“When they go low, we go high,” then-First Lady Michelle Obama told the Democratic National Convention in 2016, claiming it was the Democrats’ motto. Few things are less true of Democrats, though they repeat it to themselves in the mirror every morning.
What prompted Obama to say that was something she couldn’t stand about Hillary Clinton’s opponent, Donald Trump. “When someone is cruel, or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level,” she said just before her “go high” rejoinder. She’s right that Trump isn’t afraid to go low, but she doesn’t want voters to realize that it’s because Democrats are already down there. She was, after all, defending Hillary Clinton.
Democrats have spent decades screaming about their GOP opponents being racist Nazis, as if that by definition puts Democrats on the high road. On the contrary, false name-calling is not a high-road substitute for serious policy arguments.
What brought Obama’s quote to mind for me this week was a column by left-wing statistician Nate Silver in which he referred to it. He was explaining how Democrats can win the gerrymandering fight if only they’re willing to “go low” like Republicans do. He praised California Governor Gavin Newsom’s effort to do just that, but, like Michelle Obama, his claim is rooted in an alternate reality:
The initiative marks the end of a decade-plus of a “when they go low, we go high” attitude among Democratic leaders, which the party base has increasingly soured on. And here, the base has the right strategic instincts. Actions like Newsom’s could help the party keep the playing field level in the long run — or even eke out an advantage.
The field has tilted toward Democrats for decades because they’ve always gone low. As I argued when the Texas gerrymandering story first surfaced, you may not like what Republicans there are doing, but they’re fighting fire with fire. Democrats were already doing it to great advantage in blue states.
And that got me thinking about why Democrats really hate Donald Trump so much. Because fighting fire with fire, going low when they go low, is precisely how he fights (and wins). They absolutely cannot stand it, and it’s currently driving them into the political hinterlands.
Gerrymandering is one example; Trump’s project to remake the Smithsonian is another. They cry about how he’s revising history when they are the ones guilty of that. He’s getting rid of politicized left-wing garbage that shouldn’t be a part of taxpayer-funded museums. But I suppose celebrating America looks really political to Democrats who hate America.
The New York Times featured an article a few days ago titled, “How Trump Used 10 Emergency Declarations to Justify Hundreds of Actions.” It purports to be an explainer of how Trump is making big moves on things like immigration, tariffs, and energy by declaring emergencies to undergird his orders.
Tellingly, however, the article names Barack Obama and Joe Biden only once each — and both in cases where Trump extended and expanded their emergency orders. Yet those two presidents created the “govern by emergency” template. Who can forget Obama adviser Rahm Emanuel’s famous quote? “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” he said. “And what I mean by that [is] it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
Somehow, it’s appalling to Democrats when Trump plays by the rules they wrote.
The same goes for Trump’s flag-burning order. Leftists made it a “hate crime” to burn rainbow flags or to leave tire marks on rainbow crosswalks, but somehow it’s laudable free speech to burn American flags. I happen to agree with the late Justice Antonin Scalia that the First Amendment covers both expressions, but Trump says if we outlaw one, we’re going to outlaw the other.
In fact, Donald Trump has so thoroughly co-opted the Left’s tactics to beat them that Jeffrey Blehar argued at National Review yesterday that he “has become our first truly unapologetically Alinskyite president.” He’s referring to Saul Alinsky and “all twelve of the Chicago activist’s infamous Rules for Radicals.” Trump, he contends, “has internalized every one of them” and uses them to great effect.
I’d argue that Barack Obama was the first Alinskyite president, though the word “unapologetically” is doing a lot of heavy lifting for Blehar, who would likely assert that Obama always pretended otherwise. Yet Obama was the Chicago radical whose “hope and change” message was actually a thoroughly leftist vision for government activism in every facet of life, with a steady undercurrent of polarizing racialism.
Trump might be using some of the same tools and tactics, but for opposite ends. In short, he knew the “we go high” claim was BS, and he’s now beating the tar out of Democrats by using their own rules.
They destroyed “norms” for decades, and the main reason anyone thinks Trump’s bold and brash moves are destroying them now is that he’s undoing what became normal. He uses Alinsky. He uses “emergencies.” He gerrymanders. He does whatever it takes to win, just like Democrats have for decades.
They doubly despise him for it.
