The Reflecting Pool, the Catering Cart and Trump’s Real Vulnerability

I’ve worked on Democratic messages and digital ads for decades. 

When I started, we would’ve been positively exuberant to have some of the material President Donald Trump has given his opponents. But many of these promising nuggets from today’s stumbler in chief — saying that he loves inflation or doesn’t give “a s**t about housing” — are little more than fool’s gold. 

Odd as it may sound, Democrats would be wiser to emphasize more trivial-seeming flubs instead. And to understand why, we must first understand the persuadable voters that campaigns will be reaching this fall.

It’s been more than 10 years since Trump started making his move on the national political scene. In that time, he’s been arguably even more exhaustively covered than a normal president, from traditional news to modern social media platforms to neighborhood conversations across the country.

Imagine living through all those years of non-stop discussion and not even knowing whether or not you like Trump.

Clearly he’s not my guy, though I understand that there are people who feel differently. But for most readers and others who follow politics, it can be hard to comprehend the mind of someone who could genuinely go either way. The information is readily available. They’d almost have to shut political information out of their minds on purpose.

And indeed, from my work with and study of campaigns over the years, I believe that there are two main reasons why someone might very well shut out political information.

For one, it’s overwhelming. Politics has a lot of characters and subplots. If you haven’t been following along for years, dropping in during the middle of an election cycle feels like starting “Succession” or “Yellowstone” in season three. Better to just not believe what anybody says.

There’s also too much conflict. For some of us, watching people fight can be very stressful. Everybody’s always telling you they’re right and the other guy’s wrong. How can you ever know the truth?

That means that when a Democratic ad hits one of these persuadable voters’ screens, they will simply tune it out if it summons that overwhelmed or conflict-averse feeling. No matter how airtight the argument, the ad won’t persuade anybody.

That’s why issues like inflation and housing are almost tailor-made to turn off persuadable voters. They seem so weighty and serious and important, and you wouldn’t want to make a bad judgment would you? All those political types would probably just get mad at you. Better to tune it out.

In contrast, other debacles of Trump’s own making stand out as much more promising vectors for attack on congressional Republicans, who are having trouble distinguishing themselves from him this year.

The mess Trump has made of the reflecting pool on the National Mall stands out as one powerful example. You don’t have to understand policy to see that it’s a trainwreck. It’s not one of the big, consequential issues pundits and politicians constantly fight over. It’s just a hole with some water in it. Yet, it symbolically captures so much of the vanity, incompetence and chaos-by-choice personality that turn people off of Trump.

Likewise, the incident where Trump left most of his travel entourage exposed to potential danger as he snuck out the side of a plane in an airport catering truck didn’t carry major stakes for the fate of the nation or the world. Still, it’s a concrete, readily understandable example of a coward who talks a big game on the world stage, but can’t back it up.

And when Trump calls for renaming Lake Ontario or New Mexico, it’s not just a silly distraction. It’s a way to show people who recoil from politics that there’s more going on here than two inscrutable sides fighting about policy. It’s that Trump isn’t even trying to address the priorities of voters.

Without fail, every time Trump puts his foot in his mouth on one of the big issues people seem to care about, I see someone say that Democrats should put it in every campaign ad.

But every Democratic candidate who wants to ride Trump’s historic unpopularity to victory this fall has to remember that it’s mostly the already-decided voters who latch onto those big things. The voters they must actually win over in order to win are shutting it out. Better to attack on the seemingly less dire issues that will actually reach them.

Will Bunnett is a Democratic strategist and senior advisor at Doodle Mom Strategies.