Democracy:  Dead?  Dying? Or Just Dormant?

If he does not get incarcerated beforehand, Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination for President in the 2024 election.  In fact, he might well win the GOP nomination even if he is incarcerated.  Then, on November 5, 2024, he has a very good chance of winning the Presidency.

How is this possible?  Trump’s unworthiness for public office was on full display back in 2016 up to and including the recorded statement of how he, as a celebrity, could do what he wanted to women’s genitals.  Given the man’s limitations, I was certain there was no avenue which he could navigate that could lead him to the White House.  The dark stars of American politics aligned for him though.  The Clinton campaign grew complacent and arrogant.  James Comey’s self-righteousness overcame his common sense.  And Trump barely won enough votes in just the right places to win the Presidency.  It was one of those weird sequences of events in American politics similar to the unlikely ascendance of Abraham Lincoln or Harry Truman who were roundly dismissed by insiders – until they won.

But Lincoln and Truman became iconic Presidents whose administrations were just the right thing at just the right time for a nation at risk.  Trump’s administration was the opposite.  He assumed control over a stable nation and brought it to its knees.  He is, without question, the most corrupt, incompetent, mentally ill, and unworthy man to have ever held the Presidency. America has had bad Presidents before.  Some very bad Presidents.  None of them though can be compared to Donald Trump whose record of ineptitude is so long that we can only list a greatest hits version below; the breadth of Trump’s full record defies presentation in anything short of a multi-volume treatise.

The fact that Donald Trump stands a very good chance to retake the Presidency in 2024 poses a fundamental question about the United States.  Is democracy dead?  How can a man with Trump’s history of malignant behavior warrant even a small handful of votes, let alone enough votes to be elected?  Even after a full term of chaos he still won over 74 million votes in his re-election campaign.  Since the failed 2020 campaign he has tried to reverse the results of a proven free and fair election, he launched an insurrection against the U.S. government, pleaded the fifth amendment several hundred times under oath to avoid self-incrimination, and had his house raided by the FBI.  Yet he still stands tall, the standard bearer of the Republican Party, unfazed, unchallenged, and undaunted.  This could not have been what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they assumed a majority vote would, if not guarantee victory to the worthiest candidate, at least guarantee defeat to the least worthy one.  That’s not happening now.

But it has consistently happened in the past.  Just over the last 50 years, numerous presidential candidates – candidates who were leading in the polls – had their presidential hopes derailed by factors which pale in comparison to Donald Trump.  Consider the following:

Gary Hart was the front runner for the democratic nomination during the 1988 election campaign until it was revealed that he had had an extra-marital affair in his past.  He withdrew from the race in May 1987, but re-entered it in December 1987.  The American public was having none of it.  He withdrew a second time after losing the early primaries.  Other than the marital cheating he was the perfect middle of the road candidate that the electorate pined for, and he would likely have become President.

The man who did win the 1988 Democratic nomination was Michael Dukakis.  He ran against George H.W. Bush in the general election and was leading in the polls by 17 percentage points until two events derailed his candidacy.  The first was the publication of a picture of Dukakis in an M-1 tank wearing an oversized helmet that made him look ridiculous.  The second was an ad campaign citing Dukakis’s weak record on crime as Governor of Massachusetts.  These two superficial events were enough to reverse his commanding lead.  George H.W. Bush won the election.  It was a time in our history when something as small as a dumb photograph could kill a political career.  It was a time when America wanted its President to be tough on crime, even if Presidents have almost no influence over state and local crime fighting.  Dukakis was well on his way to the Presidency.  To this day, he probably still wonders, “What the hell happened?”

John Edwards was on the Democratic ticket in 2004 as the vice president and ran for president in both 2004 and 2008.  He was the picture-perfect politician – southern democrat, handsome, attracting voters from across-the-board constituencies, etc.  He would have been a viable candidate in 2008 were it not for the same flaw that ruined the Hart campaign – an extramarital affair.  Even as late as 14 years ago, America wanted no part of men who cheated on their wives (as long as they kept their affairs away from the public eye).

The point is that U.S. history is fraught with political careers ruined by irrelevant and insignificant events, especially at the Presidential level.  America always wanted its President to be male, white, Christian, and most important, married to one woman.  Before Trump, there was only one divorced President, Ronald Reagan.  But Reagan got divorced as a very young man and had been married to Nancy Reagan for enough years that America forgave his sins.

Compare this to Trump.  Married three times.  Had children from all three wives.  It is documented that he cheated on all three wives.  Even his third wife and the first lady, Melania Trump, has suffered through repeated indignities of stories about Trump with Playboy models, porn actresses, etc.  Although the American public has tolerated infidelity in its Presidents, it has always been expected that the affairs would be kept private.  Until Trump.  Trump wears his promiscuity on his sleeve as a matter of masculinity that all men should aspire to.  For the first time in U.S. history, even the religious right has decided that misogyny and racism are not only to be tolerated, but perhaps not altogether a bad thing.  Only manly men should be President and manly men do sinful things that make them manly.  This has been an earthquake in American politics.

But wait.  There’s more.  So much more.  Trump’s record extends far beyond simple racism and infidelity.  His complex set of mental pathologies have encouraged behavioral patterns which brought the nation to an existential crisis after his four years in office.  I list below a much-abridged list of statements, acts, and gaffes which in prior times would have easily caused a politician to, if not be impeached and convicted, then to certainly be defeated in the nominating process.  Not so for Trump.  Consider the following list which seems to have helped Trump not only increase his popularity, but to allow a near unlimited ability to raise funds:

• “Grab them by the Pussy!”– Several weeks before the 2016 election, a tape was released in which Donald Trump admitted on a hot microphone that since he was a celebrity women would let him grab them by the genitals.  Evidently, not all women yearn to have Trump’s hands on their groin; 26 women have accused him of various levels of sexual misconduct over the years. 

• “I like people who weren’t captured” – Trump used these words to describe war hero John McCain who spent over five years in a North Vietnamese POW camp.  Trump himself dodged the Vietnam War by getting a doctor to say he had bone spurs in his foot.  Trump became the only human in history to experience a magical cure of bone spurs without the benefit of surgery.  He had bone spurs at age 20.  He doesn’t have them now.  There was a time when such cowardice would have doomed a public career before it started.

• Tax Returns – Before the 2016 election Trump promised to release five years of his tax returns.  We’re still waiting.

• It’s about geography, stupid” – During his 2016 campaign Trump referred to the country of Belgium as his favorite city.  That’s one very big city.  Trump’s geographical challenges continued through his Presidency.  He never really did understand that the Balkans and the Baltics are different regions.  He wanted to build a wall between Colorado and Mexico.  After he bombed Syria, he thought he had bombed Iraq.  He once told the Prime Minister of India, “It’s not like you have China on your border.”  To this day he has no idea what the difference between England and the United Kingdom is, nor does he understand how Ireland fits into the picture.  And so on.

• 3,000,000 people snuck in – then snuck out – Responding to the reality that he lost the 2016 popular vote to Hillary Clinton, Trump claimed that 3,000,000 illegals came in to the country and cast votes for her as part of a plot.  Then they disappeared.  He actually appointed someone to conduct an investigation into his fantasy – an investigation that quietly disappeared two years later with no findings.

• American Carnage – In his inauguration speech on January 20, 2017, Trump portrayed America’s cities as an “American carnage” that he would stop “right here and right now.”  This was another in a long line of dog whistles to racists that America’s problems stem from the inner-city poor (read Black and Hispanic) who are coddled by the liberal elite. 

• Inauguration crowd size – The day after his inauguration Trump claimed that the crowd that gathered to watch his inauguration was the largest to watch any presidential inauguration in U.S. history.  The claim was not only ridiculous, it was easily refuted by comparing photographs to prior inaugurations.  His crowd was small due largely to the cold, rainy weather which kept people away.  To this day, Trump maintains the claim is true.

• The Muslim Ban – In January, 2017, Trump issued Executive Order 13769 which limited immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries.  Although several courts rejected the order it effectively added Muslims to the group of minorities which Trump held responsible for America’s problems.  The Order was reminiscent of a campaign speech in which Trump suggested a total ban on Muslim immigration into the United States. 

• Drug Dealers, Criminals, and Rapists – Trump’s overtly racist political platform was effectively formed at the commencement of his 2016 campaign when he stated that Mexican immigrants were drug dealers, criminals and rapists.  His proposed solution to the problem was to build a wall that ran the length of the 1,954-mile U.S. Mexican border.  He claimed that the wall would be paid for by the Mexican government.

• Cages – Trump instituted some of the most restrictive and racist immigration policies in U.S. history – policies which profoundly affected the nation’s economic supply chain by 2020.  But the worst part of his policies was separating young children from their parents and storing them in cages at the border.

• Trump fires Comey – In May, 2017, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey because…. well, you can take your pick of the many and evolving reasons Trump claimed as cause for the dismissal.  The real reason was that Comey refused to publicly state that Trump was not a target of the Russian probe being conducted by the Department of Justice.

• Frederick Douglass – During black history month in 2017 Trump stated, “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more.”  He had no idea that Douglass was an abolitionist who lived in the 19^th century.

• The President of the Virgin Islands – After Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit the Caribbean, Trump said that he had met with the President of the Virgin Islands, unaware of the fact that the Virgin Islands is a U.S. territory of which Trump himself was President.  He had actually met with the governor of the Virgin Islands.

• Shithole Countries – In a 2018 speech Trump lamented why the U.S. has so many immigrants from “shithole” countries such as El Salvador, Haiti, and Africa and why can’t there by more immigrants from countries like Norway.  We’d like to say this was the most obvious racist comment made by the President, but, no, it wasn’t even close.

• Treason! – After Trump’s 2018 State of the Union speech was met with silence from the Democratic side of the aisle, Trump accused the democrats of treason. 

• COVID Response – At the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump claimed that “it would go away” and established a formal policy of ignoring the pandemic.  In the first few critical months of the spread, while other hard-hit countries protected their citizens by tracking and quarantining victims (South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand), the Trump Administration did nothing until the virus got out of hand.

• “If she wasn’t my daughter….” – Yes, referring to his daughter Ivanka, Trump stated publicly that he would try to date his daughter if she wasn’t his daughter.  Ew.  Just eewwww.

• “Very fine people on both sides” – After a summer 2017 protest by neo-Nazi groups in Charlottesville, Virginia during which a woman was killed, Trump was asked by a reporter to comment.  He stated that “there were very fine people on both sides,” indicating that at least some of the neo-Nazis are fine people.

• The Helsinki Summit – In a joint speech with Vladimir Putin after a summit meeting in Helsinki, Finland, Trump announced he believed Vladimir Putin that Russia did not interfere in the 2020 election and that U.S. intelligence agencies’ evidence to the contrary was not credible.

• The Perfect Phone Call – Trump tried to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by holding up U.S. security aid until Zelensky launched an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden.  The aid had been approved by Congress which meant Trump had no legal authority to withhold the funds, not to mention it was a clear act of extortion which earned Trump his first of two impeachments.

• Trump the Weather Forecaster –  In September, 2019 Trump stated that Alabama was in the path of Hurricane Dorian which was then in the Caribbean.  The National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) however did not forecast that Alabama was in the path of the storm.  Thus contradicted, Trump continued to insist that Alabama was in the path of the storm and forced the NOAA to retract their forecast and place Alabama in the storm’s track, although no model reflected that.  He even went on television with a weather map on which he took a sharpie pen to circle the southeastern part of the state.  For a week he continued to state that Alabama was threatened although the entire country knew it was not.  He also threatened to fire NOAA employees if they did not support his inaccurate forecast.

• “Stand Back and Stand By” – During a presidential debate against Joe Biden before the 2020 election, Trump was asked by the debate moderator Chris Wallace to condemn white supremacist groups and militant groups who resorted to violence during protests the prior summer.  Trump refused, saying to the Proud Boys, “Stand back, and stand by.”  It was an odd statement at the time but its meaning became clear a few months later when the Proud Boys became an organizing group in the Capitol attack on January 6th.

• Buying Greenland – In 2019, Trump offered to buy Greenland from Denmark.  Although Greenland is a territory of Denmark, it is self-governing.  Both Denmark and Greenland were dumbfounded by the offer, which they believed to be a joke since it made no sense on so many levels.  It was not a joke.  Independent of any advice or strategy Trump woke up one morning and decided that he wanted to buy Greenland.

• 30,573 – The number of lies told by Donald Trump during the four years of his Administration, according to a tally by the Washington Post.  I don’t think I said 30,573 things during the four years, let alone 30,573 lies.

• Use disinfectant for what ails you – During a COVID press conference in 2020 prior to the release of vaccines, Trump suggested to the American public that they inject themselves with household disinfectant such as bleach to defeat the virus, which could have proven fatal to anyone dumb enough to take his advice.  In the same news conference, he suggested that people find a way to shine ultraviolet light inside their bodies as an alternate way to kill the virus.

• Falling in Love – Donald Trump, according to his own statement, fell in love with Kim Jong Un, probably the most brutal and sadistic dictator on earth.  After two sets of meetings with Kim, the two men sent each other “love letters” during which KJU nearly pulled off a feat that North Korea had been attempting for its entire existence – to get the U.S. to revoke all sanctions and enter normal relations.  Historians will be hard pressed to find a U.S. politician who was more easily manipulated than Donald Trump was by Kim and Putin.

• “Anyone who wants one can get one” – Trump told the public on March 6, 2020 that anyone who wants a COVID test in the U.S. can get one.  On March 6^th, a total of 2,000 COVID tests were actually administered.  It would be months before the testing infrastructure was sufficient to administer and provide results to meet the demand in the U.S.

• Pastor Trump – After clearing Black Lives Matter protesters from the area around Lafayette Square with tear gas and police violence, Trump marched across the street to St. John’s Episcopal Church. For some reason, Trump stood outside the church holding up a bible, accompanied by several unlucky members of his Administration who happened to be within earshot of the Oval Office that afternoon.  Trump’s use of a church and the bible as props in a cheap photo op did not even remotely phase his religious right supporters.

• “Find me 11,700 votes” – Trump called Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State, after Trump lost the Georgia 2020 popular vote, to find him 11,700 votes which would put him above Joe Biden and give him the state.  The call was exactly what it sounded like – Trump asking an election official to commit fraud by fabricating enough votes to win.  It contributed to Trump’s second impeachment.

• Insurrection – On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump incited an armed crowd outside the ellipse to march down to the U.S. Capitol and stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the 46^th President.  The crowd did exactly what Trump asked them to do and were successful, if only for 12 hours.  While the mob ransacked the Capitol Building, Trump was the only person with the authority to summon the D.C. national guard and/or request the Maryland national guard to help the overwhelmed Capitol police force to stop the riot.  He chose not to do so – the crowd was doing exactly what he wanted them to do.

Any one of the above entries would have disqualified a presidential politician in the past.  Remember Michael Dukakis.  He went to the political trash bin because of a photograph on a tank.  Compare that to the 30 entries above.  Not only has Trump not been damaged by the above greatest hits, these things did the opposite – they solidified his popularity.

Beyond all of the craven behavior though perhaps the most damning thing about Donald Trump is that he has never had, nor will he ever have, any interest in actually governing.  Being President is an annoyance to be tolerated so that he can get what he really wants – to be featured in the news cycle every day.  During his four years in office, he never acted as the President of the United States.  He has none of the human skills and characteristics that are essential to a chief executive.

First, the man doesn’t read.  I don’t mean he doesn’t like to read.  I mean he doesn’t read.  Anything.  Ever.  Full stop.  He’s never read a single book.  Trump is a completely incurious man.  He also doesn’t have the attention span to read.  The problem is that Presidents have to read.  Constantly.  One might say reading consumes most of their time.  They are presented with situation summaries and briefings all day long and they have to bring papers and documents back to the residence to read at night.  Presidents have to make the final decisions on military matters, scientific matters, health matters, and financial matters.  But Presidents aren’t soldiers, scientists, doctors, or CPAs.  So they have to read to educate themselves on such matters in order to make informed decisions.

Donald Trump has a complete scorn for anything that is complicated; he deals with that scorn by creating the fantasy that he knows more about matters than the specialists.  This allows him to make military decisions because he knows more than “his generals.”   This allows him to suggest that bleach be used as a cure for viral infections because, you know, how complicated can it be?  What do doctors and scientists know?  This plays well with a less educated support base who resent the “educated elite” telling them what to do.

The enigma we are trying to solve here is the correlation between Trump’s ineptitude as President and his unyielding support in the Republican Party.  For some reason, a large portion of the American electorate (about 80% of registered republicans) are fully devoted to the man and are incapable of changing their opinion of him regardless of his behavior.  If Donald Trump says it, does it, or believes it, then by definition “it” becomes right.  He actually could murder someone on 5^th Avenue in New York City and he would not lose support among his base.  No segment of the American electorate this large has ever behaved in this way before.

What is worse is that Trump has spawned an army of Trumplets who have learned at the feet of the Master Grifter. We have the DeSantises, the Jordans, the Greenes, the Boeberts, the Pauls, the McCarthys, the Gaetzes, the Gosars, the Gohmerts, the Cruzes, and so on.  They’ve learned that the most extreme behavior raises the most funds. They’ve learned that a focused and vicious minority will overcome an inert and complacent majority every single time.  It’s become so bad that even if the good Lord takes Donald Trump unto his eternal bosom America will still be left with his spawn, like so many COVID mutations, only more virulent, more contagious, and more capable at spreading chaos.  

I don’t have any answers for this.  My only conclusion is that in my mind democracy, in light of the events over the past ten years, is without question on its deathbed, at least in America.  As a profession politics is not attracting the Abraham Lincolns or FDRs.  It’s not even attracting the Gerald Fords or George H.W. Bushes.  Or if it is, those politicians are winnowed out early in their careers.  American politics has become a fertile ground in which only lunatics can bloom.  Marjorie Taylor Greene is a cretin – and proud to be one.  Rand Paul is a raging contrarian.  From his speech patterns and mannerisms, Paul Gosar appears to me to be brain damaged.  Matt Gaetz will probably never emerge from his adolescent proclivities.  These politicians will serve in their house and senate seats until they and only they decide to leave.  This minority is ascendant while the Cheneys, the Kinzingers, and the Meijers are exiting.

The Founding Fathers had the wisdom to understand that carpetbagging opportunists would always plague American politics.  Corrupt politicians would always be knocking at the door.  The Founders set up a system that they felt was the perfect defense – a large discerning electorate who would recognize and discard corrupt men and women through a popular voting system.  Their wisdom held for nearly 250 years.  What the Founders did not count on though was that the corrupt politicians, like viruses, would evolve with each defeat, learning new ways to evade the system’s defenses until one day the defenses would fall.

I fear that day has come.  We’ll find out for sure in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

• John Barton