I read a recent Politico article that pointed out that if Trump does get elected again in 2024, the opposition to him (among Democrats) will likely be weaker than it was in his first term - mainly due to sheer fatigue, exhaustion and a resigned-demoralized attitude.
This again gets back to the alternate history trope of all opposition being encased in amber. He would actually have to do things, many things. These state officials would have to do many illegal things. Can you move yourself to respond?
How the hell did this country every win WWII. Apparently we’re now a bunch of cowards and wimps.
Trump’s support runs far lower than half the people. Even the Republicans as a whole don’t have the support of half the country. Which is why they put so much effort into rigging the election system. If they could just win elections by letting people vote, they would.
And this is their vulnerability. Trump and other Republicans are tearing down the rule of law and the legitimacy of the political system. But without that system in place, power just becomes an issue of who can put more people into the battle. And that isn’t the conservatives.
The right wingers are heading towards the same mistake they made in 1860. And they’ll achieve the same result. And Trump is heading towards the same mistake that the guy who thought he was in charge of everything made in 1649, 1793, and 1918.
You’re correct that nobody else is going to be a “Trump”, but Trump has shown the GOP that they can say and do outrageous things, and as long as they don’t apologize or show contrition and push an agenda that promises to elevate supporters and push down everyone else (even if they can’t possibly follow through on that) that a significant portion of the electorate will still support them even if the votes don’t particularly like them. The GOP was already on its way to conformational authoritarianism long before Trump came along but people like the late Lee Atwater and Newt Gingrich advocated appealing to bigotry and inducing fear through coded language and threats couched in the form of policy. Trump has little patience for cyphers and just “said the quiet part out loud”, which made a lot of people more comfortable about just coming out with their hatred and anger.
DeSantis and Cruz failed in part because they are both voids of personality, and while the former is an excellent little proto-fascist who is broadly popular in Florida it didn’t translate to popularity on the national scale even with some hefty backers. (It also didn’t help that he ran a fundamentally incompetent campaign where he spent copious amounts of money to fly chartered planes between public appearances so he avoid mingling with crowds or gladhandling donors.) But they also failed because they were in competition with Trump, whose followers will not accept ersatz while the real thing is available. Even if the enthusiasm wains with the passing of The Great Small-Fingered Vulgarian, the Republican party had substantially and probably irreversibly changed into one that fears both its own voters and the possibility of losing an election and not regaining control for another decade or more, because their institutional memory still recalls how tenuously they took the White House in 2000. This is why they have purged their ranks of ‘normal’ Conservatives who want a rollback to false notions of an earlier, better era, but aren’t willing to fundamentally undermine democratic norms to do so. Post-Trump they will seek—and probably find—a presidential candidate sufficiently appealing and authoritarian to court the MAGA crowd, even if under another name, and the impending collapse of globalism, cheap oil, and American dominance in world affairs will foment anxiety and feed the ranks of their rolls with much needed younger voters.
Yeah, I was hoping that Trump would realize how much work being president was after the glow of ‘victory’ wore off (although that would have left us with “President Pence”, which might have been even worse in some ways) but instead he confounded that expectation by not actually doing any work except twittering his tiny thumbs to red nubs. If re-elected, he won’t resign even if he was completely incapacitated, nor will the Congress be able to muster sufficient votes to remove him via invoking the 25th Amendment.
Stranger
The difference is:
WWII was against an external enemy. It’s always much easier to fight an external rather than internal foe, and get cohesive/rallied/united as such;
The United States’ involvement in WWII didn’t even last four years, while we’ve been dealing with Trump for over 8 years by this point;
WWII was a war that showed clear progress towards a goal being won and mission being accomplished. There aren’t signs that the war against Trump is being clearly won; if anything, he looks as strong as ever and his enemies hence are as fatigued as ever.
Wait, I thought it was Congress who had the power of the purse (and the power to declare war, but we’ve been ignoring that since the 50s).
I sometimes think the tendency to expect the president to do everything is what’s pushing people towards perceived strong leaders. Maybe if we reminded ourselves that we were a people whose government was by consensus, we’d elect more leaders who would do it that way—or at least work harder on the illusion.
Oh my freaking God. World War I, Great Depression, Spanish Flu, World War II, Polio and on and on and on. Trump is nowhere near the level, at this point, of actually killing people the way Hitler and Japan did. Your comparison is utterly ludicrous.
People that are so fatigued, frightened, and cowardly by mostly posting on Internet boards about Trump, the main way that they appear to have been discomfited, are free to step aside and watch silently and cowardly as better people step forward.
The President drives the bus. The Congress (the bus company) has no immediate control over him. Same goes for SCOTUS. Even his tiny hands on the wheel can do irreparable damage in 4 years of wild driving.
Besides that, it is in the best interests of many in Congress to support Trump in everything he does. It’s all about power.
You are correct. We passengers on the bus can only hold on tight and watch.
Congress does have the power of the purse, but the Executive couldn’t be very effective if he had to run to Congress for every nickel-and-dime decision. That’s why executive authority exists.
I’m not an expert here but I understand that there are multiple forms of executive authority that allow Biden more latitude to act than he’s currently exercising. One being the Presidential Drawdown Authority. I have the impression that we have thousands of Bradleys that are unattached to any unit and not designated as a combat reserve or transfer to another ally. The few we’ve sent are performing splendidly in Ukraine, why not send surplus ones that aren’t designated for any other future purpose? I’m confident the Presidential Drawdown Authority can be used for that purpose.
I would agree that there are median voters who don’t understand basic civics, and expect the President to do everything.
However there are many people who are perfectly aware of the constraints, and still want the President to do more for 1 of 2 reasons:
- Some people simply want a dictator to help people they like, and hurt people they don’t like. Their reverence for the Constitution extends only to the 1st and 2nd amendments, and they’d happily chuck Congress out the window if they could.
- Others are irritated at Presidents not using their powers of office because they allow themselves to be constrained by a pipe dream of national consensus that died sometime around the 1994/1995 timeframe, and hence do not use their powers of office.
It’s dangerous to conflate the desire for a President to use his lawful powers of office with a desire to simply give the President all powers of office. Presidents should use their powers for the publci good. They shouldn’t seek more power than the Constitutio allows. Pretty simple proposition to me.
Out of curiosity, who would those last 3 be? Without looking things up, I’d guess 1649 - the King of Spain, 1793, the King of England (or was it a Queen at the time, or maybe Emperor?), 1918 - I really have no idea, I know Woodrow Wilson was an asshole, and racist to boot, but I don’t think he had delusions of grandeur, and I’m pretty sure the British monarch at the time also realized by then he wasn’t in charge of everything.
The difference is that back then we had, for lack of a better term, “aggressive liberals”. I’ve already mentioned Dwight Eisenhower, but you could add FDR to that list, and LBJ a few decades later as well. We no longer have anyone like that. Trump hasn’t even won yet, and he’s already, via Greg Abbott, dictating border policy, because Biden and the center-left Democrats refuse to do anything about it. If Trump had actual authority, things would be even worse, with the influence of the center-left likely to shrink to almost nothing.
ETA: In other words, the center left has become too conservative, in the old fashioned sense of the word.
As a moderate Republican (officially unaffiliated)
The worst outcome is that the Trumpanistas get renewed energy that prolongs this hijack of the Party another decade. If Trump loses in the primary that is the best outcome … not because he can’t win the general but because the MAGA crowd may realize they are hitching their wagon to a dying horse and maybe, just maybe, some will move to a more rational position.
What would that position be? The center-left is dying from inaction, but the center right (Bush / Cheney / Romney style Republicanism) is already dead. IMHO that leaves them 4 options. Join the dying center left, join the MAGAs, join the still active but too small in number to make a difference far left, or start something brand new.
1649: Execution of Charles I of England
1793: Execution of Louis XVI of France
1918: Execution of Nicholas II of Russia
Got it. I doubt any of those three thought they were in charge of everything, not even to the extent that the US presidents might have been thought to be back when they could be referred to as the leader of the free world. But certainly within their own realms I can see how they would have thought that.
Back when I was growing up, Republicans believed the Constitution was the guiding law of the land, not the Bible. I’d be happy if we could start with that.
My inner cynic leads to think it could get worse than that. The MAGAs have regressed from the Constitution and blown past the Bible, to now believing in whatever Trump says, which IMHO is even worse.
Indeed. All three of these monarchs believed in the “divine right of kings” which did not permit any Earthly oversight whatsoever over their authority. This belief played a large part as to why they were deposed and subsequently executed.
One time the GOP lost the general (2012 Romney/Ryan - leading to Obama’s second term) and they decided to tack harder to the right in 2016 and got rewarded with a win. Eventually, Trumpism wont be right enough, but continuing to lose elections will eventually smother them from public discourse (we have to work on them losing elections).
What is really scary is that at some level they know he’s lying but like flat-earthers, Holocaust deniers, etc. they refuse to acknowledge any proof to the contrary. I’ve used this example before here: Trump on Sean Hannity
Trump: If we had won in 2020
(silent Oh $#!^ moment)
Trump: … and we did win in 2020
How many MAGAs do you think heard that and started doubting that Trump honestly thought the election was stolen?
I would need a consistent definition of right wing before I would necesssarily agree to this statement. And not one that is simply retro-fitted to Trump.