Un-Trumping America: A Plan to Make America a Democracy Again

by Dan Pfeiffer

“This is one of those pivotal moments when every one of us, as citizens of the United States, needs to determine just who it is that we are, just what it is that we stand for.” —Barack Obama

America is a “democracy” governed by antidemocratic institutions, a country where a growing progressive diverse majority is being governed by a shrinking conservative white minority.

“In the White House, you always want to be the person who writes the memo. Being the one who holds the pen gives you the most influence on what the president says and does.

It taught the politicians that shame was weakness, truth was unnecessary, and democracy was the enemy.

Modern politics is a contest between two different philosophies. It’s “Yes We Can” versus “Because We Can.”

There is an amoral (and often immoral) nihilism to an approach that strives for political power for political power’s sake. All of a sudden everything is on the table to maintain and expand that power. That is the approach of the modern Republican Party, and no one embodies that approach more than Mitch McConnell.

The politics of “Yes, We Can” is a bet on an inherent idealism in the American people that emanated from his own life.

To win elections, we need to inspire nonvoters to become voters.

Somewhere down deep in his dark soul, Trump knows he can’t convince people he is good, but he can convince people that his opponent is bad.

Unless you are a Kardashian or Trump,135 all PR is not good PR.

Voters have an amazing BS detector. They will know if you are trying to change who you are in order to win their votes.

The best campaigns are the most authentic ones. Run as your best self, but run as yourself.

Fixing democracy needs to become the primary purpose of the Democratic Party.

Democrats have to stop running against the Democratic Party.

There is a rich irony to these Trumpian Twitter tantrums: the media that he loves to beat up might just be helping him.

the media deck is stacked against Democrats.

Ultimately, we believe in the media’s mythology about themselves—it’s a mythology born of Watergate when reporters were the ones that brought down a corrupt president. That’s a huge mistake. That story wasn’t true then, and it certainly isn’t true now. There is no modern-day Bob Woodward about to walk through those doors and save us from Trump.174

An aggressive right-wing propaganda machine, the corporate consolidation of media, and the emergence of social media as a primary distributor of news have amplified right-wing voices and drowned out left ones.

We are still talking about what Trump wants us to talk about.