“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.”

― J.M. Barrie , Peter Pan

As Mnuchin and the Trump admin jump through another hoop by inventing a fake statue to obfuscate releasing Trump’s tax returns, I’m again reminded by this Guardian article I read weeks after Trump won the election. In it, Stephanie Kirchgaessnerin lays out for the uninitiated the case for America some foreshadowing warnings from her experience dealing with the polarizing political outside Silvio Berlusconi, who served as Italy’s Prime Minister for much of the late 90’s and 2000’s.

In hindsight the #resistance should have grappled with some of these more. Here are some highlights:

Silvio Berlusconi

(1) “Stop crying and try to understand his voters”,

(2) “Journalists must be wary of complicity”

(3) “Prepare for a new feminist fightback — Berlusconi’s attitude prompted a sort of revolt from women, and women’s groups, who had been silent and absent for years”

(4) “Berlusconi had an unspoken agreement with the Roman Catholic church that helped him hold on to power”

(5) “Berlusconi tried to use his political power to defend himself, making laws and using his position as prime minister to delay trials.”

I think that what the beltway class, the writers of socially liberal leaning (albeit economically conservative) outlets like the Washington Post, the NY Times, the Late Night Talk show hosts fail to realize is that they are in some ways Trump’s greatest strength. Trump rose to viability only when he sucked up all of CNN and the like’s attention in the aftermath of his strong showing in the debates. Like Berlusconi, Trump used brashness and his brand as a political outsider and successful business man to bring into the fold people who have a distaste for being looked down upon by coastal elites, who wanted nothing more than to flip the apple cart, and to this day still smile widely whenever Trump overcomes another challenge. This Tax Return side-step is but another WWE title fight that turn impropriety into strength.

Liberals, you won’t beat Trump with process and formalities. He doesn’t care about the process, and he knows he doesn’t have to, because his base (and let’s be honest the majority of voters) don’t care about it.

You won’t beat him with the law. His base has disdain for the law, using it as a weapon when it serves them such as Trumps upending of immigration laws & visa, but applauding his ability to overcome it as an obstacle when it comes to his shady dealings. Not only that, but the American public has contempt for all of congress, polling at an average of 21% to the President’s 38% in approval. Why should the President be held to the law when people don’t feel like the other side is held to it either.

You won’t beat him with scandal. There’s an entire wikipedia page just outlining all the scandals Berlusconi was wrapped up in. Again, just feeding the narrative that no matter what you throw at the guy, he can dominate you and change the rules while you’re following them.

Ultimately the context that seems to have upended him, and led the way to a narrow victory by center-left candidate Prodi in 2006 was the context of a struggling economy without growth, and a sharply divided country. My intuition here is that ultimately what Berlusconi lost was his ability to project strength, and power. His economic vulnerability put a massive chink in the armor of his “businessman who knows what he’s doing” image.

Power. Among all the things that are guaranteed positives for a political movement and candidate is the perception and reality of power. As we moved towards the 2020 Democratic Primary we should be wary of this perception of power. As Trump presides over a perceived strong economy (though peripherally weak with stagnating wages and a labor sector quickly transitioning from careers with pension to contracted gigs without healthcare) and comes out of the Muller scandal appearing strong on its surface by “beating” those pesky Democrats, Liberals and progressives should think through what the average American’s view of power is, and what kind of power will ultimately turn out enough voters to swing the election.

We should think through what weakness is, and how easy it is to appear weak when not being mindful of picking your battles where you are sure to lose in the headline war. We should think about weakness in equivocation of positions that Democrats should be unified on such as increasing the minimum wage and ensuring healthcare is available as a right to all by moving to a single-payer Medicare for all system. But on a deeper level, understanding these headlines and ideas through the lens of power and engaging with the reality that “anyone but Trump” is a form of weakness in the same way that “Repeal without Replace” was a weakness for the Republicans in losing the Healthcare battle.

Power will win the day, whether or not the Left decides to use it.