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KAVANAUGH, TRUMP, AND THE SWIFT BOATING OF THE SUPREME COURT
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/10/kavanaugh-trump-and-the-swift-boating-of-the-supreme-courtTrump, the mad puppet master of identity politics, understood that Kavanaugh is a proxy for precisely the sort of voter who swept him into office: a white, fiftysomething man, furious that what he feels is owed to him might be slipping away. But the “Kavanaugh bump” with G.O.P. voters may be short-lived.
And yet: Trump’s electoral success is derived from his ability to surf his own pure instinct, however crude or impolitic, and translate it into a weirdly ad-hoc political strategy. He knows that the Kavanaugh saga is shaping up to be exactly the kind of thing that motivates the kind of voter that brought him to the Oval Office in the first place—the aging white man. So why would he not take Kavanaugh’s side in the most Trump-y way imaginable? Aside from his elite credentials and Bethesda, Maryland, bearing, Kavanaugh himself is something of a stand-in for the Republican voter in the age of Trump—a white, fiftysomething man, furious that what he feels is owed to him might be slipping away thanks to sinister forces at work in our culture. A white guy in a competitive Senate state like Texas, North Dakota, Florida, or West Virginia can surely identify with a man who may have done something stupid in high school or college, but doesn’t think it should ruin his life.
Trump, the mad puppet master of identity politics, knows this. Sixty-two percent of white men voted for him in 2016, and he is counting on his enormous support among non-college-educated white men to carry Republicans through in November. “It is a very scary time for young men in America, where you can be guilty of something you may not be guilty of,” Trump said earlier on Tuesday, before his rally. “This is a very difficult time. What’s happening here has much more to do than even the appointment of a Supreme Court justice.” Those remarks would not get a person invited to the Aspen Ideas Festival, but to the legions of dudes who spent last weekend shouting “I LIKE BEER” at pretty much every N.F.L. and college-football game, his comments probably didn’t sound very controversial at all. Saturdays are for the boys, after all.
Midterm elections are always a head-to-head matchup between the party’s two bases, and Republicans are playing defense in almost every respect. With college-educated women trending toward the Democrats in a huge way, opening up what could be being the biggest gender gap in American political history, Trump is left to do what he does best: stoke the anxieties of Republican men. So, since decency has no quarter in the Oval Office these days, why not jet to Mississippi for a night and attack a female victim from the presidential podium? There’s a lot of white men in Mississippi—and two Senate races this year as well.
In a sense, as a useful political tool, the Kavanaugh debate can be seen as an updated version of the infamous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Back in 2004, George W. Bush allies tapped the outside group to cast doubt on John Kerry’s biographical calling card, his service in the Vietnam War, by questioning his heroics in a series of slashing TV ads. The maneuver was ripped from the Karl Rove playbook—attack your enemy’s biggest political strength. But the Swift Boat strategy was noteworthy for another reason that seems resonant today: it showed that there was nothing to be gained politically from standing on the sidelines and playing timid at a hot-burning moment, even if attacking a hero’s war service was deeply controversial. Instead, the Swift Boat team charged into the fight, even if it offended the sensibilities of the media and many reasonable-thinking Americans.
So rather than shying away from the Kavanaugh story and all of its thorny tentacles—the #MeToo movement, the politicization of the Supreme Court, the risk of pushing women even more deeply into the Democrats’ corner—Trump is now embracing Kavanaugh as a weapon, damn the torpedoes.
And yet: Trump’s electoral success is derived from his ability to surf his own pure instinct, however crude or impolitic, and translate it into a weirdly ad-hoc political strategy. He knows that the Kavanaugh saga is shaping up to be exactly the kind of thing that motivates the kind of voter that brought him to the Oval Office in the first place—the aging white man. So why would he not take Kavanaugh’s side in the most Trump-y way imaginable? Aside from his elite credentials and Bethesda, Maryland, bearing, Kavanaugh himself is something of a stand-in for the Republican voter in the age of Trump—a white, fiftysomething man, furious that what he feels is owed to him might be slipping away thanks to sinister forces at work in our culture. A white guy in a competitive Senate state like Texas, North Dakota, Florida, or West Virginia can surely identify with a man who may have done something stupid in high school or college, but doesn’t think it should ruin his life.
Trump, the mad puppet master of identity politics, knows this. Sixty-two percent of white men voted for him in 2016, and he is counting on his enormous support among non-college-educated white men to carry Republicans through in November. “It is a very scary time for young men in America, where you can be guilty of something you may not be guilty of,” Trump said earlier on Tuesday, before his rally. “This is a very difficult time. What’s happening here has much more to do than even the appointment of a Supreme Court justice.” Those remarks would not get a person invited to the Aspen Ideas Festival, but to the legions of dudes who spent last weekend shouting “I LIKE BEER” at pretty much every N.F.L. and college-football game, his comments probably didn’t sound very controversial at all. Saturdays are for the boys, after all.
Midterm elections are always a head-to-head matchup between the party’s two bases, and Republicans are playing defense in almost every respect. With college-educated women trending toward the Democrats in a huge way, opening up what could be being the biggest gender gap in American political history, Trump is left to do what he does best: stoke the anxieties of Republican men. So, since decency has no quarter in the Oval Office these days, why not jet to Mississippi for a night and attack a female victim from the presidential podium? There’s a lot of white men in Mississippi—and two Senate races this year as well.
In a sense, as a useful political tool, the Kavanaugh debate can be seen as an updated version of the infamous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Back in 2004, George W. Bush allies tapped the outside group to cast doubt on John Kerry’s biographical calling card, his service in the Vietnam War, by questioning his heroics in a series of slashing TV ads. The maneuver was ripped from the Karl Rove playbook—attack your enemy’s biggest political strength. But the Swift Boat strategy was noteworthy for another reason that seems resonant today: it showed that there was nothing to be gained politically from standing on the sidelines and playing timid at a hot-burning moment, even if attacking a hero’s war service was deeply controversial. Instead, the Swift Boat team charged into the fight, even if it offended the sensibilities of the media and many reasonable-thinking Americans.
So rather than shying away from the Kavanaugh story and all of its thorny tentacles—the #MeToo movement, the politicization of the Supreme Court, the risk of pushing women even more deeply into the Democrats’ corner—Trump is now embracing Kavanaugh as a weapon, damn the torpedoes.
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