The secondary objective is to demolish the
Republican Party. Trump is an individual. Individuals come and go. The
Republican Party is an institution. Decaying and corrupt as it may be, it was
here before Trump and will be here after Trump, unless the Democrats send it on
its way like the Federalists and the Whigs. They have been a millstone around
the neck of this country since at least the time of Reagan with their twisted,
incoherent and inconsistent philosophy, an amalgam of borrowed themes to justify
or rationalize their underlying greed. They have been obstructing even the most
moderate progressive policies for forty years if not more. There is room for a
conservative party in this country in the classical sense of conservatism, but
the Republican Party today is a party of reaction, not conservatism, and Trump
is their flag bearer. They stand for plutocracy. Even worse under Trump they
stand for monocracy - the rule of one. They stand for the disenfranchisement of
those who vote or might vote Democratic. In this regard, they are attempting to
carry forward the voting restrictions of the Jim Crow South (as well as other
attitudes of that era). This is Trump's sick world view, and the sycophants of
the Republican Party are willing to follow him all the way to the deluge, or at
least the bank. Their ideal is the one party state. They are not Nazis, but that
is their political model. Take a look at what was going on in Germany in 1933
and thereafter. Noam Chomsky may be right when he calls the Republican Party
"the most dangerous organization in human history". As David Blight has put it,
"It knows what it hates: the two coasts, diverse cities, marriage equality,
certain kinds of feminism, political correctness (sometimes with reason),
university 'elites', and liberals generally. It is racial and undemocratic. It
twists American history to its own ends, substituting 'patriotism' for
scholarship and science. It has weaponized 'truth' and rendered it oddly
irrelevant."
Trump has only contempt for democracy, at least as it is practiced
in this country, as well as the rule of law which preserves liberal democracy.
His democracy is the "democracy" of Russia, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the
Philippines, China and North Korea. Certainly he believes in "one man, one
vote". The problem is that for him that one man is him and the one vote is his.
He has continuously and consistently tried to circumvent Congress (which does, in
fact, represent the people although they sometimes have a funny way of showing
it) and even his own administration. He constantly advocates policies which do
not reflect the preferences of the majority of the American people whether it is
the wall, DACA, health care or even modest regulation of guns, among other
things. In fact, it would seem that due to his mental illness his policy
decisions are based on being in opposition to the majority. His is the emotional
attitude of the two year old demanding attention. He is like a naughty little
boy determined to show that we cannot make him listen or care or behave, that no
parent or teacher or public health official can guilt him into anything because
now he is all grown up. His reward is our disapproval, and that will always be
enough. It feeds his perverse pride at being out of step. According to Trump
biographer Michael D'Antonio, "He just prefers being the bad boy, the
out-of-control deviant member of society who says the things that no one else
will. He's just performing. He needs adoration of the mob more than he needs the
acceptance of normal people." At some level he knows that he is so inadequate
that he would be totally ignored if he did not stand in opposition to the
majority's standards and norms. Yet he also psychologically needs to claim that
he is backed by the majority of people, i.e., the biggest crowd at the
inauguration, but for voter fraud he would have won the popular vote, etc. In
his twisted way he deals with this by redefining the people to consist of his
minority base of racists, homophobes, ethno-centrists, misogynists, white
supremacists, QAnon, authoritarians, religious extremists, etc. The "others" are
not part of the people.
As Susan Faludi has pointed out, Trump channels (or
tries to channel) old fashioned machismo - aggressive, physically tough,
physically strong, never back down, bullying and bombast. FDR's declaration from
1932 seems apt, "... the man of ruthless force had his place in developing a
pioneer country" but he now endangered the nation. "The lone wolf, the unethical
competitor, the reckless promoter whose hand is against every man's, declines to
join in achieving an end recognized as being for the public welfare, and
threatens to drag the industry [read country] back to a state of anarchy."
Faludi calls it, in Trump's case, "ornamental" masculinity, defined by display,
a pantomime of aggrieved aggression: the curled lip, the exaggerated snarl. The
irony, if anyone can get any joy from irony in our political world today, is
that Trump is in fact weak and a coward, a cry baby and a whiner. His
"masculinity" is not only ornamental, it is fake, a "cover up". Just as Trump
University was a sham, although it may have been a good way to learn how to get
ahead in real estate by lying, cheating and stealing, the art of Trump's deals.
How does anyone buy into this?
Let's face it. Roughly 40+% of the voters are going to support him no matter what.
Are they "deplorable"? Perhaps, or just
damaged goods. In any event, it's a given. They are people who fear complexity
and change. They are the living embodiment of the themes of the
Counter-Enlightenment, which seem to lurk under the surface to re-emerge in
history from time to time and never fully disappear, in the rejection of reason
and the eruption of irrational behavior. These are people who embrace the
doctrinaire, conformity, uniformity, hierarchy and obedience thereto, divine
revelation and authority, revealed truth as distinct from science, a natural
social order with separate strata, and liberty as freedom from constraint from
the will of the minority or of those who don't conform to one's tribal norms. As
one commentator has said, "Trump supporters ... have a strong concept which you
could summarize as white, rural, John Wayne, football and hunting. They feel
core America is under existential threat from people they view as outsiders:
immigrants, Chinese communists, cosmopolitan urbanites and people of color. They
see themselves as strong and vigilant protectors, defending the sacred homeland
from alien menace." Sort of a tribal solipsism.
Beyond that there is a more malign element here. Trump and the Republicans want to create (perhaps
"maintain" would be the more accurate verb) a permanent underclass of
non-whites, a racial hierarchy. Obviously they don't say that (they blame the
economic disparity on "bad choices"), but that is the desired effect of their
social, economic and political policies. This is to keep their undereducated,
rural white base in line. Going back to slavery and Jim Crow days, that is how
the planter aristocracy and its progeny in the South kept political control of
the poor whites - by ensuring that there was always a class below them that they
could lord it over. The Republican Party has become a new kind of Confederacy.
Then there's roughly 40+% of the voters that can reliably be expected to vote
for Enlightenment principles such as reason, a secular democratic egalitarian
community, inclusive of the entire population, pluralism, education, tolerance
and progress, i.e., Biden. This is why this election represents more than just a
debate over climate change, health care and abortion, although it is that too.
We are at Armageddon. Are we going to be a liberal (don't forget, democracy can
be authoritarian) democratic country or a country dominated by autocrats and
plutocrats in essentially a one party state in which the ruling party would not
represent a popular majority.
The critical mass in the election is the remaining
10% who are on the fence and may go either way. How do the Democrats appeal to
them? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. That alone won't
do it. Certainly there has to be a substantive policy program that appeals to
what most Americans want or need. But at this point what Americans want and need
most (aside from the end of the pandemic, and we will get to that) is a return
to civility, stability, reliability, dependability, a sense of decency,
predictability, togetherness, fairness, all of the old fashioned but never out of
style virtues. There is no better way to promote these values than by
emphasizing all the ways in which Trump denigrates these ideals - by quoting
Trump back to them, by listing his egregious statements, positions, lies,
contradictions, failures, hypocrisies and misstatements of fact. Leave out the
petty stuff. You don't need a list of a thousand lies, 20-30 (choose your own
number) will be enough if they are important and convincing enough. On top of
that, give examples of how Trump and his cronies have circumvented Congress in
order to spend government funds on projects which he can't get Congress to
approve and to put officials in places of responsibility without required
Congressional approval. His appointment of incompetent and corrupt officials who
are then fired to be replaced by more incompetents (usually "acting" so he can
keep them on a string and because he couldn't get them approved by the Senate).
Finally, list all of his international failures - China still stealing our
technology, North Korea still increasing its nuclear capability, Iran back on
track to develop theirs, Russia still interfering in our elections, Venezuela
still ruled by a dictator, Hungary's Orban invited to the White House, the
invitation to Duarte of the Philippines to do likewise, the worldwide loss of
respect and influence for our country, particularly by our allies in NATO and
elsewhere. If this is the work of a self-proclaimed brilliant negotiator, can
you imagine what a bad negotiator would do. Xi, Kim, Erdogan and Putin have all
eaten Trump's lunch. In fact the rest of the world thinks of Trump as a jerk, a
fool and just plain incompetent; the would-be emperor of a banana republic.
Emphasize his lack of emotional and mental stability with quotations to that
effect from those who serve or have served in his administration and from his
family members, draw comparisons between Trump and Joe McCarthy and George
Wallace (and Andrew Johnson who was our worst President prior to Trump), point
out that he is one of only three Presidents to be impeached (which include
Johnson) and the reasons for the impeachment, detail his conflicts of interest,
crony capitalism, nepotism, self-dealing and tax evasion, his constant business
failures, his obstruction of justice and politicization of the Justice
Department, his firing of five inspector generals in numerous agencies for
uncovering corruption and incompetence, his ignoring of congressional subpoenas
and stonewalling of more than 20 congressional investigations, his demeaning of
the intelligence agencies and most significantly the public health agencies, the
pardoning and support of his criminal cronies, his implicit support of white
nationalism, his attempts to chill the freedom of the press, his blatant and
explicit racism and misogynism, his attempts at voter suppression, his
usurpation of local policing activities, his anti-pollution control and
anti-environment activities, his failure to take action against foreign
interference in US elections and in fact his encouragement of such interference,
his imposition of tariffs for which Americans pay, his continued and still
pending attempt to overthrow Obamacare with no replacement, his failure to put
forward his promised infrastructure projects, his anti-union regulations and his
rejection of climate change and science generally. All by one man and in only
four years - in one sense it's an astonishing achievement.
What about Trump's handling of the economy, the one area where the polls show some approval?
Let's see what Steven Rattner says - (i) for the first three years of his presidency,
his economy amounted to nothing more than a continuation of the recovery
engineered by President Obama; (ii) job growth was faster during Obama's last
three years than during the first three years of Trump's administration; (iii)
the economy expanded at roughly the same rate during the two periods and never
came close to Trump's promised "4, 5 or maybe even 6 percent"; (iv) after the
virus came, Trump's slow start and clumsy management no doubt contributed to
unemployment rocketing to 14.7 percent and a second-quarter fall in gross
domestic product of 9 percent, by far the largest since the great depression;
(v) there is no V-shaped recovery-more like a backward check mark; last month
only 661,000 jobs were created, bringing the total returned to 11.4 million,
just over half of what was lost; (vi) new claims for unemployment insurance have
been trending sideways for two months, nearly quadruple pre-pandemic levels;
(vii) manufacturing, a centerpiece of MAGA, sits at its smallest share of GDP in
73 years of data; (viii) the trade war-Bloomberg Economics estimated that the
trade war would cost the US economy around $316 billion by the end of 2020; (ix)
the tax cut-has fallen wildly short of generating promised revenues or growth;
(x) going forward-Moody's Analytics estimated that the economy would expand
faster under Biden, by a full percentage point if the Democrats also retake the
Senate, and a Biden presidency would also mean 7.4 million more jobs created
than under Trump, who would end a second term without unemployment having fully
recovered. That would mean, in the latter case, that at the end of a second
Trump term America would have fewer jobs than it had when Trump took office.
As to the motley crew of enablers which Trump has recruited, such as Lewandowski,
Bannon and Manafort, Romney's senior strategist in 2012, a Never Trumper, has
described them as follows: "These are evil people. They don't have a sense of
right and wrong. The people Trump attracts - these are damaged people. These are
weird, damaged people. They are using Trump to work out their personal issues."
One compilation going back to the Nixon administration shows that the Trump
administration is the subject of 215 criminal indictments compared to 76 for the
Nixon administration, 26 for Reagan, 16 for George W. down to zero for the Obama
administration.
The Democrats can't just rely on the NY Times, The Washington
Post, CNN, The Atlantic, etc., to make their case. They have to put the Bill of
Particulars, the indictment as it were, (reminiscent of Thomas Jefferson's
indictment of George III in the Declaration of Independence) in their messages
to those most abused by Trump and those of the educated electorate who may not
be living in urban centers. Of course, there also needs to be emphasis on the
positive substantive programs which the Democrats plan to put in place, such as
universal health care through a public option to go along with employer provided
health care and Obamacare, dealing with climate change, tax increases aimed at
the wealthy and corporations, responsible public health policies to bring the
pandemic under control, stronger financial and antitrust regulation, empowerment
of unions, more funding of education, including universal pre-K, increasing
teacher's pay and training, easing the cost of higher education and vocational
training, fully refundable child tax credits, paid parental and sick leave,
environmental protection, increase in the minimum wage, affordable housing,
police reform standards (not defunding), assistance for displaced workers and
job training, comprehensive immigration reform, campaign finance reform, a
foreign policy which restores our influence and allows us through international
alliances to minimize the civil disturbances which lead to refugee and asylum
pressures on us and our allies, and most importantly a return to respect for the
rule of law both domestically and internationally.
Democrats must continue to
hammer home on the pandemic. No crisis has had a greater impact on our daily
lives since WW II. Trump's incompetence and criminal negligence in coping with
it, which have already cost us over 225,000 lives (and still counting), alone
justify his defeat at the polls (as well as his Senate enablers). His latest
absurd counter-factual statements as well as those he has made since the
beginning of the pandemic, his discouragement of anti-pandemic rules and
guidelines by state and local public officials, and his attacks on and
contradictions of federal public health officials, too numerous to mention here,
should be broadcast in capital letters throughout the social networks and the
mainstream media. And for those who may put higher priority on the economy, it
needs to be emphasized that the economy is not coming back until the pandemic is
under control.
Assuming victory in the White House and the Senate, the Democrats
should strike quickly. Biden's idea of a commission to study what to do about
the Supreme Court and the court system generally is a good one, both politically
and practically. The issues are complex, and as recently demonstrated in the NY
Times series of Op-Eds on the subject there are a number of ways to deal with
them. That also provides time to see just how extreme the Court as currently
constituted may be. At the same time the Democrats should aggressively propose
meaningful legislation in several of the areas enumerated above which are most
popular with the public. If the Republicans persist in their opposition to all
things progressive, as they did with Obama, then the Democrats should threaten
to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate. If that gets no results, then the
filibuster should go. Down the road that may bite back, but for now there must
be movement. Otherwise the reactionary right will think they can get away with
anything.
