Some Unsolicited Advice for Democrats: Keep the Eye on the Ball

Democrats are entering the homestretch leading up to the midterms with a commanding lead in the generic polls, a real shot at not only winning the House but also the Senate, and an opportunity to hobble Donald Trump’s attempts to MAGAfy the United States.

Over the past few weeks and months, their advantage has been slowly building from a tie in March of last year to an 8.9 percent lead now. In other words, it is now so big that something drastic would have to happen for them to squander it.

That being said, the size of their looming victory will make a huge difference. For the Democrats, the playing field has expanded deep into red states to the point that they have a chance of building a Fetterman-proof majority in the Senate and picking up more than a dozen seats in a House election in which a GOP-led gerrymandering spree stacked the deck against them.

All they have to do is not screw it up.

And by that, we don’t mean that they merely have to avoid committing political suicide by, for example, proclaiming that they will bring back every single person who has been deported over the past two years and grant them immediate citizenship and the same benefits that combat veterans have earned.

No; they just have to continue to press their advantage and avoid getting distracted by sideshows… like insane things Trump says.

Case in point is a comment the president made at a rally in Nebraska on Monday night.

Trump was in the middle of a “weave,” which is what he calls it when his addled brain meanders from one topic to another.

Specifically, he was talking about how the consequences of his Iran war, i.e., rampant gas and diesel prices as well as higher costs for just about everything else, are a “small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe.”

He then “weaved” to (falsely) claiming that Iran would have been able to take out an American city if he had not acted, and mentioned Los Angeles and San Diego as potential targets before going back to saying that this is a “very small price to pay.”

Now, while Trump loathes states that he lost, he is clearly not saying that he believes that the nuclear annihilation of LA would be no big deal.

He’s just an imbecile.

And it doesn’t help Democrats if they try to capitalize on every foolhardy thing the president says, like many of them did in this case.

By doing so, they are playing on his turf. Or, as the saying goes, never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and only the pig likes it.

The American people have demonstrated in two elections that, for whatever reason, they give Trump a ridiculously wide berth when it comes to saying and doing insane stuff.

Therefore, focusing on these things is not to the Democrats’ advantage.

Instead, they have to keep their eyes on the ball and make this election about the one issue that got them to this point: that, instead of fixing the affordability crisis as he promised, Trump made it worse with his tariffs and the war.

Therefore, if they want to point out something crazy that the president is saying during his rallies, it should be that he claims the economy is the greatest in US history.

If they want to sprinkle in something about Trump’s corruption and self-enrichment, that’s fine. Or they can talk about the cuts to health care and food benefits that many Americans rely on. But they have to stay away from being drawn into debates on every crazy thing he says — and there will be plenty of those as the president wants to hit the campaign trail hard.

The correct response in this case should be: “We can’t comment on every idiotic thing Trump says because there are so many and he is clearly losing a few marbles. What really matters to the American people is that they are struggling to make ends meet while the president claims we are in the golden age and the affordability crisis is a hoax. When we get elected, we will do everything in our power to help lower costs for the middle class.”

That’s it.

The Democrats will crush Republicans in four weeks if the election is about that. However, if Trump and his allies can make it about sideshows and parsing the words of a president with a history of saying crazy stuff and getting away with it, then the blue wave that is coming will be smaller.