President Donald Trump is teaching Democrats a lesson on “how to make a comeback,” according to a column from author and commentator Paul Waldman.
In the piece, which was published on MSNBC, Waldman slammed Trump for broken promises that he’s made.
“What I want to do and what I will do is, you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country,” Trump said in a June 2024 interview.
This promise, which Trump has “reneged on,” is perhaps why a September 2024 New York Times/Siena College poll found that “10% thought he wasn’t conservative enough, 32% too conservative, and 49% not too far either way.”
Aside from pointing out the broken promise, the author and commentator believe, “this episode includes a valuable lesson for Democrats trying to figure out how to make a comeback.”
“Many of Trump’s most controversial actions were previewed quite clearly during the 2024 campaign,” Waldman said. “Unlike the moderate pledge he has broken, he’s working in earnest to accomplish these goals.”
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Aside from the “right-wing version of Trump,” Waldman believes there is also “a moderate version of Trump that emerges when he speaks off the cuff and says whatever he thinks people want to hear, including some progressive ideas.”
Some of the progressive ideas Waldman mentioned include Trump's comments claiming “the government would pay for in vitro fertilization treatments, or that he’ll always protect Medicaid, or that raising taxes on the rich might be a good idea, or that he wants to cap credit card interest rates at 10%.”
It’s rhetoric like that which Waldman believes “made Trump seem more liberal and benevolent than he actually is.”
“It may be hard to imagine that even at this late date, some people don’t realize just how malevolent Trump’s intentions are,” Waldman said. “As tempting as it is to mock them for their naivete, those people may change their minds when they realize what he’s really doing.”
Waldman concluded by saying, “Democrats might just be able to win them over by looking to some of the moderate promises that Trump made for inspiration.”
