It is astonishing to watch how events during the past three weeks have conspired to make Donald Trump’s victory in November seem certain. But they say the darkest hour is just before dawn.
On June 27, there was President Biden’s catastrophically unpresidential debate. A lifelong public servant who overcame more than one tragedy at home and whose career culminated in an effective term as president has, sadly, lost what it takes to defend democracy against a determined authoritarian. The last I heard, Biden hadn’t watched a replay of the debate. If he were to do so, he’d surely withdraw from the election. It was a too-memorable flop of political theater.
On July 1 came the Supreme Court’s decision expanding presidential immunity so as to make prosecution of crimes while a president is in office extremely difficult. Notable in that case, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett dissented from part of the majority’s opinion. Had Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas recused themselves due to conflicts of interest, as many observers said judges in lower courts would have been required to, the case would not have been decided by a 6-3 majority. In fact, because of Coney Barrett’s partial dissent, the decision would have come out very differently. It might have been that Barrett and the three dissenters formed the majority. Either way, the decision would not have been nearly so draconian.
On July 11, Trump was to be sentenced after his New York hush money conviction. However, the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision convinced the judge to defer sentencing until September in order to weigh the decision’s impact, if any, on the validity of the conviction.
On July 13, a twenty-year-old loner took it on himself to attempt to assassinate Trump. A theme of Trump’s campaign was his self-sacrifice for the cause of the people who support him. A master of political theater, Trump had the presence of mind to raise a fist as he rose from the ground. Now his supporters are glowing with reverence.
On July 15, the Republicans’ four days in the spotlight began with the opening of the convention.
That same day, Trump-appointed federal judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the purloined classified official secrets documents case based on her claim, against higher court precedent, that special counsel had been appointed unconstitutionally. Her decision was a flippant dismissal of a serious and readily provable charge. Trump’s past shows that having such documents in his possession is a threat to the country, as evidenced by his casual disclosure of the identity of an Israeli “information source” to Russian officials. Jack Smith will appeal, but Cannon’s action pretty much ensures the case won’t be anywhere near resolution by the election.
Also on July 15, Trump nominated J. D. Vance to be his vice-presidential running mate. Eight years ago, Vance wrote an article for The Atlantic characterizing Trump as cultural heroin. If Trump has changed since that July 4, 2016 article, it is only to have become a more extreme version of himself.
Posts on this blog take me back to the early days of the Trump administration. A satirical essay called “Trumplodyte and the Arena People,” in which I drew on the Rumpelstiltskin story, reveals an already disturbingly demagogic would-be tyrant. Today, after four years in office and another four of reflection, he will be much better prepared to carry out his self-serving agenda.
Another essay I posted around that time reveals a very different kind of response to student protests than those we’ve witnessed this past year. James S. Kumin, a student at the 1968 Columbia University protests, kept a diary that he turned into an illuminating narrative in The Strawberry Statement, published that same year. The police were careful not to incite confrontation, and Republicans didn’t hold hearings, as Congresswoman Elise Stefanik did this past year, that were designed to embarrass university officials regardless of their actions and statements. The contrast between that time and the reactions by Columbia’s administration and Congress this past year couldn’t be more striking. I happened to re-read the book in 2016 and wrote about it in the context of the forthcoming Trump administration in that December 22, 2016 post. I said Trump made liberals and protesters look naïve, but I expressed optimism that they were giving what I called “fresh impetus to the American experiment.” A Trump victory in the 2024 election would cast grave doubt on such optimism. Trump has already shown his eagerness to trash democracy. Witness the January 6 protest, as aptly summarized in Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the presidential immunity case.
Donald Trump, J. D. Vance and Elise Stefanik disturb me less than the willingness of tens of millions of people to buy into the delusions these figures create. They must know Trump is a fraud. They have ample evidence of his contempt for women. His rhetoric is violent. Everyone knows he demands loyalty without offering loyalty in return. They may or may not recognize that his economic plans, including more tax breaks for the wealthy and high tariffs on all imports, will lower most people’s living standards, but he makes no secret of those policies.
What is Trump’s appeal? Is it simply his brazenness in giving the elite, whoever they may be, the finger? Notwithstanding his hypocritical gestures to black voters, is it that he captures some white Americans’ fears that America may not stay majority white without drastic intervention? Is it just that he’s a better performer, a demented vestige of Borscht Belt comedy, than Joe Biden?
The way to put an end to Trumpism isn’t to assassinate him, but to defeat him in November’s general election. This wannabe “Hitler,” as Vance once called him, must be vanquished, and his defeat must be accomplished by the very democracy he seeks to destroy.
But his defeat requires, first of all, a crucial, true self-sacrifice. Democracy is about rights and responsibilities. Joe Biden, his family and his inner circle must accept his responsibility to acquiesce now that age has caught up to him and withdraw from the election.
Note, July 24, 2024: Readers who received the original of this post could justifiably accuse me of using hindsight on reading the current second sentence. The whole time I was drafting the post, I had the Mamas and the Papas’ singing “The darkest hour is before dawn” (from “Dedicated to the One I Love”) going around and around my head. It was my basic point, and yet I never wrote it down. All these developments were just too good to be true for Republicans. And so it proved.
Leave a Comment