Donald Trump takes great pride in being unpredictable, but in some respects, including the following, he is very predictable, indeed:
- Politics is an exercise in mobilizing your base, not in building consensus, which is a waste of time better left to wimps and fools. If you are constantly on the attack, triggering liberals and the MSM, and forcing people to choose between you and the fearsome Other, you can maintain a practical majority in the country, whether you have one on paper or not.
- The point of negotiating is to win, and the best way to win is to find and exploit leverage. That can best be done by taking extreme positions and threatening to shoot hostages. Talking about nukes and trade wars is consequently very much on the table, even if your predecessors didn’t have the balls to do it.
Trump’s position on family separation is obviously consistent with both of those principles. The mere fact that it polls poorly and looks bad on TV is of no consequence to him; in the long run, he thinks it will help him.
The Democrats need to remember that the enemy isn’t simply Trump–it is Trumpism, as described above. Electing a left-wing version of the same phenomenon would not be much of an improvement.