The US Democratic Party National Convention has been taking place over the past few days and anyone hoping for proof of the party having learnt from the mistakes of 2016 must be sorely disappointed. As the country struggles to contain the spread of COVID-19, the damage of millions of job losses and riots on the streets of several of their major cities, the stage was poised for the Democrats to offer a vision of a more compassionate future and a roadmap for bringing the hardships of 2020 to an end.
Instead, the Convention has eschewed substance and focused on almost all its time on attacking President Trump. Trump's handling of the COVID-19 outbreak has been disastrous, not to mention the myriad other failings of his Presidency, but at a time when the most important country in the world needs clarity and leadership above all else, the Democrats are continuing to indulge their failed strategy of making relentless personal attacks against the sitting President, focusing their 2020 campaign on getting him out of office rather than showing why they deserve to be there.
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 seems to have left mental scars on the entire political left in the US which have yet to heal, or even attempt to be treated. Even looking beyond the often racially and socially divisive nature of Trump's successful campaign, it was especially humiliating for those on the left who had treated Trump as a joke candidate, even having gone so far as encouraging him to run.
Reducing the outcome of a national-scale event down to a single cause is fatuous and there are many reasons why Hillary Clinton's campaign floundered, but her campaign's singular failure to make a positive case for her Presidency rather than decrying her opponent must be considered a serious contributor. Trump's campaign may have been cynical, opportunistic and similarly vicious in its attacks on Clinton, but it also offered a positive vision of America standing up for its own interests, no longer having jobs and industry siphoned off to foreign countries, getting involved in costly foreign military interventions, and 'draining the swamp' of a corrupt and patronising political establishment so fatally exemplified by the Clintons.
This vision was enormously appealing to a large number of Americans, sufficiently so that even many of those put off by Trump's rhetoric around immigrants and crime were compelled to vote for him regardless. Once the Trump campaign had found the hook that drew voters in, the Clinton campaign had nothing. Whether one approves or not of attacks on the opposing campaign, they are part of the electioneering wallpaper. When one party focused on them to the detriment of any vision or policies of their own, though, all the other party has to do is demonstrate a single reason why voters should elect them and the opposition's entire campaign collapses.
Like Clinton's campaign, the closest that the 2020 Democratic National Convention has come to substance is a jumble of platitudes ("an ally of the light, not the darkness"), buzzwords and appeals to identity. This may be ambrosia to the Twitterati left, but has the opposite effect on those living in the real world. Harris' speech at the Convention emphasized her race as the reason she deserved her selection as Biden's VP, yet this race-first approach was an abject failure in attracting support during her much-vaunted run to become the Party's Presidential nominee. By contrast, Joe Biden, who is not only old but also straight and white, attracted considerable support among ethnic minorities and a somewhat cooler response from white voters.
It must not be denied, of course, that the Trump campaign also leant heavily into identity politics, albeit majority rather than minority identity. The idea that playing to racial identity for support is the exclusive preserve of the modern left is a lie, and as unedifying as it is on the left, there should also be no question that the right creating and emboldening a sense of race-based discontent among the majority population is an inexcusably dangerous strategy for everyone.
That danger is the reason why identity politics should not be practised at all, because whether uniformly casting a majority population as oppressors or oppressed, the effect of creating a sense of being under siege for the colour of one's skin (or any other immutable characteristic) is the same. Most people living their lives outside the shouting-matches on social media know this, which is why such strategies unpopular. This nevertheless seems to be all that the Democrats have to offer beyond their attacks on Trump's character (whether deserved or not).
I do not expect Trump to win a second term, although my reasons for this belief are largely based on his gross mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and his loss of the element of surprise from the last election. Familiarity is typically a positive for sitting politicians, but considering the emphasis Trump previously placed on being the candidate from outside the establishment, it will surely only function to his detriment this time around, especially given how little his tactics have changed. What little has been seen of his 2020 campaign is also guilty of everything I've accused the Democrats of here: he's had plenty of names and accusations for Biden and Harris, but no compelling message of his own.
That said, if he does lose - and it remains far from a sure thing - it will be in spite of the Democrats' campaign if they continue down this road of lashing out in lieu of confronting their own failings. Biden's likeability was always going to pose the kind of challenge to Trump that Clinton could not, but before the pandemic hit, Trump was well-placed to win the election courtesy of a strong economy, employment rate and a number of outcomes, such as the pushing back of the ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq and death of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, falling in his favour.
Despite Democrats' attempts to cast Trump as the worst President in history, his first terms has had some successes to counterbalance its more insalubrious characteristics. Against the George W. Bush Presidency in particular, Trump compares favourably, while the Democrats incessant attacks and impeachment obsession have made them look petulant and spiteful.
If the Democrats are not only to win but to make the country a better place if they do, they have to put their hatred of Trump aside, cease trying to play him at his own game and focusing on laying down a clear, substantive and unifying path out of the country's hardships. That may involve the far-left policies popular among younger party members like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or more centrist/centre-left positions favoured by older members like Biden and Nancy Pelosi. The 2019 British general election was a maelstrom of morally-questionable candidates and unethical positions, but was at least fought first and foremost on policy. If the Democrats genuinely wish to have a positive impact on America's future, their victory will have to mean more than revenge on Donald Trump.
