"WHAT IF TRUMP WINS?"

 “WHAT IF TRUMP WINS?”

The national polls and the polls in the swing states are making me nervous – it is much too close for comfort!  While I still think that Harris will win by taking the Blue Wall states and the one district in Nebraska, I am nervous.  Harris may also take North Carolina, but I will be very surprised if she wins Georgia (though I would love for her to do so).  This will make for a long election night.

So, I must consider that Donald Trump may win the presidential election, and that is a scary thought.  How could such a crude, would-be dictator be so close to being elected president?  I think that there are several factors, and I want to look at those briefly before looking at a future Trump presidency.  First, he has correctly understood how deep is the idea of white grievance, and he is exploiting it strongly.  Those of us who are classified as “white” have felt for some time that we are losing power in America.  The election of Barack Obama as president in 2008 heightened the fears of white people that we were being replaced.  The demographics do not bode well for superiority in numbers for those classified as “white,” and Trump has effectively exploited those fears while fanning their flames.

Second, in this election especially, Trump is making a play for the votes of young males of all racial categories.  His offensive remarks, his threats of revenge against his enemies, his boasting of his (and only his) power – all speak to the masculine side of young men, men who are coming of age in a time when most women are refusing to fit back into the old patterns of the pre-1960’s time.  We who are classified as “male” are not sure what our place is in the modern world, and one prominent alternative that Trump is offering is a call to return to a time when it was clear to everyone that males, especially white males, should be in charge.  The “Make America Great Again” slogan refers not only to racial categories, but to gender categories as well.

Third, many Republicans have lost their courage when it comes to Trump.  They know that he has a 40% base who will follow him blindly, and if they want to have any future in the party, they must stick with him now – here’s looking at you, Nikki Haley and Brian Kemp.  Rather than sit this one out, refusing to endorse anyone, many of these Repubs have endorsed Trump and used their networks to support him.  What should be a landslide for Harris (like LBJ and Goldwater in 1964) has turned into a cliff-hanger because of the lack of Republican courage.

Fourth, the Democrats (especially Joe Biden) have been their own worst enemy.  As I wrote last week, Biden should have announced early in 2023 that he would not seek a second term as President.  His oh-so-late announcement in late July deprived the Democrats of the natural primary process, where the strongest candidate would emerge.  This is not to say that Harris is not the strongest candidate (though I favored Gretchen Whitmer).  It is rather to say that whoever got the nomination had only 110 days or so before the election, putting them at a severe disadvantage, as we are seeing with Harris.

So, if Trump wins, what can we expect?  I don’t think that Trump is actually interested in being President again – he simply wants to win in order to get revenge on his opponents, and he wants to dismiss as many federal counts against him as possible, so that he may stay out of jail.  The sentencing hearing in Judge Marchand’s court in New York in November will get even more interesting if Trump wins the election.  Judge Chutken may refuse to drop the charges against Trump in the DC circuit, even if the prosecutor moves to drop them.  Of course, finding someone to prosecute will be a major problem.  

I do think that Trump will seek some revenge on his political enemies, and he will push for DOJ and IRS to investigate them,  likely starting with Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, John Kelly, Mark Milley, and Merrick Garland.  And with SCOTUS having ruled that Presidents are virtually immune from their actions while in office, Trump will have very few guardrails.  John Roberts’ scolding of the moderates and those on the left may come back to haunt him, when Trump pulls an Andrew Jackson and tells SCOTUS that he will not enforce any of their rulings that are not in his favor. 

I don’t think that Trump is interested in running the government – he will turn that over to his minions, including JD Vance, Stephen Miller, Jeffrey Clark, and others.  He will direct them to strengthen the power of the executive, all the while seeking to gut the power of the federal government, so as to weaken the regulating power which seeks to hold corporate and private power in check.  In other words, this will be a rocky and scary four years, if Trump wins.  I vacillate daily, but I still believe that Harris will pull it out.