I groaned when I saw that the DNC is taunting Donald Trump with a taco truck. Featuring a graphic of Trump in a chicken suit, the truck was parked near the Republican National Committee’s headquarters on Capitol Hill this Tuesday. "Trump always chickens out. We’re just bringing the tacos to match," DNC Chair Ken Martin said to Fox News. Axios reports that Democrats “think they have found a way to get under the president's skin.”

“Trump Always Chickens Out (TACO)” is a term coined by Financial Times writer Robert Armstrong, who was referring to the way Trump has backed off extreme tariff threats under market pressure. Armstrong said market trends reflect a consensus that “the US administration does not have a very high tolerance for market and economic pressure, and will be quick to back off when tariffs cause pain.” He “wasn’t trying to come up with the next hot Trump insult, he was just looking for a punchy shorthand for Trump’s approach to trade policy.”

But Democrats, who are fumbling around searching for a message, quickly seized on “TACO,” especially after Trump himself bristled at the term, saying the reporter who asked him about it had posed a “nasty question.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer recorded a video applying the “TACO Trump” framework to the ongoing negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program: 

When it comes to negotiating with the terrorist government of Iran, Trump’s all over the lot. One day, he sounds tough. The next day, he’s backing off. And now all of a sudden we find that [Steve] Witkoff and [Marco] Rubio are negotiating a secret side deal with Iran. What kind of bull is this? They’re going to sound tough in public and then have a side deal that lets Iran get away with everything? [...] If TACO Trump is already folding, the American public should know about it. No side deals.

Notice that Schumer is attacking Trump from the right on Iran, suggesting that Trump is not being tough enough and is letting a “terrorist” government “get away with everything.” This is the sort of criticism that Republicans hit Democrats with: soft on terrorists. It’s one of the criticisms I wish Democrats would stop making, because it doesn’t make any sense. It’s good that Trump isn’t taking a hard line on Iran. It’s a relief, because it means we’re less likely to end up in a catastrophic war. Instead of supporting Israel’s view that Iran should just be attacked instead of negotiated with, the Trump administration is trying to come to some sort of agreement with Iran. There will be enough Republicans critical of such an agreement; we don’t need Democrats joining the chorus by saying that Trump is folding or “chickening out” of a war with Iran! I’m reminded of the way, in his first term, some Democrats suggested Trump was soft on North Korea when he opted for diplomacy over threats of force. (Schumer himself called this “one of the worst few days in American foreign policy.”) They were wrong. It was good when Trump showed an openness to negotiations. It does not help when the party that should be for diplomacy over military aggression criticizes Trump for being insufficiently aggressive. 

Likewise on tariffs: it’s good that Trump is backing off his most extreme threats! It’s good when he’s flexible. We want this. We want him to back down, because the tariffs are stupid. So don’t go shouting “Chicken Trump, bawk bawk!” as if you want him to double down on his worst ideas. We should point out clearly that he’s being flexible because he’s realizing his ideas are terrible, not because he’s a brilliant negotiator. But we shouldn’t be saying it’s “chicken” not to go through with these bad ideas, any more than we should be trying to goad him into building more of the border wall. 

I don’t like Democrats embracing “TACO Trump” in part because it waters down the force of their message (to the extent they have one), implying that the thing they stand for most is “whatever will most easily get under Donald Trump’s skin.” But that’s not what your politics should be based on. 

Donald Trump is taking truly heinous actions while in office. His slashing of foreign aid is literally killing HIV/AIDS patients and starving some of the poorest people on Earth. His Secretary of Health & Human Services is pushing bogus unscientific nonsense that will get people killed. He is escalating a climate crisis that is going to cause massive suffering. He is plotting the full ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip and giving a complete greenlight to Israel to carry out some of the worst atrocities of our time using American taxpayer dollars. His new budget takes healthcare from the poor so it can give tax cuts to the rich. His deportations are targeting ordinary working people, cruelly tearing apart families and ruining lives. There is so much evil to concentrate on that it’s hard to keep track of.

So why on Earth is the leader of the Senate Democrats, instead of being laser-focused on the worst crimes, going after Trump for being too soft on Iran? Why is the DNC handing out chicken tacos? This kind of message distracts from the most important issues that are at stake, and it makes the fight look like petty schoolyard insult-throwing rather than what it really is, which is a battle against a monstrously cruel and corrupt autocrat. The opposition to Trump needs to be conducted with moral seriousness, homing in on all of the ways in which he is hurting people. 

JD Vance (whom I am no admirer of) scoffed at the taco truck stunt, saying it showed Democrats were the “lamest opposition in American history.” He’s right, and I hate when he’s right. This sort of stuff inspires nobody. It has no moral dimension. It doesn’t identify and attack the real problem, or the issues where Trump is weak.

I’m wary of all political messaging that sets aside important issues. When John Fetterman ran against Dr. Oz, he attracted fans because of his sassy social media posting about Oz. But one thing I noticed at the time was that Fetterman wasn’t really going after Oz on substance, but over things like Oz living in New Jersey and Oz being an out-of-touch rich man who says the word “crudité.” I wanted a harsher campaign that exposed Oz as a quack who doesn’t care about people’s health. 

Watching Democrats cast about for a message is exasperating. The latest proposed quick-fix to the party’s unpopularity problem is “abundance,” the philosophy that Having More Things Is Good (and burdensome regulations are preventing us from having all of the wondrous things we could have). Polling suggests “abundance” is not likely to inspire the Democratic base very much, but what’s frustrating to me about it is that it sets aside the traditional progressive concerns of justice and equality. I believe that an opposition to Trump should be focused on the ways in which he does things that are cruel, unjust, and unfair, that enrich his billionaire friends while screwing over working people. That’s the anti-Trump message Bernie Sanders carries forth at his Fighting Oligarchy tour, and it’s a good one, which is why people have been packing every venue Sanders visits in order to listen to it. This really shouldn’t be complicated, and I’ve been saying it since 2016: if Democrats want to defeat Trump, they need Sanders-style populism. Anything else is just going to consign them to irrelevance and fail to inspire the anti-Trump movement we need, and will vindicate Vance’s view that they are the lamest opposition in American history.