You’re Fired: The Perfect Guide to Beating Donald Trump

Political pundit Begala (Third Term) delivers a digressive, quip-filled road map for defeating Donald Trump and congressional Republicans in the 2020 elections. Addressing hot-button topics including climate change, the coronavirus pandemic, health care, voter suppression, and the wealth gap, one-by-one, Begala first offers well-worn critiques of the Trump administration and its conservative supporters, then advises Democrats on how they can run on the issue at hand. Though he claims that the key lesson liberals should take from 2016 is to make the next election “about voters’ lives, not Trump’s character,” Begala routinely appears to ignore his own advice. He mocks everything from Trump’s middle name (“Jaundice,” “Jerkface,” “Jughead”) to Mitch McConnell’s legislative strategy (“The guy couldn’t pass gas in a men’s room in a taco bar”), and only sketches how Democratic policies would actually improve people’s lives. Though Begala identifies where previous campaigns went wrong—by trying to refute Trump’s attacks rather than ridicule and recontextualize them, for instance—his prediction that Democrats can win simply by vowing to protect Social Security and other entitlements will strike many progressives as naive, given Trump’s hold on the Republican base. This centrist polemic muddles its message. (July)