Executive producer and reality star Donald Trump is stealing the Democrats’ spotlight
It is standard practice in American politics for incumbents to send a surrogate to circle the main events of challengers as a distraction to dim some of the spotlight and provide assembled media with a source of competing information.
The current incumbent’s administration has taken this a giant step further. As a routine exercise this cycle, Donald J. Trump, executive producer of the Donald J. Trump White House, dispatches Donald J. Trump himself to the challengers’ vicinity, not only as a distraction but also as a competing main event.
As president of the United States, he can not only attract attention, he can require it. Why give the evening entirely over to the opposition?
So, a half-dozen surviving Democrats, all of them white and half in their seventies, gather before a few hundred people on a TV stage to proclaim the supreme importance of diversity in their party and to argue amongst themselves about how to spend vast new sums of Americans’ hard-earned earnings.
Meanwhile, the president appears before an adoring audience of thousands packed into an arena with many more supporters assembled outside.
Conventional political wisdom is to let opponents fight among themselves. As unconventional and theatrically unpredictable as ever, this commander in chief entertains his enthusiastic, responsive fans and a large nationwide audience on C-SPAN with immodest tales, at times exaggerated, of his many accomplishments in office and repetitive mocking jabs at his opponents with derogatory nicknames.
The crowd of supporters, many of whom began lining up the previous night, loves every minute of the political pep rally. Even those who entered with a marginal political interest or affiliation come away with effusive accounts of the infectious spirit and unity they felt there.
During the event and for days after, they’re transmitting awed firsthand accounts and cellphone photos to family, friends and social media accounts. And as they enter, none mind at all handing over email addresses and cell numbers to campaign workers entering the data into vast national directories for future texts, emails, video clips, financial pleas and reminders to vote.
Democrats had one debate last week, the ninth of this cycle. TV audiences had slumped to 7 or 8 million. While party members remain united in their devotion to ousting Trump one way or another, they also have become united in boredom at the same platitudinous promises time after time from the same pack:
A wealthy 78-year-old democratic socialist who’s really, really against income inequality, an angry aunt with more government plans to detail than fingers to count on, an earnest ex-mayor who appears just old enough to drink legally, a pleasant woman from Minnesota who doesn’t look like she’d throw staplers at staff and, of course, an aged ex-vice president who’s pretty sure of the state he’s in for a change.
But this time, the TV audience soared to a likely Democratic record of 19.7 million, although a half-million left after an hour. The reason for the ratings, of course, was the first debate appearance of yet another New York billionaire who thinks he can run the country because he has a lot of money and is willing to spend more than $400 million of it in just three months.
Some of these quadrennial “debates” resemble more bachelor or survivor reality shows without the hot tubs or loin-clothes. Not terribly apparent is the relevance between the 60-second sound bites each gets promising new taxes on somebody else and the intellectual and managerial skills and discipline desirable for a nation’s chief executive to address the country’s economic and security needs.
But that’s where we are now as a national electorate in the fourth year of the first reality-star president, a man surprisingly but fairly elected after the last two-year campaign that barely produced a pathetic voter turnout of 55%.
Consensus was this recent Democratic debate was the best so far, measured by spats and sharp talking points. Except for Michael Bloomberg, the rich New Yorker, who was rusty, defensive and deemed to have bombed. Many in the media pronounced his candidacy DOA.
But here’s the reality: The primary horse race has many more furlongs to go, plus the 35 weeks until the main event. So far, the party has picked barely 6% of its delegates. Another 40% will come on Super Tuesday, March 3, when Bloomberg officially joins the field.
If all 19 million rated viewers were actually watching the debate and not texting or changing for bed, that’s not even 6% of the population. Others will hear news reports. But millions more have seen and will see Bloomberg’s ads (“Mike will get it done”).
His $410 million and counting has taken him from zero support at Thanksgiving to above 15% now. That’s what, about $27 million per percentage point? A recently converted Democrat, the 78-year-old Bloomberg is prepared to spend hundreds of millions more to prolong the party’s primary struggles and defeat Trump. But he’s also prolonging a split field while the grumpy guy builds a lead, more likely to help Trump.
A recent Republican, Trump is riding a strong economy and markets and his highest job approval yet (49%). Last week, the 73-year-old spoke for an hour three times at packed rallies in Phoenix, Colorado Springs and Las Vegas on the eve of the Democrats’ Nevada caucuses, as he did previously in Iowa and New Hampshire.
In the next week, Trump is again scheduled to shadow them in South Carolina the day before that state’s Democratic primary and three days later, in North Carolina, which votes on Super Tuesday. Other than that, this president’s obviously taking his reelection for granted.
This story was originally published February 25, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Executive producer and reality star Donald Trump is stealing the Democrats’ spotlight."