Cromwell

Life in the time of Trump.

And now we sit and wait.

It’s too soon to say for sure

That love defeated hate.

I can’t tell you who’s ahead

Or what the future brings.

But millions of Americans

Just voted for a king.

As I write this, the result of the presidential election is unknown, and the nightmare scenario looms, minus any widespread militia activity outside of polling places. Even if Biden ultimately wins, which is hardly assured, the notion that a president with such appalling qualities, and such a terrible record, could be that competitive is nothing short of shameful. Why is it happening?

Just look at the maps. This election is about the urban/rural split. Trump hasn’t done anything to make people in rural areas safer or more prosperous, so this is a culture war election, pure and simple. Culture trumps everything in this country, including respect for institutions and the law. Period. Even the deaths from the virus barely mattered.

And so, if you’re associated with the protests, or BLM, or the 1619 Project, understand that Trump was running against you, not Biden, and a large percentage of Americans hates you. The transformative moment that you thought had arrived is still years in the future. Fair or not, that’s the way it is.

Life in the time of Trump.

Election Day is here.

Today we march on to the polls

With hope instead of fear.

We know that Trump will try to cheat.

His ego’s on the line.

A blue wave looms if the vote is fair

And that suits me just fine.

What if the Chinese had a hypersonic missile that killed over 200,000 Americans. Would Trump be saying “It is what it is?” Would the GOP acquiesce?

Of course not. As with the hypothetical that I posed many months back about climate change, this illustrates the fact that the GOP is not really interested in protecting Americans from external threats. Part of the reason is the need for collective (i.e., governmental) action, which they hate, but they have no objection to big government when it is fighting wars instead of doing contact tracing. No, the real reason for the difference is that there is a suitably macho response to a military attack, but not to a virus or to climate change. If your brand is toxic masculinity, you have no answer to the virus except to downplay it and move on.

For whatever reason, Trump has clearly convinced the mainstream of GOP voters that he is the only thing standing between real America and the “radical left.” The irony, of course, is that Trump himself has moved the needle to the left by convincing left-center voters that everything he says and does is illegitimate and, well, evil.

Other than his disdain for liberal democratic norms, it may well be his most enduring legacy as president.

A column in the NYT a few days ago made the point that Trump’s blustery, whiny masculinity was completely inconsistent with the paradigm of the strong, silent, self-sacrificing man that prevailed in the World War II generation. I agree; it is an argument I have made in previous post.

So who was the actual antecedent of the Trump persona? I think it is the medieval knight–obsessed with status, prepared for war at all times, and contemptuous of peasants and workers (i.e., “losers”).

Now, that’s really old school!

In a similar vein to the last post, I’ve observed that commercials for GOP House candidates have frequently focused more on their unconditional support for Trump than for the usual rancid cocktail of Republican policies. What happens to these people if they win and he loses in a blue tsunami?

The hope is that they will try to recreate a responsible center-right party based on markets and small government. The fear is that they will double down on the new theories of minority rule by and for white Christians. Right now, I don’t know which way the mop flops.

We just drove from North Carolina to our home in Florida in order to vote on Tuesday. That has kind of a biblical feel to it. It’s also sixty degrees warmer than it was when we left.

On the way, we saw a number of billboards telling us that only God and Donald J. Trump could save America. Obviously, the message here is that Orange Jesus is the real deal. I have the following questions:

1. If God is God and Trump is Jesus, who is the Holy Ghost? Mike Pence? I suppose he kind of looks and sounds the part.
2. What happens to the people who believe this if Trump loses?

Check out this article about Trump’s life after losing the election in Politico. It’s even worse than I ever imagined.

Today’s NYT contains a series of opinion columns under the umbrella “What Have We Lost?” Predictably, the opinions range from “nothing but our illusions–America was always a racist, fascist country” to “Trump could have been a W. J. Bryan for the 21st century, but he blew it” to “Trump alone is destroying our country.” I’m going to rephrase the question a bit and try to provide a more nuanced answer to it.

The big, fundamental change in American politics over the last 12 years has been the evolution of the GOP from a fairly standard center-right party to a Trumpist party with no allegiance to liberal democracy. How did this happen? Here’s the chronology:

1. Reactionaries have been the core of the GOP since about 1980. For most of that time, however, they didn’t assert any kind of right to rule; all you had to do was throw them an occasional rhetorical bone, and they were happy. PBPs and CDs ran the party, and its real focus was on economic issues and foreign policy.
2. George W. Bush severely damaged the credibility of the CD and PBP factions with his unsuccessful Iraq War and the Great Recession.
3. Racial reactionaries were galvanized by the election of Barack Obama in 2008. You could see their prominence and impatience in the clear preference of the crowds for Palin over McCain during the campaign.
4. Fox News emerged as the mouthpiece and the intellectual leader of the reactionaries. It told them 24/7 that they were victims–strangers in the land that they and their white Christian ancestors had built. The government hated them. It was illegitimate. The end was near.
5. Demographic changes, of which the reactionaries were well aware, threatened the majority status of white people in this country.
6. Supreme Court decisions, most notably on gay marriage, further convinced reactionaries that the entire establishment was stacked against them.
7. For all that, the GOP nominated Mitt Romney, a quintessential establishment figure with roots in the CD and PBP factions, in 2012.
8. By 2016, the drumbeats of racial and cultural annihilation, most notably in the “Flight 93” article, had become too much to ignore. Trump was the beneficiary.
9. Still, Trump didn’t win a majority of the votes in the GOP primaries until very late in the process. His victory was attributable more to the number of candidates doing battle to win in other lanes than to his own doing. And so, the racial/cultural reactionary succeeded an establishment figure as the head of the party without any significant change in opinion within the GOP.
10. The real shift in opinion has occurred during the Trump era. Trump’s violations of democratic norms have been accepted by the mainstream of the GOP because the rank and file have been convinced that he is the only thing that stands between them and chaos, or, even worse, the gas chambers.

The bottom line here is that the trend line was clear even before Trump, and the raw materials have been there for decades, but Trump didn’t just expose them; he made them much worse with his divisiveness and his authoritarian leanings. We would not be where we are today if Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio had not been running in the same ideological lane in 2016. A President Rubio would have taken some of the same actions that Trump did, but we would not be talking about the likelihood of the Orban Option if he were in office.

Al Gore didn’t give up after the Supreme Court ruled against him in 2000 just because he was a decent American who didn’t want to damage the nation’s institutions, even though he was; he gave up because he thought the Court had the respect of the American people, and there was no appeal from its judgment. If we have a similar scenario with the Trump version of the Court, with Barrett joining the majority, will the result be the same?

No. This Court will be viewed by blue America not as an impartial caller of balls and strikes, but as an arm of the Republican Party whose decisions are not entitled to any deference. Biden and his followers will continue the fight, although, as I’ve noted previously, it’s hard to see any good options at that point.

You might be able to think of a hundred, but here are my top ten, in reverse order:

10. The regressive tax cut, which blew up the deficit and increased inequality without creating any kind of an investment boom.

9. The pointless trade wars, particularly with friendly countries.

8. Sucking up to dictators all over the world.

7. Alienating our democratic allies in the name of “America First.”

6. Using his position to advance his business interests.

5. Treating climate change as a hoax instead of an existential threat.

4. His narcissism and incompetence.

3. Ignoring science and common sense on the pandemic.

2. His authoritarian tendencies, which will only get worse in a second term, as no one will remain to keep him within the boundaries of decency and the law.

And the top reason is . . .

1. He divides the country every day by telling people like us that he hates us, and that we aren’t real Americans. Can you tolerate four more years of that?

The NYT has recently told us the following story about Trump and his dealings with his Chicago tower:

1. Trump makes a bad investment using money from Deutsche Bank and a hedge fund;
2. He can’t pay his obligations;
3. The creditors close in;
4. Consistent with his usual practice, Trump responds by hurling insults and filing suits against the creditors;
5. The creditors back down and either refinance the loans or forgive them;
6. Trump offsets the income arising from the creditors’ forbearance with other business losses, and so avoids paying any tax on it; and
7. Trump still owns a tremendous amount of money to DB. The loans will come due during his second term, if he has one. The loans are backed by a personal guarantee.

Trump, of course, says this proves he is a brilliant businessman. The record shows that he has a flair for dumping his financial problems on other people, but not for actually making profits, except with “The Apprentice.” My question is, are large creditors usually this spineless? If you or I behave aggressively when banks try to collect from us, will they back down, or is this just a Trump thing?

If it isn’t just a Trump thing, it doesn’t bode well for our financial system. Oh, and imagine DB trying to enforce the personal guarantee if Trump is still in office. Good luck with that!

Since it is clear that Trump’s only chance to win is by vote suppression and inappropriate intervention in the counting process by “his” Supreme Court, let’s review where we stand on the four big issues today:

1. CAN FEDERAL COURTS, AS A MATTER OF FEDERAL LAW, OVERRIDE STATE LAW AND REQUIRE STATE AUTHORITIES TO EXTEND VOTE RECEIPT DEADLINES TO ADDRESS ISSUES CREATED BY THE PANDEMIC? The definitive answer to that question is no. There are two grounds for this: federalism concerns; and the desire to avoid chaos and provide a winner on or around Election Day. The Supreme Court’s position on this issue can be viewed as harsh and dogmatic, but it is legally defensible. The problem is that the two threads supporting it dictate different results in different situations, as we will see below.
2. DOES THE SUPREME COURT HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO OVERRIDE STATE COURTS AND OFFICIALS WHO EXTEND VOTE RECEIPT DEADLINES TO ADDRESS ISSUES CREATED BY THE PANDEMIC USING STATE LAW? This is a much thornier question; we know the Court is divided, and we don’t have a definitive answer, because Barrett hasn’t weighed in yet. The actual decisions thus far have narrowly favored the Democrats. Note that the two threads described above lead in different directions here: federalism concerns, which almost always dictate federal deference to state courts, support the Democrats; while the chaos rule supports Republicans.
3. WHAT WILL THE COURTS DO, IF ANYTHING, TO ADDRESS WIDESPREAD VOTER INTIMIDATION? That depends on whether it happens on Election Day. We won’t know until then. Don’t hold your breath waiting for effective judicial action on that front.
4. DOES THE SUPREME COURT, AS A MATTER OF FEDERAL LAW, HAVE THE OBLIGATION TO ORDER THE STATES TO STOP COUNTING BALLOTS THAT CLEARLY WERE CAST LEGALLY UNDER STATE LAW AFTER NOVEMBER 3? This is the really important question that could determine the outcome of a close election. We know Trump will raise it. It is clearly frivolous, from a legal perspective, but we know that Thomas and Alito are both partisan hacks who will do anything to keep Trump in office, and a recent opinion by Kavanaugh contains language which suggests he may have some sympathy for it, although the actual decision in that case addresses different facts, so we don’t know for certain. If Kavanaugh and Gorsuch support Trump, it will come down to Barrett. That’s a scary proposition at more than one level.

If he loses the election, I have to think so, for the following reasons:

1. If the NYT is correct, Trump made a tremendous amount of money off of “The Apprentice.” This would be a similar way to repair his finances after his mistakes with unprofitable golf course developments in the last several years.
2. Like many other unscrupulous right-wing figures, he would make a perfect pitchman for bogus and defective products.
3. It would give him the perfect platform to maintain a direct connection with his millions of admirers, and thus maintain influence over the electorate and the leadership of the GOP. What better way to position himself to run in 2024, if he wants to do so?
4. It would guarantee him publicity and public adulation, which he values more than power, without any of the irksome responsibilities of the presidency, including travel and dealing with tiresome democratically elected world leaders.