It has been quite a week in America as our team pulled together a discourse on the week that was in the aftermath of the Trump indictment in New York: |
Call Ron DeSantis what you please. The new Scott Walker? Tim Pawlenty? Bobby Jindal? Or how about the new Rick Perry? One more Republican Great White Hope presidential candidate who appears to be headed directly for the dumpster. Nikki Haley and Mike Pence might start making room for him on the Bench of Nobodies.
Of course, I never ever make predictions in these essays. Though such a disastrous end for DeSantis sure seems like a real possibility. His current faux book tour/ campaign swing has revealed a candidate who has jumped into waters way above his head. The problem with DeSantis is that he needs to be playing a role and he cannot quite decide what the role is. He cannot rely on his instincts as Trump does because it’s not clear he has any other than being a coldly cynical opportunist.
While he peddles himself as a tribune of freedom and liberty, his biggest support comes from those delighted by how he uses the power of big government to bludgeon his real and invented opponents and enemies. Not much in common with traditional conservatism. They love how he snubbed common sense public safety protocols during the pandemic so he could demonize Dr. Fauci. They revel in his unrelenting attacks on “CRT,” “wokeness,” and public education in general. He’s a zealot when it comes to banning books. And his aggravated hostility to everything and anything LGBTQ earns him the highest marks among the most backward segments of the populace. And what can be more glorious than kicking Mickey Mouse in the nuts?
All of this unabashed aggression is just fine and dandy back home in his own private DeSantiStan of Florida – where there is clearly something in the water that turns so many of its residents into jackasses. But it’s not nearly enough to win a general election for President of the United States and, sadly for the Governor, it looks like it might not be enough to even win the Republican nomination.
There’s a simple reason impeding certain victory for DeSantis. It’s that nobody does Donald J. Trump better than Donald J. Trump. And all that DeSantis has done so far is to project only a slight variation of classic Trumpism, making him but a cheap and unsatisfying imitation.
I did you all a favor and watched Trump’s Saturday rally in Waco, Texas so you didn’t have to. And while Trump is now crazier than a bedbug, and quite dangerous I might add, his performance for more than 90 minutes still captivated the thousands who hung through hours of delirious warm up speeches to intently listen, applaud, hoot and holler for Trump.
There’s just no way on earth that DeSantis can match such a performance. He lacks the charisma, the evil charm and the manic energy of Trump. Indeed, DeSantis lacks any visible personality whatsoever, any set of working social skills and, most importantly, he seems to lack any specific knowledge of who he is and exactly what he stands for. Being Trump Light doesn’t cut it, especially when the Real Thing is still out and performing in public with full froth and effervescence. He caught a whiff of hell from “establishment” Republicans when he issued an inane statement last week enlisting in the Trumpian world view, writing of the Russian war against Ukraine as a mere “territorial dispute” of no strategic interest to the U.S. That might get him some kudos from the GOP’s Putin faction as well as an invite to a Code Pink rally but it went over like Hitler’s Bar Mitzvah among a whole lot of Republicans who still despise Russia. After he was chastised for it, he pasted together a couple new sentences in an interview late last week, reversing course and agreeing that Putin was a war criminal that needs to be “held accountable.” In the end, DeSantis wound up alienating both major factions of the GOP, those who support the war and those who oppose it by feebly trying to have it both ways.
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Along with the standard disclaimer that it’s still early and that the coming indictment/s of Trump may radically scramble the picture, make no mistake about it: Donald Trump as of today remains the undisputed leader of a very diseased Republican Party as well as standing as the clear front runner and favorite for the nomination. Yes, his support has somewhat deteriorated…after all when any pol hits 95% approval as he once did among Republicans, some decline is inevitable. But that’s not the same as being out of the game. At the moment, Trump faces no real or serious primary challenge other than DeSantis who, in order to prevail, must not only deeply cut into Trump’s base, but must also expand his appeal to somewhat more rational Republicans (assuming there are any still left). And as to the indictments, I will make another non-prediction: the coming indictments will certainly not help Trump in a general election, but they are not going to hurt him much in the primaries. He’s perfectly capable of getting to the nomination finish line first but with an arm and a leg blown off and bleeding from the head as a result of legal action against him. He’s not going to surrender mid-stream no matter how many body parts fall off. Keep this much in mind: Donald Trump today is much more popular among a broader swath of Republicans than he was in 2016.
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One of the great masturbatory pundit games of the moment is to speculate on whether Trump or DeSantis represents the greater threat to American democracy. Sorry. They both do. If DeSantis were to prevail he would do so by absorbing the Trump base and rendering himself subject to it, the same way Kevin McCarthy has become MTG’s official Little Bitch (McCarthy further pandered to the neo-fascist right this week by meeting with and celebrating the mother of Ashli Babbitt—the young woman who was shot to death on January 6 as she tried to penetrate the room where several congress-members were hiding). The contest between Trump and DeSantis can accurately be described as one between a deranged grifter and psychopath on the one hand and on the other a grim, committed authoritarian who seems willing to support any extreme policy so long as it pisses off Democrats.
Trump, meantime, has never been as dark, as threatening, as extreme as he has in his current phase. It was no accident that for this first big campaign rally he chose Waco, Texas – virtual sacred ground for the anti-government, pro-fascist militias and other extremists who live among us. This is where in 1993 some 80 members of the Branch Davidian religious cult were incinerated (by fires they set) culminating a 51 day FBI siege of the cult compound. And it was to commemorate Waco that Tim McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building killing nearly 200 people on the precise anniversary of the Waco holocaust two years later. Holding the rally there was a strong message to the fascist adjacent Right that Trump is their guy. And in case that wasn’t clear enough, Trump went out of his way to heap adoration on the American Right’s current Eva Braun -- Marjorie Taylor Greene. “Marjorie Taylor Greene. I don’t want to insult you by saying this, Marjorie, but on the plane, I said, ‘People don’t realize how brilliant she is,’” Trump said and then went on to applaud her recent solidarity visit with January 6 defendants in the DC jail.
“Would you like to run for the Senate?” Trump then asked in Greene’s direction. “I would fight like hell for you.”
(Another non-prediction: it sure sounded to me like Trump is seriously considering MTG as his running mate).
If there was any doubt as to exactly whom Trump was aiming his performance that was clarified as soon as he took the stage (that is after Ted Nugent called Zelenszky a “homosexual weirdo” and Pillow Guy Lindell repeated a long list of lies about the 2020 election). His hand over his heart, Trump stood solemnly as the so called “January 6 Choir” — composed of violent jailed Jan6 rioters sang a ditty called “Justice for All” featuring Trump himself reciting the Pledge of Allegiance over the choir singing the national anthem. Roll over, Horst Wesel!
During his 90 minute speech, full of whining about American Carnage, and painting a picture of an America haunted by roaming violent gangs of immigrants, BLM thugs, a woke, collapsed and useless military, a rogue FBI persecuting Free Americans, and deviant sexual perverts sifting through our schools bent on grooming our children he referred to the 2024 election in apocalyptic terms, calling it the “final battle” to save the country from “demonic” forces. This is crap straight out of the Militia Right playbook. The previous week he issued a late night screed from Mar-A-Lago calling the Manhattan African-American prosecutor Alvin Bragg a “a Soros-backed animal” thereby scoring a twofer of Racism and Anti-Semitism. In that same statement, Trump predicted “death and destruction” if and when he is indicted. I doubt if Trump has ever read or even knows what the Bhagavad-Gita is but don’t be surprised if in the next few weeks its best-known phrase pops up in one of his speeches: “I am become Death.”
It’s been said many times over the last few months but that does not undercut its basic truth: a second Trump administration would be about revenge and payback and would be like something never seen before in America. It would butcher American democracy and would involve a total trashing of our already decaying public values and virtues. Indeed, it’s almost impossible to imagine who would actually populate such a crew. It would make the 2017 cabinet look like a Girl Scout troop.
The good news is that it seems impossible – or if you prefer, highly unlikely-- for Trump to win a general election. In 2016 he was the most unpopular of all candidates but had the good fortune of running against a very problematic Hillary Clinton and was able to eke out his victory thanks to the quirks of an obsolete 200 year old electoral college. Trump thought he had happened upon the winning formula of grievance and lightly shrouded racism. But he lost in 2018. And lost again big time in 2020. And his candidates got their clocks cleaned in 2022. There’s absolutely no way Trump can win the presidential popular vote and he can get elected only if there is some chicanery in the state by state certification process – certainly a possibility albeit rather remote as this sort of anti-democratic funny business has finally caught the attention of other Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Trump’s hand picked candidates willing to engage in such nefarious stunts were soundly defeated last November.
So, yeah… it’s highly unlikely that either Trump or DeSantis can win a general election. But that Trump continues to reign as maximum leader of a robust know-nothing anti-Democratic movement that will be with us for some time to come is a dead certainty. And we need to take this very seriously. Assuming he cannot win the presidency is not enough. ++
