To talk public policy in the context of Donald Trump's presidential campaign kind of misses the point of Trump-as-politician. This should worry Democrats. Earlier this week, Paul Krugman gamely laid out a few of the almost preposterous inconsistencies in Trump's evolving tax policies--particularly in light of his refusal to release his own returns. Much of what Krugman writes is so true as to be self-evident. And, a la Krugman, Democrats will continue to hammer Trump every day from now until November on his stunning ignorance of foreign and domestic policy, glaring inconsistencies, and seemingly pathological aversion to concrete proposals. They will do this knowing all the while that in the end, it might be no more effective than throwing water on a grease fire.
Clinton is running her second presidential campaign, but this is Trump's thousandth pissing match. His tactics and strategy amount to the same thing: making himself look good by making her look bad. And he's well practiced at that game. Ultimately, Trump's proposition--that public policy is no longer relevant to our politics--is probably the closest thing he's got to an actual policy proposal. If he's right about that, and the Democrats are playing the wrong game, he may win. The fact that nobody has any idea what he'd do afterward is a feature, not a bug.
