Note: This essay is going to be brutal and blunt because I believe with every passing day that the danger to the United States is growing, not easing from the extremist movement led by Donald Trump. This threat isn’t just dangerous. It is existential. It is also drawing closer.
Our society is cracking apart because a single man — Donald Trump — has proved once again the power of an individual to bend history by harnessing lies for hate, division, greed and grievance. Some object to my frequent use of the words “American experiment” to describe our country. They say that America is established because it has endured for 2.5 centuries. I assume they feel that the country has become “too big to fail,” or been made permanent by time. They are wrong.
Ronald Reagan was precisely correct when he said:
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
This isn’t a statement by the way; it’s the truth. The experiment will never end because the entire proposition seeks to defy the worst instincts of humanity by constraining them in a system of checks and balances under a rule of law that rejects the divine right of kings, in favor of the majesty of the free human being. The American system exists in defiance of political gravity and most of human history. Its endurance is the most obvious evidence of a miracle having taken place anywhere in the world over the last quarter millennium.
All of this is at risk. American democracy will crumble to dust should Donald Trump return to the presidency, like the mighty and seemingly impregnable Twin Towers did on 9/11/01.
The United States has a two-party system. Respectively, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are the world’s oldest and third oldest political parties.
The Republican Party has become the vessel of Trump’s MAGA extremism, and is fueled by a potent and toxic mix of personal ambition, cynicism, fear and cowardice amongst its elected leaders and apparatchiks. The fear of losing Trump’s voters has turned the party’s leaders into liars and hostages. There are millions of people across America who identify as Republicans. They should never be confused with the cabal that controls the institution of the party in the state capitols, Washington, DC, Mar-a-Lago and Fox News. They hold no real power — other than the vote. They get a voice in the choice, but beyond that, aren’t part of the calculus. If you don’t believe me, read this story about Ron DeSantis and his campaign, and how they see the world.
Of course, this leaves the Democratic Party as the last bastion of defense for the American system of government. The price of failure beggars imagination, but it is time to talk about it.
Dick Durbin (D-IL) is an honorable man, and has served the people of Illinois with integrity and conviction over a long political career. Yet, he has also spent many years cloistered in the small and heady chambers of the United States Senate. Perhaps it has secluded him from a sense of duty, urgency, responsibility and basic common sense. His response to a question posed by Jake Tapper suggests that he has floated apart in a deprivation chamber for too long. Tapper ask an extremely overdue question in plain English to Senator Durbin. Let’s watch, and then dissect the answer:
Senator Durbin didn’t want to speculate about history potentially being different if Ruth Bader Ginsburg had retired during the Obama presidency, as opposed to dying during that of Trump. He implied that it is impossible to know what might have happened.
This isn’t so. We all die. Everyone and everything. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a historic figure and pancreatic cancer survivor, who was 86 years old when she died in office. The result was the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett, and ultimately the nullification of RBG’s life’s work, the repeal of Roe v. Wade.
This matters in the context of Senator Feinstein because history is repeating itself at a moment that is much less murky. Once again, ego is dominating duty.
Dick Durbin gave a compassionate answer steeped in decency for a colleague that he has known for decades. It was a sincere answer that I know to be absolutely true, given his treatment of my friend Senator Mark Kirk, who endured a stroke at the beginning of his first term. Dick Durbin is a rare Washington, DC, figure who is inclined towards grace — but that isn’t the issue at hand.
Senator Durbin is the chairman of the US Senate Judiciary Committee. Here is how he phrased its current state of impairment:
It is a challenge in the Senate Judiciary Committee to do our business [without her].
Roe v. Wade was overturned in one of the most radical judicial decisions in American history on June 24, 2022. Since then, an unqualified Trump appointee, who failed to make material disclosures to the Judiciary Committee during his confirmation, has unilaterally banned mifepristone in an act of outrageous judicial arrogance and activism. Clarence Thomas has been exposed as being corrupt, and the extremist judiciary continues to growl at the American people.
There is an urgent necessity bordering on a national emergency that the ethically- shattered American judiciary be restored to some measure of reasonable standing, balancing and functioning with the confirmation of qualified judges who are faithful to the US constitution that Donald Trump has demanded be shredded. The only scenario where this can happen involves a Democratic president and a Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate. Period. Full stop. The tenuous majority is being squandered, and the cause is Diane Feinstein.
Here is the simple truth. Diane Feinstein is 89 years old, and suffering from dementia. She will not be returning to Washington, DC. She is not fit for duty, and there is no prospect of recovery. She must step aside. Now. Should Donald Trump be restored to power this Tapper/Durbin exchange explains why.
For many Washington, DC, Democrats Trump is a useful Voldemort-type figure. He is viewed as a prop, not a threat. In fact, as MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle pointed out to Ari Melber after her White House sit-down with President Biden that it is clear to her that Team Biden is hoping Trump will be the Republican nominee.
Think about that. They are hoping that Trump moves forward and into position to be one of the two finalists for the American presidency, knowing full well that his election could end American democracy, shatter the Western alliance and endanger human civilization. Reckless doesn’t begin to describe it
Stephanie Ruhle asked the president a perfect question. Let’s watch:
The answer is revealing. It offered absolute clarity around how Joe Biden sees himself, and how he perceives the race ahead. His answer is a statement of conviction, strategy and belief. No matter what any White House advisor ever says on television the core of the Biden candidacy is anchored in this answer. Every single thing that happens in campaign ‘24 will be explicable through the Ruhle/Biden exchange.
President Biden is running on his wisdom, honor and assertion that his longevity means he knows best. Is this a sound strategy and rationale for the currently 80-year-old president? Does it endanger America’s future by drawing Trump forward into a fight he might win?
Perhaps it would be best to raise such issues before the next instance of mass surprise, hysteria and marches by millions of Americans who chose not to vote in the 2016 election, which was decided by small numbers.
What President Biden believes about himself is not something shared with the American people. They don’t see it that way. How do we know?
Yesterday’s WaPo/ABC News poll revealed the following:
President Biden’s approval number has fallen to 36 percent, a new low
63 percent say he doesn’t have the mental sharpness to serve effectively as president
His support against leading Republican challengers is far shakier than at this point four years ago: 44 percent say they would “definitely” or “probably” vote for Trump, while 38 percent would definitely or probably vote for Biden. The remaining 18 percent are either undecided or gave another answer.
These numbers are terrible, and should strip away any notion that Donald Trump can’t win. They are also inexplicable if you believe he has had a successful record as president. It doesn’t matter if he has. The simple truth is that it is almost 2024, he is 80 years old and behind Donald Trump in this poll. Being affronted over age questions isn’t virtuous. It’s evidence of arrogance and denial. I don’t want to lose my country and children’s birth right because of fear about offending the sensibilities of elderly people who lack the humility to understand when it is time to step aside.
There is an iron-clad rule about polling. When two unelectable candidates run against one another, one of the unelectable candidates wins.
The issue at hand isn’t whether President Joe Biden has been a great president or not. The issue is the perception because in American politics perception is reality.
Washington, DC, Democrats seem incapable of grasping that President Biden has been an effective president with a massive communications problem. For 27 consecutive months, he has been smeared, and turned into a senile old man by a brutal and ceaseless propaganda machine that never relents. His vision of himself, as expressed to Stephanie Ruhle, may be an aspiration, but in the present tense, it is a delusion. There is scant evidence that anyone around the president is inclined to share this with him. That is understandable. It is hard to face the most powerful man in the world, and tell him that he is delusional about something.
There is enough time left to avert disaster and imagine a different scenario for what is coming down the path. The elected leadership of the Democratic Party has rallied around power. The voters are trying to say something. Maybe it would be a good idea to listen before we lose everything.
Anyone who thinks it is impossible for Trump to return to power hasn’t been paying attention. He has managed to stay alive and around because he hasn’t been finished off. He thrives off of weakness and appeasement. He doesn’t have morals, a conscience or possess any quality of restraint. I wonder how Trump feels about running against the invincible man that Stephanie Ruhle interviewed. Like it or not, Trump gets a vote just like all the rest of us — at least for now. I’m betting that he is very pleased with the landscape right now. Why wouldn’t he be? He is the worst president in American history, twice impeached, utterly disgraced, the father of an insurrection — and he is still winning. Something is broken.
I hate that you quoted Reagan in this important piece. He began this slide towards Authoritarianism. He was himself a very divisive man. A racist, a homophobe, a religious bigot. A man who read lines. A man out of Trump’s vaunted “Central Casting”. A man so confused about reality, he mistakenly told Elie Wiesel he was a Concentration Camp “liberator”.
GET OFF OF REAGAN. He destroys your argument by being our very first modern era Useful Idiot.
Whenever you quote him, I stop reading.
Your words are important. Your vessel is cracked.
"The voters are trying to say something." You're right. Know what it is? "We're idiots. We don't read the paper. We don't listen to the news. We think a President who's done a great job--not perfect, but really good--doesn't deserve to be reelected. We'd love a divisive primary, because of course we would. Why not!" I don't agree with you about Biden. Neither does Rick Wilson.