Five weeks ago I wrote the first of my “The Stakes, Not the Odds” essays, focused on the impact of a second term for #PO1135809 on health care policy in the United States. Four weeks ago I wrote my second essay in this series, focused on what foreign policy might look like in his second term. Three weeks ago I wrote the third essay, focusing on the impact on the overall functioning of government and the judiciary. Two weeks ago I wrote about how the white supremacy inherent in the MAGA approach to governing will kill the America we have known. Last week I wrote about the effect a 2nd #P01134809 term would have on the American economy. This week’s essay focuses on the threat posed by #P01134809 to the future of American democracy. I’m repeating the first page or so of my introductory essay before I go into this week’s essay
It’s January of 2024, and we are less than a year away from the 2024 presidential election. We should be worried, because President Biden’s popularity as reflected in the polls is lower than that of his likely opponent, #P01135809. I can’t, for the life of me, understand why people think that it’s a good idea to give #P01135809 another term in the White House, but that seems to be the case – at least for now.
We saw a couple of statements from #P01135809 over the last month that warn us clearly about his plans. He confirmed in a public interview that he plans to be a dictator “on Day One” if he is reelected. We should take him both seriously and literally. He was never funny, and he is no longer even a bad joke.
Warning signs are flashing around the world. A second term for #P01135809 would be a – well we don’t really have a term for BEYOND disaster, but that’s what it would be. You don’t have to trust me on this – Google “Trump” “second term” and “authoritarian” to see articles from around the world about this threat. The January/February issue of Atlantic is totally devoted to this threat. We should all read it. Yes, sources like Atlantic are not free. It costs something under $100 per year, depending on what plan you select. Eight dollars a month, give or take. Quality journalism is worth paying for.
I have friends (acquaintances, tbh) who have decided to take the moral “high ground” and refuse to vote for either Biden or #P01135809. They refuse to accept the notion that this is not the hillside to die on.
The media tend to focus on elections as horseraces – who’s ahead, who’s behind, who’s lagging, who’s coming up on the inside, who is the “dark horse” that you didn’t see coming. This is not helpful in our current situation. Instead of the “odds” of Biden winning reelection, we should be talking about the “stakes” at play here. What would a second #P01135809 administration look like?
If you have any friends, neighbors, or family members who are opposed to efforts to remove #P01135809 from any ballots in 2024, I encourage you to ask them one question: Do they have any reason to believe that he would accept any result, either in the primary or general election, other than his victory? For people who are saying “We need to leave this to the voters,” you should remind them that we did that in 2020 – with the results we have all seen.
For the past decade, #P01135809 and his acolytes have sowed the seeds of political mistrust in the American election system. Under the guise of election integrity, the GOP has managed to make American voters uncertain about elections. #P01135809 is the epitome of the sore loser that all of us were taught to abhor when we were children; he seems to believe that it is literally impossible for him to lose a fair election and that therefore any other results must be the result of “rigging.”
Here's a reminder of his history on this issue:
2012 – he called the reelection of President Obama a “total sham” and a “travesty,” averring that the United States is “not a democracy.”
2016 – when he lost the Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz in 2016, he claimed that Cruz “stole it.” He went on to assert that a new election should take place or the Cruz victory nullified.
2016 – in October (before the election) he claimed that the election was “absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary” without providing any evidence for the claim.
2016 – after the election, which he won in the Electoral College but not in the popular vote, he claimed “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” A reminder – there was no evidence of widespread and systematic voter fraud then.
August 2020 – he claimed in a Wisconsin rally that “The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged. He continued to attack mail-in ballots and absentee ballots well into the fall months so that when the ballots were tabulated, he could cast doubt and speculate that he was the victim of fraud due to the vote-by-mail system.
2020 – on the day after Election Day, when Biden’s lead was becoming more evident in several states, #P01135809 ramped up his accusations of a rigged election. Since then, his efforts have only ramped up and become more unhinged.
In addition, he and his followers have encouraged, condoned, and participated in political violence if things don’t go their way.
His followers in state legislatures across the country have systematically worked to restrict voting rights, gerrymander voting districts in a way to favor the GOP, and intimidate voters.
The atmosphere of mistrust and vengeance fostered by #P01135809 has created unprecedented levels of political violence by his supporters against anyone he has identified as his enemy. Just within the last week, we have learned of the “swatting” of Judge Chutkin (in the DC case against #P01135809), Jack Smith (the DOJ Special Prosecutor leading dual investigations – into the criminal mishandling of classified documents and the actions of #P01135809 before, during, and after the January 6 insurrection), and (just this past Wednesday) Judge Engoron in New York, who is presiding over #P01135809’s business fraud trial.
In case this term is new to you – swatting someone is an act of criminal harassment to deceive an emergency service into sending a police or emergency service response team to another person’s address. Swatting creates several serious problems; in addition to the costs incurred by fake reports to emergency services and the diversion of resources from actual emergencies, the uncertainty and potential for violence in the uncertain circumstances created by swatting has resulted in intimidation, property damage, and even the injury or death of a unwitting person on the scene.
I’m not going to go into the specifics of the current charges against #P01135809 and other Republicans in the ongoing investigation into election interference and the January 6 insurrection charges. The amount of evidence is enormous, I have neither the space, time, nor interest in summarizing all of the evidence that has been amassed against #P01135809 in the past few years. You can read everything about these events if you want to learn (or remember) more.
Senate Judiciary Committee Report, October 7, 2021. This report, produced by a GOP-controlled Senate, summarizes the efforts by #P01135809 to pressure the Department of Justice to overturn the 2020 election results. Hint: the 5-page executive summary is a pretty quick read if you’re not up for 30 pages.
Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, a bi-partisan committee of the Democratically-controlled House. Again, you can skim the 134-page executive summary if you’re not up for all 845 pages. Ari Melber wrote the executive summary if you are a fan.
Here are the texts from the several indictments the former President is facing — the indictments he calls politically motivated witch-hunts by #P01135809-hating prosecutors and judges:
The “documents” case is being prosecuted by Jack Smith in Florida. You can skim the 50-page document and pick out the relevant information.
The election interference/January 6 case, also being prosecuted by Jack Smith, can be read here. The 45-page indictment is full of details you may have forgotten.
You can read the Fulton County, Georgia, racketeering, and election interference case indictment here.
New York Judge Arthur Engoron will issue a final decision on the damages that must be paid by the former president’s massive business empire in the next week or so. As a reminder – Judge Engoron issued a summary judgment in this case in September, saying that the organization was liable for damages in this suit. This week’s trial is focused solely on the amount of damages, which is expected to be over $200 million. You can read about this case here.
And lest we forget – the civil suit brought by E. Jean Carroll against the former president, alleging sexual assault, is proceeding through the New York legal system as well. We need to recall that this is the second case Ms. Carrol has brought against Trump; after she was awarded $5 million in damages for battery and defamation in a civil trial in Manhattan last spring, he almost immediately spoke to the press on the steps of the courthouse, condemning the verdict and repeating his earlier comments about Ms. Carroll. Not being a stupid person, Ms. Carroll filed yet another civil suit, alleging the same behavior. Here’s the verdict in the first case. The trial in the second case is scheduled to begin January 15, 2024.
In the current presidential campaign, one of President Biden’s campaign talking points is that “Democracy is on the ballot.” True to form, #P01135809 has coopted this phraseology, claiming that the true threat to democracy lies in the legal cases against #P01135809 and the judicial efforts to keep him off the ballot.
Much of the back-and-forth relating to the crimes and other dishonest behavior engaged in by #P01135809 in his minions is couched in constitutional language – language that is often either intentionally mischaracterized or unintentionally misused by politicians, lawyers, and the general public. This is not the first time in American history that the demands of the Constitution seemed to impose an unwise burden on the actions of individuals whose duty it is to carry out the terms of the document.
Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln (you’ve maybe heard of them?) agreed with the general idea that “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” Here’s what Wikipedia had to say about this phrase, which expresses the belief that constitutional restrictions on governmental power must be balanced against the need for the survival of the state and its people.
It is most often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, as a response to charges that he was violating the United States Constitution by suspending habeas corpus during the American Civil War. Although the phrase echoes statements made by Lincoln, and although versions of the sentiment have been advanced at various times in American history, the precise phrase "suicide pact" was first used in this context by Justice Robert H. Jackson in his dissenting opinion in Terminiello v. Chicago, a 1949 free speech case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The phrase also appears in the same context in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision written by Justice Arthur Goldberg.
Thomas Jefferson offered one of the earliest formulations of the sentiment, although not of the phrase. In 1803, Jefferson's ambassadors to France arranged the purchase of the Louisiana territory in conflict with Jefferson's personal belief that the Constitution did not bestow upon the federal government the right to acquire or possess foreign territory. Due to political considerations, however, Jefferson disregarded his constitutional doubts, signed the proposed treaty, and sent it to the Senate for ratification. In justifying his actions, he later wrote:
A strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means.
Under the United States Constitution, habeas corpus can be suspended in cases of rebellion or invasion. The Confederacy was rebelling, thus the suspension of habeas corpus was both legal and constitutional—but only if done by Congress, since the Constitution reserves this power under Article I, which pertains solely to congressional powers; Lincoln, meanwhile, usurped the power under his own executive order. After habeas corpus was suspended by General Winfield Scott in one theater of the Civil War in 1861, Lincoln did write that Scott "could arrest, and detain, without resort to ordinary processes and forms of law, such individuals as he might deem dangerous to public safety." After Chief Justice Roger B. Taney attacked the president for this policy, Lincoln responded in a Special Session to Congress on July 4, 1861 that an insurrection "in nearly one-third of the States had subverted the whole of the laws . . . Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?"
Later in the war, after some had criticized the arrest and detention of Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio, Lincoln wrote to Erastus Corning in June 1862 that Vallandigham was arrested "because he was laboring, with some effect, to prevent the raising of troops, to encourage desertions from the army, and to leave the rebellion without an adequate military force to suppress it. . . . Must I shoot a simple-minded deserter, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?"
The United States is at as great an inflection point as it has experienced since the Civil War, almost 160 years ago. Make no mistake about it – the stakes of this election could not be higher. What we do in the next few years will determine whether our constitutional republic survives in recognizable form.
Make no mistake about it – Democracy is on the ballot in 2024.
I was one of those who questioned the constitutionality of CO and NH denying TFG of being on the primary ballots of those states. Thanks to your quotes from Jefferson and Lincoln, and it is Lincoln's thinking that I understand most easily, I realize that it is not just my or anyone else's vote that will save our democracy. There are existential reasons for not permitting TFG's toe in the door of any primary in any state. Though I believed that a second term for him would be the end of us, I now believe that in order to preserve our democracy, we must deny him or any would-be candidate who takes up the banner of authoritarianism, or in any way shouts or whispers about subverting our entire form of government, or works to deny the vote of any of the country's citizens, that person should be denied the privilege of running for any elected position for life. The stakes are too high to permit his candidacy.
Your last statement and picture says it all…….