We are ten months away from the presidential election of 2024 which is shaping up as among the weirdest in American history. For starters there’s the issue of the geriatric candidates. Biden is already the oldest man to hold the presidency at 81 and if reelected would be 85, if he lives, at the end of a second term.
Trump would be 78 if elected and 82 if he lived to serve out the term. However, he has never been known to exercise, is obese, and consumes a diet that might be regarded as suicidal. Obviously, in both cases the choice of vice-president could be crucial. Trump will inevitably choose a reliable toady. Though it won’t happen, Biden could probably guarantee a huge turnout by selecting Barack Obama as his veep.
Trump also faces one prosecution after another and several legal experts have suggested he is more likely to spend the rest of his life not in the White House but in prison. Many of his cultish followers seem unfazed by his criminality, and in fact regard it as a selling point, but polls show that 25% of his voters think a conviction would be so toxic as to persuade them not cast a ballot in favor of a felon.
It is also worth noting that Trump’s behavior is off-putting for great swaths of the country as demonstrated by the 2020 election in which polls showed that more of Biden’s winning 81 million voters cast their vote in his favor not because they wanted him to be president but be cause they wanted to avoid four more years of Trump.
If Trump is polarizing all by himself, his conversion of a once conservative party into an extreme MAGA party is also likely to repluse many voters and help democrats win House and Senate seats in the fall. Clearly some states and districts are enamored of the more grotesque of Trump’s followers, but most Americans want their representatives to govern not put on the kind of freak show familiar from Lauren Bobert, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, Elise Stefanic et al.
The MAGA wing has little interest in legislating but thrives on agitating. Its members often seem to be engaged in an attempt to turn back the clock to the good old days of white supremacy, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and authoritarian rule. This plays well in some retrograde pockets of the country, but much of this country regards with alarm a Trump platform aimed at getting even with his detractors, weaponizing the justice department for revenge, purging government of non-MAGA employees, ending immigration, imposing tariffs to punish imports, and stopping immigrants from poisoning our pure blood.
Since everyone in this country, except Native Americans, is descended from immigrants, including Herr Drumph’s German and Scottish forebears, this is a bizarre talking point. But Trump’s fringe followers are nostalgic for the Confederacy and the Klan. Among the unpleasant effects of Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric have been physical attacks, home invasions, beatings, bombings, and shootings aimed at those he identifies as enemies. These have included elected representatives, judges, attorneys, professors, journalists, and everyday citizens.
The Republicans who continue to bow down to Trump are all too willing to go to extremes by impeaching the Secretary of Homeland Security for failing to stop immigrants at the border, by threatening to hold Hunter Biden in contempt for not appearing for a kangaroo court hearing even though he chose to show up.
Abuse of power is now the modus operandi of Trumpism and has led many distinguished scholars and jurists, including conservative retired Judge J. Michael Luttig and liberal Law professor Laurence Tribe, to conclude that Trump is unfit for any position of trust, guilty of criminal behavior, poses a clear and present danger to democracy, and should never be entrusted with elected office again.
But the warnings of wise men are rarely heeded by those in thrall to demagogues. Trump has scorned his critics, ignored all democratic norms, and can be expected to continue to emulate the sort of leaders he has admitted to admiring — Xi Zinping, Vladimir Putin, Kin Jong Un, and the author of the book he kept at his bedside “Mein Kampf.” His Storm Troopers are already busy preparing to steal another election for him.
One is inclined to react with despair and to fear the worst, but perhaps Thomas Jefferson’s words regarding the evil of slavery offer some consolation. “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”