Toward the end of last year I posted my predictions about the coming year. Those that can be tested against reality have stood up fairly well, though I obviously did not predict the plague, and my prediction about Justice Ginsburg was negated by her death. But right now I’m thinking about this part of the prediction, specifically the part I’ve emphasized:
On January 21, 2020 Donald Trump will be consigned to the memory hole, like his most recent Republican predecessor, and the media will rush to proclaim that the Republican Party has been purged and is now, once again, the responsible party they knew and loved before the Trumpian aberration came along. Lindsay Graham won’t remember anything about the man. Both siderism, which has begun to be in a bit of a bad odor lately, will see a new rebirth.
When I wrote that prediction I was suffering from the delusion that Trump, like other ex-presidents, would go gentle into that goodnight. It’s obviously what the Republicans all want him to do, though only a few have the guts to say so.
I have no doubt that the Republican establishment would very much like to see that emphasized statement come true. I don’t watch Fox, but I do read Crooks & Liars so I think I’m somewhat aware of what’s going on at that network, and it seems that they are at least in some respects preparing to toss Trump into the memory hole, where they previously tossed George W, though folks like Lou Dobbs have not yet gotten the message. The questions are: Can they pull it off, and if they can’t, what effect will that have on national politics.
Over at the Palmer report, they’re telling us that we don’t have to worry about Trump post election, because he’ll be in jail. Would that were true. It may be more likely that he’ll be able to turn any New York indictment to his own advantage, as it will give him grifting opportunities with the base, the opportunity to get media attention, and the ability to play the victim card. That wouldn’t do him much good, maybe, if there were a substantial chance of him being convicted and doing time, but is it possible to pick a jury where die hard Trumpers are excluded? I didn’t practice criminal law, but my instincts tell me that it would be difficult to get a whackjob free jury, even in New York City, and that it would only take one to prevent a conviction. He could then turn that to his advantage, from a grifting point of view.
So there’s a good chance that Trump will climb out of the memory hole, and the Republican Party will have to deal with that reality. Having constructed a party of propagandized zombies, totally impervious to facts, programmed by Fox et. al. to vote against their own interests, the Republican Party will once again find itself in the position of having to cater to a base that it can no longer completely control. That base will still be willing to vote against its own interests, but only if it is fed ever redder meat, preferably from Donald Trump. He may very well be an omnipresent reality with which Republicans must deal. They may be stuck between the Scylla of pleasing the base and the Charybdis of the sane majority, who will, if anything, despise Trump even more. Among other things, that means they will be wedded to the obligation to parrot the claim that Biden stole the presidency.
So my guess is that Trump will not disappear like W. He will be omnipresent for the foreseeable future, even running for president again if he thinks he can turn that to his financial or personal advantage.
Next question: how does that affect the state of politics for the next four years.
Let’s start out by acknowledging that Trump doesn’t really care about policy. But he knows what sells to the griftees, so he’ll attack any movement the Republicans may make toward any sort of compromise with Biden. Mitch will likely be quite comfortable with that, as his natural tendency is to oppose anything and everything a Democratic president tries to do. As I’ve said before, in many ways Republicans prefer to be in the minority. Fox gets to attack the entire government and the Republicans get to raise money and frustrate effective government action while manipulating the media into giving credence to their claims that it’s Democratic failures that are causing the nations’s problems.
I said in the post to which I linked above that the Democrats were even likely to take the Senate. That’s no longer true, but even if they do take both Georgia seats, Joe Manchin has promised to hand effective control of the Senate to Mitch McConnell by voting against any attempt to stop the filibuster. Even if Joe Biden is willing to sign progressive legislation, it will never reach his desk. Trump’s continued presence in the national conversation will quite simply reinforce the natural tendencies of Republicans. We must, after all, bear in mind that Trump was a natural outgrowth of Republicanism, he is not some sort of sui generis political freak.
It would be nice to think that Republican insistence that Biden is an illegitimate president would hurt their electoral prospects, but that’s unlikely. Bear in mind that they have more or less implicitly claimed that every Democratic president since Clinton was illegitimate. They’ll just be more out in the open about Biden, which is a bit ironical, since his victory was so overwhelming, but we are now living in a fact free world.
At first blush one would think that an insistence that Biden’s victory was stolen, in the teeth of mountains of evidence, would be enough to turn away the majority of voters almost anywhere. But that happy outcome would depend on the reactions of two major players: The Democrats and the Press.
Bear in mind, if you read further, that a lot of people, those who are not politically engaged, have not really come to terms with the fact that the Republican Party is a fascist party. They still think of the Republican Party the way we thought of it in the 60s: one of two relatively sane political parties, each with their good guys and their bad guys. If Democrats want to win, they have to break through to these people and show them the reality.
I’ve already mentioned that one of their own, Joe Manchin, is prepared to prevent the Democrats from achieving anything even if they do take the Senate. Actually delivering concrete accomplishments, such as an effective pandemic response, both medically and fiscally, would go some way toward turning the non-zombies into loyal Democratic voters. That won’t happen. With Manchin’s help, if needed, Moscow Mitch will prevent anything good from passing the Senate. He will then blame the Democrats for inaction. The press will both sides that claim.
The Democrats also have to step up their game when it comes to messaging. It really shouldn’t be hard: come up with some catchy phrases that capture the reality of the situation and repeat them endlessly. You know, just like the Republicans do, except the Democrats could tell the truth instead of lie. The Democrats used to have this capability. I remember that the Democrats were still running effectively against Herbert Hoover when I was a kid, but they have long since lost the ability to control the narrative. If they don’t work on that, they will lose big-time in 2022. They are obviously still blissfully unaware of this lack. Where, after all, is the cacophony of abuse and ridicule that they should be hurling at Trump for his infantile refusal to accept the election results? By not endlessly mocking him and his enablers, they are, to a certain extent, legitimizing his claims.
It’s become clear to anyone with eyes, that the party’s leadership (at the DNC, the DCCC, the DSC) must be replaced, as it is dominated by the far right of the Democratic Party, which spent this last election season protecting right wing incumbents from primary challenges rather than fixating on beating Republicans. It is also dominated by a group think that the way to win over red-state voters is by offering a Republican-lite Democratic Party, a strategy which, repeatedly, hasn’t worked, while emphasizing Democratic issues that have wide support (e.g., minimum wage increases, taxing the rich, taking money out of politics, Medicare-for all (yes, really)) promises far more success.
On another front, the Republicans have become masters at working the refs. As a result, the press bends over backwards to be “fair” to Republicans. As Oliver Willis points out here:
The New York Times even devoted time to profiling Nazis, in a story originally headlined, “In America’s Heartland, the Nazi Sympathizer Next Door.”
Democrats, of course, are loathe to criticize the press, so the net effect is that we have a press environment where Republicans are expected to lie and cheat, which gets only passing notice as it is considered normal, while Democrats are held to a far higher standard. One of my favorite examples of that on a local level was a New London Day editorial endorsing highway tolls, which explained that the Democrats alone had to carry the ball on the issue, because, as the editorialist matter of factly pointed out, without a hint of reproof, Republicans were going to play politics with it.
We can expect the diner visits to continue, but no one will be visiting Biden voters, or trying to “understand” them. If Trump maintains a presence, we can expect the press to do no more than give us more stories about his supporters, perhaps sprinkled with disclaimers that he has “falsely stated” (the shorter word “lie” is still verboten) this or that. The Democrats must learn to attack the press for their false equivalencies. Again, it couldn’t be too hard to come up with some pithy phrases to throw out each and every time a David Brooks attempts to equate a campus brouhaha with a full blown fascist movement.
Democrats must put the press on the defensive. Editorial endorsements are insufficient if press coverage itself refuses to acknowledge basic truths about the two parties.
So, as things stand now, I’m afraid my year end prediction may prove untrue, though on balance I hope it doesn’t. Who knows, maybe the Democrats will wake up and learn to play the game. They have the advantage of offering a program people like, if only they would break out of the defensive crouch they’ve been in since 1972.