Well, folks, here we are. Trump Eve. Some thoughts.
It’s been disappointing over the past two-and-a-half months to see so little pushback against Trump and what he’s been signaling he intends to do as president. It’s clear there is little by way of a Resistance this time around.
But I also understand why there’s been a lack of a response. It’s true some people are bummed and exhausted and need to recollect themselves. I think the biggest thing, though, is that people are at a loss as to how to respond effectively to Trump. There’s an old saying that goes, “When you have the facts, you pound the facts, and if that doesn’t work, then you pound the law, and if that doesn’t work either, then you pound the table.” With Trump and his supporters, none of that works. Neither does mockery nor sincere moral appeals. Trump’s critics could have just kept pounding away for the past two-and-a-half months, but potentially persuadable Americans didn’t want to hear it, lots of people weren’t paying attention, and it wasn’t going to change people’s minds regardless. For the most part, Trump’s victory hasn’t chastened his critics. It’s that they feel whatever they have to say is just coming across as static noise right now. (That, and the fact that a lot of us are profoundly disappointed our fellow citizens would put a wannabe autocrat back in charge. What do you say to people who should know better?)
Now that Republicans have control of all three branches of government (although that House majority is so small it may not be functional; stay tuned) Democrats also seem content to let Republicans run the show and then critique the outcome. Democrats’ logic here is to keep their fingerprints off the pending quagmire and let Americans see firsthand what Trumpism run wild entails, which may include mass deportations, draconian abortion laws, corporate-friendly tax cuts, the fall of Ukraine, prolonged government shutdowns, a government default, and tariff-induced inflation.
The problem with this approach is that a lot of people can get hurt along the way. Democrats may feel obliged to use whatever leverage they have to prevent bad potential outcomes from becoming a reality. That’s a genuine moral quandary, and I’d completely understand if Democrats felt they needed to be the adults in the room and keep the worst from happening. But by refusing to cooperate with a Republican governing trifecta, Democrats can keep their hands clean and finally force Americans to reckon with the consequences of poor Republican governance. If Republicans do decide to step up and govern responsibly, it’s likely they’ve stirred the wackos up so much over the past ten (twenty? thirty?) years that it will incite a Republican civil war that will kneecap Trump.
Of course, no matter what happens, “Washington” will get blamed, and Washington is full of Republicans and Democrats. Trump will insist Democrats and the “deep state” are responsible for whatever goes wrong. Both parties will be scolded for failing to find the middle ground. But the spotlight needs to shine bright on the MAGAfied Republican Party for the sake of accountability. Furthermore, Trump has insisted he can single-handedly fix the nation’s problems. (If the war in Ukraine isn’t over by noon Tuesday, Trump needs to explain why he spent the night at all those inaugural balls rather than working the phones to fulfill a campaign promise he made 33 times last fall.) It’s time Americans come to terms with the real-world limits of presidential power.
My only piece of advice to Democrats here—and I don’t know how workable this is in practice—is that I would refrain as much as possible from focusing attacks on Donald Trump. That’s hard to do in part because Trump is a defective human being who is a problem in and of himself, but it may be more powerful to draw voters’ attention to policy outcomes than it is to level personal attacks over his clownish behavior. Another reason to divert the focus away from Trump, though, is that Trump has proven to be an extraordinarily resilient political figure who has survived countless episodes that would have destroyed the political careers of ordinary politicians. He absorbs scandal and turns them into a personal strength.
Instead, I would treat Trump as a natural disaster. You can’t critique a hurricane or an earthquake or a wildfire; those things are forces of nature beyond our control that we can only lament. But we can definitely critique the response to a natural disaster. When Trump acts up, Democrats need to turn up the heat on congressional Republicans. GOP senators and representatives need to be pressed as to why they’re not standing up to him.
To pull that off, Democrats can’t go hard at Trump, as that will only elicit an impassioned defense of Trump from his Republican lackeys. Instead, Democrats have to hope Trump’s pathologically bad behavior speaks for itself. Republican officials, however, need to be made to answer for why they don’t have the courage to check (not necessarily Trump, but, more abstractly) power when it is misused or abused. It’s time to turn our local Republican members of Congress into this story’s Big Bad. Recent history shows they’ll try to avoid answering tough questions like these, but Democrats should find ways to drag them into the spotlight regardless.
A lot of pundits are reflecting now on Biden’s legacy. One of the more poignant pieces I’ve read is by Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark, who compares Biden to Mike Pence:
You won’t find a bigger admirer of Joe Biden anywhere outside his immediate family. I’ve written favorably about him over and over (and over).
And while Mike Pence might be a good father/brother/husband/friend, he was most definitely not my cup of chamomile. He spent four years propping up, bowing to, covering for, and enabling Donald Trump.
Joe Biden never had anything but the best intentions; Mike Pence’s intentions were rarely on the level.
And yet one of these men sacrificed his career to save democracy and the other made a series of choices which concluded with the restoration of Donald Trump and the complete takeover of the federal government by forces that are—at best—agnostic on the question of small-l liberalism.
It’s a story that could have been written by Euripides. …
Mike Pence enabled authoritarianism. But succeeded in stopping Trump’s coup.
Joe Biden returned normalcy to political life and governed wisely. But he presided over the resurgence and total victory of the forces of Trumpism.
It’s a uniquely American tragedy.
Tough pill to swallow.
I can’t remember who wrote it, but another article I read put it even more succinctly than Last: Biden was elected to move the nation past Trump, which he completely failed to do, rendering his presidency an abject failure.
Of course, Biden did a lot of good as president. His environmental and infrastructure bills will likely stand as his most enduring domestic policy legacies. We’ll see if he was president long enough to leave a lasting impression on foreign policy, although I suspect history will not treat him kindly when it comes to his administration’s handling of Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
But it’s hard not to think of Biden’s presidency now as nothing more than that moment America put Trump in time-out.
That said, Biden’s reputation could improve over the long term if Trump’s second term crashes and burns. Biden will still be remembered as the geriatric commander-in-chief who couldn’t keep Trump from returning to the White House (if he’s remembered at all; anyone know who served as president between Grover Cleveland’s two non-consecutive terms?1) but he could be recalled as a president who, unlike the vandal who both preceded and succeeded him, at least took governance seriously. At best, people will say Biden was well-intentioned but too old for the job.
So the question is, what should we expect from Trump! Part Deux? There are five things I keep telling myself when I start to panic over the implications of a second Trump term and need to calm myself down:
Trump is term-limited. By that I don’t mean that we only have to live with this guy for the next four years. It’s that a term-limited president has a diminished reservoir of political capital. It’s hard for them to cut deals with other policymakers because they may not be able to hold up their end of the bargain in the remaining time they have left in office. Policymakers may also conclude it’s better to curry favor with their constituents and their party’s future potential presidential nominees than with a lame duck president who will be presiding over nothing more than the wait staff at Mar-a-Lago four years from now. (That said, I’m going to freak you out right now and predict the 2028 Republican presidential nominee will be Donald Trump, Jr., which could keep Papa Trump from becoming a lame duck.)
Republicans have a small congressional majority. That slim majority may encourage greater party unity, but the GOP has virtually no room for error in the House. That alone limits what Congress can pass and send to Trump’s desk. Recent history has shown House Speaker Mike Johnson has struggled to do anything along party lines with a similar-sized majority. Perhaps some Democrats will work with them on a few bills, but it’s also easy for the minority to find something wrong with a bill and just leave the majority twisting in the wind.
The Republican Party is also a divided party. Trump is a unifying force within the GOP (so long as he’s potentially on the ballot, which he isn’t anymore) but there are deep divides between the far right and the party’s few remaining moderates, as well as between the conscientious lawmakers and the clown car caucus. Again, with a slim majority, it may be difficult to smooth over those divides.
Trump has a reputation for incompetence. I know there’s a lot of talk that Trump’s team will be more competent this time around, but Trump breeds chaos. (Who knew the acquisition of Greenland was one of Trump’s political priorities?) Unfortunately, real consequences follow from bad governance, but hopefully Trump’s inability to consistently keep his act together will prevent him from following through on many of his worst ideas.
Trump does not have a political mandate, many of his proposals aren’t popular, and he has a history of alienating voters. If Barack Obama and Joe Biden struggled to build a durable electoral base despite cracking 50% in the popular vote, so will Trump, who did not win an outright majority. Furthermore, mass deportations and inflationary tariffs are not on the public’s to-do list; he could easily turn off swing voters by pursuing them (or anger his base by settling for half-measures.) Finally, Trump has a tendency to do things people don’t like, which, now that the clock is counting down to the end of his political career, may permanently cost him support.
All of that said, I’m still very worried that Trump will run roughshod over American democracy. If he can’t get Congress to do his bidding, he may do what he wants independent of their authority and dare Republicans to defy him. I am concerned he’ll take steps to undermine our nation’s electoral system or warp our political system to disadvantage his opponents. I have little faith in the spinal fortitude of GOP officeholders and the judges they’ve installed on the nation’s highest courts to check him. After the past four years, Trump may feel he can commit crime without consequence. I fear Trump will make an example of someone and bully his critics into silence, and that the corporate interests who oversee our nation’s major media outlets will conclude it’s better for their bottom line to acquiesce to Trump than publish stories critical of his administration. I worry about what may happen in the event of a national emergency that demands competent leadership; I worry about how Trump may use a national crisis to expand his power.
In the best-case scenario, Trump overplays his hand, Americans quickly grow tired of his act, and an energetic new political movement emerges to restore Americans’ faith in democracy.
Or perhaps we should just hope Trump stumbles early, his political luck finally runs out, and we look back on his final four years in office as wasted time.
Right now, though, optimism feels like a fool’s game. I fear we’re in for some trying times.
See you on the other side.
Exit Music: “Soul Man” by Sam & Dave (1967, Soul Men) (R.I.P. Sam Moore)
The answer is Benjamin Harrison.