by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
I have not been this rattled since election night 2016. We’re not in a crisis because the system isn’t working. We don’t live a liberal democracy anymore because one of the two major parties in our body politic doesn’t believe in it anymore. They have no shame. Power is for power’s sake. They only care about “democracy” when they’re out of power.
But, let me make some observations.
One of the big flaws in my opinion of Democrats is they’re oblivious to the asymmetrical radicalization that’s taken place. To date, the Democrats have picked up the slack. They represent a broader type of people because the Republicans have grown so radicalized that they are able to function quite well feeding off the votes of angry older men without a college education. So, it’s at times like this that you have to think more about triage than any form of “victory” if you’re dealing with something Trump has done.
At the absolute best, you’re going to get The Pence Pivot. That is the absolute best case scenario. And that is likely only to happen not because of anything you may actually be able to prove, but because Trump finally snaps. Trump would have to do something so surreal, so absolutely demonstrably impossible to defend that Republicans simply start talking about how great Pence is. And they still won’t vote to convict Trump in the Senate. So Trump will still be in power. He will still be setting policy and he will still be sending Federal judges to to the Senate to be confirmed. The only difference is, Republicans won’t shut up about how great a president Pence will make in 2025. Even then, Trump is likely to fire Pence, and they’ll have to rationalize that away. And they will.
With that in mind, what can you actually expect to get? The first thing you have to accept is they want to own the moment. They want to own the moment so bad that they will lie, they will distort and they will deflect. All I can say is pick whatever point you want to made and stick to it. At some point the MAGA person will either stop talking to you or attack you personally. To lose the moment is to show weakness.
One thing interesting is it’s possible the reason why The White House was so chill with the transcript is they figured that people — specifically the base — would shrug and say, “That’s just Trump being Trump. We knew that about him when we voted for him, fuck you.” This is the reason for the dramatic difference in takes on this issue. Normal people are astonished that a sitting president would act this way, while MAGA either lulzs it or they start talk about how Trump did not do what we all think he did and by the way fuck you.
In this environment, what can we, in fact, hope for? Well, the only thing I got is Trump himself. If Trump is such a wreckless numbskull that he would call up a foreign power and behave the way he did a day after the “poor optics” of the Mueller testimony, it’s reasonable to believe Trump is going to continue to be his own worst enemy. If he really wanted to get kind of dark, you would suggest that Trump is likely going to finally lose his mind and take us places as a nation that we never imagined. And, like I said, even then Trump will never be convicted in the Senate. Because Republicans have no shame and only care about power for power’s sake, it’s reasonably possible that Trump could be in a catatonic state and still be president. Everyone would know this. About 60% of the electorate would be flabbergasted and an organized, passionate 40% would think we should lay off in Trump’s time of need.
The most astonishing aspect to all of this is House Trump is consolidating power in a spectacular and brazen manner. That the only way we extricate ourselves from this is Trump is criminally incompetent and on the cusp of maybe losing his mind is maybe the most devastating aspect to all of this.
I need a stiff drink.
