American Disaster

It is forbidden to abandon hope, but we’d better not comfort ourselves with illusions.

Last night, everyone saw the chances of averting the end of American democracy drop alarmingly. This writer is only human and not gifted (or cursed) with precise foresight, so my previous post about what I feared happening in the so-called debate did not literally “come true.” But my premonition of disaster was on the money, and I am glad I kept my promise to myself not to watch it.

A second Trump victory spelling the doom of American democracy is not yet a foregone conclusion, not quite. For that reason, I suppose I have now reluctantly boarded the “please step aside, Mr. President” desperation train, but I am aware of no precedent in American political history for dumping a party’s presumptive nominee this late in the election year, and certainly not when that candidate is the incumbent. Nor has any incumbent I am aware of dropped out this late. The last one to quit mid-race was Lyndon Johnson, who ended his campaign for re-election on March 31, 1968. Whoever replaces Biden would have none of the advantages of incumbency, which would then accrue to “the former guy.” Too, if Biden refuses to surrender the nomination voluntarily, his replacement would start out with the considerable handicap of widespread resentment among the president’s supporters, who are more numerous than conventional wisdom recognizes.

There is also the small matter that there is no heir presumptive, and the handful of figures now being discussed have major weaknesses. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg may be close to a household name, and his Midwestern background and aw-shucks small town air could be assets, but he is gay and would face vile attacks for that reason, most significantly the relentless MAGA propaganda that has painted all homosexual men as pedophiles. Moreover, it is doubtful that his soft-spoken manner would be effective enough against Trump’s bellowing bluster, now that every dummkopf in America has been taught to confuse the latter with strength and any whiff of reasonableness with weakness. Vice President Kamala Harris is nationally known too, but unpopular, again thanks to relentless MAGA propaganda in which the non-fascist media has been inexcusably complicit. She also has two strikes against her in today’s America of reinvigorated racism and misogyny. Gretchen Whitmer and Kathy Hochul, the Democratic governors of Michigan and New York, respectively, are little known outside their states, and as women they, like Harris, would face the nearly insurmountable obstacle of reinvigorated American misogyny, including from a large fraction of female voters. The feminist “sisterhood” is a minority phenomenon at best, despite its insistence to the contrary.

That leaves only Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, who is white, male, straight, pugnacious, youthful, and possessed of a blond California surfer’s good looks combined with a level of self-confidence verging on arrogance. So far so good, but he is little known outside California and susceptible to Trumpian attack as a “radical left-winger,” which is nonsense but might leave moderate swing voters and Never-Trump Republicans with fatal doubts. Nevertheless, Newsom would probably be the best of these bad options. So far, though, Biden shows no inclination to depart the field, and it is possible that the damage he sustained last night is not as bad as it now appears.

But the portents are definitely not good. The president has probably sustained all the “bounce” he can expect from Trump’s criminal conviction, the net effect of which has been to erase the Maximum Mountebank’s lead in the polls–a net difference of perhaps one or two percentage points. The odds are still against Biden, however, because state-level polls continue to show Trump ahead in most of the states that turned against him in 2020, which together possess enough “electoral votes” to determine the outcome. We could well end up with a repeat of the 2016 election, with Biden instead of Hillary Clinton winning the “popular vote” but losing in the Rube Goldberg machinery of the “electoral college.” A squeaker of a victory for Biden might be almost as bad, leading even more Americans to fall for the Trump/MAGA lies about vote rigging and fueling the violence sure to follow a second Trump defeat. Nor is there any guarantee that a replacement for Biden would do any better, no matter what kinds of promises are printed on the tickets for the desperation train. And it is surely significant that everyone from European governments to the Iranian regime are now operating on the assumption of a Trump victory.

Nobody reading this is likely to have any more power over events than the present writer, so we’d best prepare for the worst. Thanks to today’s raft of rulings from the Supreme MAGA Court, the publication of close Trump allies’ plans as “Project 2025,” and the experiments in fascism now under way in “red” states, the shape of the oppressive regime now under construction is coming into clearer focus and will be the subject of my next post.