Gone but not Forgotten

Donald Trump has been fired. He has finally left the White House, whining like the poor loser he has always been. I have just re-read a comment I posted last year (Can Trump Do It?, May 30, 2020). In it I tentatively looked forward to Trump’s defeat and provided a number of reasons that I thought (hoped) would bring him down.

Foremost among these was a belief that his hold on many dispossessed voters who voted for him in 2016 because they had nothing to lose and opted to gamble on a long shot, would loosen as they realised that their lives had not become great again. This appeared to be a factor in Biden recapturing the northern mid-west states that Hillary lost in 2016, as well as flipping Arizona and Georgia in the South. This time, as I suggested, the Democratic campaign took seriously getting the vote out in the big cities of the key states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. It also appeared that Trump really did have ‘a woman problem’ – who’d have guessed? Enough white middle class suburban women swung over to Biden in cities like Atlanta and Maddison and Philadelphia to join the overwhelming number of African Americans to push him well over the line.

But it is sobering to reflect that Trump won over 70 million votes, the most by a sitting President seeking re-election. So, his grip on ‘the base’ remains solid, anchored in the rural and white male populations in the flyover states, many of which display a baked in gerrymander reflecting both the constitutional arithmetic of the electoral College and the active manipulations of Republican state administrations over the past two decades. This solid Trumpian base is in turn embedded in the Republican Party’s basic electoral strategy aimed at solving what political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson call ‘the conservative dilemma’. Since the advent of the universal franchise, they note, conservative parties and the privileged interests behind them, have had to deal with the age-old problem of democracy – the threat that the majority who have little will seek to use their votes to redistribute wealth and privileges from the minority who have much. By definition, conservatives are happy with things as they are. So, the challenge for conservative political parties the democratic world over is how to win elections when demography and socioeconomic reality is against them, that is, when their supporters (beneficiaries) are in a permanent minority.

The first solution is noted above – manipulate the electoral system and engage in voter suppression. But this has limited returns, since it rapidly becomes transparent. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time, as the president that Trump magnanimously allowed might have rivalled his greatness once said. The next step is to mould voter perceptions through the use of mass media and other mechanisms. Trump, of course, made social media, especially Twitter, his main link with the base and avenue for peddling ‘alternative facts’. Other tactics follow, like demonising anyone, even those from one’s own party, who dares to express opposition to the Trumpian worldview. Trump used the executive power of the presidency to ruthlessly attack his enemies, hire and sack subordinates, and threaten mayhem on any Republican congressional ‘ally’ who looked like breaking ranks. His threat to sabotage the runoff senate elections in Georgia after losing the presidential election kept virtually all Republicans from enabling a smooth presidential transition. Their craven parroting of Trump’s claims of fraudulent ballots and support for the succession of failing court challenges kept the country in suspended animation, fuelling wild speculations and fears of a constitutional coup, right up until Congress finally signed off on the result in early January. And what a day that was. Insurrection! Trump’s incendiary, if incoherent rhetoric sent thousands rushing up to the Congress. The scene looked like an HBO series on a revolution in a South American banana republic. A Republican ex-governor likened the scenes to Kristallnacht in 1938. My thoughts went to the storming of the Bastille.

As I write, the US House of Representatives is drawing up a second impeachment charge sheet against Trump. Many but far from all of his Congressional supporters are melting away. There is anger among Republicans that he has cost them control of the Senate and irreparably trashed America’s democracy. Twitter and Facebook have (belatedly) banned him. But the crazies are still out there, armed. Trump won’t attend Biden’s inauguration on 20th January. But how many of the goons who stormed the Capitol last week will? What will Trump do next?

Hacker and Pierson in their book, Let ‘Em Eat Tweets, point to the three key tactics that the Republican Party, well before Trump appeared on the scene, crafted to impose minority rule in the US: the three-Rs; resentment, racialisation and rigging. Resentment was stoked among those left behind in the neoliberal world embraced by both major parties. Workers who saw their jobs exported to China, small business owners, struggling tradespeople and farmers, all saw their standard of living falling. Many Americans are still struggling to recover from the fallout from the global financial crisis during which they lost their jobs, pensions, health care cover and houses. It was too easy to finger those anonymous coastal elites in finance, media, the liberal professions, academia and entertainment as the culprits, along with the threats posed by cheap labour abroad and poor immigrants arriving from abroad. These were not unreasonable fears. These threats were real. Global capitalism was hollowing out America’s middle and working classes for the benefit of a small minority of very wealthy fellow citizens, who liked it that way. Resentment was effectively deflected away from the real beneficiaries of growing inequality, the 1%. So, although the vast majority of Americans in poll after poll express support for higher taxes on the wealthy, a significant minority vote for the party that remorselessly reduces taxes on the wealthy and ever seeks to widen economic inequalities further.

This couldn’t happen without the particular role that race plays in American society and politics. The anger and resentment of poor white Americans is skilfully turned against people of colour, particularly African Americans. Identity is focused on race or ethnic background, a powerful generator of division among lower and middle class Americans, especially white males. Liberals and moderates in both major parties also contribute to the rise of identity politics by prioritising issues around gay and other human rights, while forgetting to deal with the socioeconomic bases of class inequality and resentment. The culture wars that fixate on surprising major issues like climate change and the current pandemic, also divide and divert political passions and behaviours. A similar dynamic is playing out in other western democracies, though less virulently than in the US.

The final tactic, rigging the system, has already been noted. Together the three-Rs have become the best, perhaps only, hope for the Republican party to cling onto political power, especially at the national level. If successful, it promises to deliver a new model, counter-majoritarian representative democracy in which the vast benefits of social cooperation and economic development congeal at the apex of a new plutocratic order.

But how realistic is this plutocratic future? in the past, even in America, periods of extreme economic and political inequality eventually sparked popular resistance and ultimately social crises and major reforms. The new robber barons of the twenty-first century, the bankers, hedge fund managers, tech entrepreneurs and corporate CEOs, should sleep uneasily in their beds: in the words of Leonard Cohen’s song, Democracy is Coming to the USA.

What will Donald Trump’s part be in the unfolding future? What is clear from the recent election outcome is that Trump was a major cause of Trump’s defeat. In keeping with his long track record, he bet the house and went all in by focusing only on playing to his base, and the more extreme and crazy elements of it at that. Making mask-wearing become an indicator of weakness and an attack on the liberties held dear by Americans and by refusing right though the pandemic to take any sensible steps to fight it, he unwittingly killed hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens, most of whom were his supporters. Had he acted early and consistently on the public health advice that polls showed were supported by most of his base while also pushing through the search for an effective vaccine, he could have emerged as a triumphant leader in the run-up to the November election. But his gut instinct to never accept failure or advice contrary to what he wanted to hear closed off this venue to re-election. At base, Trump’s character failings must be given a lot of credit for his defeat.

But, as his actions since election night amply demonstrate, Donald Trump is not planning to fade away. Every bone in his body shrieks for revenge, for another shot to prove that he won, that he is a winner. In my earlier post I suggested that he might simply declare victory and then quietly leave the White House by the back door and resume his life as a celebrity buffed by the trappings of having held the highest office in the land. I was right about the first part; he did and continues to claim that he won, and that the election was stolen from him. But I was dead wrong about the second part – I think. He shows every intention of setting up an administration-in-exile, creating a situation reminiscent of the great religious schism in 1378 when three men claimed to be Pope in the Western Church. This may indeed be a base from which he continues to bully the Republicans and launch another presidential bid in 2024. Alternatively, it may be a way of imposing a candidate of his choice, say a family member, into the 2024 contest. Or it may be what for Trump is business as usual, a new way to make money, to stay one step ahead of his creditors. For what it’s worth, I favour the last reading, although brand Trump has taken a fearful beating after the mob attack on the Capitol. The prospect of reputational damage by association with the Trump brand may drive upmarket businesses away from the Donald. Again, Trump is the author of his fall.

The final nail is about to be hammered into his political coffin by a second impeachment in the House of Representatives. Holding the trial over until the Democrats attain control of the Senate after January 20th will improve the chances of conviction this second time around and disqualification from any future candidacy for public office. Can he keep the Trump faithful behind him? Can he maintain control over Republican Congressional representatives, especially in the Senate? Or will the Grand Old Party split, with Trumpists heading even further rightwards and the gamesters led by Mitch McConnell drifting back towards the old right centre? Most intriguingly, what will the dominant class do to resolve the conservative dilemma – to maintain minority rule (and their wealth and privileges) in a mass democracy? (Hint: expect race to figure prominently.) Perhaps only Trump or an imitation will stand between them and the pitchforks. Time will tell.

The real lesson of the Trump whirligig is that American democracy is not immune, as the framers of the Constitution hoped, to authoritarian takeover. Had Trump really been a very stable genius, instead of a narcissistic hustler, America may now be on the road travelled in the ancient world after the collapse of Athenian democracy in 322 BCE and its replacement by a plutocratic regime. It may still be. There are Trump political apprentices straining to have a go. What’s to stop the three-Rs from continuing to eat away at the system? Plato and Aristotle were convinced that democracy led inevitably to tyranny via demagoguery.

Joe Biden has a very hard job to shore up the foundations of a house teetering on the edge. His administration must find a way of breaking the power of the plutocrats and dismantle their three-Rs strategy of maintaining their grip on power. He has a brief window to do so, less than two years until the next mid-term elections that could flip either or both Houses of Congress. President Obama couldn’t manage it; perhaps his deputy might. The first test will come on January 20th. Will the mob return attempting to disrupt the inauguration of the legitimately elected President of the United states?

Welcome to the third decade of the twenty-first century.

PS Or might Trump preemptively resign from office before the house impeaches him? IN order to prevent being banned from standing in 2024.