Resistance isn’t a real strategy for the Democrats

Nearly nine months after Donald Trump's reelection, Democrats still can’t make sense of it. Only the faintest glimmers of a reset are visible. The only thing that might pass for a strategy seems to be the hope that, given time, voters will finally come to their senses: it's the people who need to think again, not the politicians who are asking for their support.

- Clive Crook, Tribune News Service

Given Trump's recklessness, this approach isn't in fact doomed to fail — yet his opponents need to do better. How, exactly? What should a Democratic reset look like?

Let’s move quickly past what's obvious, or ought to be.

First, address the voters whose minds you want to change — people who voted for Trump — with respect. They don't like being called idiots and bigots. Acknowledge the elements of validity in Trump's account of what needs to change. Insist that support for Trump is a mistake, but neither groundless nor intelligible only as a consequence of racism or stupidity.

Second, renounce — don't just decline to discuss — the provably unpopular woke nonsense that party extremists have set as an ideological litmus test. Colour-blindness is racist. Speech is violence. Equality is a fraud. Capitalism is evil. Immigrants can't be “illegal.” The country’s true founding was in 1619. And so forth. Democrats should stand for compassion and fairness, but not for an encompassing theory of systemic oppression that most Americans don't recognise and rightly view as unhinged.