We are the cavalry
Slaying the Trump dragon is up to the American people. Bloody hell.
On this morning after Super Tuesday, here’s your sobering thought for the next six months: the fate of American democracy rests solely with the American people. And a big chunk of them are bat-shit crazy.
That’s the only conclusion from the events of the past week, where the country zoomed past yet another off-ramp for the Donald Trump democracy dumpster fire. American has had several of these since the pretend billionaire began his 2016 presidential campaign by declaring Mexicans were “rapists.” His party and its supporters shrugged when Trump all but confessed to sexual assault by declaring “when you’re a star you can do anything [to women] … grab ‘em by the pussy.” Robert Mueller pathetically punted on the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and allegations of conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Republican senators cowered during Trump’s first impeachment around his efforts to blackmail Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy; ditto for the second impeachment over the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
Now, another opportunity to cut loose the worst president in American history seems dead. It’s obvious Trump wants to win primarily to quash the 91 criminal indictments he faces, and he’s engaged in his usual approach of trying to delay, delay, delay cases until after November. The gravity of the charges—notably the four federal criminal counts levied by special counsel Jack Smith over Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election—was supposed to make this different; to ensure the American people went to the polls fully informed about the candidates.
Trump’s principal delaying tactic has been the absurd argument that, as president, he has absolute immunity—that the only avenue for legal recourse against a president is impeachment, an argument even Republican senate leader Mitch McConnell rejected during the second impeachment trial (too spineless to vote to impeach Trump despite his “disgraceful dereliction of duty,” McConnell said it was because “we have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one”).
Trump’s immunity claim was unanimously rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a stridently forceful ruling intended to ensure the Supreme Court didn’t feel the need to even consider something so obviously crazy. But after sitting on it for a couple of weeks, the conservatively skewed Supreme Court decided it really did want to review it, setting hearings for … late April. Given the timeline, the odds are long of a decision before the election on the fundamental question of whether the former president tried to engineer a coup.
Which leads us to here. The 2016 election was, we were told, the most consequential in history. That paled by comparison with the 2020 battle, where it was obvious Joe Biden was the last bulwark against what would have been a deep erosion of American democracy in a Trump second term. Now, the country is faced yet again with the most consequential presidential election ever. Mueller didn’t save us. Republicans are cowards. Trump has skated on his obvious criminal conduct. The future of this grand experiment in self-governance once again comes down to Americans voting in a deeply flawed election process.
And, terrifyingly, maybe that’s as it should be?
Don’t get me wrong: Trump’s existing convictions—especially his sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll—should rule him out. He shouldn’t be anywhere near elected office. But he’s in, and he has a chance. It’s beyond distressing for the future of America to hinge on an increasingly polarized and exhausted electorate, let alone one where about a third of it appears totally bonkers. Yet in country’s that’s still—at least until November—a democracy, I guess that’s kind of the point.
The Supreme Court two days ago unanimously said Trump should remain on ballots in Colorado (while going way too far on an underlying issue, natch), firmly backing the idea that when it comes to saving this country, the final decision should be left to the people. I mean, the US system is deeply undemocratic, but I became an American citizen last year (under a sane and accomplished leader) to add my voice to the right side of history.
“You have to go out and beat this person,” former Democratic congressman Tim Ryan told Bill Maher last week. “If the political apparatus on the Democratic side is going to think the Supreme Court’s going to come in and save them, that’s not going to happen. Because we’ve been watching this shit show with the Supreme Court for damn near 30 years now.”
So, that’s where we are. Trump will be the Republican nominee for president; Biden the Democratic. Setting aside policy differences—not that Trump has any discernible policies beyond retribution—and looking solely at fitness for office, it ain’t close. And it’s even clearer if the comparison is extended to the potential impact of a Trump victory on the state of the nation and the US in the eyes of the world.
“Most Americans don’t understand the depth of the threat that Trump poses to their democracy,” Francis Fukuyama wrote in a Weekend FT op-ed titled “It’s not too late to reverse America’s political decay.” “The Democrats have a lot of work to do to wake people up to the magnitude of the challenge the country faces.”
They sure do. And having woken their fellow Americans to the danger, Democrats then have the challenge of convincing them Biden is again their savior in a system where a huge chunk of the electorate declares its preference by … not even bothering to vote.
Nervous yet?
A note about whatever this is …
After writing a few thousand articles for newspapers and magazines, I spent a long time trying a bunch of other stuff. I guess I figured what came (relatively) easily must by definition be less valuable, so I wandered in the corporate wilderness, becoming increasingly frustrated and doing work that felt increasingly lousy.
Sometimes with age comes wisdom, and I’ve realized finding something (relatively) easy ain’t a bad thing. So, this is a space where I’m resurrecting writing for myself, on topics weird and wild and wonderful.
Posts will appear when the mood takes me, but I do try to be consistently inconsistent—sometimes it’ll be a couple of days between drinks; sometimes a week. But if you subscribe, you’ll get a email letting you know I’m ranting. Again.