August 12, 2022. A gathering of ten. Dinner. Wine. Talk.
Democratic businessperson:
Trump and the GOP are in big trouble. FBI search was totally justified. Trump was in possession of nuclear secrets, for god's sake. He was committing a felony.
Democratic lawyer:
Trump and Republicans will be better than ever. He will say he had possession of those documents for four years, so there was no harm in him having them. He will say it's a Democratic witch hunt. He will say they are coming for all Americans next.
It is good to get back to normal.
We were eating, drinking, and talking politics. It is summer. We were outside. We grilled meat. No masks. No talk of COVID. We were part of something humans have been doing since the dawn of time. It felt great.
The FBI search at Mar-a-Lago put Trump back in the spotlight. For a few days Biden had been the story, and it looked good for him.
***He was a dealmaker who resolved things with Manchin and Sinema, and Democrats passed legislation. It supposedly reduced inflation. It did something environmental. It let Medicare negotiate drug prices, at long last. It appropriated money so the IRS could reduce tax cheating by the wealthy. It made corporations pay a minimum tax. No one understood any of the provisions but it all sounded good to Democrats.
***Unemployment is down.
***Inflation maybe slowed.
***Gasoline prices are down.
***There is voter backlash against the red-state abortion laws.
It was Biden's moment, but it is over. The FBI handed the spotlight back to Trump.
Midterm elections are traditionally a referendum on the president. American consumers and voters worried about inflation and thought the economy was bad. Biden and Democrats were likely to lose badly. Then, a change. The Supreme Court took center stage, reversing Roe and laying hints that gay marriage, contraception, interracial marriage, and a total nationwide ban on abortion might be on the national agenda. Red-state legislatures showed this wasn't an idle threat. This made the 2022 election a referendum on runaway red-state MAGA extremism. Now Republicans might pay the price.
Then the FBI search. Trump and the GOP seized the narrative. They immediately made the story a choice over whether the tyrant thugs at the FBI were doing it out of Deep State instinct to preserve its own corrupt secrets, or whether the FBI thugs were carrying out the bidding of Biden.
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| Huffington Post |
In the after-dinner conversation I sided with the lawyer. Trump will ignore the crimes, and say "So, what!" proudly and shamelessly. I argued that the search managed to do the near impossible: Make Trump look like a victim. That is how he is selling it, and he sells louder and harder than the proper and reserved Attorney General. This elevates Trump and crowds out DeSantis and the other aspirants.
That is not the end of the story, though. All is not lost for Democrats. Biden is old, but he is not as weak as people thought. Maybe he becomes a nonentity, rather than a problem. Trump crowds out the nonentity Biden, too. Trump is interesting. He makes news. Trump is chaos, strife, and trouble. He is also exhausting.
What Americans are experiencing in real time is the setup for a mid-term referendum on Trump. The mid-term election won't be about inflation or Afghanistan or whether Biden is too old. It will be about Trump because Trump insists on it. GOP leaders could band together and end the Trump era, but they don't. Trump-endorsed candidates are on enough ballots to make the specter of Trump part of the GOP brand everywhere. Trump is spreading his scent.
Republicans will suffer for keeping Trump in place and letting this be a referendum on Trump. Senior GOP leaders and people close to the former president could take charge and lance the boil, but until then it is all about Trump. Trump won't be removed by the law. Only by voters.
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5 comments:
GOP leaders aren’t likely to “lance the boil” anytime soon. They’re rallying around tRump. One of the few true things he ever said is that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and his supporters wouldn’t care. The worse he acts, the better they like him.
Not that long ago, the Republican Party touted itself as the party of law, order and family values. Then they tried to overturn a free and fair election, beat up cops, trashed the capitol building and terrorized Congress. Now they’re attacking the Department of Justice. What do they have against democracy and justice for all?
"The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us," - Mitch Mcconnell
GOP "outrage" over the investigation and coming indictment is craftily couched to reveal as much dirt as possible; push AG Garland to put out a statement, unseal the warrant and affidavit. Leaks! Yes, their condemnation of the FBI is despicable and dangerous, but as we've been noting lately the end justifies the means. That they are willing to put agents in life threatening jeopardy is just another example of Republican venality.
Hopefully, an indictment with solid evidence will taint endorsements. In the meantime watching the succession of mutually exclusive excuses will be entertaining.
And...shoplifting the documents must have been irresistible. As it unravels I won't be surprised to learn it was a long term scheme with accomplices, who may have already flipped.
The question left is what was the motive? Money, of course, but how?
I understand that people often object when the Hitler analogy is used. However, if you have ever wondered how Hitler came to power and how many (but not all) Germans could have supported him, now you know.
To a prior commenter’s question: Democracy and Justice are only valued by the Republican Party if they further the goals of theocracy and unfettered capitalism.
Regarding the reference to Hitler by “Anonymous”: Some consider that excessive, but so are the similarities.
My father was a West Point graduate and a bomber pilot in WWII who flew missions over Germany. He took his military oath seriously, as he did the principles enshrined in the Constitution. He was also a lifelong Republican.
He died a little while ago and I was sad, but later was glad that he didn’t live to see Trump elected and what that did to his party. It’s become too much like what he risked his life defending us against.
When we have a president and leader of a major political party who "fell in love" with Kim Jong-un and calls neo-Nazis “very fine people,” be very afraid.
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