Democrats lost to Donald Trump because they were unable to capitalize sufficiently on his political weaknesses – lying, bigotry, bankruptcies, allegations of serial sexual assault – that would normally be considered disqualifying. If they are to limit the damage Trump wreaks on the country and beat him in four years, they need a new strategy. Fortunately for them, he is already handing them one by behaving as a corrupt kleptocrat.



Like Karl Rove’s fiendishly brilliant decision to attack John Kerry’s heroic war service during the 2004 campaign, Democrats should go after their opponent’s strength. He won the crucial Rust Belt states by being perceived as an outsider, an agent of change and a friend of blue-collar white people between the coasts.



Democrats must expose Trump for what he really is: a self-dealing political profiteer and a tool of the business and political elite.

Trump is making that job easy by nominating generic establishment Republicans and Wall Street insiders to fill his White House and using his meetings with foreign dignitaries to pressure them for favorable treatment of his businesses. If Democrats are to gain anything from Trump’s abandonment of his campaign promises to oust the establishment and clean up the capital, they need to develop and repeat a negative narrative about Trump.

Since winning the presidency, Trump has asked British politician Nigel Farage to help stop a wind farm from going up near his Scottish golf course and, allegedly, asked Argentina’s president, Mauricio Macri, for swifter building permit approval for an office building. (Trump and Macri denied that Trump mentioned his project, but three days after their conversation, Trump’s building got its permits.) Trump supports building the Dakota Access pipeline – and he owns, or owned, if he did indeed sell it off in June, stock in the project’s parent company.

He may have promised to “drain the swamp” in Washington, but he is filling his administration with typical swamp creatures. Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus was tapped for chief of staff. Trump has nominated or is considering such other longtime GOP power brokers as Senator Jeff Sessions for attorney general, and Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani for secretary of state. The latter two are veterans of the same corporate speaking circuit that Trump heaped abuse on Hillary Clinton for traveling.

Romney ran a private equity fund that profited from laying off workers across the heartland. Giuliani also works at a firm that lobbies Congress on behalf of corporations and he has his own bundle of conflicts of interest, since he has been on the payroll of several foreign governments. One Beltway veteran who has turned down Trump’s invitation to audition for cabinet jobs is his informal advisor Newt Gingrich. The former House speaker has made millions consulting for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and working as a corporate influence peddler. Now, he is cashing in on his relationship with the president-elect by jacking up his speaking fee.



And Trump’s national security team is filling up with generals – also known as longtime government bureaucrats. Among them are NSA director Michael S Rogers, whom Trump is considering for director of national intelligence or other high-level posts, despite his current superiors recommending that he be fired for poor performance. Trump nominated retired Marine Gen James N Mattis for secretary of defense and retired Lt Gen Michael T Flynn for national security advisor. Gen David Petraeus, who pled guilty to sharing classified information with his mistress and would need permission from his probation officer to travel out of the country, is being considered for Secretary of State. Anyone who thought Trump would overthrow the hawkish national security establishment will be disappointed.

The economic team is also a band of insiders. The Washington Post reports that “the millionaires and billionaires of Trump’s White House ... will be the wealthiest administration in modern American history.” Treasury secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin is a former Goldman Sachs partner and hedge fund manager. For commerce secretary and deputy commerce secretary, respectively, Trump tapped billionaire investor Wilbur Ross and Todd Ricketts, a former securities trader from a super-wealthy Republican donor family.

Perhaps no one better embodies Trump coopting the permanent governing class than his future Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chao. She is a veteran of three past GOP administrations, the Heritage Foundation and Citicorp. She’s also married to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.

Mainstream Democrats have mostly failed to wrap all this into a thematic critique. Take Sen Cory Booker, a rising star in the party who is frequently discussed as a future presidential candidate. He has spoken up only about the Trump appointees, such as Bannon and Sessions, who are openly racist. The same goes for Senate minority whip Dick Durbin, who has criticized Bannon and Sessions but not gone after other cabinet nominees other than to say the Senate will closely inspect them.

Perhaps Democrats are reluctant to complain about establishment nominations when the alternative is comically unqualified right-wing extremists like Ben Carson, Trump’s pick for secretary of housing and urban development. But pointing out Trump’s insider status may be the only way to to show the public that he isn’t who he claims to be. They should say, “This is just another instance of the corrupt crony capitalism typical of the Trump administration.”

So far it’s mostly just liberal pundits and gadflies like Bernie Sanders pointing out Trump’s corruption, when it should be leading national Democrats such as incoming Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, or House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. Instead, Schumer and Pelosi are foolishly speculating that they can work together with Trump on infrastructure – ie, they’re normalizing the incoming administration.

This message needs the megaphone and official imprimatur of elected officials who go on Meet the Press. And it needs a party disciplined in hammering points home as the GOP did its bogus attacks on Clinton over Benghazi and her email server.



Remarkably enough, the first major political figure to take on Trump’s economic policy hypocrisy is one his earliest supporters, Sarah Palin. In an op-ed Friday, Palin accurately denounced the Trump’s Carrier inducement as “corporate welfare” and “special interest crony capitalism.” Palin is an intuitively shrewd manipulator of conservative populism and Middle American resentment. Her adopting this meme demonstrates that its appeal will reach beyond the Democratic base.

That Democrats have allowed Palin to beat them to the anti-Trump punch shows they are doing their jobs terribly, if at all. If they want to beat Trump, they had better start hitting him where it will hurt.