Trump/Thomas 2024

Nearly 30 years ago, Democrats chose a rhetorical running mate for their Republican opponent. That playbook could be the key to winning in 2024.

History books will tell you that the Republican Party’s 1996 ticket was Bob Dole and Jack Kemp. And it’s certainly true that if Dole had won, Kemp would’ve been sworn in as Vice President. But for campaign purposes, those of us who were involved in the effort to re-elect Bill Clinton know better: Bob Dole’s running mate was Newt Gingrich. We made sure of that.

Jack Kemp was a bad candidate with bad policy preferences that would have been bad for America, but Kemp’s badness wasn’t additively bad — it didn’t add particularly important new dimensions of badness Dole didn’t already have, and Kemp didn’t particularly magnify Dole’s own flaws, either. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, was deeply unpopular and was peddling a worldview and agenda that ranged from bizarre to frightening and back to bizarre again. He was bad in ways that both added to and amplified Dole’s own flaws as a candidate.

So the Clinton campaign¹ did everything we could to make Gingrich into Dole’s running mate in the public eye. Television ads blasted the “Dole Gingrich” agenda, the two names verbally smushed so close together some viewers likely thought the Republican presidential nominee was named “Dolegingrich.”² In opposition research documents, talking points, press releases, speeches and every other way we communicated with the public and with the news media, we made clear that we were running against Dole/Gingrich, down to the “Dole/Gingrich” buttons we produced.

Not the best slogan ever, but at least it rhymed.

That November, Bill Clinton — written off for dead the previous year — was re-elected with a whopping 379 electoral votes.³ Not entirely due to the Dole/Gingrich gambit, of course, but it played a crucial role.

Democrats have a similar opportunity this year.

Donald Trump will announce his vice presidential pick any day now,⁴ and that person will undoubtedly be an aspiring autocrat, just like Trump, with no shortage of dangerous and unpopular policy preferences and odious personal characteristics, just like Trump. Democrats certainly shouldn’t ignore Trump’s literal running mate — we didn’t ignore Kemp in 1996, either — but whoever it is will likely be something of a Trump Mini Me: Bad in many ways, but as bad as Trump in few. Trump’s running mate may provide the opportunity to highlight Trump’s extremism on issues on which the news media falsely portrays Trump as a moderate (most notably abortion) but for the most part Trump’s running mate probably won’t add much to our understanding of Trump himself, or the danger to America of his election.

The Republicans on the Supreme Court are another story. They are Trump’s real running mates: essential participants in his campaign who will govern in lockstep with him, extending and amplifying his power and influence, and whose own deep unpopularity, ruinous agenda, and flamboyant corruption can be useful in demonstrating the threat Trump and Republican candidates up and down the ballot pose to Americans’ basic freedoms and wellbeing.

Democrats should do everything they can to make clear that the real GOP ticket this year is Trump/MAGA Supreme Court.⁵

Donald Trump will be on the ballot this year because Republicans on the Supreme Court insisted that states cannot apply the 14th Amedment’s plain-text prohibition on insurrectionists and traitors standing for election. Donald Trump will stand for election without having been tried for crimes relating to his actions leading up to the January 6 insurrection he incited⁶ because Republicans on the Supreme Court delayed the case for months, helping Trump run out the clock — and then declared him immune from prosecution and above the law, like a king. And Donald Trump’s electoral prospects are aided by a decade of the Republican Supreme Court eviscerating the Voting Rights Act, allowing their fellow Republicans to enact discriminatory laws designed to make it harder for Black people to vote and easier for Republicans to ”win” elections with the support of a minority of voters.

The Republicans on the Supreme Court — three of whom were put there by Trump — have functioned as the legal department of his campaign. But that understates the role they play in imposing a radical, unpopular and anti-American agenda on the nation. They are Trump’s full governing partners, and have continued enacting their shared agenda after voters threw Trump out of the White House.

Abortion is the most obvious example. Donald Trump could not overturn Roe v Wade’s guarantee of abortion rights by himself. So he promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe, did so, and (correctly) took credit for the Dobbs decision. Now Trump is trying to run and hide from his responsibility for the abortion bans that are the intended outcome of his actions. In doing so, he is benefiting from misleading and dishonest media coverage that portrays the person most responsible for abortion bans as an abortion moderate. Trump is also benefiting from voter confusion about which party controls the Supreme Court (a quarter of voters incorrectly think the majority of justices were appointed by Democratic presidents⁷ and only 37 percent are sure a majority were appointed by Republican presidents.) And Trump is benefiting from voter confusion about which president is responsible for a ruling by Republican Supreme Court justices that occurred during a Democratic presidency (14 percent of Americans think Joe Biden is responsible for recent abortion bans, not much less than the mere 24 percent who know Trump is responsible.)

Centering the Republican Supreme Court as Donald Trump’s true running mate can help Democrats make clear Donald Trump’s responsibility for the deeply unpopular abortion bans he promised, caused, briefly took credit for, and is now trying to run away from.

The same basic concept holds for a wide range of issues voters care deeply about: The Republican Supreme Court has been doing the GOP’s dirty work, leading to voter confusion about who to blame. The Biden/Harris administration has aggressively and creatively reduced and even eliminated predatory college debt burdens for millions of Americans, but many voters are disillusioned that relief hasn’t been as broad as they hoped. But that’s because the Republican Supreme Court blocked the White House’s original debt relief plan, with Trump appointees casting the deciding votes, leaving the administration to take a series of smaller steps. Again, centering the Republican Supreme Court as Trump’s true running mate can help Democrats make clear to those disillusioned Americans where responsibility for the ongoing college debt burden rightly lies: With Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

From abortion to Trump immunity from prosecution for his crimes to eviscerating the Voting Rights Act and the government’s ability to ensure Americans have clean air to breathe and water to drink, the Republican Supreme Court has issued a steady stream of deeply and justly unpopular edicts that are fundamentally reshaping America and paving the way for a Trump autocracy, all while indulging in the kind of flagrant corruption only those who believe themselves accountable to none would dare exhibit. The result is intense and broad public disapproval of the Court, and a classic potential wedge issue with the left and center alike angry at the GOP Court and the Republican base reverential towards it.

Trump and the Republican Supreme Court are joined at the hip substantively. Democrats should aggressively ensure they are just as closely linked politically.

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On Friday I will participate in a Netroots Nation panel I helped organize with Take Back The Court Action Fund,⁸ titled “Why Democrats Should Campaign Against The Supreme Court.” If you’re attending Netroots, please consider checking it out. I’ll also have (much) more on the electoral benefits Democrats could reap from campaigning aggressively against the Supreme Court in this space soon.

1. I was one of the junior-most members of the research department of the Democratic National Committee at the time, an inessential but attentive cog in the most effective team I’ve ever been part of.

2. I have a hazy but insistent memory of Dole himself complaining about this but ten seconds of halfhearted internet searching didn’t confirm my memory. If anyone finds it, feel free to drop it in the comments.

3. Still the most by a Democratic nominee since 1964.

4. Assuming, of course, that Trump is still running for president. The last two weeks of media coverage of the presidential campaign leaves that very much in doubt.

5. This is perhaps suboptimal phrasing. I am not prosing magic words. I’m laying out a framework here, an argument worth making and a story worth telling. Language is important, of course. Maybe it’s more effective to use Clarence Thomas as the personification of the Republican Supreme Court‘s greatest flaws — and Trump/Thomas has a nice alliterative ring to it. Maybe there’s another phrasing or slogan that’s better. The party’s creatives and opinion researchers should certainly generate and test language that best advances this argument, but the argument itself shouldn’t get lost or delayed in endless debate over wording. Sometimes the fight you pick is as important as the words you use.

6. Trump has of course already been convicted of 34 criminal counts in another case. He’s committed a lot of crimes!

7. It has been more than 55 years since the last time justices appointed by Democratic presidents were a majority on the Supreme Court.

8. I am an advisor to the Take Back the Court Action Fund & Foundation.