Trump’s Corruption is Probably Worth Highlighting

Yglesias makes the case:

Democrats are still licking their wounds from the presidential election, afraid to return to a strategy that many believe cost Hillary Clinton the White House: excessively focusing on Donald Trump’s personal flaws rather than policy. It might have been the wrong choice then, but a swing back closer to it is the right approach now, especially on Trump and corruption.

To pause here for a second, I’m inclined to think that Clinton should have done more policy advertising, particularly late in the campaign when Trump’s negatives seemed established at a high level, although I have no idea if it would have mattered. But one thing that seems pretty clear — particularly in light of the fact that the exit polls seriously underestimated Clinton’s support among college-educated voters — is that her campaign’s general strategy of making up for losses in voters without college degrees with educated suburbanites has been vindicated. She may not have been the right candidate to execute it, but in the elections of 2017 and 2018 this trend seems to be accelerating and has been crucial to Democratic wins. I don’t think this means an exclusive focus on corruption — Republican policy is generally unpopular too! — but that’s where the marginal votes are likely to be. (And, of course, we can be as certain as we can be of a campaign counterfactual that had James Comey followed the rules rather than issuing a prejudicial letter based on nothing Clinton wins, and this problem is unlikely to recur for many candidates in the midterms.)

Trump’s exploitation of loopholes in American conflict of interest law, after all, is a policy issue. And with the economy doing fine and America’s low-key drone wars not directly impacting most voters, it’s clear that for better or worse the central political issue in American politics is Trump himself.

This is, on some level, obvious. Yet Democrats feel so burned by Clinton’s missteps that they risk overcorrecting. “You cannot just run against Donald Trump,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned his co-partisans in a February speech in Kentucky.

Outside voices, in particular, keep urging Democrats not to fall too in love with the Trump-Russia issue even while Democratic strategists themselves keep worrying that Democrats will fall too in love with the Trump-Russia issue. Yet potential collusion with the Russians is itself just one element in a vast nesting doll of shady dealings and opaque finances that congressional Republicans are helping Trump keep under wraps.

And while personal corruption alone is never enough to entirely sap a demagogue’s political appeal to his core followers (just ask Silvio Berlusconi, currently enjoying yet another comeback in Italy, or American proto-Trumps like George Wallace or Buddy Cianci), the basic fact that Trump is on the take in outrageous ways deserves a higher profile in American partisan politics and will serve as a strong motivating line and unifying theme.

Beyond that, the levels of self-dealing Trump is enmeshed in are something no Republican Congress member would have defended as recently as two years ago and something that all Democrats can agree is bad despite their own internal ideological differences. Best of all, it’s something (unlike free college or Medicare-for-all or an assault weapons ban) they can actually take action on by seizing a majority in the House of Representatives.

I think this is right. 1)Emphasizing Trump’s corruption, given his unpopularity, seems like a promising avenue for attracting marginal voters and competing in marginal districts, and 2)it’s not an either-or question, and indeed attacks on Trump’s corruption and Republican policy are highly compatible, and also consistent with emphasizing more attractive and popular Democratic policy alternatives. Trump’s massive corruption can be a powerful symbol of Republican policy.