NO EXTREMIST -- YOU'RE THE EXTREMIST

Donald Trump's speech in Ohio last night is getting a lot of attention. Here's the New York Times headline:

Trump Says Some Migrants Are ‘Not People’ and Predicts a ‘Blood Bath’ if He Loses

Here's an excerpt from the story:

Former President Donald J. Trump ... gave a freewheeling speech in which he used dehumanizing language to describe immigrants, maintained a steady stream of insults and vulgarities and predicted that the United States would never have another election if he did not win in November....

He added: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.”

... If he did not win this year’s presidential election, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t think you’re going to have another election, or certainly not an election that’s meaningful.”

... He asserted, without evidence, that other countries were emptying their prisons of “young people” and sending them across the border. “I don’t know if you call them ‘people,’ in some cases,” he said. “They’re not people, in my opinion.” He later referred to them as “animals.”

Notice what's not in these stories: any evidence that Trump is claiming dictatorial powers.

Trump raised a lot of eyebrows in December when he said he wanted to be a dictator, but only on "day one" of his presidency. I think he knows that made him look like dangerous and scary. So what is he doing? He's focusing on the idea that his enemies are the ones who are dangerous and scary.

It's reminiscent of the moment in the third general-election debate in 2016 when Hillary Clinton argued that Vladimir Putin wanted Trump to win "because he would rather have a puppet as president of the United States" and Trump replied, "No puppet. You’re the puppet." It's Trump as Pee-wee Herman: I know you are, but what am I?

Democrats say a second Trump presidency will lead to chaos in America? Trump says it's a Democratic victory that will lead to a "blood bath." Democrats say Trump is a danger to democracy? No, Trump says -- it's Democrats who won't allow any more elections to take place if they win. Crime: all the fault of immigrants, and therefore all the fault of Democrats.

Can this work? I don't know. Last month, Ezra Klein -- no not in that column -- quoted a pollster who thinks this could work for Trump:

Kristen Soltis Anderson, a co-founder of the Republican polling firm Echelon Insights, believes that the Democrats are right that voters are craving stability. But she thinks they refuse to see that Trump is leading in many polls because voters believe that he is the one who might offer it. What Trump is pitching, she said, is a “push for order — ‘I am going to be the one who secures the border. I’m going to be the one that cracks down on crime. I’m going to be the one that tries to stabilize your prices.’”

I'm sure this works for some people, so it's up to President Biden and his team to out-argue Trump on this. At least recognize that the line of argument allows Trump to sound overwrought and even deranged while claiming that he's worked up because he needs to be worked up to stop the chaos, not to create it. If you buy what he's selling -- and it's possible that some of the people who buy it won't be MAGA cultists -- then this justifies his personal style. So Democrats have to make the case all over again that he will be a chaos agent. They can do it, but they have to recognize that they need to. Trump = chaos might not be obvious to every persuadable voter.