One step closer to the edge
It’s the week of June 11, 2018. Look down. Look where we’re standing right now. Careful, it’s slippery, and steep. Watch your step.
You’re never going to get Donald Trump to love you anywhere near as much as he loves himself, but if you’re one of his fellow dictatorial strongmen, you’re pretty goddamned high on his list, apparently.
Trump has spent the first year and a half of his regime effusively praising every authoritarian ruler he could find in his rolodex, especially his man-crush Vladimir Putin. This past week, he at long last got to meet his back-up crush (just in case things don’t work out), Kim Jong Un.
Trump praised his ability to “take over a country” at age 27 (he’s a “tough guy”). He saluted one of the North Korean generals. Then, there was this…
It’s not as if there needed to be one more straw to break this camel’s already shattered spine, but this past week Trump has become more emboldened than ever to blatantly assume the strategic posture of an autocrat. As Rick Wilson deftly notes in his recent Daily Beast piece (linked below), Trump never necessarily concealed his intentions before, but now the facades and curtains have all fallen. At the beginning of the week Trump shared the flag-draped (one U.S. flag for every carefully placed North Korean flag) stage with—and thereby legitimized—on of the world’s most brutal despots. Then, he book-ended the week by visiting his state television show Fox & Friends to come fully out in the open.
In 18 months, Trump has pushed and shoved against the pillars of democracy: The free press, the judicial system, voting rights, the rule of law … and our partnerships with, you know, other democracies. There hasn’t been a single U.S. institution that the founders intended to prevent authoritarianism that Trump hasn’t fiercely attacked. This is no longer an administration, it is a regime. The U.S. has elected its first dictator, and now we await what comes next: The reaction of the congressional and judicial checks—and of the people.
Awake, asleep, or entranced?
There are generally three ways that the U.S. citizenry has begun and will continue to respond to Trump’s streamrolling toward banana republic tinpot status … and two of the three are bad.
- People who don’t want Trump to become a dictator
- People who don’t realize Trump is becoming a dictator
- People who want Trump to become a dictator
The Awake: We know it’s happening, and we want to stop it. This group does not necessarily include all Democrats or Never-Trump Republicans, unfortunately. Sadly, this is probably the smallest group of the three, at least for now. This also happens to be a category whose loudest voices are late night hosts, Michelle Wolf, Samantha Bee and Robert DeNiro.
The Asleep: This group of Americans is a mish-mash of under-informed, unaware, and naive citizens, many of whom believe that after 230+ years as a republic, nothing could ever topple our democracy. They either don’t know, don’t care, or more likely both: They don’t care that they don’t know.
The Entranced: This is primarily the “Trump Base,” probably without exception. If you were to sketch out a scenario where Trump took a more authoritarian position over the country for a fervent Trump supporter, they wouldn’t blink. Their argument is that Trump may need to take some “extra” control in order to “shake up” the system, as the more evenly balanced checks have led to this mess Trump inherited.
This recent Christian Science Monitor article lays this scenario out in the broad daylight, in stark detail.
Of these three groups, the “Awake” appear to be a significant minority compared to the combined numbers who are either ambivalent to or supportive of Trump’s totalitarian agenda. This agenda is being propped up and enabled by this large swath of the public, and it’s evident in more than just the anecdotes such as those in the CSM article. Trump is watching his approval poll numbers gradually tick upward, and is knocking off unfriendly Republican primary opponents with a tweet.
Welcome to the slippery slope
Poll respondents and primary voters are not demonstrating any qualms with Trump’s recent performances. This is somewhat understandable, as polls and primaries are not all that consequential, relatively speaking. But the truer tests of any resistance to Trump’s master plans are coming on quickly, however. The November mid-term elections, and congress’ response to any forthcoming findings of the Mueller probe, will either pump the brakes on the Trumpocracy machine—or floor the accelerator.
The “Awake” and “Entranced” segments obviously represent the classic polarization that we’ve been lamenting since the 2016 election and long before. The progressives fear Trump wants to be a dictator, the far right think that also but embrace it. During the Obama administration, you could have flipped that script: The right thought Obama was an authoritarian, the left thought Obama didn’t go far enough in that direction. (Contrasting Obama and Trump’s tendencies in this regard is a discussion for another day, so I will only say that the comparison is laughable.)
As the 2018 mid-term election approaches in November, the “Asleep” category will need to awaken, at least long enough to cast their vote. These are the votes that will determine if our nation takes a step forward onto, or back from, the slippery slope toward authoritarianism. Should Republicans do well enough to continue to hold the two chambers of Congress and continue to acquiesce to Trump’s rise, down the slope we slide.
Perry Bacon’s article on FiveThirtyEight.com takes a rather tame view of what could happen here…
I would pepper such an article with more red flags and warning bells than Bacon does. While some polls have indicated that generally, Americans want there to be a “check” on Trump, I wouldn’t invest a lot of stock in that. Instead, center-left, center-right, and independents who will make the difference in this mid-term election should consider the following…
If Republicans hold the House, an unchecked Devin Nunes and his sycophant cronies will continue to bludgeon the outer hull of the Mueller investigation, causing public confidence in the eventual findings to corrode so much that little if anything is done about it. In fact, it’s possible the full findings may not see the light of day. If Democrats take the house, they stand a chance to at least beat back the rising tide against the investigation and allow it to continue and its findings to be published. Impeachment doesn’t even need to be part of the conversation yet, let’s just first get a fair look at the facts (innocent until proven guilty, right?) But should things come to that, the Democrats would be able to proceed.
If Republicans hold the Senate, this is where things get scarier—and the dominant assessment is that the Democrats have a steep uphill climb in the upper chamber. Two more years of Republican control before 2020 means more Trumpian judicial appointments, and the possibility of stacking the Supreme Court with one or two more appointments. Look at Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s dual stunts of denying a vote on Obama’s replacement for the decease Antonin Scalia, and subsequent “nuclear option” rule change to get Trump’s Neil Gorsuch nomination through instead. Is there any doubt that if Trump were to tilt the court fully in his direction with two more “regime-friendly” judges, a Republican Senate would stop him? Have they not already proven they’ll stop at nothing to control the SCOTUS?
If Democrats take the Senate (in a stunning upset)—now we’d be getting somewhere, in terms of a check and balance on Trump. In fact, even though the Republicans have a slight majority in the Senate now, it should be serving as more of a check on Trump than it is. Center-right senators have been mostly silent, unless they are retiring (see Jeff Flake and Bob Corker), and have generally been all bark and no bite where it comes to speaking out against further McConnell stunts (such as not holding a vote on a provision to protect the Mueller investigation).
And don’t forget redistricting… The 2010 and 2014 mid-terms resulted in a staggering advantage for Republicans down-ballot and in statehouses. This has impacted redistricting and gerrymandering to an extent that in some states, the Democrats can win 55% of state congressional votes and still not control the chamber (sound familiar?) New congressional districts will be drawn again in 2020, so the 2018 state-level elections will have dire consequences for a minority party that is already on the ropes electorally. On the other hand, gerrymandering the map even further in the Republicans’ favor would bolster the further Trump-ification of the House of Representatives and the Electoral College map.
The long slide down … while the world watches
If Democrats and centrists are unable to turn back some or all of the Republican tide, think of what we have to look forward to … Think of how quickly the White House has become a den of lies, bigotry, nepotism, corruption, and autocratic tendencies in under two years, and now imagine it after another two years—or God forbid, six. The 2018 mid-terms are all that stand in the way.
Importantly, the world is watching, as are our children. The electoral map and the states Democrats need to defend in the Senate are daunting, but that will be little excuse—If mid-term voters validate this administration with enough support to maintain congressional majorities, that will send a message about the kind of country we are. Trump and his supporters will seize on that message, and double down on attacking the press, stacking the courts, and assaulting his political opponents. It’s unclear if Trump would enter the 2020 presidential campaign stubbornly bruised and battered from these fights, or if those fights would again create just the right mix of electoral swinging and swaying to win another four years.
We’re standing on the slippery edge. The mid-term election is still months away, but it’s not too early to re-establish our footing, and get the attention of those who are checking the Dow and 401k numbers and otherwise sleeping through the Trumpocracy. This apathy’s presence is felt in Trump’s approval ratings, which while soft, are steadily rising.
In conclusion, to repeat: The November 2018 mid-terms will be a referendum on what kind of country we are.
