A spectre is haunting the United States – the spectre of Trumpism.
So I’m cribbing from Karl Marx. Seems fitting though. For the past century communism has served as the boogeyman of American politics. Now Trumpism is the ghost that possesses our democracy.
No one expected Trump to just retire once he moved out of the White House. This past weekend, for instance, Trump popped up at a rally in North Carolina. That was inevitable. Steve Bannon also threw out the idea that Trump should run for Congress in 2022 with the aim of becoming Speaker of the House if Republicans win back the chamber; Trump thought that sounded “interesting.” Before you dismiss Bannon’s proposition as outlandish, recall that crazier things have happened as a result of Trump setting his sights on public office. Of course, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy may have a few objections to Trump cutting in line to grab the Speaker’s gavel. But also: Kevin McCarthy doesn’t have a spine.
But that’s Trump the actual man. I’m more concerned here with Trumpism, that poltergeist lurking within every news story about American politics. Even as Trump remains a grandiose buffoon, and even as he no longer commands a Twitter account followed by millions, and even though he no longer wields actual power, American politics is conducted in his shadow. Every move it seems is weighed by how much it would stir or quiet his spirit. There is no moving on to the Biden era. The halls of government and the many rooms of our memories remain haunted by Trumpism.
This is especially true for Democrats, who have good reason to be spooked. It’s not just that Trump is a Republican who pursued Republican policies as president. That’s part of the normal give-and-take of politics and one that can be countered through regular political channels (i.e., policy initiatives, grassroots mobilization, GOTV efforts.) It’s that Trump was a narcissistic, overconfident, and incompetent leader (see: pandemic) who exacerbated those personality flaws by attracting sycophants, the corrupt, and the corruptible into his orbit while marginalizing those committed to public service. It’s that he treated Bill Barr’s Justice Department as his own private counsel and had no regard for the rule of law. It’s that he viewed politics as a pitched nationalistic zero-sum culture war and tapped into a legacy of racism, sexism, and xenophobia to divide the country along racial and ethnic lines to his benefit. It’s that he’s a wannabe (albeit lazy) autocrat who intuited how far a megaphone, the politics of grievance and grandstanding, and a nihilistic disregard for truth and principle could take him. It’s that by the end of his presidency, the norms and guardrails of democracy meant nothing to him.
It all culminated in the Capitol Riot, by far the most perilous moment for American democracy since the Army of Northern Virginia turned south at Gettysburg. On 1/6, all the warnings Democrats had sounded about Trump came true. Yet the sight of Trump’s rioters marching the Confederate flag through the Capitol—something Robert E. Lee failed to accomplish—was not enough for most Republicans to abandon Trump and Trumpism. It turns out Republican politicians are spooked by the spectre of Trump too.
The issue here is that a huge chunk of the party remains enthralled to Trump. GOP lawmakers realize if they criticize their dear leader, they’ll end up primaried by a MAGA devotee, and if they did manage to prevail in that contest, Trump may very well tell his supporters to stay home on Election Day to deny the “traitor” victory. The Marjorie Taylor Greene’s of the world aside—and who knows for sure how many of these die-hard Trumpists there really are, and there could be a lot—I suspect many in the GOP just want to move on from Trump, whose popularity with the American people continues to sink. This is probably why so many Republican members of Congress voted against a bipartisan 1/6 commission that would have kept Trump and his most deviant supporters in a rather unflattering spotlight for the rest of the year. The less we pay attention to Trump, they reason, the more obsolete he will become, a task made all the easier by Trump’s social media ban.
But ignoring Trump and hoping for the best has never been an optimal strategy for dealing with him. The guy’s not going away. He’s still the party’s biggest draw, has attained a cult-like following among his admirers, and remains a kingmaker commanding a decisive chunk of the electorate. Given all the opportunities Republicans have had to fix this problem—they could have stopped him in the primaries, at the 2016 convention, after the Access Hollywood tape, on Election Day 2016, after Charlottesville, after the Mueller Report, during his first impeachment, after he gassed a bunch of protesters so he could hold up a Bible in front of a church, on Election Day 2020, after 1/6, during his second impeachment—I wouldn’t trust any of them to stand up to the man if he livestreamed his own shooting spree in the streets of NYC. (They’d probably find a way to blame DeBlasio instead.)
It was Liz Cheney’s argument that the only way to exorcise Trump from the GOP was for the party to speak with one voice and throw him under the bus during Impeachment II. Only that sort of unity held the potential to demystify Trump. (That move would have had the added bonus of actually holding a delinquent politician accountable, but that’s never been a strong feature of American politics.) Cheney sounded like an NBA GM arguing it was time to rebuild a team past its prime: Trade off the expensive contracts for a bunch of prospects and future draft picks, waive the veterans you can’t move, suck for a few seasons, draft well, clear cap space, use your assets to gain talent, and hopefully come out competitive after a few years and win the fans back. The GOP, not wanting to alienate fans hoping to relive their team’s glory days, decided to fire the GM and run it back instead. Republicans, it turns out, do not trust the Process.
But even with Trump on a hiatus of sorts, Trumpism and its nihilistic, autocratic, anti-democratic nationalism remains potent. Copycats like Sen. Josh Hawley (MO), Gov. Ron DeSantis (FL), and Gov. Kim Reynolds (IA) follow the Trump playbook while toning down Trump’s rhetorical excesses. (Republican voters, when asked if there was something they didn’t like about Trump, consistently said during his presidency that they wish he’d “tweet less,” as if the main problem with Trump was a matter of style over substance. Or maybe it just made them uncomfortable that he was saying the quiet part loud.) To this day, citing as proof the mathematical fact that fewer votes were cast for Trump than for his opponent, Trump’s loyalists remain convinced the 2020 election was rigged against the Man Who Cannot Lose, while those unwilling to go that far cite the presence of “irregularities” to remain in good standing with the right’s deluded doubters. This Big Lie has emboldened acolytes in some state legislatures to take steps to ensure their party never again loses an election by granting themselves the power to disregard electoral results and declare their own winner.
The psychological dread is real. For Democrats, who control the presidency and Congress by the slimmest of margins, every move is dogged by the fear that a mistake will re-empower a more competent variety of Trumpism that will quickly and more effectively move to cripple democracy. While debates among Democrats about legislation still invoke normal concerns—you know, principle, the practicalities of policy, the demands of constituents, etc.—the subtext is always about whether the effects of passage are likely to preserve or hasten the demise of the republic. Anyone who suggests Democrats are overestimating the prospects of a Hobbesian breakdown must have been born after January 6.
Do Republican lawmakers experience the same dread? We know many fear Trump enough to either acquiesce to his wishes or at least avoid provoking his wrath. But how many are actually worried their party’s electoral success would roll back the United States’ democratic experiment? And if that prospect does keep them up at night, what are they willing to do to prevent that from happening?
It may be Biden’s already done everything he’s needed to do—end the pandemic, put some money in people’s pockets, preside over a prolonged economic revival—to at least secure control of the executive branch for the next eight years. Maybe that way Trumpism can be countered or contained. My guess is it will take something more than that, though. I suspect the future of American democracy hinges on the success of the Democratic agenda, and that that agenda will require buy-in from Republicans willing to downplay their disagreements with Democrats for democracy’s sake. The likelihood of that? I said never tell me the odds, Threepio. Never tell me the odds.
Absent that, American democracy teeters on the edge, with the only party committed as a matter of policy to preserving American democracy struggling to prove it can govern and deliver on its promises while the opposition snipes from the sidelines and continues its flirtation with autocratic forces beyond its control. It’s a dangerous game. Cast the wrong spell and who knows what greater demon may come to haunt us all.
Photo credit: “45” by Truthout.org (Creative commons)
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Garbage Time
(Garbage Time theme song here.)
So this happened a couple weeks ago. This is referred to as one of the dumbest plays you’ll ever see, but if you haven’t seen it, you can’t even begin to imagine how dumb this gets:
Most sports bloopers happen at the pace of the game. This one is slowed down to waaaaaay less than the speed of thought. There was plenty of time and a very simple way to correct for this error, but no; instead, the Pirates gift us a catastrophe. Pirates first baseman Will Craig (who’s back in the minors now, but probably not because of his defense, even though a .217 batting average this season isn’t that horrible) needs to own this and use it to make some coin.
Love how Baez calls the runner safe at home before taking off for first, then calls himself safe at first before breaking for second.
Fun Fact #1: I’m pretty sure from pitch to the end of the play, every member of the Pirates defense except for the left fielder touches the ball. Fun Fact #2: The only reason the runner was on second to begin with was because he’d been picked-off by the pitcher only to escape after Craig bobbled the catch. Fun Fact #3: Baez would score from second in the next at-bat, meaning two runs resulted from this mind-melt. The Pirates would lose by 2.
I can say I have seen a play like this before. A little background. In high school, I was playing third base with one out in the bottom of the seventh (the last inning in high school games) and runners on first and second when I fielded a bouncing ground ball hit just to my left. I easily tagged out the runner coming at me, then easily tossed to second for a game ending double play. The runner in that situation should have stopped to either a.) prevent me from tagging him so I would throw to second and compel the second baseman to try to complete the double play with a throw to first (which may not have been on time or on target) or b.) force me to eat up the time necessary to turn two by stopping and backing up. Instead, I completed a play I still remember to this day.
With that in mind, after graduating, my brother was playing in a high school game when a similar situation came up. Only this time, my brother’s team was on the base paths and the runner on second made the correct play: He stopped and backed-up. The third baseman decided he would instead throw to first for the out. (A good rule in baseball or any sport is to compel your opponent to make an athletic play whenever possible rather than gift them an advantage, because things can go wrong on any play.) The crazy thing was the umpire called the runner on second out for stopping and backpedaling, which until a few weeks ago was just about the most absurd thing I’d ever seen happen in a baseball game. A runner doesn’t have to run if he doesn’t want to; he can collapse with an injury or get confused while running the bases and run every which way, but he won’t be called out if the ball is in play until a fielder tags him, not because he’s motionless or moving backwards. And also of note, once the third baseman threw to first, the runner on second was no longer forced to run to third anyway, since first base was open again. The runner who was initially on first could have retreated back to first and the runner who started at second could then also go back to second.
But the Cubs-Pirates play is its own level of craziness because there’s always a force at first. The runner has to run; even if he keeps backing up like Baez did, he’ll never be safe if he retreats to home. The bases could have been loaded and all three runners could have crossed the plate and the first baseman and batter could have started a staring contest that lasted into the wee hours of the night but none of the runs would have counted if the first baseman finally decided to touch first base with the ball and did so before the runner got there. I mean, come on, “Two outs, play’s at first” is practically a nature sound at little league diamonds across the United States. Tee-ballers get this. That bird that just flew across the field knows what to do with the ball if it’s hit to them in this situation. Absent that, just tag Baez!
The really amazing thing about this is that the Cubs weren’t on the wrong end of this. But they’re recent World Series champions, loveable losers no more. Kind of miss that about them.
Thanks for reading.
Exit Music: “Take the Long Way Home” by Supertramp (1979, Breakfast in America)