When there’s a Trumper at Thanksgiving

Columnist Rachel Bitecofer offers a strategic approach for dealing with “Uncle Bob,” the Trumper at the Thanksgiving table. It’s called “Pivot and Attack” and is sure to make the MAGAs the turkey at your holiday table. It’s a way to beat the Republicans with their own tactics.

Note from Rachael: “Pivot and attack doesn’t come naturally to us liberals. We live, breathe, and exist for wonky, substantive policy debates. We like to fight back with facts, because they are often on our side and plentiful.”

And just like Republican Party strategists, your Uncle Bob knows this about you, and he exploits it at every opportunity.

MAGA Bob will say, “So Rachel, if we defund the police, who are you going to call when you wake up in the middle of the night to someone standing over your bed?”

Bitecofer says you must resist your instinct to defend with facts. You’ll want to point out that virtually no elected Democrats support defunding the police. You’ll want to say it means shifting police budgets to cover services like mental health crises.

But it’s too late. Uncle Bob has you on the defensive and he’s ruined another Thanksgiving. Instead, use the approach illustrated below. Print this out as a PDF.

Pivot and attack intentionally puts your opponent on the defensive:

• by switching the topic of conversation
• to something that brands them as unreasonable or extreme.

“It is the polar oppositive of a meaningful, substantive debate,” she said.

Now, given what you’ve learned so far, let’s try it in a hypothetical conversation with Uncle Bob.

Uncle Bob: “So Rachel, do you support mutilating children to change their gender too? Why won’t you protect kids!”

You: I am so glad you want to talk about protecting kids, Uncle Bob, because I was going to ask you how you sleep at night knowing your extremist positions on guns is going to kill another few kids tomorrow. Why do you want little kids to get slaughtered at school? Why do you want kids to die?”

[Narrator: Now, Uncle Bob was NOT expecting that. He was baiting you into a long and pointless defense of gender affirming care for minors using facts, but now he’s been called a kiddie murderer and has to defend himself.]

Uncle Bob: “We have a second amendment for a reason!”

You: “So, it’s your constitutional right to let kids get slaughtered by weapons of war?! That’s some position for a guy spending his days obsessing over the genitals of little kids.”

And just like that you’ve muzzled the MAGA! “The modern Republican Party produces an endless supply of foil you can use in pivot and attack. From trying to end democracy, to their Big Gov abortion laws, to the party’s pro-Putin wing threatening 80 years of American national security work, there has never been an easier time to make Republicans the turkey,” she says.

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Rachel Bietcofer is author of The Cycle on Substack. If you think this effort is bringing value to your intellectual life (or sanity), you might be willing to share this post with your followers, friends, or family members.

The “Pivot and Attack” strategy is covered in her forthcoming book Hit ‘Em Where it Hurts: How to Save Democracy By Beating Republicans at their Own Game.