By Frank Bruni, Opinion Columnist, June 13, 2018<\/p>\n
Dear Robert De Niro, Samantha Bee and other Trump haters:<\/p>\n
I get that you\u2019re angry. I\u2019m angry, too. But anger isn\u2019t a strategy. Sometimes it\u2019s a trap. When you find yourself spewing four-letter words, you\u2019ve fallen into it. You\u2019ve chosen cheap theatrics over the long game, catharsis over cunning. You think you\u2019re raising your fist when you\u2019re really raising a white flag.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re right that Donald Trump is a dangerous and deeply offensive man, and that restraining and containing him are urgent business. You\u2019re wrong about how to go about doing that, or at least you\u2019re letting your emotions get the better of you.<\/a><\/p>\n When you answer name-calling with name-calling and tantrums with tantrums, you\u2019re not resisting him. You\u2019re mirroring him. You\u2019re not diminishing him. You\u2019re demeaning yourselves. Many voters don\u2019t hear your arguments or the facts, which are on your side. They just wince at the din.<\/p>\n You permit them to see you as you see Trump: deranged. Why would they choose a different path if it goes to another ugly destination?<\/p>\n Of course this is broader than De Niro, bigger than Bee and about more than profanity<\/a>. It\u2019s about maturity, pragmatism and plain old smarts \u2014 and the necessity of all three when the stakes are this high.<\/p>\n Many Democrats get that.<\/a> Maybe even most do. In the primaries last week and on Tuesday, Democratic voters by and large chose House candidates whose appeals were tempered and whose profiles make them formidable general-election contenders. They\u2019re the best bets for wooing less fiercely partisan voters and snatching seats currently in Republican hands.<\/p>\n The results in Virginia\u2019s 10th Congressional District on Tuesday were a perfect example<\/a>. State Senator Jennifer Wexton, a former federal prosecutor, won, and will take on the Republican incumbent, Barbara Comstock. That was precisely what Republican strategists didn\u2019t <\/em>want, and at the beginning of the year, they chattered hopefully about Wexton\u2019s being thwarted by more strident Democratic rivals to her left. But she beat the second-place finisher by almost 20 points.<\/p>\n I\u2019m buoyed by that and by what I\u2019ve witnessed when I\u2019ve met with Democratic candidates in potentially red-to-blue House districts. They\u2019re not getting bogged down in impeachment talk, which can sound to many voters like a promise of ceaseless partisan rancor and never-ending Washington paralysis. They\u2019re not frothing at the mouth about Trump.<\/a><\/p>\n They understand that there\u2019s no need for that. He\u2019s the most exhaustively chronicled and psychologically transparent president in the lifetimes of most American voters, who already know how they feel about him. What they\u2019re less certain about are their alternatives. If you want to make sure that at least one chamber of Congress is a check on Trump, talk to them about that.<\/em><\/p>\n And do so in a vocabulary that\u2019s measured, not hysterical. Enough with \u201cidiot\u201d and \u201cmoron\u201d (unless you\u2019re directly quoting an administration official). They\u2019re schoolyard and splenetic.<\/p>\n Enough with Hitler, too. Has Trump shown fascistic tendencies? Yes. Is he the second coming of the Third Reich? No. Nor are the spineless Republicans who have enabled him Nazi collaborators, not on the evidence of what has and hasn\u2019t happened so far.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not urging complacency. But when you invoke the darkest historical analogies, you lose many of the very Americans you\u2019re trying to win over. What you\u2019re saying isn\u2019t what they\u2019re seeing. It\u2019s overreach in their eyes.<\/p>\n And when you make the direst predictions, you needlessly put your credibility on the line. The stock market didn\u2019t go into free fall after Trump\u2019s election. We\u2019re not at war with North Korea. I\u2019m not ignoring the grave flaws and galling giveaways in his tax overhaul, and I\u2019m not minimizing his disregard for diplomatic norms<\/a>, including his unwarranted verbal attacks on American allies. I\u2019m noting that when you extrapolate too wildly into the future, you sometimes wind up distracting people from what\u2019s happening in the here and now.<\/p>\n The more noise, the less discernment. The more fury, the less focus. Proportion and triage are in order, and that means an end, please, to the Melania madness. Floating the idea that she\u2019s a victim of domestic abuse merely supports Trump\u2019s contention that his critics are reflexive and unfettered in their contempt for him and that all <\/em>of their complaints should be viewed through that lens.<\/p>\n