And Democrats do. Over and over again.
Over the last couple of days, I have written about Donald Trump's "cornering strategy," a term I use to describe Trump's deliberate choices to provoke Democrats into defenses of the worst of their policies and outcomes. That is especially apparent on urban crime, where Trump has Democrats attempting to claim that Washington DC streets are safe when their homicide rate far exceeds places like Fallujah on a per-capita basis. Trump has done this all year on issues like trade, foreign policy, and government spending, but it has been particularly effective on immigration, law enforcement, and cultural issues such as DEI and the trans/queer agenda.
Why? Because Trump knows that his positions are within the broad consensus of the American electorate on such issues. However, this only works because Democrats don't have any agenda at the moment except for their obsession with Orange Man Bad.
Yesterday, Democrat Dan Turrentine lamented on how easily Trump has played Democrats:
🚨NEW: @danturrentine *UNLOADS* on his party after Day 1 of DNC Summer Meeting🚨
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) August 26, 2025
"It’s the definition of insanity: you just keep doing the same thing over and over again. And as a Democrat, it’s maddening that we're still not serious."
"We haven’t lost 4.5M voters — nor is… pic.twitter.com/u2F1HdCLdI
“It’s the definition of insanity: you just keep doing the same thing over and over again. And as a Democrat, it’s maddening that we’re still not serious,” Turrentine said, going on to address the number of Democrat voters who have fled the party. “You said it: we haven’t lost 4.5 million voters, nor is our brand at a historic low, because we don’t fight hard enough. It’s because we remain completely culturally disconnected and we have absolutely no agenda.”
“You said earlier in your monologue: [President Donald] Trump’s trying to solve problems,” Turrentine continued. “We always offer the three P’s: the personal attacks, which you just heard: ‘He’s a dictator and authoritative.’ We argue process: ‘Oh, he shouldn’t do this, he’s violating customs and norms.’ Or it’s the press: ‘It’s their job to do it.’ And then on the cultural issues — we literally have think tanks putting memos out that ‘these are the words you’re not supposed to say.’ You add it all up and we are not in good shape.”
Turrentine hits the nail on the head, and thus far seems to be the only Democrat to do so. The reason Trump can keep provoking Democrats into stupid fringe positions is precisely because they fight too much. All they do is "fight," and they have spent the last two years fighting for one purpose only -- because they despise Donald Trump. The substance of the fight matters not one whit, because for Democrats, Trump is the All Encompassing Substance That Must Be Opposed. Nothing else matters, not even the issue sets that voters care most about.
That disconnection from the culture -- true on multiple levels -- and lack of any coherent policy offers to address the issues that matter to voters allows Trump to lead them around by the nose. Right now, Trump has them championing dangerous urban environments out of spite, criminal illegal aliens, anti-Semitic rioters on college campuses, and now flag-burners. Trump can make his cornering strategy work because he knows he can trigger Democrats to rush to defend whatever he opposes, and to oppose whatever Trump defends, even when it's female access to educational and sporting opportunities.
As several commenters have already said and not entirely in jest: If Trump cured cancer tomorrow, Democrats would accuse him of undermining researchers and medical resources that would no longer be needed.
What makes this so astounding is that it keeps working. Democrats spent the last four years, and especially the last two, focusing entirely on Trump and how he could be "disqualified," rather than offer a coherent platform to convince voters to trust them to govern. Of course, at the same time, they attempted to foist a senile incompetent on voters for another four years by claiming him to be Sharp As A Tack®, etc etc. When that blew up in their face, they then anointed another incompetent and pretended that they hadn't spent the last three years keeping her incoherence under wraps.
All during that time -- but especially during Kamala Harris' "Brat Summer" -- Democrats refused to make a case for themselves, arguing instead that Trump was so awful that they didn't need to make an argument for themselves at all. Voters made it clear that they wanted Trump to return, which should have awoken Democrats to the emptiness of their Trump obsession.
And yet ... here we are. Trump keeps leading Democrats by the nose, forcing them to defend the politically indefensible, and even the Protection Racket Media can't help them. Even when they diagnose the situation with some accuracy, as Politico's Rachel Bade did yesterday, they still miss the context:
To many Washington insiders, President Trump’s early August Beltway crime crackdown seemed like an opportunistic and hamhanded pivot after getting walloped for weeks over the Jeffrey Epstein affair.
But if it wasn’t clear then, it is now: The White House’s public safety play is a deliberate ploy to refocus the narrative on an issue that favors Republicans ahead of the midterms — one that’s already backing Democrats into a corner. ...
It’s a sign that despite polling showing how unpopular Trump’s moves are in Washington, the president is playing to a national audience — and betting this is a battle he and the GOP can win. If his recent escalation was an attempt to goad Democrats into declaring that crime isn’t a problem, repelling swing voters in the process, top Democrats did not disappoint him.
Bade linked to a poll of DC residents by the Washington Post to call the move "unpopular." A poll from Harvard-Harris CAPS told a much different story:
- Declaring a crime emergency in DC: 55/46
- Ordering NG troops into DC: 55/46
- Taking control of DC PD: 50/50
- Trump actions justified: 54/46 (next slide)
- NG will make DC more safe: 51% more safe, 22% less safe, 27% no difference (next slide)
The Associated Press notes similar sentiments in its own NORC polling:
Americans are generally not happy about the Republican president’s handling of issues like immigration and the economy but are more positive about his tough-on-crime approach, according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Indeed, the vast majority of Americans, 81%, see crime as a “major problem” in large cities — a concern Trump has seized on as he has deployed the National Guard to the District of Columbia and threatened to expand that model to cities across the country. Despite that perception, data shows that violent crime in D.C. is at a 30-year low. But Trump’s approach appears to be helping him, at least for the moment: His overall approval rating has increased slightly, from 40% in July to 45% now.
If Democrats want to win elections in DC, then yes, the moves are "unpopular." If Democrats want to compete outside of DC, then they may want to deal with the impression that Democrat governance in America's urban cities is failing and voters want something done about it. Trump actually is doing something about it -- while Democrats insist on obsessing with Trump rather than developing policies that address voter concerns. And the Protection Racket Media apparently can't figure out the difference, either.
Will Democrats listen to Turrentine? Eventually, maybe. Until then, Trump will lead them by the nose into painting themselves into radical corners, and then wonder glumly why voters and donors are disappearing.
Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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