Will No One Rid Us of This Troublesome Autocrat?
Below is a link to an important essay from the superb Steve Schmidt, one of the founders of The Lincoln Project, the highly effective aggregation of leaders of the small but potent group of solidly anti-Trump former Republicans, like those also found at The Bulwark.
We will apparently NEVER get a “smoking gun” sufficiently indisputable to dissuade a large enough chunk of Trump’s famous “base” from their blind adherence to their tin God. He can somehow always manage to present any piece of evidence, however stark, as a falsity by his political enemies contrived to bring him down.
Trump seems to know just how to cast a sufficiently large smidgen of doubt on any piece of direct EVIDENCE, even that from his own mouth, as the work of those seeking to attack not so much him as his supporters. “They’re not coming for me—they’re coming for YOU.”
As demagoguery goes, it is brilliant and relatively subtle—for Donald. It is not convincing to anyone not already a Kool-Aid drinker, but it apparently works for those already happily ensconced at Donald’s version of Jamestown.
I remain unshakeably convinced that these tactics will NEVER allow Trump to win a general election majority. But his grip on 60+% of GOP primary voters is apparently unquestionable. Thus while there is a majority of the electorate—if a sadly narrow one—utterly opposed to Trump, we must await a future election to drive a final and indisputable stake in the myth of Trump’s electability.
My guess is that this will happen in 2024, but I believe its occurrence will be a certainty by the following electoral cycle—2028. That year should have found an 82-yr. old Trump brought down by a lifelong diet of McDonald’s and KFC—but so far sadly no sign of that. Thus Trump’s demise—electoral or otherwise—will have to await the combined effects of ever-increasing signs of his mental imbalance and the inexorable demographic effects of still more members of Gen Z reaching voting age. The second trend is, I believe, immutable and the first—Trump’s growing looniness—almost equally dependable.
However every day we await that ultimate consummation is painful for us in the anti-autocracy MAJORITY to endure. But we must not just endure it but must work constantly to combat it—by writing, talking, marching and—most of all—voting.
Trump won his Electoral Colege victory in 2016–ever so narrowly—by bringing a large cohort of former non-voters to the polls. A variety of indices can be advanced that will create, in my opinion (note absence of “humble”), a solid anti-Trump majority among those who have so far remained non-voters. These potential voters are mostly in the pro-democracy, anti-autocracy camp, and will, I believe, in the future assure defeat for any MAGA Republican in a national elections, not just Trump.
Remember that the last national election when the GOP achieved a popular vote majority was 2004, and even then it was a narrow one. And that was when the Republican standard-bearer was a reasonable—if seriously flawed—George W. Bush, buoyed by the post 9/11 wave of ginned-up patriotism. And that was well before the GOP became the tool of a mentally-disturbed would-be autocrat. Before that, to find a Republican majority we must go back to 1988–one that was achieved against a hopeless Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis.
Just before that election, in September of 1988, I found myself at a gathering on the North Shore of Boston where I was introduced to the head of advertising for the Dukakis campaign. When I besieged him with my lengthy list of complaints about how stupidly Dukakis was conducting the campaign, he silenced me with the following astounding statement:
“Everything you have just said are ideas we have begged Dukakis to implement. But he won’t listen and he stubbornly clings to a gross misunderstanding of the political landscape.”
I then queried him as to what a reasonable Democrat like me should do. He shot back this: “Do what I’m doing—vote for Bush!” This from the head of advertising for the Dukakis campaign.
Fortunately, people on the side of reason, rationality and democracy have grown steadily in number in the ensuing two decades. Conversely, the GOP has gone from a reasonable and respectable coalition of philosophical “Conservatives” to a group of outright loonies promoting minimally a theocracy and maximally an outright dictatorship. But, despite these unmistakable trends, Trump’s form of clever demagoguery has also increased the size of the autocracy-friendly voting bloc.
So time and tide—which we are told never wait for mankind—must be relied on to rid our country of the plague of Donald Trump and his adherents. It will, I feel certain, happen but seemingly not before still more permanent damage by his sustained attack on the very idea of truth will have been done to our nation’s 234-yr. old democracy.
It is a truism to say that American democracy has never faced such an existential threat since the Civil War. But the funny thing about truisms is that they are true.
Roger
