Friday, March 29

Trump’s threat is darker than ever and is hot on Biden’s heels | Jonathan Freedland


TThe problem with this week’s anniversary coverage of the events of January 6, 2021 is that much of it was written in the past tense. It is true that the attempted insurrection that saw a violent mob storming the Capitol to overturn a democratic election was a year ago, but the danger it represents is clear and present, and looming over the future. Because the stark truth is that while Donald Trump is the last president of the United States, he may also be the next. What’s more, the threat of Trumpism is now darker than ever.

This grim prognosis is based on two premises: Joe Biden’s current weakness and the current strength of his predecessor. Start with the latter, evidence of which comes from the contrast in how Trump’s fellow Republican politicians spoke about Jan. 6 at the time and how they speak – or do not speak – about it now.

At the time, it was clear to them that the outgoing president had crossed a line, that he was “Practically and morally responsible” for the rioters who marched into Congress and built gallows for the politicians who got in their way. Many of those Republicans had pleaded with Trump, sending him text messages asking him to stop the mob. Now, however, or they say nothing … refusing to even show up for a moment of silence in memory of those killed on January 6, or rush to apologize for having rightly described that day as a “violent terrorist attack”.

That’s because they fear Trump and they fear his followers. In order not to arouse their fury, they have to utter the new shibboleths: they have to accept the great lie that the 2020 presidential elections were stolen and accept that political violence is not to condemn, but to please when it comes from their own side.

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It means that Trump’s tactics, his authoritarianism, have not shamed or repelled Republicans, as some hoped the January 6 outcome would be, but rather infected them. What was once the eccentric stance of fringe lunatics – that Trump won an election that more than 60 different court decisions ruled he had lost – has become the required creed of one of America’s two ruling parties, believed by two-thirds of Republican voters.

More alarming still, polls show 30% of Republicans say that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save our country.” Ask the question slightly differently, and that figure rises to 40%. Not in vain the editor of the New Yorker this week ask if a second American civil war is coming.

You could imagine that all of this should secure Biden’s position. The majority of the American electorate will surely join in the message he delivered so scathingly in a speech Thursday that pointed directly at Trump and the “web of lies” he had spread to soothe his own “wounded ego.” They will surely back down from a Republican party that is breaking with the foundations of democracy. They will surely walk away from Trump’s party and flock to the Democrats as the only reliable Democrats. But this is not how it is developing.

Biden has the lowest approval rating of any US president at this stage in his term, save for Trump himself. He is especially wrong with him independent voters who decide elections. Polls suggest that Democrats will lose seats in the November midterm elections, thus losing control of the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate as well. That will leave Biden paralyzed, unable to pass any legislation without Republican approval.

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That is why 2022 is the defining year for Biden’s presidency. If broken, the ground will be laid for Trump’s return in 2024. Except this will be a Trump with fewer restrictions than held back before, one who now openly upholds the autocratic creed that elections are illegitimate unless they are held back. win, that he alone must occupy the position and that violence is justified to maintain his power.

Republicans are working hard to improve the playing field for Trump. Republican-ruled states are rewriting the electoral law to make it more difficult to vote by stopping early or postal voting often used by low-income and minority voters, and giving Republican-controlled state legislatures extra powers on the conduct of the elections. They want to remove one of the security mechanisms that ensured the integrity of the 2020 contest: impartial election officials. To that end, those important positions are beginning to be filled with Trump loyalists. Simply put, they want fewer people to vote and their people to count.

The current Republican strength is a combination, then, of both the resistance of public support, despite the party’s submission to Trumpism, and its ability to play the system in its favor. But it’s also a function of Biden’s weakness. It is worth recalling here how unstable the president’s position was from the start, seeking to govern with a diminished and thin Democratic majority in the House and a Senate stagnant at 50%. Despite that, he has passed some major bills and made some major, even transformative moves. As former George W Bush speechwriter David Frum puts: “In 11 months, Biden has done more with 50 Democratic senators than what Barack Obama did with 57.”

And yet it is not enough. Biden passed a vital infrastructure bill, but his largest package of social spending and action on the climate crisis is stalled. Their ratings were affected by the speed with which the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan after the chaotic US withdrawal in August. And his July 4 declaration that the United States could celebrate its “independence from Covid-19” now seems horribly premature.

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You can make a strong case that none of these things is Biden’s fault. His spending bill is stalled thanks to two Democratic senators simply refusing to participate. (Given his politics, Biden probably deserves credit for getting them to endorse him as often as they have.) The withdrawal from Afghanistan was carried out under an agreement agreed by Trump; in fact, Trump’s departure would have come sooner. As for Covid, what could any president do when more than a quarter of the country … overwhelmingly Trump supporters – refuse to be vaccinated?

But politics is a ruthless business. Voters are used to blaming the man in the White House, especially when they face mounting bills and daily costs like they do now. To turn things around, Biden can start by passing that key spending bill, even if it means stripping him of some precious and necessary programs. Voting rights legislation, to block those continued Republican efforts to load the dice even further in their favor, is also a necessity. One way or another, Democrats have to enter the fall midterm with a record to follow. Defeat would not guarantee Trump’s return two years later, but it would make it much more likely. That is a prospect to freeze the blood of all those who care about America and democracy.




www.theguardian.com

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