This morning, I came across an OpEd by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat that I found to be both extremely sensible and also encouraging. In essence, he urges us to calm down, stop imagining the worst, that Trump will refuse to play by the rules and attempt to remain in office despite his election defeat, and focus instead on what needs to be done to help the Biden presidency succeed. Easier said than done, but I think he’s right … see what you think.
There Will Be No Trump Coup
A final pre-election case for understanding the president as a noisy weakling, not a budding autocrat.
By Ross Douthat
Opinion Columnist
Oct. 10, 2020
Three weeks from now, we will reach an end to speculation about what Donald Trump will do if he faces political defeat, whether he will leave power like a normal president or attempt some wild resistance. Reality will intrude, substantially if not definitively, into the argument over whether the president is a corrupt incompetent who postures as a strongman on Twitter or a threat to the Republic to whom words like “authoritarian” and even “autocrat” can be reasonably applied.
I’ve been on the first side of that argument since early in his presidency, and since we’re nearing either an ending or some poll-defying reset, let me make the case just one more time.
Across the last four years, the Trump administration has indeed displayed hallmarks of authoritarianism. It features egregious internal sycophancy and hacks in high positions, abusive presidential rhetoric and mendacity on an unusual scale. The president’s attempts to delegitimize the 2020 vote aren’t novel; they’re an extension of the way he’s talked since his birther days, paranoid and demagogic.
These are all very bad things, and good reasons to favor his defeat. But it’s also important to recognize all the elements of authoritarianism he lacks. He lacks popularity and political skill, unlike most of the global strongmen who are supposed to be his peers. He lacks power over the media: Outside of Fox’s prime time, he faces an unremittingly hostile press whose major outlets have thrived throughout his presidency. He is plainly despised by his own military leadership, and notwithstanding his courtship of Mark Zuckerberg, Silicon Valley is more likely to censor him than to support him in a constitutional crisis.
His own Supreme Court appointees have already ruled against him; his attempts to turn his voter-fraud hype into litigation have been repeatedly defeated in the courts; he has been constantly at war with his own C.I.A. and F.B.I. And there is no mass movement behind him: The threat of far-right violence is certainly real, but America’s streets belong to the anti-Trump left.
So if you judge an authoritarian by institutional influence, Trump falls absurdly short. And the same goes for judging his power grabs. Yes, he has successfully violated post-Watergate norms in the service of self-protection and his pocketbook. But pre-Watergate presidents were not autocrats, and in terms of seizing power over policy he has been less imperial than either George W. Bush or Barack Obama.
There is still no Trumpian equivalent of Bush’s antiterror and enhanced-interrogation innovations or Obama’s immigration gambit and unconstitutional Libyan war. Trump’s worst human-rights violation, the separation of migrants from their children, was withdrawn under public outcry. His biggest defiance of Congress involved some money for a still-unfinished border wall. And when the coronavirus handed him a once-in-a-century excuse to seize new powers, he retreated to a cranky libertarianism instead.
All this context means that one can oppose Trump, even hate him, and still feel very confident that he will leave office if he is defeated, and that any attempt to cling to power illegitimately will be a theater of the absurd.
Yes, Trump could theoretically retain power if the final outcome is genuinely too close to call.
But the same would be true of any president if their re-election came down to a few hundred votes, and Trump is less equipped than a normal Republican to steer through a Florida-in-2000 controversy — and less likely, given his excesses, to have jurists like John Roberts on his side at the end.
Meanwhile, the scenarios that have been spun out in reputable publications — where Trump induces Republican state legislatures to overrule the clear outcome in their states or militia violence intimidates the Supreme Court into vacating a Biden victory — bear no relationship to the Trump presidency we’ve actually experienced. Our weak, ranting, infected-by-Covid chief executive is not plotting a coup, because a term like “plotting” implies capabilities that he conspicuously lacks.
OK, the reader might say, but since you concede that the Orange Man is, in fact, bad, what’s the harm of a little paranoia, a little extra vigilance?
There are many answers, but I’ll just offer one: With American liberalism poised to retake presidential power, it needs clarity about its own position. Liberalism lost in 2016 out of a mix of accident and hubris, and many liberals have spent the last four years persuading themselves that their position might soon be as beleaguered as the opposition under Putin, or German liberals late in Weimar.
But in reality liberalism under Trump has become a more dominant force in our society, with a zealous progressive vanguard and a monopoly in the commanding heights of culture. Its return to power in Washington won’t be the salvation of American pluralism; it will be the unification of cultural and political power under a single banner.
Wielding that power in a way that doesn’t just seed another backlash requires both vision and restraint. And seeing its current enemy clearly, as a feckless tribune for the discontented rather than an autocratic menace, is essential to the wisdom that a Biden presidency needs.
Great
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Thank you!
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This is where History comes crashing through the windows. Yes it can be assumed Trump being the immature louse that he is would think about such a thing and rally his millions…..Thing is he would not be the first to try this and end up on his rear.
As pointed out in the piece he does not have the unswerving loyalty of his Security Services and they can promptly find so many was to ‘defend’ the constitution.
Yes there is the nascent risk of low level civil war breaking out, such as was witnessed in Ulster back in the 1960s to 1990s. This is possible in all nations at all times (UK quivered on this in the early 1900s).
All things in politics are possible, whether they come to pass is another matter.
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I find living through these times to be both fascinating (like watching a major train wreck) and depressing … they alternate from one day to the next. I think that I won’t see the way in which today’s issues resolve themselves … would that I could, but I have no desire to live to be 120 years old!
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(Whisper) – Here’s the thing Jill, they never resolve, we just have quiet, middling, turbulent and down-right nasty episodes of variable lengths and not in any particular order.
Also not in uniform status across the world.
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Ahhhhhh … so humans will never learn to live together in peace, then. Mass chaos will keep returning again and again until finally the human species extinguishes itself. What fun. 😒
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Well apart from a substantial number of of folk who vote for Trump and their like in the rest of the world, the evidence of the fossil record shows what happens if you don’t adapt……
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Yep … sure does. And we aren’t adapting, are we? Oh well … wolf pack, here I come! 🐺
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When you are howling at the moon keep a look out for that very small speck flitting across it’s image; that’ll be me
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I will … and I’ll raise a paw and say, “Hey Roger!!! How’s it going?”
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I’ll swoop down low and wave to the pack, you Jill especially
Lyrics:
I’m up to the eyes n’ I love everyone
Today I could cry I could reach for the sun
I’m walking on air ‘n’ I’m here ‘n’ I’m there
I travel the sky but for what I don’t care
Fly me straight and fly me high
Fly me straight and fly me high
I’m up ‘n’ I’m down ‘n’ I’m gone, I’m around
I’m driving along with no wheels on the ground
Hang on to me tight ’cause it doesn’t last long
A few hours more and it’ll be gone
Fly me straight and fly me high
Fly me straight and fly me high
I leave you behind on the streets in the gloom
I’m up here alone and there’s plenty of room
You won’t see me, I’ll see you, I’m too fast
Whoops! Here I come, Now I’m gone. Now I’m past
Fly me straight and fly me high
Fly me straight and fly me high
I’m up to the eyes and I love ev’ryone
Today I could cry I could reach for the sun
I’m walking on air ‘n’ I’m here ‘n’ I’m there
I travel the sky but for what I don’t care
Fly me straight and fly me high
Fly me straight and fly me high (‘sept for that bit about ‘love everyone’…. that an’t me)
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And we will both be in our element, free from the idiocy of the human world. Never heard that one by the Moody Blues … thanks!
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Mind you being a ghost and bothering some folk who deserve bothering does have an appeal 🤭
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Agreed! I can see where that might be a great deal of fun … hmmm …
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Yeah like getting into Limbaugh’s bedroom at 3am and singing ‘The Sound of Music’ loudly and out of tune to the accompaniment of a large bass drum.
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Ha ha ha … if I sang ANYTHING, it would be loud (I seem to talk louder than average because I can’t hear) and definitely out of tune!!! Just ask my girls, or the kitties! Great idea!!!
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The cunning beauty of the plan is since the guy has been in and out of rehab and suchwhich if he tries to tell anyone, they’ll start to think …’Uh-ho…..time to call the Wacko-Wagon, this is the big one!’ 😉
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I love it! Perhaps I will do that after all!
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Jill, Ross Douthat is a voice of reason. Yet, Trump is both a noisy weakling and a budding autocrat. It is where false bravado accompanies an enormous ego. Keith
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This is true, too. And, we cannot forget his base and the fact that they are mostly all ardent gun-toting bigots, easily susceptible to him stirring them to violence, as he has done before.
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Jill, my newspaper ran Douthat’s column today. Ironically, it was the same day they ran my letter, so I was glad to see that. Keith
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You’re in good company, then!
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Reblogged this on Musings on Life & Experience and commented:
Words of wisdom.
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Thank you, Suzanne!!!
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well said by Douthat. I am not worried that Trump would try to stay in office if he loses; as Douthat points out, he has little support for such a bold move.
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This is true, but he also has sycophants in key places, like William Barr. And, there’s a reason he’s determined to get Barrett confirmed before the election. I don’t think he’ll be successful at staging a takeover if he loses the election, but he can cause some major havoc, especially if he riles his base enough. Sigh.
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I think I’m more worried about how his base will react than how he reacts.
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As am I, my friend. They all own guns … big guns … and they are easily riled by Trump’s rhetoric. A dangerous combination.
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21 days…
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Yep, the countdown begins …
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He walks the walk and talks the talk and can put your fears at rest so easily. Yet I’ve been telling you that for years and still you look for rabbit holes.
Cwtch
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Nah … he was encouraging, but didn’t put my fears to rest. You, on the other hand, while not quite putting my fears to rest, have managed to pull me out of the rabbit hole and have given me the strength to keep on fighting the good fight.
Cwtch
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A great counter-weight to our fears, Jill. I had forgotten to look deeper to what institutional support Trump would have, like the military. From Douthat’s article it seems that very few, if any of those institutions would back him in an unconstitutional fight. I also like this statement “Our weak, ranting, infected-by-Covid chief executive is not plotting a coup, because a term like “plotting” implies capabilities that he conspicuously lacks.”
I hope this article has eased your anxieties a little. ~hugs~
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It is encouraging, gives us pause in our fatalistic musings, but I’m still leery of what might happen in the coming months, for as we all know, Donald Trump does NOT play by any rules but his own. Still, I do like this perspective and it has in some ways given me more reason to hope for a sane outcome! Huge Hugs!!!
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