I suspect that centrists and those with liberal leanings are terrified by the prospect of a gridlocked Biden facing a Trump rematch in 2024. And yes, there will be gridlock on key Biden policy issues, but most of his appointments will sail through. Biden has been very reassuring to centrists in his selections.
Shudders and quivers of fear are also associated with the appointment of uber-conservatives Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court. Yes, the Court will shift to the right, emphasizing property rights over free expression, paying much more deference to religious preferences and leaving states with less accountability to the federal government. But give the new justices, particularly Ms Barrett, time. They are probably going to surprise us all. Whatever their personal beliefs and shortcomings might be, I do not envision a wholesale reversal of the Affordable Care Act or Roe vs Wade. There are already signs that these justices might rise above their partisan roots to do what’s right.
Assuming that the Democrats do not win both Georgia Senate runoffs, a reasonable assumption, the 2022 midterms will be most telling. Some of Biden’s seminal platforms, relating to healthcare, taxation increases for the rich, energy and environmental priorities and foreign policy/aid initiatives will face tough going. But Biden has a great deal of administrative discretion over federal lands, requirements in potential federal vendors and an ability to sign and act on treaties even though formal Senate ratification might not happen. His control over foreign policy reconfiguration is immense, and he also has control over the budget requests of virtually all federal agencies. The Trump Wall is dead, dead, dead. Immigration priorities will be dramatically different, and DACA children will find a way to live in the only homeland they have ever known… forever.
But I strongly believe that Donald Trump, thorn in everyone’s media side that he will endeavor to be, will never ever have a meaningful shot at being President again. Aside from his age and general health (he is obese and will have continuing and long-lasting impairment from his bout with COVID-19), his sulking behavior and unwillingness to accept defeat with even a modicum of grace may play well with his base, but it has seriously alienated those truly uncommitted independents and particularly the younger, rising generations. Without those voters, he doesn’t have a prayer of being reelected.
He has not remotely replicated the economic growth of either the Clinton or Obama administrations, a fact that has been buried in misleading and self-serving tweets, and the levels of climate change driven natural disasters have exploded during his term in office. He has failed to exert any meaningful control over an epidemic, incredibly evidenced when our infection and mortality rates are so much worse, proportionately, than any other comparable nation on earth. The voters will not forget. The divisiveness he personally championed ripped America apart. His vituperatives, his name-calling, blaming and failure to take responsibility – reflected in tweets that will live forever to haunt him – are actually repugnant to most Americans, right and left.
Citizen Trump may or may not be able to pardon himself (or resign at the last minute to allow Mike Pence to do the honors) from federal crimes, but he cannot escape federal civil fines and penalties or violations (including criminal) of state laws. Like New York that is going after him with a vengeance. His tax returns will be public knowledge, and the results of detailed investigations into his questionable business operations will be examined by experts and journalists alike as details spill out. Trump, and his entire family as they are enmeshed in those questionable business dealings, will be outed as they have never been outed before. The base, which skews older and is slowly dying off, may support him, but the rising replacement generations will not.
William Barr and Mike Pompeo may have better luck running for Senate seats in bright red states, but their Trump taint will be their scarlet letter for life. History will view them as only one small step above rabble rouser, Joseph McCarthy. Rudy Giuliani has relegated himself to a standing joke, losing all credibility in a flood of baseless conspiracy theories and dripping hair dye.
Donald Trump is over. Done. He will linger for the immediate future as a media provocateur, but if the GOP wants to revive, they will soon see a need to split from this failed populist distraction and find new leadership. It would be easier for Democrats if the Republican Party fails to correct this misstep – out of fear of losing the base – but as the base fades in the cold bath of reality, the GOP cannot remain ostrich-like in a sea of change. Coal miners have not kept their jobs. Steelworkers still face foreign competition. The Rust Best got rustier. Farmers lost major foreign markets. The economic promises were just words.
Finally, the notion that Wall Street and Big Business love Donald Trump, primarily because of his tax cuts and policy of deregulation, is beyond false. Those platforms have always been GOP basics, but Donald John Trump is hardly a Republican. His pre-pandemic deficits were soaring. His trade policies made too many multinational American corporate giants into pariahs to the rest of the world. His on-again, off-again tariff wars, rolling last minute sanctions, made conducting cross-border business a quagmire of unpredictability. And most of all, his basic “Art of the Deal” was to throw the “other side” off with bullying instability, a strategy that did not work in business (Trump is the bankruptcy king) and absolutely failed in global trade relations. Wall Street abhors instability, and Donald Trump views destabilization as his most powerful tool.
Biden may be too old to seek a second term, and there are plenty of GOP candidates already building national viability. I think Mike Pence has been severely damages as national candidate, but players like Marco Rubio and, particularly, Nikki Haley, are very likely to slide up that national ladder, most probably after the 2022 mid-terms. Trump will be a memory they will need to erase.
I’m Peter Dekom, and while we dodged an authoritarian bullet this time, perhaps we now know the kind of American president we can never afford to have again.
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