Or I'm misunderstanding your response. Learning from your enemies doesn't mean coopting their bad behavior. It's figuring out what they're doing that's effective and rebranding it as your own. Then using it against them. Acting instead of our usual reacting.

The gist isn't anything new. The American populace isn't terribly insightful, to put it mildly. Stop acting like they are. Keep the message simple, straightforward and consistent. Truthful is even better. And every Dem pounds it home. This has been discussed for years, but Dems are still no good at it. Republicans have been doing exactly this for decades, long before Trump, and are far more tapped into the American psyche than we are. Dump our strategists, who are obviously terrible, and enlist the help of former Republican operators who are as disaffected by Trump as we are. They can teach us a thing or two. And just as important, it will take a significant amount of cooperation within a party that's not known for it's internal cooperation. We'd better figure that shit out too as we have little choice.

End of the day, it's about reclaiming the democracy by any and all means necessary while there's still a goddamn democracy to reclaim. Once we do that, we can then return to our regularly schedule political fights with said Republican operators.

Republicans base their simple winning slogans on mendacity. We’re not good at that. apparently, that’s what the Republicans are doing that works though. Think of selling used cars. That’s what they do on their side.

Take no prisoners is a prominent characteristic of tRump's negotiating style, which is why they have 1 1/2 deals in 90 days. Take no prisoners is why Mike Johnson's caucus is so fractious and unmanageable. Take no prisoners is why, despite all the lies and bots and flimflammery and racism and misogyny, tRump won by a razor thin popular vote and a razor thin House.

Obama did not win by taking no prisoners. Obama is a much more effective negotiator than tRump. Obama won by "Yes We Can" and building a ground game with a positive forward-looking movement behind it. ACA was one result.

Yes to thinking outside the box and being a bit unconventional.

We should be seeing this message on blue ballcaps and t-shirts everywhere.

George Washington fought for independence

Thomas Jefferson sought to define it and refine it

Lincoln sought to preserve it and expand the people covered by it

Teddy Roosevelt sought to enlighten it and reassure the people that it was patriotic to criticize their leaders.


Two of those presidents were Republicans—the greatest ones that party ever sent to the White House. No tent was ever bigger.

Actually not.

The myth is that prior to Trump, the GOP was a sane, slightly right-of-center party interested in sound governance and responsible public policy – that hasn’t been true for more than 50 years.

Trump is the product of the GOP – representing the fear, ignorance, racism, bigotry, and hate of the Republican agenda, of white grievance politics and racist replacement theory, and of a contempt for democracy and our democratic institutions pursuant to the tyranny of Republican minority rule.

Last, ‘the system’ – no matter how imperfect – is worth preserving; a system, despite its flaws, safeguards citizens’ rights and protected liberties and affords the people a voice in governance.

It’s this system that Trump and Republicans seek to destroy; indeed, they’ve already succeeded in hobbling and undermining the judicial process – the democratic process is next.

He isn't doing anything Republicans, particularly Freedom Caucus types, aren't at least secretly happy about.

“Politically adept?” They are finally collapsing under the weight of their own lies and bullshit propaganda.

The wheels are coming off the Trump wagon.

the one thing that seems to be missing from all of them is an actual solution. I read the article and this is how it ends:

That's all this author can offer. Two trite slogans that might just as well be Trump campaign slogans (Make America Affordable Again. Make America Work Again for Everyone.) a suggestion to "think about what works on a podcast," and an exhortation to "Take off the gloves. Show your teeth, take no prisoners."

I've lost count of the number of times I've heard people talk about how we need to "take off the gloves" and "show no prisoners" without providing any concrete examples of what that actually means in the real world.

The author says we should learn from Trump. He says that under Trump, "Insurrectionists become patriots. Law-abiding immigrants become threats to America’s way of life. Journalists become 'enemies of the people'. It’s magic."

It's not magic. Trump's only talent is that he is inhumanly incapable of feeling shame, which means he can lie, cheat, and bully at will. He is a co-opter, and a coercer, and a blackmailer. He's the human equivalent of Hitler's blitzkrieg across Europe. He is a cancer, and articles like this are the equivalent of trying to cure cancer by yelling at your body's T-cells that they need to take the gloves off.

I apologize if this comes across as despairing. I am by no means suggesting that America just lie back and take Trump's abuse, but at the same time, I don't have a solution. So I guess I am just a little tired of reading opinion pieces by authors who think that saying "take no prisoners" is a meaningful political strategy, and implying that pro-Democracy forces could easily defeat Trump if they just "showed some teeth."

Yr so much more diplomatic and articulate than I’ll ever be.

I think that the one viable strategy to use against Trump is basically what is going on right now, which is a disparate, scattershot approach involving many different attack vectors. Any advantage, no matter how small, should be pressed, because you never know when a small crack in Trump's armor might turn into something larger. See the sudden and dramatic re-emergence of the Epstein scandal over the past week.

I think articles like the one in the OP encourage people to rely too much on the idea that the Democrats could save America right now, but are choosing not to because they're not "taking off the gloves." But at this point in the political cycle -- immediately following a presidential election, where one party has gained control of the House, Senate, and presidency -- our system is not set up to allow for singular, focused opposition. We don't have a "shadow president" -- a single figure that our opposition to Trump can rally around.

A single opposition leader will eventually emerge, but not for another few years -- certainly not until after the 2026 mid-terms. It will begin when various Democrats announce that they are running for president, and are able to gain media traction and focus on their individual messages, and it will reach its peak when the Democratic primaries are over and we have a presidential nominee to get behind.

But until then, we're kinda on our own. At this point in the cycle, "we are the ones that we've been waiting for" as Obama used to say. And I'm fine with that. Anything that can be done to draw attention to and create public disgust over Trump's fascist ways is helpful.

That certainly includes things like Alex Padilla standing up to Kristi Noem, or Cory Booker holding the Senate floor for 25 hours, or Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez holding town halls across the country. But it will take more than that. Democrats wiped out the Republicans in 2008, but it wasn't Republican leaders who brought the party back in 2010. The Tea Party was financed behind the scenes by right-wing activists, but it was powered by regular people. What we have been seeing from No Kings, Indivisible, etc. is something similar. Also see the anti-ICE protests all over the country. Despite the happy face the administration is trying to put on everything, there is broad disgust for many of Trump's policies.

Unlike the author of the Guardian article, I don't believe there is a one-size-fits-all solution to Trump -- instead, we should be focusing on political death by a thousand cuts, and grabbing at anything that makes Trump look weak, whether that's putting him on the defensive over Epstein, or pointing out that he's looking really, really unhealthy these days. If there's anything we should learn from Trump, it's flexibility. We know that his strategy is to bounce from scandal to scandal as quickly as possible, so that his opposition can't focus on one before the next one occurs. So we need to embrace that. Don't complain that his latest scandal is a distraction from the last one, don't fret about the media no longer focusing on something awful that happened a week ago -- instead just pivot to the new scandal as fast as Trump did, and start attacking it. Then move on to the next one. Just keep the pressure on at all times, from as many different angles as possible.

Campaigning -- especially for a shameless freak like Trump -- is relatively easy. You can promise people the world, and if you're a world-class con-man, you can get them to believe whatever you want. But governing -- actually running the country -- is hard. The more Trump's policies negatively affect people, and the more we can keep poking and prodding and diminishing him in as many different ways as possible, the more people will drift away from him.

Trump has built his political movement on lies and bullying, and it is frustrating to read columnists constantly praising him.

Focus on economic issues

If you don’t believe that I’ll assume you have stuck to your New Year’s resolutions. The “I’ll save more money” didn’t fall victim to “I want to go on that ski weekend with my friends” and the “I’ll eat better” didn’t fall victim to the never ending sweets in the break room.
People voted for Trump because he made them feel safe. They like that he’s always the same the same. The world is changing at a faster rate every day and they grabbed a hold of someone who told them he would make it stop. He played off their fears. The Dems can and should do the same thing. Everything the Dems want makes their lives safer. Explain it to them in short, sound bites that calm their fear and we win.

Hope I'm wrong. But part of me thinks we'll just keep on keeping on with the same failed strategies, instead of coopting those that allowed Republicans to turn Liberal into a dirty word.

Dems are a big tent group with many ideas and to get them to show up and vote for one person is challenging. If that one person goes too far in any direction some will vote third party or not vote. Like Gaza issue.

Then are the independents a large group really independent? Or are they typically right or left and what makes some change?

I think anger drove a lot of people to Trump even if dems are angry at some of the same things like prices being high, but we both blamed different causes for it. And most of the country isn't doing any homework to find out what is real.