Reasons for Despair. And Hope. But Mostly Despair
Brookings Institution senior fellow Robert Kagan had a rather lengthy opinion piece in the Washington Post last week that had the political commentariat all atwitter, so to speak. Now, this might be a little inside baseball even for readers of a politically-themed newsletter; so I’ll explain a little — the Brookings Institution is one of the most famous think tanks in D.C. It skews left, but isn’t crazy left. It’s also more intellectual than populist. Which is to say, it’s more Joe Biden than Bernie Sanders.
So anyway, when a senior fellow writes a stemwinding article about how Donald Trump represents a grave constitutional threat to the United States, people’s ears perk up. It’s certainly quite something.
It’s difficult to summarize a nearly-6,000 word essay into a digestible newsletter item, but I’m nevertheless going to try. Basically, Kagan argues that Donald Trump is a unique — and uniquely dangerous — phenomenon in American politics. As such, he is uniquely suited to be largely immune from the normal checks and balances in the American political system. Trump’s willingness — and therefore his supporters’ willingness — to blatantly ignore constitutional norms and political customs makes the chances of his usurpation of political power, even in the event of his losing another election, higher than we should find acceptable. Thus, we should be taking extreme measures to prevent Trump from ever taking power; but Republicans — even “good” Republicans, by Kagan’s definition — are standing in the way of such efforts, and they should go along with Democrats to prevent a second Trump term, even if it amounts to political suicide.
As you might imagine, people who have opinions for a living had some thoughts. It’s funny, two of my favorite podcasts did shows on the piece, and unsurprisingly took, uh, opposing positions:
The folks at the Bulwark were pretty much entirely on Kagan’s side; agreeing that Trump is an extraordinary threat to American democracy and therefore extraordinary efforts are justified in preventing his return to power. Meanwhile, the people at Commentary were perfectly willing to grant that Trump is awful, the entire aftermath of the 2020 election culminating in January 6th was shameful, and he should be nowhere near political power in the United States — but let’s not pretend this was almost the February Revolution.
As is my wont, I’m somewhere in the middle of these positions. I will happily grant that I, like many others, suffered from a failure of imagination when it comes to Donald Trump. My Facebook memories recently have just been multiple instances of me trying to rationalize Donald Trump’s success in 2015-16. “Yeah sure, he has a high floor of support, but he also has a low ceiling!” “When people see this, they’ll stop supporting him!” “Surely people will take offense that this guy is so clearly unprepared and uninformed that they’ll vote for someone else just as a matter of pride!” I vastly underestimated the power of shamelessness coupled with ignorance, and the willingness of a large swath of the electorate to go along with it. And I certainly underestimated the willingness of a significant portion of the electorate to embrace crackpot conspiracy theories and political violence. Which is to say, I never thought a presidential candidate could lose by seven million votes, look the American people square in the eye and say “I didn’t lose, they cheated,” and have millions of people agree with him to the point that thousands of them ransacked the Capitol building. Like I said, it was a failure of imagination.
But I also take the point that these weren’t exactly the Bolsheviks running the Tsar out of town. These are mostly just incredibly gullible-albeit-angry people impotently raging about changes they don’t like. Even if they had accomplished the unthinkable and murdered law makers on January 6th, it would not have changed the outcome of the election.
The most worrying part to me, from an American democracy standpoint, is how many Republican lawmakers and government officials are being hounded out of office for refusing to indulge Trump’s lies. I mean, yes, we can confidently say that in 2020 “the guardrails held.” But the guardrails only held because there were Republicans willing to resist incredible pressure and still fulfill their civic duties. If such people are removed and replaced by less scrupulous people who are more willing to ignore the law and/or the will of the voters, well, that’s a problem. I’m just not sure what there is to be done about it.
It was Kagan’s prescription for this ailment that made me roll my eyes so hard that I almost detached a retina:
We are already in a constitutional crisis. The destruction of democracy might not come until November 2024, but critical steps in that direction are happening now. In a little more than a year, it may become impossible to pass legislation to protect the electoral process in 2024. Now it is impossible only because anti-Trump Republicans, and even some Democrats, refuse to tinker with the filibuster. […]
Heading into the next election, it is vital to protect election workers, same-day registration and early voting. It will also still be necessary to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which directly addresses the state legislatures’ electoral power grab. Other battles — such as making Election Day a federal holiday and banning partisan gerrymandering — might better be postponed. Efforts to prevent a debacle in 2024 cannot.
I’m sorry, what? You spend 5,000 words laying out in great detail what a threat Donald Trump is to American democracy, and your suggestion is to…nuke the filibuster to protect same-day registration and early voting? Bro. If you’re gonna bang on — reasonably! — about how Donald Trump and his supporters are willing to steamroll the rule of law, constitutional norms, and general decency to illegitimately claim power, what do you think early voting and same-day registration protections are gonna do? It’s like warning of an alien invasion and then suggesting that we tighten FAA regulations. The proposed solution is so mismatched to the stated problem that it’s hard to take seriously.
And maybe that’s just indicative of how intractable of a problem this is. The federal government, rightfully, has pretty limited say-so in how states run their elections. Same-day registration and early voting are such small potatoes that it’s almost insulting that Kagan wants to change/remove the filibuster on their behalf. They’re infinitely less important than, say, a state appointing a bunch of unscrupulous conspiracy theorists to be in charge of their elections. As people have taken to saying lately, it turns out who casts votes isn’t as important as who counts votes. The problem is that if a state wants to appoint a bunch of unscrupulous conspiracy theorists to be in charge of their elections, the feds don’t have much leverage over that.
The solution, per usual, lies in having a responsible electorate. I know, I know, put down the rotten vegetables. I don’t like it any more than you do. But in as much as the American system isn’t really designed to handle someone like Donald Trump, the American system isn’t really designed to handle an electorate so unserious as to even entertain the idea of someone like Donald Trump.
(And not for nothin’, that’s largely what drives my libertarian leanings. I want the terrible political decisions of other people, particularly other people in different states, to have as little impact on my life as possible.)
If there’s one reason to be hopeful that a disastrous second Trump term can be avoided, it’s that Donald Trump remains, well, Donald Trump. Much of the handwringing over the 2020 election revolves around the idea that “sure the guardrails held this time, but what if someone more competent tries it!” That is a reasonable concern. The good news is, Donald Trump is not that person. Donald Trump has not gotten more competent since leaving office. There’s no reason to believe his mental state will improve in three years.
I’m not saying relying on Trump’s own laziness and ignorance is a fool-proof plan, so to speak, and I certainly wouldn’t bet the mortgage on it keeping him out of office. But when choosing between one particular candidate and the field, I always take the field.
Silver Linings
Another reason to have hope, ironically, is the so-called audit of the Arizona presidential election. After multiple delays, a draft report was released that showed that Joe Biden did, in fact, win Arizona. If anything, but marginally more votes than was originally thought.
This matters because this “audit” was nothing of the sort. It was a partisan attempt by politically-motivated actors to cast doubt on the results of the election. They had every incentive and motivation to produce — even dishonestly — something, anything, that Trump supporters could point to in their effort to delegitimize the 2020 election. And they came up with nothing. They spent months and millions of dollars in search of something that any serious person knew did not exist; and in the end it so thoroughly did not exist that they couldn’t even fudge it.
That should be reassuring. If nothing else, we can get a little schadenfreude out of it. The night before the report was released, Donald Trump released this statement:
Ah yes, these highly respected auditors! That confirmed Joe Biden’s victory in the state. Naturally, the statement has since been deleted from Trump’s website.
My Dumb Brain
I have softball games on Sunday nights, and last night I was packing up after we finished and I heard someone say “see ya, Charles” as they passed by.
Now, just as a little backstory, related to my speech disorder, my brain has these sort of “pre-loaded” phrases that I can usually say fluently; and it spits them out any time I’m caught of guard — even if they’re not totally situationally appropriate.
So I heard someone say “see ya, Charles,” and my brain spit out “yeah man!” in response. But when I looked up to see who said it, it was my teammate Sarah who is decidedly not — nor sounds like — a man. Having realized my mistake, I just said “oh sorry Sarah, geez.” And went back to packing up. It was such a nothing moment, and I’m sure it barely registered for her if at all; but in my head I was thinking “well I’m gonna be up ‘til 2:00 feeling weird about this.”
Stuttering is a disorder of social presentation, or so I’m told. And since my social presentation baseline is already pretty awkward, stuttering isn’t doing me any favors.
Trient-Weekly Trivia
Friday’s answer:
Category: American Cities
Clue: Peyton Manning repeatedly gave mid-game shout-outs to this city near the confluence of the Missouri and the Platte Rivers.
Omaha
Today’s clue:
Category: Musical Performance
Clue: A male alto voice is also known as this 12-letter word.
Dispatches from the Homefront
My daughter has officially reached the height where she’s tall enough to put things in the shopping cart without us noticing. We were doing some shopping over the weekend when a little voice near the ground said “need crunchies!” and lo and behold, crunchies were in the cart. Along with some snack bars. There was also an attempt at a gallon of apple cider, but she couldn’t get it over her head.