The Atlantic

Holding Democrats to the Trump Standard

Can Democrats still win if they don’t play the president’s game?
Source: Rhona Wise / AFP / Getty

Sometimes it seems like Donald Trump is president in one dimension, and the Democratic primary race is taking place in another.

Democrats are engaged in a back-and-forth over whether the federal government should have superseded local authorities on public school busing in the 1970s, and on the relative merits of the process as a tool to achieve racial integration. President Trump has offered that busing “certainly is a primary method of getting people to schools.”

After Russian President Vladimir Putin told the that Western-style liberal democracy is “,” Trump said he thought he understood the point, saying, “if you look at what’s happening in Los Angeles, where it’s so sad to look, and what’s happening in San Francisco, and a couple of other cities, which are run by an extraordinary group of liberal people.” Last week during the first primary debates in Miami, Democrats were pushed to provide concise and specific answers about national security issues. This was just a few hours before Trump joked about election security with Putin before ambling over the barrier in the DMZ to give North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un yet another “made for TV” moment, without asking

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