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Republicans have shown us exactly how to defeat Trumpism. [1]

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Date: 2025-02-23

It seems everywhere I turn, there’s another freaking article about how the Democrats are in trouble and have no idea how to defeat Trump. Whenever a deadline is approaching and a reporter doesn’t know what to write about, you know what happens. I’m sick of this narrative.

Thankfully, the Republicans have left a playbook showing exactly what to say. Now, it’s payback time a**holes!

1) The Economy Sucks, Stupid.

If there’s one thing that we’ve learned from the past four years, it’s that the economy doesn’t actually need to BE bad in order for people to THINK it’s bad. Prior to the election, the US had full employment, a prolonged stock market rally, decent economic growth, good wage growth, and inflation tamed to below 3%. Yet, poll after poll showed broad majorities of people thought the economy sucked. It was a combination of people not understanding how inflation works, and the relentless Republican messaging.

Post- pandemic, economists nearly unanimously predicted severe recovery pains that never materialized. Through some combination of luck and very good economic policy, the US never faced the same painful slowdown that many other countries dealt with. It is now looking like that softest of soft landings might not have been quite so cushy. It would take a very adept hand to carefully keep the economy balanced right now and not… sorry I can’t even finish that sentence without snorting.

Because of his bull-in-a-china-shop approach, Mango Mussolini owns the economy right now. Every increase in prices can be plausibly blamed on him. Every decrease in employment is because of his terrible policies. For an economy that could go either way at this point, Trump has sure put his giant orange butt on the scale. He’s created a ton of uncertainty. When there’s uncertainty, businesses don’t invest in new capital projects. They cut back on research and development and scale back their operations. Trump’s tariff threats are paralyzing entire industries. The rest of the world is also PISSED at Trump. They’re purposely avoiding American-made products and cancelling vacations in the US. Foreign direct investment in the US is also going to drop off a cliff.

Consumers will cut back on their spending. They won’t take risks. It’s not a good time to buy that new car or new home. They cut back on luxuries like entertainment, restaurants and vacations. Hell, there are 3 million civil servants right now probably tracking every penny. Another 7 million work for government agencies like the post office. Millions more people work for businesses that rely on government contracts. Yet more people are in tariff-vulnerable sectors likes auto manufacturing, construction or farming. It’s utter misery for anyone caught up in Trump’s wake.

All of these things are going to lead to some bad economic numbers. Those numbers will further depress the stock market and lead to a decline in economic sentiment leading to even worse economic numbers. If a recession materializes, you can bet your “job creator” butt that every time Republicans open their mouths, we are going to hear about the “Biden Recession” even though it will be entirely caused by Trump.

Get out in front of this. No more mealy-mouthed “Trump isn’t doing enough to fight inflation”. Trump is straight-up ruining the economy. Everyone with a platform needs to hammer this home and explain why EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

2) Donald Trump is incompetent.

Everyone knows that Trump and his cronies are evil. He is a 10/10 narcissist devoid of any moral compass. That’s already baked in. When he inevitably does things that cause suffering, the media already goes to work showcasing it. It’s one of the things the media actually does well.

Where Democrats should aim their cannons is at Trump’s incompetence. Trump’s favorability consistently polls about 5 points below his job approval. That’s 5 percent of people who don’t like Trump as a person, but think he’s “getting things done”. Remember what the Republicans did during the Obamacare rollout? Let’s do that.

Because of his insane DOGE nonsense, make Trump own every error the federal government makes right now. Every check that comes late, every disaster that’s not handled right — it’s all on him now.

3) Donald Trump is senile

The orange menace cannot tell the truth. That much has been clear for a long time. Instead of attributing his constant lying to malice or ignorance, we should attribute it to signs of dementia. He’s saying these things that aren’t true because he can’t tell what is real. He’s easily influenced because he can only remember the last thing that heard about something. It fits perfectly within a narrative. What are 3 common signs of dementia? Paranoia, accusations and lying (check, check and check).

When we attribute his crazy rantings to malevolence, it makes him seem stronger and more powerful to his followers. When we attribute them to him not having his marbles, it makes him weak. Meme every slip-up. Every time he says something not true, it’s because he’s lost his ability to understand what’s going on around him. Talk about the 25th amendment openly even though it’s obviously never going to happen.

People who voted for Trump will have a hard time reconciling this with their image of him. Use phrases like “he’s lost a step”, “he’s just not the same”. Show side-by-side images and videos of him from now and 2016. It’s exactly what they relentlessly did to Biden, except this time it’s actually true that Trump has lost it.

4) Play offence

We saw in the debate that there isn’t one pitch Trump won’t swing at. There’s no squirrel he won’t chase. Instead of letting him set the agenda, Democrats with a platform should goad him. Taunt him. He’ll respond every time. And every time, he’ll look more stupid. This is especially true if you question his mental faculties. There’s no good answer for him. What’s he going to say? “Am not stupid!”. If we go far enough, he may even take a real cognitive test. I can just picture the pushback from the media: “But in fairness to Trump, he’s always been a huge liar.” That’s an argument I want to see playing out every day on national television.

5) Break up the bromance

This Elon Musk thing sucks. He’s keeping discipline by using Musk’s money to threaten any Republican who steps out of line. Most Republican politicians have big egos and are almost certainly quietly seething while Musk takes all of their power. They’re just waiting for an opening.

Blame the oncoming problems with the economy on DOGE. Say it over and over again. If DOGE becomes unpopular enough, Trump will turn on Musk just like every other person unfortunate enough to get close to him. Then we have the two people with the biggest egos on the planet going at it. It will be epic.

6) Don’t panic!

This is a marathon and not a sprint. Trump won this recent election with a popular vote that was about 3.5% higher than his vote than in 2016, and his approval started out almost exactly 3.5% higher than it was in January 2017. There hasn’t been some huge shift in the electorate. Americans just like to give their presidents a chance. People are also used to lots of chaos with Trump, so even though what he’s been doing is utterly batshit crazy, it just sounds like a lot of noise.

What we’re seeing right now is the result of years project 2025 planning all being dumped out at the same time. It’s “flooding the zone” as Steve Bannon calls it. This pace is unsustainable. We’ll eventually get back to “infrastructure week”. It will just take a few months.

On the other hand, I’m the first to admit, this first month has been an order of magnitude worse than I thought possible. Maybe I’m naive, but I’m still kind of shocked that the Moldy Cheeto got his whole odious cabinet through. The faster we can grind his agenda to a halt, the better.

The courts are holding for now. There haven’t been any signs of mass deportations or martial law (yet). Every tick down of his approval diminishes his power. Every bad jobs report, every drop in consumer sentiment diminishes his ability to keep his paper thin majorities in line. We only need a couple of Republicans to buckle to create gridlock and two years of constant Republican infighting.

It might not seem like it right now, but we’re making progress. Keep your heads down and keep working. Trump’s 538 approval rating is down 7 points in just 3 weeks. That has to be some sort of record for a new term.

And for f**k’s sake, Democrats in Congress, get your act together. Get some message discipline. Don’t mince words. “Trump is wrecking the economy, Trump is incompetent, Trump is losing his mental faculties”. Say it over, and over again.

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