Con Don Shivers
For Donald Trump and the Republicans, now comes the reckoning. Don't feel bad savouring every last drop of it.
In 2016, Donald Trump shocked the world, winning the American presidency in a stunning rebuke to DC elites and their perceived embodiment in the person of Hillary Clinton. The glitz and sheen messily papier-mâché’d over this deeply flawed and dangerously unhinged man had somehow proved enough to convince the American electorate to either hold their nose or avert their gaze and give this man a shot. With the help of a compliant and flat-footed media, the empty glitter of Trump’s shambolic campaign had conquered substance, first in the primaries making quick work of seasoned pols like Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, and then in the general defeating the pro of pros, the very centre of the Democratic party establishment.
Honestly, with social media becoming such a pivotal force, who were we to be surprised? Trump had dominated the narrative through Twitter in a way a politician barely could have even conceived of in prior cycles, bypassing legacy media to communicate directly with his legions of MAGA supporters. And besides, wasn’t this just the great American pendulum swinging from the cool competence of Obama to the cuckoo clusterfuck of Trump? Just as it had swung to Barack Hussein Obama from the strutting Texas Ranger George W. Bush? And to this “moral” compassionate conservative from the overhyped sex and money scandals of the Clinton years?
That was the view of some. Like many others I was profoundly rattled by Trump’s improbable upset, it rocking my core in a way only the September 11th attacks could compare to. After that event the country had been dragged into a polarizing (and losing) war in Iraq, following which much of the left, once their initial stupefaction had faded, descended into shrieking histrionics. Bush the Younger was Hitler! The devil incarnate! American fascism had arrived and the Republic was rasping its final, heaving breaths!
Comedian and Real Time host Bill Maher and commentator David Frum touched upon all this in an under-appreciated exchange just prior to the 2016 shocker, where Maher expressed regret for his part in the left’s hyperventilations, saying they had spent previous cycles “crying wolf” over relative normies like Bush and Mitt Romney. Now that a dyed-in-the-wool authoritarian was casting his shadow on Freedom’s Land, the left’s alarm bells had lost their power to alarm. Like Hilaire Belloc’s Matilda, they had told lies and were burned. The fire truck never came, and Auntie Hillary returned home from the Javits Center to find only ashes, her hopes and dreams turned to coal.
Even if many had resigned themselves a little too cozily to America’s back and forth histrionics, a dire threat to the republic had arrived all the same. Donald Trump could be no ordinary president. This bombastic real estate hustler, reality show star and career criminal, seemingly caught off guard by his own success, had by some perverse historical anomaly won the presidency of the most powerful and important country the world has ever known, and at a time when presidential powers were at a high-water mark. In many ways, November 8th, 2016 felt like the climactic boom of America’s long kamikaze flight inward, but in fact Trump’s carnage was just beginning, now backed by state power and the presidential seal.
For four frenzied years the US and many people outside it were held in this manic madman’s tiny grip, squeezed by a blockchain of scandal after scandal wrapping around us anaconda-style, culminating in the asphyxiation of thousands upon thousands hooked to ventilators in the *if you don’t hear it, it won’t come* early pandemic response. Like an Alzheimer’s sufferer forced to relive the anguish of a passed love one, every day brought a fresh outrage, every morning another slap in the face with the realization that this man was indeed the president, that none of it was a dream.
All the while, we heard whispers (and shouts) of republican lawmakers privately agonizing over a coarsening of the dialogue, a shredding of norms, a loss of decorum and civility. But Trump held the cards, in this case a loyal base of supporters who would stay with him to the end, no matter what. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” Trump famously said. No neophytes to the realities of the game, the GOP rushed to placate and defend him in public, not wanting to risk Trump’s wrath and the swift hammering from his base that would surely follow. The point was pressed home through a ruthless cull of all unable to rein in self-indulgent thoughts of a higher purpose, of saving an American experiment on the verge of an explosion.
Then, to the great relief of so many, the madman was defeated, actually four times in succession. First the Democrats retook the House of Representatives in 2018. Then two years later Biden won the presidency. A few months after that Trump cost McConnell control of the senate through his disastrous interventions in Georgia. Finally and most recently, and as I wrote about in November last year, Democrats defied history and held back the Republican tide, increasing their senate majority (by one) and losing control of the house by the slimmest of margins (dashing Republican expectations of a “red wave”) in the midterms of 2022.
All of which takes us to the end-game the Republicans were always going to have to face but had managed with fingers nervously crossed to postpone. As the 2024 presidential cycle waddles its enormity to the forefront, Trump retains his hold on the hard right block the GOP needs to avoid a route, but is so toxic that he prevents the party from growing the pool of voters needed to avoid a fifth defeat in November 2024. Recent polling shows 62% of independents approving of the NY grand jury’s indictment of Trump, not a good sign for a party that would need to dominate that vital slice of the electorate to have any chance at success next year.
Caught in a trap they recognized but chose to take their chances with, it might be easy to feel an inkling of pity now that the elephant has tumbled through the bamboo leaves into the abandoned well. They trumpet and snort about the unfairness of an arrest over hush-money payments, eager to satisfy the churlish demands of the dethroned mad-king, while knowing the worst is yet to come. What are they going to do when Georgia comes calling? How will they spin the Justice Department’s classified document probe? And what about January 6th? Things are only going to grow bleaker for Trump and his diminishing prospects, but it’s too late to back the GOP Trump train out of Bat-Shit-Crazy station (Senator Lindsey Graham briefly attempted it). Finding themselves caught in this dead end, what else is there to do but play to the outrage of the MAGA core, hoping Trump will somehow perform another miracle?
The rest of America might be wondering how they should respond to all this. As conservative commentator SE Cupp rightly put it on CNN,
These are people who are outraged by this indictment. They were NOT outraged by Trump’s attempts to overturn a democratic election. They were not outraged by the violence on January 6th. They were not outraged by an illegal phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State, an illegal phone call to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. They’re not outraged by multiple credible accusations of sexual harassment, assault, and rape. They’re not outraged by Trump’s sexist, bigoted, homophobic, xenophobic rhetoric. They’re not outraged by his white nationalism. They’re not outraged by his defense of anti-semitism and neo-nazis. They’re not outraged by all that stuff so will all due respect, no one should care that these people are outraged by this indictment.
Back in 2016, especially after the release of the Access Hollywood tape, it was taken for granted that Hillary would be the next president of the United States. Things did not go as planned. Because of that traumatic reversal of fortune, there has been a tendency to overestimate Trump’s strength, as well as under-appreciate the Republican dilemma, similar to the dynamic that was at play prior to Putin’s unexpectedly feeble invasion of Ukraine. “This indictment has handed him the nomination,” we hear. Even if it has, he would be a weak, wounded standard-bearer, exactly the opponent to hand a by no means unbeatable Joe Biden a second term.
Instead of agonizing over the potential for the worst once again coming to pass, we should permit ourselves a firmer resolve as the former president prepares for the possibility of a different kind of locker room talk. It might not seem so certain right now, but this Greek tragedy is heading towards its dénouement. And in this new era of autocratic aggression and democratic vulnerability, Donald Trump being held to account also gives America its argument back. It shows the world that the United States can be “a government of laws and not of men,” an especially potent idea when juxtaposed against the anachronisms of not only Putin’s Russia but also Xi’s China.
Even though it will still have to contend with the forces he unleashed, America will survive Trump. What happens to the GOP though is far less certain. Grab your popcorn.
Wonderfully written, great read. 🍿