How can Dems overthrow Trump? With “The Art of the Feel”
11 lessons misappropriated from the Trump playbook
Jeffrey Denny
Everyone knows Democrats are more emotional than the intellectual Republicans.
That’s why we lose. While we’re more educated than Trumpers who hate education, we suffer from what our amazing kiddos call “the feels.”
We care about how people feel (unless they’re MAGAs). Even more, we care about how we feel. We love to spelunk our feelings, share our feelings, write about our feelings, and pay Porsche-lease money to therapists to keep Botox face as we obsess about our feelings.
Republicans, meanwhile, are hardheaded, hardhearted Mr. Burns who bury their feelings until they volcanically explode in acting out their feelings, like Trump in a Bergdorf Goodman woman’s dressing room and always.
Without stupid feelings holding them back, Republicans can focus on winning, however ugly. But this can leave an empty feeling that they need to keep filling with more winning (see: Trump), as if winning is addictive like having cheap immigrant housekeepers doing their laundry.
That’s why even decent Republicans love Trump even if he makes them lurch for the smelling salts — like a sewage engineer, he’ll do the dirty work that traditional culture keepers lack the immoral fortitude to do.
But emotions can be a superpower. Especially for women, according to both women and men on the comedy circuit. Men are learning. That’s why male gaslighting and other forms of emotional manipulation are so popular on Zillennial social media, and HuffPo still exists to hype it.
If Democrats are so emotionally powerful, then why can’t we leverage our power to beat Trump?
We can. Through jujutsu, turning Trump’s “The Art of the Deal” against him with a new manifesto, “The Art of the Feel.”
“Art of the Deal” ghostwriter Tony Schwartz regrets that his most famous work “put lipstick on a pig.” If Democrats truly are humanists, as we say, we should offer Schwartz a shot at redemption by writing a response that saves America from Trump.
“The Art of the Feel” would flip Trump’s manual for winning that’s destroying America:
1. Feel big
Trump said, “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.”
Democrats tend to feel small. We seem to relish feeling disempowered and victimized. We’re uncomfortable with power and use power uncomfortably.
We need to seize our emotional power.
This starts at home by telling our kids whom we spend a fortune on to put through exclusive colleges to STFU with schooling us about the evils of capitalism that funds their privilege.
Then we need to stop coddling MAGAs by empathizing with how the poor dears need to destroy America and themselves out of understandable hate and resentment against us.
We need to grow a pair, as male, female, and nonbinary comedians say alike, whether referencing testicles or ovaries.
2. Protect the downside feelings
Trump’s “Art of the Deal” says the upside will take care of itself, you only need to manage the downside.
Democrats love to catastrophize that everything’s a crisis and the world is ending. That’s a scary defeatist message that doesn’t inspire action.
The Art of the Feel reflects that while we can’t always control our feelings, we can decide how we act on them. So quit pandering to the screaming, signs, and chants of our progressive wing, since they’re just as annoying as the GOP MAGA wing but lost America instead of controlling it.
3. Maximize the options
Trump says, “Don’t get attached to one deal or approach. Keep a lot of balls in the air, because most deals fall out, no matter how promising they seem at first.”
In the Art of the Feel, Democrats can win by deflecting any deal with Republicans by repeatedly asking, “How do you feel about that?” Feelings are to Republicans like crucifixes are to vampires, too scary.
4. Know your market
Trump says, “I like to think that I have that instinct. That’s why I don’t hire a lot of number-crunchers, and I don’t trust fancy marketing surveys. I do my own surveys and draw my own conclusions.”
The Art of the Feel urges highly educated, elite, demographic data-driven public policy Democrats who’ve lost their sense of Americans by saying, “Get out of Washington, Cambridge, Ivy enclaves and other thought-leadership hothouses and talk to real people, even if you find them irredeemably stupid.”
5. Use your leverage
“The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it, Trump says. “That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead.”
In The Art of the Feel, Democrats can gaslight like every narcissist date that maybe they do or don’t really want to get a deal with Republicans. Or maybe just string them along for something better. Or maybe Democrats don’t know what we want, which is the most powerful negotiating position ever.
6. Get the word out
“One thing I’ve learned about the press is that they’re always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better,” Trump said.
In The Art of the Feel, Democrats up the MAGA media outrage dose by flooding Red State grade school libraries with cute children’s picture books about militant anti-gay, anti-pedophile Republicans revealed as gay and pedophiles. “Matt The Nightcrawler,” about a certain disgraced Florida ex-congressman, will surely trigger Florida book banners.
8. Fight back
“In most cases I’m very easy to get along with,” Trump said. “I’m very good to people who are good to me. But when people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard.”
In The Art of the Feel, Democrats would fight back by leveraging psychology to help damaged MAGAs explore the deep reasons why they’re so mean and help them heal for the good of America.
9. Deliver the goods
“You can’t con people, at least not for long,” Trump said. “You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”
In The Art of the Feel, Democrats can also con people, create excitement, do promotion, and get all kinds of press with a little hyperbole. Our liberal Gen Z influencers do this every day.
10. Contain the costs
“I believe in spending what you have to,” Trump says. “But I also believe in not spending more than you should.”
In the Art of the Feel, progressive, anti-capitalist, climate-woke liberal youth can save tons of parental money with cheap fast fashion pushed by their influencers and made in Chinese factories by poor workers from synthetic fabrics derived from fossil fuels. And wind up in dead birds that are “crunchy” from microplastics.
11. Have fun
“Money was never a big motivation for me,” Trump said, “Except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.”
The Art of the Feel recognizes that money never motivates anti-capitalist Democrats, not even the wealthy ones. The money comes from doing the right thing for downtrodden Americans. Our version of fun is policy conferences at resort locales where we smartly debate and one-up what we feel real Americans need.
“The Art of the Feel” may not topple Trump, but at least it would make Democrats feel good that they tried.
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
