Hi All, I was just letting off steam, probably not unrelated to stress over the debate debacle, by debating a random Trumper on Facebook. I could tell that my debate partner was a frequent responder to people advocating positions of the left. She came at me with a torrent of posts and ready memes about how strong and tough Trump is. Everything was about his amazing strength. I stumbled towards this reply—if Trump is so strong, why does he want to surrender to Putin and destroy NATO? She weakened a bit, and said Trump is a Priceline negotiator par excellence, and would achieve our goals without war and said Biden was leading us to WWIII. I asked her why he hadn’t done that for the past two years, and suggested that Trump’s patriotism seems to be contingent on him winning—I think Trump negotiating with Putin while not in office is illegal, but MAGA folks don’t know that. I asked her why Putin wasn’t able to win the war more easily, and questioned whether Trump’s surrender would weakly let Putin off the hook. Within three or four rounds of posts, she sort of ‘surrendered’ and complimented me. I am convinced the key was the magic framing word: surrender.
In the debate, Biden advocated for the war and NATO by dryly saying that the Dem position is the best policy choice. I agree, of course, but if he had framed it by using the word surrender, it might have turned the debate. MAGA has turned Trump into a combination of Mohammed Ali and the Hulk, and the word surrender undercuts his manufactured strength in a cutting way. And it undercuts his patriotism.
I believe that Trump would lose it if the word surrender was thrown at him and his positions over and over in a debate. Trump would say that the war would have never happened if he was president. Biden response: that is impossible to say, but the Kremlin has just heard you say you want to surrender. Why would Putin stop at Ukraine knowing that? And President Xi of China has also now just heard your plans to surrender. Trump would say that he can negotiate peace. Biden response: He’s on the ropes and you want to surrender, and you weakly give him what he wants, a weakened NATO and conquered territory. Trump would say his friendship with Putin is positive—“a good thing”, I believe he says. Biden response: I don’t want to surrender and make nice with the bully. I want to hurt the bully. Trump would say that Biden is leading us to WWIII. Biden response: how did appeasing Hitler work out? If you surrender to the bully, they become emboldened. Then point out the incredible advantages our military and NATO have and that Russia only has the GDP of Texas with 6 to 7 times more people.
I am not pro-war generally, but this is a just war. We are for it, and the GOP is not. We need to frame it like they did in Iraq—as a party, we may prefer to have a positive campaign on the issues, but if better policies win elections, Biden would be winning. We have to win this election, and must use all of our advantages.