No, freaking out is how you got Trump. Republicans branded him as unpresentable in polite society, and that made him stronger and stronger (“they are all corrupt! I’m the only one speaking truth! I’ll drain the swamp!”). Democrats then painted him as a sexual predator, and again that made him stronger (“I’m just a red-blooded male, talking locker-room talk! I’m like you! It’s them who are lying freaks!”). He has an anti-establishment, anti-elite-mainstream message; repeating that he’s completely out of the establishment and out of the mainstream is literally validating what he says!
You have to hit him on his contradictions, showing that behind the rethoric he’s just another cheap two-faced bastard. By attacking him on his strongest positions, where his voters are more likely to be extremely principled, you’re just galvanizing his support. By attacking him for being “dangerously out of control”, you’re just validating his firebrand persona. The right response is pointing at how incompetent, corrupt and two-faced he is, by pointing at his actual policies once he pushes them, or to his appointments - look at how horrified his base already is, after a couple of “swampy” nominations! This is how you can really peel voters away from him - by breaking his “I am different” spell, not reinforcing it. And you have to do that with competent, honest and credible alternatives with populist appeal, not with backroom fixers with a compromised past like Harry Reid. Anything particularly bad he passes, you just make a flat “repeal” promise and keep repeating it from here to 2020, then ridicule it every time you can. Rioting or other absurdities will just play in his hands, he can’t wait to brand you “unamerican”… exactly like GWB did.
