democratic impasse.com

A 10-year old girl in Ohio, six weeks and three days pregnant, traveled across state lines to get an abortion. Ohio's trigger law prohibited the procedure after six weeks.

Asked whether South Dakota would force a 10-year old to have a baby, Governor Kristi Noem replied (after condemning the rapist and expressing horror about a situation that no one in her family has experienced), "I can't even imagine. But in South Dakota the law today is that abortions are illegal except to save the life of the mother."

After a brief back and forth, CNN's Dana Bash asks, "So will you try to change the law to have an exception in a situation like that?" The reply:

. . . What I would say is I don't believe a tragic situation should be perpetuated by another tragedy. And so there's more that we've got to do to make sure that we really are living a life that says every life is precious. Especially innocent lives that have been shattered like that 10-year old girl.

In my view, the welfare of a 10-year old girl eclipses any purported rights of a six-week embryo and it's not a close call. While it may or may not be a close call for Governor Noem, she recognizes the dilemma, since she acknowledges the shattered life of the girl.

In my view, the damage to the girl would only be compounded by forcing her to carry the pregnancy to term. That would be, were it to come to pass, "one tragic situation ... perpetuated by another tragedy."

Governor Noem is careful not to say too much or too little. While never questioning the zealots in her party, she doesn't wish to offend those who don't share the zealotry. Is it the abortion, or the forced delivery, that would constitute for her the tragedy perpetuated by the sexual assault? That's not clear, but the sounds were soothing. It's a difficult business navigating such issues while taking care not to offend a critical faction of the voting base of your party, no matter how extreme and inflexible the views of that faction are.

While holding the party line during the interview, the governor provides an escape hatch of sorts to folks (in South Dakota and the country) who find the state's draconian ban barbaric: She signals that traveling out of state is a viable option!

... in that situation, the doctor, the family, the individuals closest to that will make the decisions there for that family. But that's what's interesting about the time we live in right now, is every state will have different laws on the books. The decisions will be made by the legislators that are closest to the people. That's appropriate. It's the way our Constitution intended.
And I think that South Dakota's laws may look very different than California's, may look very different than New York's, where that governor has said she wants to become a destination known for providing abortions. That's not our story here in South Dakota.

What a nimble dancer. Noem doesn't repudiate the South Dakota trigger law (passed before she was governor). She's on the side of the extremists. But she acknowledges the shattered life of the girl who was molested and, best of all, she provides a way out for the girl's family -- Travel out of state to get the abortion, an option she professes to find in the wisdom of the Constitution, which provides (along with the Republican majority on the current Supreme Court) that legislators in each state will either permit or deny doctors, families, and individuals closest to situations regarding pregnancy to make their own decisions.

Don't like the law in South Dakota because legislators deny women and families such liberty? Not to worry. Head to California or New York, as the founders intended.

Governor Noem’s pointing to blue states (as a convenient escape from the untenable) is a version of having your cake and eating it too, which may have worked to get her through a Sunday interview and might work for a MAGA campaign in South Dakota. But for anyone with national ambitions, it’s not a sustainable response. Not with calls to federalize the abortion ban or to pass personhood amendments. Not in today’s GOP, never mind the wisdom of the founders.

In just over a week’s time, the Supreme Court has handed down precedent-shattering rulings in several areas that not coincidentally are hot-button issues for the contemporary Republican Party. The pretense, among the justices and their defenders, is that these rulings are driven by originalism, a legal theory (invented in the 1970s and pushed relentlessly by the Federalist Society and Republican politicians and pundits) that prescribes a faithful reading of the Constitution and of American history.

The plain facts illustrate why this convenient conceit is insupportable. In each of these cases (and in others of recent vintage), the GOP agenda and the passions of the voting base of the party represented the winning side, while the historical and constitutional evidence appealed to fell far short of sustaining the rulings -- and often undermined the decisions handed down.

The court's Republican majority, in a rush to discard stare decisis and other conservative judicial principles, has not hesitated to impose its religious and cultural views on Americans. This arrogant contingent evinces not the least doubt about the wisdom of its vision or its quest to put its heavy stamp on public policy. These true believers have an expansive agenda compatible with the racial and cultural resentments of the Republican Party's voting base. And, at bottom, this majority and its agenda are fundamentally undemocratic.

Religious liberty

The First Amendment (which also establishes freedom of speech and of the press, and the rights to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances) begins with these words:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

Focusing on the portion of the amendment that references religion, the establishment clause has historically loomed large. Thomas Jefferson explained that intent of the amendment was to erect “a wall of separation between church and state,” while Madison, the author of the amendment, touted the benefits of “the total separation of the Church from the State.”

The court’s Republican majority (going back several years) has both disfavored the establishment clause (and its historical primacy) and greatly expanded the meaning of “free exercise” (far beyond worship, ministering, and telling others about ones faith). These two trends, and a disregard for the rights of those who don't embrace that faith, have served to increase the trove of grievances to many constraints of civil society that white Christians in particular may now litigate. This development has been very pronounced since the Hobby Lobby decision in 2014.

On June 21, in Carson V. Makin, the court, in a flight away from decades of constitutional jurisprudence (not to mention the views of our founders), turned the separation clause on its head. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent:

What a difference five years makes. In 2017, I feared that the Court was “lead[ing] us . . . to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment.” Trinity Lutheran, 582 U. S., at ___ (dissenting opinion) (slip op., at 27). Today, the Court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation. If a State cannot offer subsidies to its citizens without being required to fund religious exercise, any State that values its historic antiestablishment interests more than this Court does will have to curtail the support it offers to its citizens. With growing concern for where this Court will lead us next, I respectfully dissent.

On June 27, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the court ruled in favor of a high school football coach who, with much fanfare and with crowds who rushed the field to join in, led Christian prayers at midfield after games (in violation of school policy). Justice Neil Gorsuch writing for the majority, ignored the facts of the case and opined that the coach wished only "to say a short, private, personal prayer.”

Justice Sotomayor, who in her dissent posted photographs that documented the scene, was more faithful to the facts as well as to previous precedent:

Properly understood, this case is not about the limits on an individual’s ability to engage in private prayer at work. This case is about whether a school district is required to allow one of its employees to incorporate a public, communicative display of the employee’s personal religious beliefs into a school event, where that display is recognizable as part of a longstanding practice of the employee ministering religion to students as the public watched. A school district is not required to permit such conduct; in fact, the Establishment Clause prohibits it from doing so.

Abortion

In a historic decision, Dobbs v. Jackson, that unsurprisingly hit like a thunderclap, the court stripped women and girls of a Constitutional right, access to abortion, decreed by a previous court a half-century ago (and reaffirmed more recently). Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion played fast and loose with American history, as many commentators have observed. For one thing, he picks and chooses his history, based on the result he aims to reach and a 19th century social system that he finds amenable.

... Alito begins his version of the history of abortion laws with the 1860s and 1870s, when states began to adopt laws that eliminated the legal significance of quickening and criminalized the ending of pregnancy at any stage. This second wave of laws was pushed by a small group of self-interested white, male physicians who were anxious about their status as both doctors and as elite American men.-- Leslie J. Reagan, professor of history and law at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and author of When Abortion Was a Crime and Dangerous Pregnancies

For another, Alito (with his conservative brethren and Justice Amy Coney Barrett), make a practice of ignoring (or figuring out workarounds) to the Civil War amendments, especially the Fourteen Amendment.

Black women’s sexual subordination and forced pregnancies were foundational to slavery. If cotton was euphemistically king, Black women’s wealth-maximizing forced reproduction was queen.
Ending the forced sexual and reproductive servitude of Black girls and women was a critical part of the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments. The overturning of Roe v. Wade reveals the Supreme Court’s neglectful reading of the amendments that abolished slavery and guaranteed all people equal protection under the law. It means the erasure of Black women from the Constitution. -- Michele Goodwin, a chancellor’s professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood

The Dobbs decision is more than anything else a wistful return ticket to an era when the roles and rights of women (even white women) were circumscribed by law, by social practice, and by the religious views (of many, if not most Americans) of the era. It is sobering how much sway this anachronistic view still has, especially -- but hardly exclusively -- among white Christian conservatives.

Even if it were so that Alito and company were unbiased, conscientious, reliable interpreters of history -- which is hardly the case -- what sense does it make to deny women and girls in 21st century America access to reproductive health care based on a contrived snapshot of American life in the 18th or 19th centuries? The notion that women have (and ought have) less autonomy than men, the belief that a human being exists (and ought to have overriding legal protection) from the moment when a sperm penetrates an egg, and the conviction that the state can (and should) enforce these judgments, spring from a religious view. The religious outlooks of the six Republicans on the current court are far too homogenous to be representative of America today; yet these justices are impatient to deploy their inordinate political power over all of us.

The majority opinion authorizes the coercive power of the state to impose its singular religious views on Americans, regardless of the religious (social/cultural/philosophical/political) viewpoints of the citizens of the state. The GOP often rails about 'liberty,' but not in this case. Women under this regime may be forced to carry a pregnancy to term. Pause to consider that. The Republican Party is pushing a savagely diminished sphere of individual liberty for women.

The ruling disregards individual choice, ones life circumstances, even poverty that would make prenatal care a desperately heavy burden. Yet the cruelty doesn't stop there. As Jennifer Haberkorn relates, at one time, prior to Roe v. Wade, many states that banned abortions, made exceptions for rape or incest:

It was a veneer of acceptance embraced by every GOP president from Reagan to Trump, and even the strongest abortion foes, that a woman should not be required to carry a rapist’s child.
Not anymore.
Just as states may be on the verge of regaining expansive authority to outlaw abortion, eliminating rape and incest exceptions has moved from the fringe to the center of the antiabortion movement.

Guns

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

In American society of 1791, militias existed to provide for the common defense of the community. Men were obligated to serve in militias. The Second Amendment prohibited the federal government from depriving the states of this means of defense.

This was well-understood at the time and was not disputed by the nation's highest court for more than 200 years -- until 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller, a 5-4 decision written by Antonin Scalia, which separated the first four words (and the history behind them) from the amendment, and ruled that the right to bear arms was an individual right.

John Paul Stevens (who wrote one of two dissents to that decision based on the historical record), wrote in an essay nine years after his retirement from the court:

District of Columbia v. Heller, which recognized an individual right to possess a firearm under the Constitution, is unquestionably the most clearly incorrect decision that the Supreme Court announced during my tenure on the bench.

He added:

So well settled was the issue that, speaking on the PBS NewsHour in 1991, the retired Chief Justice Warren Burger described the National Rifle Association’s lobbying in support of an expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment in these terms: “One of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

On June 23, in an opinion that relied on the Heller decision and on Scalia's misreading of history, the Supreme Court (in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen) ruled that the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual's right to carry a gun outside ones home for self-defense. In doing so, the court's 6-3 majority struck down a law that had been in place since 1911.

Adam Winkler, law professor at UCLA, and author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, critiques the history as presented by Justice Clarence Thomas's decision:

Most notable is that the Court says it is going to look to history and tradition, but then ignores history and tradition. The Court says that only gun laws which have historical precedent are constitutionally permissible, and then the Court dismisses all of the historical precedents for heavy restrictions on concealed-carry laws as outliers. The Court says that it is going to look to history, but dismisses early English common law as too old. The Court says that it is going to look to history, but dismisses any laws that were adopted after the mid-eighteen-hundreds as too young. The Court says that it is looking to history, but also says that shall-issue permitting is constitutional, even though shall-issue permitting is a twentieth-century invention. So the Court says that it is doing history and tradition analysis, but conveniently ignores any history it doesn’t like.

Cherry-picking historical examples is a pattern with the Republican majority on the court. It subverts history, which the majority purports to rely on in its decisions. It exposes originalism as a sham. But the Republican justices' rulings reveal another more disturbing pattern, which a bitter concurrence (which resembles obtuse trolling on social media) in Bruen illustrates:

Justice Alito (writing for himself) mocked Justice Steven Breyer's reference (in his dissent) to mass shootings; Alito insisted that the discussion of gun deaths in Breyer's dissenting opinion was irrelevant, lacking any "legitimate purpose." Breyer responded:

The question presented in this case concerns the extent to which the Second Amendment restricts different States (and the Federal Government) from working out solutions to these problems through democratic processes. The primary difference between the Court’s view and mine is that I believe the Amendment allows States to take account of the serious problems posed by gun violence that I have just described. I fear that the Court’s interpretation ignores these significant dangers and leaves States without the ability to address them.

Disabling democratic politics

In case after case after case, the Republican SCOTUS majority undoes, or disallows, public policy solutions advanced by the Democratic Party. It rules them out of order, which allows five or six justices, appointed for life, to dictate social and political policy for the country. (The 6-3 and 5-4 voting rights and redistricting decisions in recent years are especially pernicious, since they serve to depress the vote of Democratic constituencies and to make electoral choices less meaningful.)

I've written a great deal about this phenomenon, which I characterized in one post as "strategically crafting a partisan constitution." Without repeating my argument now, I'll add that the Republican Party -- at the Supreme Court; in state legislatures through voter suppression and gerrymandered state and federal districts; and with a structural assist from the Electoral College -- has a singular commitment to sustaining minority rule. Lacking majority consent from Americans, it is dedicated to taking and keeping power by whatever means possible, including actions that are undemocratic, even authoritarian.

Bruen, an imminent threat to every single one of us

The Bruen decision is especially disturbing because it puts everyone throughout the country at greater risk of death or disability through gun violence. At supermarkets and in churches, in movie theaters and at music concerts, on college campuses and in our elementary schools, from our eldest citizens to our children. Blue states, red states, densely populated urban centers, and rural areas alike. By stripping states and cities of authority to regulate guns, by encouraging the proliferation of guns in public spaces (while the Supreme Court is insulated from the threat of gun violence), the court's majority puts us all in greater danger.

That is maddening, especially since this crew lives in an affluent, privileged stratum that most Americans -- especially those whose quality of life will suffer the most as a result of this court's rulings -- can only imagine. This is another distressing pattern. Riding the New York City subway to and from work each day? Living below the poverty line as a single mother? Experiencing state coercion dictated by judicial deference to a faith that one doesn't accept? These are foreign to the court's majority. We can't expect even empathy from these justices, much less -- ironically -- anticipate anything resembling Christian charity.

It is a commonplace to note that the founders never considered the damage caused by military assault rifles circa 2022. Or ghost guns, as Justice Breyer observes: 'How can we expect laws and cases that are over a century old to dictate the legality of regulations targeting “ghost guns” constructed with the aid of a three-dimensional printer?' And of course life in Colonial America was vastly different than life in today's United States, when most of us live in urban areas that dwarf the largest cities of the 17th century, while the places where we gather today (as Justice Breyer noted in his dissent) such as, subways, movie theaters, sports stadiums, and much more, bear only distant resemblance to the founders' social environment. Until 2008, after a concerted campaign by the National Rifle Association and the gun manufactures who have come to be a primary funder of the group, the Second Amendment was not a bar to the regulation of firearms.

A reckless, imperious Supreme Court majority enjoys an extraordinary level of protection from harm; the justices are even insulated in and near their workplace from the sight or sound of critics expressing their First Amendment rights. This judicial majority, inside a bubble of protection, courtesy of the federal government, has imperiled the safety of everyone in the country who is not privileged with such protection. This court has wrenched authority from the states to act to protect us; this ruling has stripped our elected representatives of the right to propose, debate, and enact public policy solutions with majority support.

This pattern of decisions represents a profoundly undemocratic rigging of the political process that democracies rely on.

I. In Judge J. Michael Luttig's opening statement (which was not read aloud on Day 4 of the January 6 Committee hearing), he made a point that I don't recall hearing in his televised testimony: it is only Republicans who can end the war on democracy. Here is how his written statement began:

A stake was driven through the heart of American democracy on January 6, 2021, and our democracy today is on a knife’s edge.
America was at war on that fateful day, but not against a foreign power. She was at war against herself. We Americans were at war with each other -- over our democracy.
January 6 was but the next, foreseeable battle in a war that had been raging in America for years, though that day was the most consequential battle of that war even to date. In fact, January 6 was a separate war unto itself, a war for America’s democracy, a war irresponsibly instigated and prosecuted by the former president, his political party allies, and his supporters. Both wars are raging to this day.
A peaceful end to these wars is desperately needed. The war for our democracy could lead to the peaceful end to the war for America’s cultural heart and soul. But if a peaceful end to the war for America’s democracy is not achievable, there is little chance for a peaceful end to that war. The settlement of this war over our democracy is necessary to the settlement of any war that will ever come to America, whether from her shores or to her shores. Though disinclined for the moment, as a political matter of fact only the party that instigated this war over our democracy can bring an end to that war.
Like our war from a distant time, these twin wars are “testing whether th[is] nation or any nation . . . so conceived in Liberty . . . can long endure.” We must hope that January 6 was the final battle of at least the deadly war for America’s democracy.

"Though disinclined for the moment, as a political matter of fact only the party that instigated this war over our democracy can bring an end to that war."

I agree. Doing so is a responsibility of the leadership of that political party, the Republican Party. Furthermore, it is hard to see any other viable way to bring this war to a peaceful, democratic end.

II. During Day 5 of the hearings, Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers, a man of strong religious faith and commitment to conservative principles, offered powerful testimony about the intense pressure, which he withstood, from Donald Trump and his allies to take action to decertify the 2020 presidential election in his state. There wasn't the least evidence that the election was rigged and simply being a Republican was not sufficient reason to throw out the results. He explained his refusal: "[I]t is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired, of my most basic foundational beliefs. And so, for me to do that because somebody just asked me to is foreign to my very being. I — I will not do it."

Near the end of his testimony, Adam Schiff asked Speaker Bowers to read a passage from his journal, written in December 2020 while he was being besieged to act contrary to his conscience:

It is painful to have friends who have been such a help to me turn on me with such rancor. I may in the eyes of men not hold correct opinions or act according to their vision or convictions, but I do not take this current situation in a light manner, a fearful manner, or a vengeful manner. I do not want to be a winner by cheating. I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to. With any contrived desire towards deflection of my deep foundational desire to follow God's will as I believe He led my conscience to embrace. How else will I ever approach Him in the wilderness of life? Knowing that I ask this guidance only to show myself a coward in defending the course He let me take — He led me to take.

In his written statement to the committee Bowers had referenced the opening paragraph of Ronald Reagan's 1981 inaugural address: "To a few of us here today this is a solemn and most momentous occasion, and yet in the history of our nation it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every-4-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle."

Bowers' testimony was heartfelt and his strength of character, impressive. Drawing on faith in God and in a conservative icon whom he admired, he had withstood pressure and vilification and done the right thing. Yet on the day before his testimony, in an interview with the AP, he asserted that, if given the choice of Trump vs. Biden in 2024, he would again cast his vote for Trump:

Bowers said he has not watched the committee’s hearings, but did see some of the video clips showing the rampage at the Capitol. He said it sickened him watching people who supported Trump attacking police, including a man who had protested at the Arizona Capitol.
“I’m appalled at what I saw,” Bowers said, “I don’t mind their having these hearings. I don’t mind. I think it illuminates something we need to see big time, and take stock of ourselves. And I hope it would sober us.”
Bowers was one of five recipients of this year’s John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award for his refusal to consider overturning the 2020 election results despite pressure from Trump and his supporters.
But while Bowers said the efforts by Giuliani and other Trump backers have been hurtful, he does not levy any criticism on Trump directly and would support him if he were on the ballot.
“If he is the nominee, if he was up against Biden, I’d vote for him again,” Bowers said. “Simply because what he did the first time, before COVID, was so good for the county. In my view it was great.”

III. What are we to make of this? Does Bowers, a man of individual principle, not see the damage Trump and his allies wrought on the American body politic through their ferocious efforts to overturn the election? In his narrative to the committee, Bowers stands as a man who knows right from wrong and who refuses to do the wrong thing. He is steadfast even in the face of anger and abuse. Is his a tale of personal morality only?

If this were so, we might regard his willingness to move on (perhaps as an act of Christian forgiveness) as commendable. But the story transcends one individual. And in Bowers' testimony, he recognizes a broader context, reporting how he pushed back against John Eastman:

And I said, again, I took an oath. For me to take that, to do what you do, would — would be counter to my oath. I don't recall if it was in that conversation clearly that we talked more about the oath. But I said, what would you have me do? And he said just do it and let the court sort it out. And I said you're asking me to do something that's never been done in history, the history of the United States. And I'm going to put my state through that without sufficient proof, and that's going to be good enough with me? That I would — I would put us through that, my state, that I swore to uphold both in Constitution and in law?

Does Bowers not recognize what the final months of Trump's ruthless battle to stay in office has put the United States of America through? The Speaker has appealed to religion, to democratic principles (as articulated by Reagan), to the constitutions of the nation and his state, to the rule of law, and to his oath of office as the bases for his refusal to assist in overthrowing the election.

When push comes to shove, Rusty Bowers is not willing to cheat. But he is willing to vote for a cheater. He is willing to stand in solidarity with the former president's allies, whom he recognizes as cheaters. He is unwilling to do the dirty work himself. He will not sully his personal integrity through criminal activity. But, if others on his team are willing to go there, so be it.

Bowers believes that the first three years of the Trump presidency were "so good for the country" that he is prepared to overlook the lawlessness and the hostility toward American democracy. In this, he is at one with the majority of his party. The policy differences between Biden and Trump outweigh the damage that cheating brings to democratic institutions. Immigration? Regulation? Tax policy? Control of the Supreme Court? Commitment to the Republican position on a range of issues outweighs the rule of law, the sanctity of free and fair elections, and the peaceful transfer of power in the broader scheme of things.

And even more critically than specific issues, a host of cultural differences separating our two polarized political parties bolsters the decision of Republicans to side with the red team, as Bowers does. Even as it attacks American democratic institutions, the Republican Party embraces a 21st century version of traditional values (imbued in nostalgia and myth) that sustains loyalty, while on the other side of the coin, cultural revulsion toward team blue, toward what is regarded as the liberal establishment, makes voting for a Democrat (even to preserve American democracy) virtually unthinkable. (We were at war, as Judge Luttig reminded us, long before January 6.)

IV. Rusty Bowers, in my view, acted nobly in the aftermath of the 2020 election. He held to his principles, which in the months following the 2020 election were consistent with the defense of American democracy at a time when democracy was threatened. As Speaker of the House, and as a leader of the Arizona Republican party, he did the right thing. He refused to be steamrolled into embracing the big lie that the election was rigged; he refused to deny that Joe Biden was elected fair and square. He refused to bend to Donald Trump's lawless, unconstitutional, undemocratic campaign to stay in office after his defeat at the polls. He did his duty.

Near the end of today's hearing, former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen observed: "When you damage our fundamental institutions, it's not easy to repair them."

Rusty Bowers is prepared to vote again for Donald Trump. He rejects the big lie as a lie. He recognizes the outcome of the 2020 election. He knows Trump lost. He witnessed firsthand Trump's relentless war against that result, no matter the damage to our democratic institutions. Yet he is still onboard with Trump if the former president is on the ballot again.

With his decision to vote again for Trump, Bowers places himself back at the center of his tribe, the Republican Party circa 2022. No longer subject to an angry, hateful campaign conducted by the red team, he finds himself in accord with the vast majority of the GOP's leaders and voters. Donald Trump, so long as he leads the Republican Party, has the loyalty of the party faithful.

I don't believe, in Bowers' decision to vote again for Trump, he has given proper regard to the damage to our fundamental institutions that another Trump presidency would bring. But in making this judgment, he is in agreement with his fellow Republicans. He is back in the fold.

Far too few leaders in the political party that has instigated the war on our country's democratic institutions are willing to step up to put a peaceful end to it. American democracy has never in my lifetime been at greater risk.

At the conclusion of the June 16, 2022 hearing of the House January 6 Committee, Chairman Bennie Thompson praises Judge Luttig and Greg Jacob for their courage and devotion to our country and then asks the jurist for his thoughts on the ongoing threat to American democracy. His concluding remarks:

J. Michael Luttig: Mr. Chairman, I'm honored beyond words by your words. I was honored on January 6th, 2021, and also honored beyond words to have been able to come to the aid of Vice President Mike Pence. I prayed that day just like the vice president prayed that day. I believe we may have prayed the — the same prayer to the same God. I prayed that same prayer with my wife this morning before I came into these hearings.

I have written, as you said, Chairman Thompson, that today, almost two years after that fateful day in January 2021, that still Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy. That's not because of what happened on January 6th. It's because, to this very day, the former president, his allies, and supporters pledge that, in the presidential election of 2024, if the former president or his anointed successor as the Republican Party presidential candidate were to lose that election, that they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election, but succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020. I don't speak those words lightly.

I would have never spoken those words ever in my life, except that that's what the former president and his allies are telling us. As I said in that New York Times op-ed, wherein I was speaking about the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the former president and his allies are executing that blueprint for 2024 in open, in plain view of the American public.

I repeat, I would have never uttered one single one of those words unless the former president and his allies were candidly and proudly speaking those exact words to America. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear here today for these proceedings.

It’s clear that Bill Stepien takes pride in his professional reputation, integrity, and abilities. He testified before the January 6 Committee that “there was a great deal wrong with the campaign,” 115 days before election day, when he stepped into the role of campaign manager for Trump’s 2020 reelection bid. “Most of my time was spent fixing the things that could be fixed with 115 days left in the campaign.”

It’s also clear that he conforms to the image of campaign consultant as hired gun. Trump, McCain, Bush, and Christie may or may not share conservative principles – it’s all the same to him. So long as the clients have an ‘R’ after their names. He’s there to run a professional campaign, and to fix things if necessary, for Republican candidates.

Stepien draws a contrast between (presumably ‘normal’) candidates who acknowledge reality and follow conventional democratic norms, and his candidate during the 2020 presidential race – who insisted against all evidence that he had won an election that he lost and whose cries of fraud have convinced more than half of the GOP's base voters of this lie. Here’s how Stepien describes the two camps in the White House after Trump’s thumping by Biden in November 2020:

I didn't mind being categorized. There were two groups of them. We called them kind of my team and Rudy's team. I — I didn't mind being characterized as being part of Team Normal, as — as reporters, you know, kind of started to do around that point in time. You know, I said, you know, hours ago, early on, that, you know, I've — I've been doing this for a long time, 25 years, and I've spanned, you know, political ideologies from Trump to McCain to Bush to Christie, you know.
And, you know, I can work under a lot of circumstances for a lot of varied, you know, candidates and politicians. But a situation where — and I think along the way I've built up a pretty good — I hope a good reputation for being honest and — and professional, and I — I didn't think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional at that point in time. So, again, that led to me stepping away.

But notice how quietly he stepped away (or seemed to). In Josh Dawsey’s words, “He was stepping away at the time behind the scenes but didn't necessarily want it reported as so publicly, and didn't want it widely known.”

He was stepping away at the time behind the scenes but didn't necessarily want it reported as so publicly, and didn't want it widely known. https://t.co/81wxCL9YQA

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) June 13, 2022

Why ever not? January 6, 2021 was nearly a year and a half ago. Why hasn't Stepien spoken out until now? Stepien takes care to separate himself rhetorically from Team Rudy. He wants no (public) association with Giuliani's crazed cast, featuring John Eastman, Peter Navarro, Steve Bannon, et al., all working feverishly on behalf of Donald Trump’s undemocratic, illegal, unconstitutional attempts to stay in office after losing the election. None of this was normal. And Stepien appears to embrace the normal  (not the authoritarian), though he claimed to be stepping away in secret.

Why in secret? Why stay silent?

Because two upfront choices were untenable from a professional point of view. Choice A: joining Team Rudy. Choice B: publicly opposing Team Rudy (and the Republican President of the United States). Here’s the bottom line – an old fashioned bottom line punctuated with dollar signs: Both choice A and choice B would have been bad for business. Better to not go there, not to either place.

Team Normal means business as usual. It was -- is -- better to fade into the background, not drawing any attention to oneself, and continuing to profit from the big lie. This don't rock the boat approach makes sense. It is hard to deny from a strictly financial point of view, from personal self-interest, that this is the rational choice. This counts for normal in today's Republican Party.

Some have criticized Stepien (and others) for not speaking out until after Trump conned the grassroots of the Grand Old Party, inspired countless undemocratic actions and authoritarian candidates across the country after January 6. Tim Miller suggests that Stepien wasn't on Team Normal, he was on Team Coup. That's because by choosing to stay silent he allowed the big lie to metastasize throughout the Republican Party. He understood what was going on and he decided to shrug it off.

Michelle Cottle suggests that Stepien was on Team Chicken, because "he slunk away, coat collar flipped up and hat brim pulled low in the hopes that no one would notice him fleeing the spiraling freak show to which he had sold his services and his soul. And he has since taken pains to stay on Mr. Trump’s good side ..."

Bess Levin, who concurs that Stepien continues to profit off Trump's big lie, provides more ugly details:

Stepien’s National Public Affairs firm is currently being paid $10,000 a month from Trump’s Save America PAC, and since May 2021, has received $130,000 from the group, plus another $90,562 from Trump’s “reconfigured presidential campaign,” according to a HuffPost analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. On top of that, Stepien’s firm has received a whopping $1.2 million from various Republicans working overtime to spread Trump’s big lie, including $190,488 from Harriet Hageman, who is attempting to unseat Representative Liz Cheney in Wyoming’s August Republican primary.
Despite no longer being a full-time Trump employee, Stepien nevertheless spends a significant chunk of his time continuing to do Trump’s bidding. According to HuffPost, the Republican strategist’s work is to “coordinate Trump’s political strategy, including Trump’s efforts to defeat candidates who challenge his false claim that the election was stolen from him or, worse, voted to impeach him for inciting the Jan. 6 attack.” Each week, Stepien reportedly participates in an hour-long conference call with top aides to the ex-president like Dan Scavino and Miller, as well as Donald Trump Jr. “He’s trying to tell the world he quit,” a Trump adviser told reporters S.V. Date and Jennifer Bendery. “He has been on every call since Jan. 6. He gets paid every month to do that…. I mean, come on, man.” Twelve out of Stepien’s 15 other clients running for Congress are major proponents of Trump’s big lie, including Hagemen, who told CNN in September, “I think that there are legitimate questions about what happened during the 2020 election.

Look more closely at Stepien's testimony and we don't hear opposition to Trump's big lie, or to his authoritarianism. He just doesn't want to talk about it. Only a House subpoena drew him out. (To oppose it would have been tantamount to joining Team Rudy.) He conceded during his testimony a preference for normal politics, but didn't reject the authoritarian turn of the Republican Party. That might have lost him clients.

Stepien has a lot of company on Team Normal. The professionals who surrounded Trump for four years, who wished to preserve their livelihoods, enjoy the respect of their fellow professionals, provide for their families, build nest eggs to live comfortably into retirement and to pass onto their children have overwhelmingly stayed silent.

So too the Republican men and women, on the whole, in the House and the Senate, and in statehouses, and county seats, and school boards, and so on all across the country. Many -- far too many -- have opted, of course, to join the crazies, the election deniers, the open authoritarians ready to reject democratic institutions. But most have both kept a (public) distance from Team Rudy and stayed silent.

Most prominent among the folks in this camp is Bill Barr, who did Trump's bidding time after time. In June 2020, after Trump had been railing for months about the fraud that would accompany mail-in ballots in November, Barr helpfully offered a new conspiracy theory: the danger of foreign interference in our election. Without a shred of evidence, he defended this fanciful speculation by appealing to "common sense." This was rejected by election officials (“It is absolutely not the case that someone could create a multitude of ballots and in some way infuse them or inject them into the system without detection”) and election experts ("Of all the ridiculous schemes that have been floated by the President or AG Barr for how mail-in ballot fraud could affect the election, the possibility of a foreign entity swaying election by mailing fraudulent absentee ballots is the most ludicrous") alike.

Barr persisted until a point when it seemed that Trump's lie about a stolen election was more likely to be an anchor around the necks of Republican candidates in competitive elections, than a winning strategy to get out the base vote (as Mitch McConnell, with an anxious eye on Georgia, was well aware).

Dahlia Lithwick mocks Bill Barr's testimony (which was damning to Trump, but provided a most convenient escape hatch from responsibility for Barr), during which the former AG:

used words like “rubbish” and “nonsense” and “bullshit” and “garbage” and “crazy” and “annoying” and “idiotic” and “stupid” to describe, frequently with a wide smile, how fundamentally silly Donald Trump’s claims about the 2020 election being stolen really were.

But of course insurrection isn't silly; it's deadly serious. And Barr was onboard with Trump until he wasn't. And when he wasn't, he decided to pretend that it was all a big joke.

It is not, of course. Moreover, Barr is still on the Trump train: prepared to vote for him again.

That's what Team Normal looks like in today's GOP: business as usual (with an unspoken embrace of authoritarianism).

We watch twenty staff members fleeing House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's office and then, as we see a mob fighting to break through a line of uniformed Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police officers battling to keep them back, we hear the frantic cry (in the headline above) from an officer, just after his appeals for help have gone unanswered: "We're trying to hold the upper deck. We're trying to hold the upper deck now. We're trying to hold the doors of the Capitol. I need support!"

Republican viewers did not see the January 6 committee's eleven-minute compilation of the attack on the Capitol on Fox News Channel. No Republican member of the House or the Senate can expect to be asked to watch with the TV audience anything resembling representative footage from the committee's video followed by a request for comment on what we have seen with our own eyes.

Police officers were brutally assaulted by an angry, violent mob that engaged in hand to hand combat with officers for hours, eventually breached the line, smashed through windows and doors, and finally entered the Capitol. Plausible deniability requires not looking squarely at what's plain to see. Fox News Channel, in concert with the MAGA establishment of the Republican Party, is dedicated to not looking.

Fox News viewers tuning into Tucker Carlson Tonight as the January 6 committee held its first hearing heard the host tut-tut "the ruling class," pronounce the January 6 riot as a "forgettably minor outbreak" of violence and the committee as offering "another extended prime time harangue," rather than covering real news: the rise in gas prices, increase in drug overdoses, an economy heading for recession -- "and scariest, and least noted of all, this country has never in its history been closer to a nuclear war." All this and more in the first sixty seconds of the show. [Editor's note: Fox has removed the YouTube video of Carlson's June 9 program that I relied on to offer the description in this paragraph.]

Philip Bump, in comments on the broadcast (which includes reviewing Carlson's fraudulent insinuation of a debunked conspiracy theory that the riot was a "false flag" operation) notes that Fox was determined not to reveal any substantive information from the committee -- even muted visuals that might inform:

For much of the show, the hearing was shown on-screen as Carlson and his guests spoke over it. Often, the view was not of the committee members, witnesses or the video display at the front of the hearing room. Instead it was often a shot of the audience. . . . During footage showing rioters breaking into the Capitol, Fox switched to the camera showing the audience. When the hearing showed information that didn’t need sound, Fox more than once cut away from it.

Bump summed up the counter-programming: "It hyped doubt about the election results, promoted debunked conspiracy theories and ironically cast the committee’s work as lies and propaganda."

The Fox News faithful tuned into Carlson never saw the video documentation of the violent battle that took place on January 6, 2021. They never heard the first-hand testimony of the police officer injured in the attack or of the documentary filmmaker following the Proud Boys that day. And they didn't hear the remarks of the committee's vice chair:

On the morning of January 6th, President Donald Trump’s intention was to remain President of the United States despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election and in violation of his Constitutional obligation to relinquish power. Over multiple months, Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power. In our hearings, you will see evidence of each element of this plan. -- From the opening remarks of Representative Liz Cheney

Although the attack on the Capitol was number six of the seven-part plan, it's a critical link. Any Americans determined not to believe their own eyes, with hours and hours of video evidence from multiple sources (including the rioters themselves) of the prolonged attack, are not likely to accept plain evidence of the plan to subvert the election that Trump lost.

If viewers watched Tucker Carlson Tonight last Thursday night, there are still many opportunities to see what actually happened. Fox News Channel does its best to keep folks in the bubble, but diehard FNC fans who avert their eyes from the reality of the January 6 assault on the Capitol appear to be willfully remaining in the dark.

Americans who deny part six of Trump's plan are probably unreachable. The hearings are for folks less dug into the fictive illusions of the Republican Party circa 2022.

The debate about guns and gun violence, like all virtually all political debates in the country today, is marked by starkly polarized views. As the Pew Research Center reports:

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are far more likely than Republicans and GOP leaners to see gun violence as a major problem (73% vs. 18%). And nearly two-thirds of Americans who describe their community as urban (65%) say the same, compared with 47% of suburbanites and 35% of those who live in rural areas.

In spite of the continuing cycle of mass shootings, Pew reports that Republican support for strengthening gun regulations has decreased since 2019. This reflects increasing polarization of the issue, as the substance of the debate has come to have less valence than the symbolism. Democrats are for gun reform; Republicans are opposed. That governs support for or opposition to any proposal, details be damned.

An exception is the popular support for closing the loopholes requiring background checks for gun sales. Pew reports that 70% of Republicans and 92% of Democrats favor this change. (There are a handful of other exceptions.)

As polarization increases, fewer Republicans can be expected to continue to support even modest reforms. But we're not there yet. Right now even Republicans support closing the gun show loophole. Yet Republicans in office (and in conservative media) consistently deflect proposals to change gun laws. They insist that Democrats are guilty of a breach of decorum if proposals are articulated too soon after a mass killing. (After the shock has worn off and the media has moved on, they can safely ignore the calls to act.) They insist that if any single proposal would not prevent every single mass shooting, then there's no point in legislating at all. And they raise ideas unrelated to guns -- such as blaming video games for gun violence, or pointing a finger at too many doors in schools, or bemoaning the lack of mental health care -- and then charge that Democratic proposals focusing on guns prove that Democrats don't want to solve the problem.

Texas Governor Gregg Abbott played the mental health card at his Uvalde press conference -- "We as a state, we as a society, need to do a better job with mental health" -- though just two months earlier he had cut $211 million from the state budget for the agency overseeing mental health. This, in the state of Texas, which can hardly boast of ample health care for its citizens:

Texas ranked 42nd overall in our measure of health system performance — in large part because of how hard it is for people in the state to get and afford the health care they need. It has the highest uninsured rate in the country, and fewer of its residents report having a regular source of health care — an important marker of how well the health system is working. Texas also has the largest number of residents who said they skipped health care they needed because of cost, and health insurance costs take a bigger share of people’s incomes in Texas than in almost any other state. Texas is also one of 14 states that still have not expanded Medicaid under provisions of the Affordable Care Act, leaving millions of working people uninsured.

We can count on Texas Senator Ted Cruz -- “Have one door into and out of the school and have that one door, armed police officers at that door” -- to oppose any effort to close the gun loophole. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to filibuster any such proposal. Why? Why stand in the way of such a popular law, supported by more than two-thirds of Republicans?

Culture war, not public policy solutions

Because the Republican Party has no interest in public policy solutions to social problems (even mass killings of elementary school kids). That's not what wins elections for Republicans. To endorse universal background checks, or a ban on the sale of assault rifles even to 18-year olds, or any other baby step to preventing gun violence, is to give up a culture war issue and allow the Democrats a win. (Note that while the Uvalde shooter legally purchased two assault rifles just after his 18th birthday, he could not have legally purchased either a handgun or an alcoholic beverage in Texas before turning 21.)

And because increasingly the Republican Party has come to rely on the support of extremists that the party would have rejected even a few years ago. As recently as January 2019, House Republican leaders removed New York's Steve King from the Judiciary and Agriculture Committees to distance the caucus from his white supremacist comments. Even the Senate's Mitch McConnell offered condemnation.

There is a faction of Americans ideologically committed to white nationalism and violence to achieve their ends who (since Trump) have been welcomed into the Republican coalition. The Proud Boys would not have been embraced by George W. Bush (or any prior Republican president in the past half century) -- but after Donald Trump, extremist groups, conspiracy theorists, the January 6 rioters, as well as folks enamored of military assault rifles and itching for a confrontation with government, are no longer kept at arm's length.

Watching House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy defer to the crackpot agitators in his caucus (in contrast to his actions regarding Steve King) illustrates the increasing dependence of the GOP to extremists on the right. Meanwhile, McConnell can be counted on to protect far right Senators (and those who depend on far right voters) by preventing an up or down vote on anything that resembles a bipartisan solution to the problem of gun violence (or any issue that touches on the culture war). Simply put: preventing offense to fringe constituencies trumps preventing mass shootings of school children in the GOP's election strategy.

As Jonathan Chait has noted in another context: "Most Republican officials regard these figures as kooks, threatening to derail the party’s agenda with unproductive messages and tactics. But they also don’t want to risk a rupture with their allies."

Continuing mass murders at the hands of assailants brandishing military weapons -- in our schools, churches, supermarkets, movie theaters, night clubs, country music concerts ...) -- is a consequence of the culture war that Republicans rely on. The growing death toll, year after year, month after month, is collateral damage resulting from a strategically focused Republican Party.

Texas, a deadly laboratory of democracy

Meanwhile, at the state level, Republicans are intent on passing measures that stop just short of celebrating gun violence. In Texas, after the Sutherland Springs, Santa Fe, El Paso, and Midland-Odessa shootings, the governor and legislature were undeterred in their continuing push to loosen gun restrictions. The campaign to encourage more widespread gun ownership and more public spaces with guns present has been unrelenting:

In 2011, the state banned public and private employers from prohibiting employees from stashing guns in the cars in their parking lots. In 2016, the state expanded open carry laws (in opposition to law enforcement officials) for licensed gun owners and required public universities to grant licensed gun owners the right to carry concealed weapons in dorms, classrooms, and campus buildings. In 2019, the state removed the cap on the number of school guards who could be armed and clarified the law to allow carrying guns into places of worship.

In 2021: the state granted everyone over 21 the right to carry a handgun in public with no permit and no training. Previously, state law required fingerprinting, at least 4 to 6 hours of training, and passing a written exam and a shooting proficiency text in order to get a gun license. The state a passed a Second Amendment sanctuary state bill designed to supersede any legislation that might (improbably) pass at the federal level. But the state wasn't done yet. Also in 2021:

Lawmakers also doubled down on gun rights when they approved bills that would eliminate the governor’s power to ban gun sales during an emergency, prohibit big state and local government contracts “that discriminate against the firearm or ammunition industries” and make it legal for gun owners to bring weapons into their hotel rooms.
The Legislature also passed a measure to allow school boards to let school marshals carry guns on their person instead of being required to keep them locked up, among other gun rights proposals.

The 2021 session of the state legislature was the first since the El Paso and Midland-Odessa shootings, which prompted "Republican leaders at the time to express an uncharacteristic openness to some gun control measures backed by Democrats."

That didn't happen of course. And it's safe to say that the bills that Republicans pushed through were not designed to prevent gun violence so much as to cater to an angry faction of the Republican base. It's a faction that doesn't represent most Republicans, even in Texas. But it's a critical portion of the voters who are most likely to cast ballots in Republican primary elections. And it's critical for Republican politicians to guard against an opponent running to their right in a Republican primary, not to let anyone (no matter how far outside the mainstream) outflank them in waging a culture war.

These bills were all about owning the liberals. The more outrageous, the less sensible, the better. They signaled that the Republican leadership in the state would not let mass gun deaths deter them from catering to an increasingly extreme fringe.

Texas is representative of many red states. Other states have and will follow a similar path. And increasingly, so will the federal government if Republicans get their way. They already control the Supreme Court, which can be expected next month to restrict the rights of states to regulate firearms (disregarding genuine respect for the language of the Constitution or for American historical practice stretching back to the founding).

[Post revised and expanded May 30, 2022.]

I'm not going to talk about basketball. Nothing's happened with our team in the last six hours. We're going to start the same way tonight. Any basketball questions don't matter.
Since we left shootaround, 14 children were killed 400 miles from here. And a teacher. In the last 10 days, we've had elderly Black people killed in a supermarket in Buffalo, we've had Asian churchgoers killed in Southern California. Now we have children murdered at school.
When are we going to do something? I'm tired. I'm so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there. I'm so tired. Excuse me. I'm sorry. I'm tired of the moments of silence. Enough!
There's 50 senators right now who refuse to vote on HR8, which is a background check rule that the House passed a couple years ago. It's been sitting there for two years. And there's a reason they won't vote on it: to hold onto power. . . .

Texas Senator Ted Cruz offered prayers. Shannon Watts and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were unimpressed.

After 16 people were killed in a hot air balloon in Lockhart, Texas, Ted Cruz authored and passed federal legislation improving safety rules. But after the shootings in El Paso and Santa Fe, he blamed mental illness for gun violence.

Thank God there's no hot air balloon lobby.

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) May 24, 2022

Aren’t you slated to headline a speaking gig for the NRA in three days - in Houston, no less?

You can do more than pray. Faith without works is dead. https://t.co/NMX64KljhL

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 24, 2022

I'm EMBARRASSED: Texas #2 in nation for new gun purchases, behind CALIFORNIA. Let's pick up the pace Texans. @NRA https://t.co/Ry2GInbS1g

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) October 28, 2015

The governor and Republicans in the Texas legislature have repeatedly promised after mass shootings to do something to protect lives, but after time has passed (as the Texas Tribune reports) "Confronted with mass shootings, Texas Republicans have repeatedly loosened gun laws."

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. -- Second Amendment to the United States Constitution

In 1975, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously (in United States v. Miller) that the right to bear arms was connected to "the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia." The intent of the Second Amendment is clear from the historical record. Firearms regulations were commonplace in urban areas in the Colonial era. As the late Chief Justice Warren Burger stated in 1991 regarding the individual right to bear arms, "This has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

Our country's continuing experience with mass shootings in schools, churches, supermarkets, theaters and other entertainment venues is no accident. Powerful political agents have made this possible -- and, not incidentally, made boatloads of money as the death tolls mount year after year like clockwork.

It doesn't matter to them that the semi-auto ban gives jack-booted government thugs more power to take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us. -- April 28, 1995 NRA fundraising letter, emphasizing the angry shift in NRA policy begun in 1977, which has made the NRA a rich organization has made Wayne LaPierre a rich man.

But not nearly as rich as the gun industry, which also made a decisive shift. It wasn't that long ago that the gun makers' trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, embraced a strict code of conduct and there were industry-wide norms regarding trade shows and advertising -- all of which served to encourage responsible use of firearms. That's long gone as the gun makers have vastly increased the sales of assault weapons (which have much higher profit margins than other guns).

Both the NRA and the gun manufacturers have chosen to partner with a far right that is itching for a fight:

Today the industry is all in on any pro-gun influencer, especially if they spout hateful, racist, or misogynistic rhetoric. People like Ted Nugent and Sebastian Gorka are received as heroes at gun industry trade shows. Instigators like Alex Jones are discussed in hushed tones as if they are deities. Even after fomenting insurrection, Donald Trump is welcomed as the main draw of the NRA convention and most gun companies eagerly line up to court the resulting frenzied masses.
Today, there is only one guiding gun industry principle, and it’s found in the NSSF’s marketing material: “always shooting for more.”

The most critical player guaranteeing that gun massacres continue to happen again and again, of course, is not the NRA and not the gun makers, but the Republican Party.

[Editor's note: headline inspired by the Onion, May 27, 2014.]

Jonathan Bernstein offers spot-on insights on American politics with every column and his piece last Wednesday was no exception. Though his observations are measured and well-grounded, there is sometimes room for a quibble or two. And, less often, more than a quibble. Let’s take a look at two paragraphs from “Republican Voters Aren’t Trump Zombies.”

So when the Washington Post’s Annie Linskey says that “Trumpism is having a better record than Trump himself tonight,” I’d say that the strain of the party that emerges as Trumpism or Tea Partyism or Gingrichism or Nixonism or McCarthyism — and yes, there are differences among those incarnations of right-wing radicalism but it’s not hard to see continuity as well — is particularly dominant within the party now, but it just doesn’t have all that much to do with Trump.
None of which is to dismiss Trump as a major player in Republican politics. His endorsement may not be treated as holy writ, but it doesn’t have to be to make a difference in close primaries. He’s popular among Republican voters. He may well win the party’s presidential nomination in 2024. He’s probably the single Republican most able to focus resentment and grievance. And should he regain the presidency, he remains dangerous to democracy precisely because he’s so bad at normal politics, not to mention unusually contemptuous of the rule of law.

Radicalism over the years

Yes, absolutely, there is great continuity from the 1950s to the present with numerous incarnations of radicalism in the Republican Party. And while it’s jolting to read the assertion that Trumpism – the dominant variant of GOP radicalism circa 2022 – “just doesn’t have all that much to do with Trump,” Bernstein is right. When we look at the trajectory and obsessions of the Republican Party, populated by shameless liars, white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, election deniers, and insurrectionists, with agendas inspired by the urge to own the liberals and an eagerness to employ the coercive power of the state against the perceived enemies of the GOP – Trump could be struck dead by a lightning bolt tomorrow and it wouldn’t make all that much difference. Trump has already set things in motion, accelerating the Republican Party in an authoritarian direction.

But then – in the final sentence of the quoted passage – Bernstein says of Trump that “should he regain the presidency, he remains dangerous to democracy precisely because he’s so bad at normal politics, not to mention unusually contemptuous of the rule of law.” While I agree regrading contempt for the rule of law, I have more than a quibble with Bernstein’s "precisely because" assessment regarding Trump’s dearth of political skills. I think this is flatly wrong.

A weak president

Throughout the Trump presidency, a recurring theme for Bernstein (often invoking Richard Neustadt’s Presidential Power), was that Trump was a weak president because he was so politically inept. Bernstein (as well as Dan Drezner,  David Hopkins, Matt Glassman, and other political scientists) argued that Trump, lacking both the understanding and the skillset to wield power effectively, often failed where more savvy, disciplined leaders would have notched victories.

This was, I believe, obviously true throughout the first year of the Trump presidency. And the second. Perhaps the third. But – at some point – things changed. Trump changed. The party actors changed. The political environment changed. And, while Trump continued to display glaring weaknesses at “normal politics,” he still managed to get what he wanted at times. He compensated for his deficiency with workarounds. And by the last months of his presidency he had become more powerful than the figure we had watched in earlier years.

In May 2020, Ross Douthat (who viewed Trump as a clownish figure, “interested in power only as a means of getting attention”) acknowledged Trump’s weaknesses, but argued that because “real political authority, the power to rule and not just to survive, is something that Donald Trump conspicuously does not seem to want,” that he posed no threat to democracy.

Bernstein disagreed and responded:

Presidential weakness isn’t insurance against harm. The real nature of presidential power, as the political scientist Richard Neustadt explained long ago, is a function of bargaining skill, mastery at gathering and processing information, understanding of the political and other incentives of those a president deals with, and thorough knowledge of the political system. Trump has none of those things. Indeed, that makes his influence minimal. But presidents who can’t manipulate the system to realize their visions of what the country needs try instead to work around the system, even if that means bending or breaking the rules. It usually doesn’t work, but along the way they can do all sorts of damage.

I agree with every word. Douthat is completely off base. And in mid-2020, I accepted the view of Trump as a weak president. But in retrospect, I believe that by that time, it was a mistake to continue to insist on Trump’s weakness. As I noted above, there is evidence that he compensated for his dearth of normal political skills. And – with all his failings – his strength became more evident throughout the final months of his presidency.

By May 2022, Trump had appointed Bill Barr as attorney general and was beginning to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the fall election, so he could dispute the loss – a long term project. In June, he  staged a triumphant march across Lafayette Square with General Milley, Attorney General Barr, and others in tow. And Trump inspired (and presided over in absentia) the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Whether normal or not, each of these episodes had implications for normal politics, Trump's political standing, and his dominance of the party.

Since leaving the White House, Trump has convinced most Republicans in the party that he was the legitimate winner of the November 2020 election; has inspired across the country election ‘audits,’ voter suppression legislation, laws to make it easier for Republicans in charge to overturn elections, and scores of GOP candidates (for governor, attorney general, secretary of state …  down to local election officials and even volunteers) who are committed to ensure his victory next time; has shown that he can still expect pledges of support from Congressional Republicans even after they have publicly stated that he is unfit to serve; and he continues to have broad support throughout conservative media.

A weak president? Not all that weak.

The obvious rebuttal to my view is that these are not examples of normal politics. This isn’t the stuff analyzed in Presidential Power; Neustadt doesn’t give points for insurrection. We can see this move in the language. Douthat mentions “real presidential authority.” Bernstein references “the real nature of presidential power,” the attempts “to work around the system,” and a few paragraphs later, “true presidential influence” and “the proper use of the political system.”

But a key dimension of presidential power is influence (Neustadt's "ability to persuade.") And Trump's influence -- if we set aside preconceptions about moving legislation or directing foreign policy (neither of much interest to the man) -- along several dimensions is highly significant, especially for someone who lost his reelection bid decisively.

Reagan was an icon. Reaganism became an invocation. We're still living in the economic world that Reagan blessed, which has given us an increasingly greater separation between the top one-tenth of one-percent and the rest of us. Trump has transformed the Republican Party and the country just as fundamentally -- with culture, not the economy, as the battlefield. (Ironically, this shift, by ensuring that race and culture dominate our politics, may actually keep Trickle-down economics in place and protect the billionaires from meaningful blowback.)

If Neustadt had studied the Trump presidency

I’ll venture that if Neustadt had observed the Trump presidency, he would have been willing to add another chapter to his book, broadening his view of presidential power to make sense of what he saw.

But even if not, we should broaden our view.

1. We should concede that Trump’s stumbling moves (even if illegitimate or illegal) sometimes served to boost his reservoir of legitimate presidential power. We should concede that when the political environment shifted; when the fealty of Republicans (in Washington, across the country, in office and out, on Fox News Channel and Facebook) to Trump swelled; when Trump became a huge political figure in spite of his weaknesses; when he retained the GOP crown even after his defeat -- every one of these things increased the man’s political power (as defined by Neustadt). Trump didn't get much smarter, but he succeeded in increasing his clout for good or for ill.

A rejoinder is that (in Drezner's words) "constraints on the presidency have been severely eroded in recent decades, enabling even a comparatively weak leader to be a powerful president." This is almost certainly so. But look at what he has conceded: Trump as a powerful president. A focus on Trump's many weaknesses is just wrongheaded.

2. But let’s grant, for the sake of argument, that Trump was a weak president and (if he were to return) he would be a weak president in the future. Still, that’s not what makes him dangerous. He has shown that he isn't deferential to democratic norms (inside or outside the rule of law) and may transgress those norms whenever the whim strikes. He has demonstrated repeatedly that he is ready, willing, and able to trample democratic safeguards. We can be certain that we would see more of these transgressions in a second term. Count on it. That's the danger, not whether Trump is or is not skillful at normal politics.

3. Finally, if it were true that Trump is a danger to democracy precisely because he is poor at normal politics, then could we be assured that a more skillful Republican with an itch for authoritarian rule would pose a lesser danger? Not at all.

Consider a Ron DeSantis White House. His political skills appear far sharper than Trump's, but this isn't in the least reassuring. Yes, we could imagine hypothetical situations where DeSantis would act less recklessly than Trump, but in the real world (when we can't choose a hypothetical future), we have no reason to suppose that democracy would be less threatened by President DeSantis than by President Trump.

Donald Trump is bad at normal politics. Yes, his ignorance and fecklessness early on may have prompted transgressions against democracy. But at this stage, that's water under the bridge. I believe we can be grateful that Trump was as feckless as he was for as long as he was. And going forward, we have every reason to fear another Trump term, regardless of his mastery of, or failures to master normal politics.

The key concept for the 21st century GOP: dividing Americans into us and them. Even in our national celebrations.

Trump’s Mother’s Day message accurately reflects his level of respect for them. Heartwarming. The Family Values party. pic.twitter.com/9aeYUSXf73

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 8, 2022