Steve Bannon’s flood-the-zone strategy is a handy way to understand President Donald Trump’s first six weeks in office.
Bannon, the prominent right-wing podcaster who served as Trump’s chief strategist during his first administration, put it this way in a 2019 interview on PBS’s “Frontline”: “All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things, they’ll bite on one, and we’ll get our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover.”
Bannon’s comment was directed at the media, but it’s been widely extended to reflect the dilemma that Democrats face:
As the zone floods with policies and actions that are ill-advised, outrageous, illegal or unconstitutional — so the Democrats think, anyway — I like, for metaphorical consistency, the terms Bill Maher presented recently to former Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan: As the tide rises around them, which hill should Democrats choose to die on?
Birthright citizenship? No, said Ryan. Trans rights? No. Which hill, then? Ukraine, said Ryan.