A HAPPIER NEW YEAR?

Wishing for a happy new year is a stretch.

 

The revival of spirits on the Left and in the Middle because of Trump’s declining popularity and Democratic electoral successes in 2024 is the calm before the storm.

 

A recapitulation of Trump’s assaults on the Constitution and the country is superfluous.  His contempt for the rule of law and his corruption of the Department of Justice, including the FBI, are now well-known.  Trump has converted the Department of Homeland Security and its subagencies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol (BP), into units of a national gestapo.  His foreign policy is a failure, alienating allies and undermining national interests.  Likewise, his domestic policy is demoralizing increasing numbers of Americans and harming the wellbeing of tens of millions. The non-legacy media has been doing an excellent job of describing and analyzing these assaults; the legacy media—New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, and NBC—not so much.

 

Assessments of Trump himself pre-occupy many but are pointless; they provide no means to curtail his impulses or arrest his conduct.  But the singularity of the man makes it necessary to at least characterize him in general terms: personally, a sociopath; socially, a vulgarian; and politically, a vandal.  His destruction of the East Wing and his debasement of the Kennedy Center say it all.  Altogether, he resembles nothing so much as a mob boss.  He surrounds himself with people who are or have been reduced to lickspittles.  How he will respond, if, as many expect, a “Blue Wave” in the November election overcomes their efforts to rig the outcome, is problematic.  He will do everything possible to reverse the results—to include the use of military forces to intimidate or interfere with votes, before the courts can act.  (My fear is that troops, in the event of protests, particularly election-related protests, will fire on civilians, ala Kent State, 1970.)  Failing his attempts, he will not only be angry at a loss of political power, but also afraid of revelations by House or Senate hearings.  Even if he pardons all of his political appointees, immunity from prosecution will not protect them from having to testify under oath without the refuge of the Fifth Amendment.

 

The original sins of SCOTUS should be laid to the machinations of Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, now sidelined by the MAGA-aligned Congressional leadership of John Thune, who shepherded unqualified presidential nominees through confirmation.  But the real culprit is the Chief Justice John Roberts, a smirking preppie of privilege, who has, for two decades, bankrupted the law by increasingly corrupting legal reasoning and judicial conduct in favor of the rich, the white, and the well-born—and against the rest.  Under his leadership, SCOTUS has rendered decisions impairing democratic elections, civil rights, gender equality, abortion rights, and more, many curtailing or reversing precedents.  Recently, many such decisions have responded to administration claims of “emergencies” by resorting to and expanding the use of the “shadow docket,” by which the Court ignores legal reasoning or routine judicial processes and publishes diktats without justifications or hearings.  The accelerating drift of the Court in these decisions has been to embrace the “unitary executive theory,” which centers all power for running the government in the President.  What is surprising about this development is that the Roberts Court has embraced this theory during the presidency of the worst occupant of the office in American history; one can imagine realizing the theory during the crisis-riddled presidencies of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt—but Donald J. Trump?

 

Trump’s use of the military is frightening.  This aging, unwell man, unhinged to any cause higher than himself, has shown himself willing to abuse the military by deploying it against Americans, all the more so since he plainly deploys them against majority Democratic cities whose residents Trump deems “enemies of the state.”  Although he promised to end ongoing wars and not launch new ones, he has criminally bombed Iran because of its nuclear program, is criminally attacking civilian boats on the high seas, has criminally bombed Venezuela and abducted its president and his wife, is threatening criminal intervention in Iran in support of Iranian protesters, and is, no doubt, disposed to additional military adventures.  No less ominous is that, in the face of a real threat to our national interests and our allies and alliances, he is behaving erratically and unreliably in assisting Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression.  Indeed, the parallels between Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Trump’s incursion into Venezuela are obvious and ominous.  There can be little doubt that his misuses of the military, past, present, and future, reflect not only his authoritarian inclinations, but also his calculated use of these forces as a distraction from his political misfortunes, not least the unfolding and increasingly threatening revelations suggested by the Epstein files.

 

There is no reason to think that these conditions, developments, or propensities will not continue into the new year.  Indeed, Trump’s declining popularity even in his base from the pressures of the Epstein files, the rise in inflation and unemployment, the failed tariffs, and the increase in ACA insurance premiums, among other issues, will make him more, not less, reckless.  His losses on all fronts, though celebrated by his opponents, mean that he has less to lose by increasingly authoritarian actions and greater reliance on military and paramilitary government forces.

 

Unhappily, the likelihood that the Democratic Party will respond sensibly to electoral successes in 2026 and 2028 is slim, for three reasons.  The party, known for its demographic and political diversity, will not achieve a consensus on its priorities on basic issues.  Hopes that it can undo the damage done by Trump and his administration will be dashed by quarreling about which reforms matter most.  Moreover, Republicans surviving a “Blue Wave” will think themselves invulnerable if the electorate does not repudiate them for their allegiance to Trump; so, unless Democrats eliminate the filibuster in the Senate, Republicans will obstruct Democratic reforms.  Finally, an electorate which re-elected Trump to a second term after a 4-year interval allowing it to assess his performance is not an electorate which is smart or sensible enough to restore democracy under duress.  Trump’s re-election suggests to friends and foes alike that America is politically retarded, unstable, and untrustworthy.

 

Meanwhile, SCOTUS has set the example for at least one generation that the Constitution and the laws are malleable, even dispensable, and will thereby disillusion it about democracy and make it skeptical of its virtues.  SCOTUS reform will have no immediate effect in restoring confidence in the rule of law.  The result will be legal uncertainty, instability, confusion, and conflicts of all kinds for decades.  It would be naïve to expect anything else.  Needless to say, as a confidence-building measure in a restored government, all departments and agencies, especially Justice, Defense, Homeland Security, and State, must be purged of Trump’s political appointees and loyalists.

 

The election of a Democratic president in 2028 will be no assurance that the central feature of Trump’s presidency will not persist.  That feature is the expansion of presidential power consistent with the unitary executive theory.  Historically, every president has built on the expansion of his predecessor’s power.  The threat to democracy will remain if Trump’s Democratic successor retains the powers which Trump centralized in his office, even if that successor does not enlarge upon them.  To reduce that threat, the president must be willing to do the unprecedented: renounce and reverse the powers which Trump and some predecessors have amassed in the presidency.  The list of such powers is long, but we can give thanks that Trump’s abuses of his office have identified many weaknesses in the Constitution and the laws, and in SCOTUS.  Trump’s Democratic successor must encourage Congress to reduce the powers of the Executive Branch, especially the size and authorities of the White House.  He or she must encourage Congress to re-examine and revise the scope of SCOTUS’s authority in light of its illegitimate decisions and the corrupt conduct of its justices.  He or she must also encourage it to pass Constitutional amendments to redress those weaknesses which cannot be redressed by laws.  Without radical reforms of the Constitution and the laws of the land, democracy will remain vulnerable to anti-democratic forces which have undermined it for nearly half a century.  Like former confederates, who maintained their allegiance to the “Lost Cause” and metastasized in the KKK, MAGA devotees, even in defeat, will remain loyal to Trump and his political heirs.

 

The only way 2026 can be a happier year is work to fulfill the promises of the Declaration of Independence: the political equality of all people and their free and unfettered consent in their governance.  We now know that such work requires a willingness to support radical changes in the Constitutional and legal implementation of these promises.