the national mood is shifting and if Harris and Tim Walz can maintain their happy warrior posture, then we could see meaningful political change. The era of the snarl could be at an end, and MAGA is nothing without its snarl.

I’m nervous about offering an optimistic take on American politics. . . . . But I’m optimistic nonetheless. Joy alone isn’t sufficient to defeat Trump. The best approach combines joy with tenacity and an appealing set of policies. But it’s plain, to me at least, that Harris’s joy seems to have caught the Trump campaign off guard. Even worse, Trump simply can’t pivot to match the spirit of the moment. He’s too mired in his own grievances and rage. . . . there is simply no bottom to MAGA talk. There is no bottom to MAGA behavior.

For nine years, Trump opponents have tried to make Americans care about Trump’s scandals. I’ve done it myself, constantly reminding readers that Trump’s misconduct doesn’t just disqualify him from the presidency; he also rightfully faces criminal charges, and no person who’s done what Trump’s done should run any institution, much less the executive branch of the United States government.

But you can’t make people care. And you certainly can’t make them share your anger. You can, however, meet them where they are. If they are ready for joy, then give them joy. I can think of few ends more fitting for MAGA than finally defeating it with joy rather than anger and teaching the next generation of American politicians that the best way to reach American hearts is with faith and hope rather than rage and fear.