A year ago, members of the newly elected House were about to be sworn in. A blue wave had given Democrats the majority. The stage was set for a year that would test the Trump presidency. Mueller’s team was expected to report its findings. The House committees, which had abdicated their oversight responsibilities under Republican leadership, would surely issue subpoenas and hold serious hearings. Damning information would come to light, and pressure for impeachment would grow. How would Trump’s Republican base hold up against a tide of denunciation?
That question framed the events of 2019. As the year unfolded, we saw ever more clearly that the answer was “damn well.” The Mueller Report brought cries of “total exoneration” from Trump and a chorus of “nothing to see here” from his idolaters. They didn’t need Barr’s perfidious summary, nor did they lift an eyebrow when Barr was shown to be a common shyster. In national polls, Trump held on to his wedge of the approval pie.
Through the spring and into the summer, the House subpoenaed Trump’s lackeys and government documents. They got nothing. Trump had spread a “no cooperation” order across the Executive Branch. No more checks and balances. He might as well have declared the Constitution dead. Was his base aghast? Did shock waves rock the states he carried in 2016? Not a bit. A recent Pew poll shows that 43% of Republicans and Republican leaners, a record high, think the country’s problems could be addressed more effectively if presidents “didn’t have to worry so much about Congress and the courts.” Tyranny good, divided powers bad.
In August, an unidentified whistleblower filed a complaint about Trump with the inspector general for the intelligence community. The complaint alleged that Trump, in a phone call with Ukraine’s president, said the delivery of anti-tank missiles depended on Ukraine’s willingness to investigate his chief political rival. In effect, Trump was allegedly bribing Ukraine for a political favor. The Constitution explicitly identifies bribery as an impeachable crime.
The House Intelligence Committee investigated the allegation in a number of televised hearings and found it completely credible. The few attempts at rebuttal were absurd, yet every Republican voted to reject the committee’s report. Like the Trump base, the House Trumpists are intransigent. There’s little doubt that when articles of impeachment reach the Senate, the Senate Trumpists will be the same. We are witnessing nothing less than the debasement of an entire political party.
Just last month, an Economist/YouGov poll reported that 53% of Republicans think Trump is a better leader than Lincoln was. I was gobsmacked. This was off-the-chart ignorance! But then I recalled that the heart of Trump’s base is in the South. Maybe after 154 years, they still don’t cotton to Lincoln. We know from examples of bloody animosity — Christian-Jewish, Catholic-Protestant, Sunni-Shiite, European American-Native American, Turkish-Armenian, Hutu-Tutsi — that hatred dissipates at pretty much the same pace as rocks erode.
These phenomena are symptoms of the fissure that separates the Red and Blue States. I think we can make these inferences about it:
- It’s long and deep. Religiosity, sexual expression, abortion, chauvinism, gun rights, the privileges of wealth, social democracy, racial animus, ethnic animus, and unconditional suffrage are all Red/Blue issues. They go right to the marrow of our society.
- It existed in much the same form when our nation was founded. It has simply been more manifest at some times than others. Trump is the catalyst that made it manifest in our time.
- There is no simple way to close it. When politicians say, “Vote for me. I will bring us together again,” turn away. No set of public policies will close a breach of this enormity, not in our lifetimes nor in our children’s or grandchildren’s lifetimes.
Who wants to wait a century or more to see a substantial majority — say, 75% of the electorate — be of one mind on issues that are vital to our happiness? There is, however, a way around this curse, and it could be implemented in a decade. It has a serious drawback, though — it’s disturbingly strong medicine. I’ll elaborate in my next post.
The Scratching Post 