How long will it take to climb back?

Democracy is not dead. But it's in a deeper hole than ever in my lifetime

A while back, I posted that the election would be America’s selfie. And so it is.

It is not a pretty picture. We look hideous. And the ring-kissing has already begun.

I know as I write this that nobody is in a mood to read yet another kvetch from an old, Jewish liberal. I’m heartbroken. You’re heartbroken. I’ll understand if you skip this. But I have to get it out—even if it leads Trump’s vengeance team directly to my doorstep.

FLASHBACK:

April 28, 2021. Joe Biden in his first address to Congress:

“In my conversations with world leaders — and I’ve spoken to over 38, 40 of them now — I’ve made it known — I’ve made it known that America is back. And you know what they say? The comment that I hear most of all from them is they say:

‘We see America is back but for how long? But for how long?’”

PRESENT DAY

November 5, 2024. The question the world leaders posed to President Biden has been rudely and definitively answered: Four short years.

My question now: For how long will the United States be gone this time?

An optimistic answer is the same: four short years. But that’s not the right answer. Trump’s second four-year term will be dedicated to building the foundation for a permanent autocratic, oligopoly. Trump himself may not even make it through the four years. But that foundation will, nevertheless, be built by Vance, Musk, and team. Here are some of the building stones.

• Four years more of Trump-appointed federal judges

• Two or three Trump-appointed 40-something Supreme Court justices

• Rubber-stamp confirmations of all of Trump’s cabinet picks

• Fast-tracked destruction of our merit-based and knowledgeable civil service

• Fast-tracked installation of thousands of pre-screened Trump loyalists across the bureucracy

• Stress-testing military loyalty to the Constitution

• Undermining more than a century of evidence-based public health practices

• Further restrictions on abortion rights

• Capture of the education system to indoctrinate students in white Christian nationalism—from k-12 to university (see DeSantis’s Florida for the prototype)

• Attacks on trans rights

• Further encroachment on voting rights

• Threats of using the police and military for political purposes—if not their actual deployment against American civilians

• Mass roundups and deportations

• Active suppression of a free and independent media

• Mutual support from autocratic world leaders including Putin, Orban, Kim, and Xi—all of whom are practiced at manipulating Trump

• Corrupt advancement and entrenchment of Trump’s billionaire backers, Elon Musk being the richest and most influential

• Aggressive propaganda and hectoring from the Trump infosphere—Fox News, Xitter, Bro pods, and the dark web

• And everything else Tim Snyder warned against in On Tyranny

As we watch the Trump island of misfit toys and oligarchs work systematically to undermine America’s constitutional order and cement their place at the apex of our social and economic order, we’ll also be subject to the unchecked random impulses of the sociopath and vengeful malignant narcissist behind the Resolute Desk.

I remain grateful to VP Harris and Gov. Walz, to all their campaign staff, their brilliant surrogates and influencers, to all the artists and celebrities who joined in the campaign, to everyone who voted, donated and volunteered, and to all the never-Trump Republicans and ex-Republicans who worked by our side. Above all, I’m grateful to President Biden for the accomplishments of his four-year term and his selflessness in stepping aside.

At the end of the day, however, the mountain we needed to climb proved too high. I await (but will probably ignore) the detailed postmortems and second guessing by pundits and analysts pouring through exit polls and diner interviews. I don’t expect there will be much of a market for books about it. Irony: I have a shelf-full of insider-Trump books. I doubt that Trump supporters have any interest in buying books about Harris. Or Biden.

Here’s my rough draft on what happened: Trump won because of a combination of misogyny, racism, nationalism, ignorance, and amnesia.

Let me start with the first three—misogyny, racism, and nationalism. I subscribe to the Herpes Theory of Hate. The virus is always present—in most of us. But the outbreaks are only periodically visible. For hate to surface requires fear of social disruption, permission, and encouragement. Trump and his media allies supplied all of that and made it safe to hate. We like to think that love beats hate. But that’s only in the long run. Hate wins many skirmishes.

As for ignorance and amnesia, I chalk that up to our siloed and algorithmically filtered infosphere.

Nobody alive remembers the rise of Hitler (although some of us had parents who did). But how did we manage to forget Trump’s first term? How did we manage to look past the Dobbs decision? In Florida, 57% voted to protect abortion rights. The measure failed to reach a 60% threshold but if those 57%—if even 51%—had voted for Harris, for Debbie Murcasel-Powell and their local Democratic House candidate, they—and everyone in the country—would have had abortion rights protected. They couldn’t or wouldn’t make the connection.

One aspect of Trump’s first term that his voters never forgot, however, was getting checks from him. He had planted lasting positive memories by printing his signature on the stimulus checks that a Democratic House and Senate voted to issue. For a dumb guy, he’s a genius at self-promotion. During the campaign I heard a number of voter interviews that mentioned “the stimmies.” Biden, by contrast, modestly declined to personally sign the $1400 checks issued under the American Rescue Plan.

While Trump’s rallies were listless, deranged, random, and garbled—not even filling the small venues he booked—his paid media campaign was focused. And relentless. He narrowed it to three issues—pricing, the border and trans healthcare. The Harris campaign failed in their weak efforts to counter the border issue and didn’t even attempt to defend trans rights. Trump’s side kept pounding them. And Harris’s side all but ignored them. I took that as evidence that both campaigns had research showing that those issues tested as salient motivators.

As for Trump’s adavantage on managing the economy, Harris managed to almost close the gap in public polling. But amost wasn’t enough. People's residual resentment over higher prices persisted through Biden's and the Fed's ability to tame inflation and Harris's proposals to lower prices.

Trump’s re-election is a devastating outcome but I remain eternally grateful all who fought the good fight—and who are preparing to fight the battles ahead. I know we all need a breather to recover and regroup. But, please, spare me any illusions about what we face. Those battles will be the longest and most arduous of our political lives. At age 81, I’m not expecting to see their eventual positive outcome. But I am ready to re-engage. We are not at liberty to sit on the curbside, holding our heads in our hands and spitting into the street. We have work to do. Hard work.

To quote Kamala Harris:

Fighting for a brighter future may take hard work, but hard work is good work.

To quote from the Talmud:

He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say: It Is not up to you to finish the work, but you are not free to avoid it.

Onward.