The Blanket Coverage of Trump's Sins

New York Times
columnist
Thomas Friedman

Thomas L. Friedman's latest New York Times op-ed, "Keep Up the Blanket Coverage of Trump. It Hurts Him," prescribes the wrong fix for our ailing democracy. Mr. Friedman's premise: "Just a little wave of disgust among Republican moderates is all that is needed to turn several key states from red to blue."

His prescription (aimed mainly at those in the news media who decide what material gets covered the most): Don't stop the ongoing vituperative coverage of everything the president does wrong and everything he cruelly and falsely utters.

Mr. Friedman's hope: " ... there are decent Republican moderates who, while they may never pull the lever for a Democrat, just might get too disgusted to vote. It’s the best hope."

Too disgusted to vote??? Don't pull any electoral levers at all, if you feel you can't tolerate Trump and refuse to vote Democratic??? The recommendation is itself undemocratic. In itself, if carried out, it would further wound our democracy.

Moreover, Mr. Friedman's logic is self-refuting. He says there has indeed been ongoing blanket coverage of Trump's neverending faux pas. No one would challenge this fact, I agree. Yet in the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls, Trump still has a personal approval rating of 43 percent.

Trump's job approval ratings since he took office in January 2017 are shown by the lower black line in this graph:

They're right where they were just after his inauguration! Though they've leveled off in the last couple of months, in the first half of 2018 they have even climbed, after having bottomed out at 37 percent last December!

So the incessant bad press hasn't really hurt Trump.

Mr. Friedman says, in what I consider a tellingly weak argument:

I want all of this heard and spread from sea to shining sea. Because though [Trump's words of "bullying arrogance"] do rally Trump’s base, they also rally Democrats and evidently embarrass Republican moderates and alienate independents.

The veteran pollster Stanley Greenberg told me that he’s seeing signs of this is in his recent focus groups: One was with moderate Republicans, all of whom “were put off’’ by Trump’s behavior, and another was with “secular conservative Republicans,’’ half of whom were put off.

Overall, it seems the ongoing vituperativeness of most of the media coverage toward Trump has had marginal impact on G.O.P. voters, if only half of secular conservative Republicans have been "put off." Mr. Friedman continues:

In addition, Greenberg said, the full Trump — insulting black sports heroes, threatening conservatives who dare cross him, praising Vladimir Putin and attacking the F.B.I. — “reminds evangelical conservatives of the devil’s bargain they made in supporting him. Seeing him in all of his overreach and mania and self-absorption doesn’t make them second-guess their choice, but it makes them uncomfortable about it.’’

Just "uncomfortable"? Just "put off"? The continuing assault of our rational media upon our irrational president hasn't shown itself to be a great strategy, I'd say. So now the best prescription is: if you're not a confirmed Democrat but are uncomfortable with and put off by Trump, just don't vote?

No, I say, that is the worst sort of prescription, if we want to save our democracy. We need to find a way to convince as many as possible of the 40-45 percent of the electorate who continue to form Trump's base to abandon him at their polling places. We need to convince those who cast no vote at all in the 2016 election, and those strong Democrats who might otherwise fail to vote this November, to come out and vote against Trumpism. Let's maximize voter turnout, not minimize it!