An Open Letter to the Journalists of the USA

 

Dear Members of the Press,

        As this eventful year grinds to a close, I write to you as a citizen, a reader, a listener, and a viewer to plead that you prepare carefully for the post-presidency of Donald J. Trump. 

         Perhaps it would be most useful to you if I began with a self-administered survey. What, as a consumer of news media, would I like to hear about Donald Trump after 12:00 PM on January 20, 2021? Preferably, absolutely nothing. Barring that, AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE. 

        My preferences of course arise in part from my politics. I have been an ardent critic and opponent of President Trump's since he first launched his campaign in 2015. But my bias does not, I would argue, make my input invalid. 

       Even the President's supporters would have to admit that Donald Trump has manipulated the news media like no president before him. Moreover, as long as he wielded the power of his office, there were severe limits on what you as professionals could do to evade that manipulation.  Whatever the president says or does is virtually by definition "newsworthy," you were thus bound by the ethics of your trade to report his words, even when they were gratuitously offensive, deliberately misleading, or disingenuously provocative.  

       All of that changes on January 20, however. Once Trump is a private citizen, his pronouncements become no more newsworthy than that of any other celebrity. This principle is very important to think through and work with, if you hope to maintain your professional integrity, because experience teaches us that Donald Trump will try to get you to forget it. He will broadcast progressively more offensive slurs, progressively more outrageous lies, and stage progressively more lurid scenes of turmoil and mayhem to keep your cameras, microphones, and headlines focused on him. 

       His instincts for this kind of spectacle are uncanny. Just this morning he has broken through the tragic news of the pandemic that has killed 300,000 Americans by releasing a video. It satirizes the 1993 "Beef: It's What's For Dinner" ad by setting scenes of the Trump presidency over Aaron Copland's familiar "Rodeo" suite, and trolls the president's critics by, for example, implying that he has (or should have) been awarded several Nobel Peace Prizes. 

       This is just a taste of what is to come. Conspiracy theories. Racist innuendo. Twitter brawls with Rosie O'Donnell and Alec Baldwin. A smorgasbord of madcap fun awaits.

        Let's be honest. Some of this is about money, and Trump knows it. Even as Trump has excoriated you all as "enemies of the people," he has aided your bottom line by generating so much news. I do not mean this observation as a criticism. Constructing a system driven by sales and profit and then denigrating those who do what they must to survive according to those rules is one of the most clever and hypocritical tactics by which the powerful perpetuate their control in America- I won't play that game with you. 

        But continuing to cash in on the public appetite for "Trump outrage" will only be profitable in the short term. Ultimately, allowing the entire media to degenerate to the level of tabloid exploitation hurts everyone and everything, including your bottom line. News can only remain a profitable commodity in the long run if it remains news, and for that to be true it must retain relevancy. "News" sold purely for its entertainment value (which is the only value that anything coming from Trump will retain, once he is out of office) will eventually be driven off the market by other, more artful and rewarding diversions.

      So this is what I beg of you, as someone who has a great deal at stake in your success. After January 20, 2021, I ask that before you publish or air ANY story about Donald Trump, you think carefully about a single question: "Is this news?" If you are performing this operation conscientiously, given Trump's proven track record, 9 times out of 10 the answer will be "no". 

     I and others will be watching carefully. If you appear too mercenary or opportunistic in your coverage of Trump, your audience is likely to apply pressure by way of boycotts and "news fasts" to get you to correct course. But I am optimistic it will not come to that. Most of the press has shown courage, dedication, and integrity during these challenging years, for which I thank you. I look forward to profiting from your work as we cross the approaching threshold, and wish you all a Happy New Year!

 

             Sincerely,

 

              Andrew Meyer 

The Powell Gambit

 

News that Donald Trump might seek the appointment of Sydney Powell as special counsel to "investigate election fraud" provides a new window onto Trump's sheer animal cunning and utter nihilism. Last week I imagined that the theatrics being planned by Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) and Representative "Mo" Brooks (R-Alabama) at the joint session of Congress on January 6th, at which they plan to object to the certification of the Electoral College vote, might be the "final insult" to our collective intelligence by the Trumpist movement. This is not to say that Trump himself and his followers will not continue to spew vitriol and nonsense. But January 6th looked like the last opportunity for Trump's clown posse to use the actual organs and procedures of government to score political points. 

The appointment of Powell would change all that. The idea is simple but viciously clever. A key plank in the Trump mythology is the claim that his opponents saddled him with the "Russia hoax" and the Mueller investigation out of purely political motives, to restrain what would have otherwise been an "even more" powerfully transformative presidency. The appointment of Powell would thus be a case of "turnabout is fair play," except that Trump would of course (wink wink) insist that it was not really turnabout, since the "election fraud" is "real," while the "Russia hoax" was not. 

The strategic brilliance of this idea is that it would effectively create a proxy by which Trump himself could stay in government past January 20. Powell would be given a suite of offices, a budget of tens of millions of dollars, and would be empowered to hire a staff of dozens (if not hundreds) of lawyers and clerks. She would have the full attention of the media because, however ridiculous the pretext on which she had been credentialed, her office would have real power to issue subpoenas and empanel Grand Juries.

 The rallying cry of Trump and his goons would be "it is just like Mueller!" But of course, Powell would be very different than Robert Mueller in many respects. She would not limit her investigations to any narrow brief, but would begin casting as wide a net as possible as soon as she got rolling. She would also be very free in sharing information about her ongoing investigation with the press. We would begin hearing very lurid details about Hunter Biden's love life within minutes of Powell turning on the office lights. 

A key aspect separating Powell from Robert Mueller is her place at the lunatic fringe of our politics. She has publicly allied herself with the "QAnon" movement, which claims that the Democratic Party is a cabal of Satan-worshiping, blood-drinking pedophiles. The object of installing her as a special counsel is thus not to launch any credible legal threat against the Biden White House, but to set them up for a political firestorm.

Why? Powell is such a toxic figure that she can be counted upon to become completely intolerable, given any modicum of real authority. She will use the platform of special counsel to broadcast progressively more egregious obscenities, until the sheer level of racism, antisemitism, homophobia, and xenophobia issuing from her office becomes so poisonous as to compel her dismissal by the Biden White House (it will be a choice between ejecting Powell and losing the support of tens of millions of mortally offended voters).

This will of course be met with theatrical howls of outrage from throughout the GOP. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Kevin McCarthy will call fire and brimstone down on Joe Biden for daring to do what even Donald Trump did not! Fire a special counsel! Heaven forfend! The Saturday Night Massacre replayed! Will the nation ever recover!

To be sure, this will only buy Donald Trump a few more months of relevance. If Powell is appointed in January I would expect her to be gone by April or May and forgotten soon thereafter. But anyone who believes that Trump would not do this out of simple spite has not been paying attention. And there would be other dividends. Money could be raised on the plume of outrage. The "embarrassment" of firing a special counsel would leave the Justice Department open to charges that any investigation of Trump himself was "politically motivated."

I must say, as disgusted as I am by the sheer hypocrisy and nihilistic malignancy of such a maneuver, the very idea displays more imagination and creativity than I gave Trump and his minions credit for. I do not doubt that Trump would do this in a heartbeat, but it will not be so simple to accomplish. He will need an Attorney General who is willing to be associated with such a grotesque stunt. William Barr, who has demonstrated that there is a limit to how much disgrace he is willing to bear, is exiting. But finding someone willing to go along with this plan as acting AG will not be easy. It must be an attorney who has not yet been disbarred, but has all of the ethics of a gangster consigliere and no future ambition of virtually any kind. Even Rudy Giuliani would most likely blanch at the prospect. 

We live in interesting times, and the next thirty days may be an especially intriguing interval. Arriving at a point where we only had to worry about the tens of thousands who are dying of a novel plague would, amazingly, make the world a more boring place. Here's hoping that we can reach that juncture soon.

Naked Dumb Part 33 1/3: The Final Insult

Yesterday's vote by the Electoral College confirming Joseph R. Biden, Jr. as President-elect and Kamala Harris as Vice-president-elect put yet another stake through the heart of the zombie coup being orchestrated by Donald J. Trump against the democratic process. One might imagine that this would mark an end to Trump's grotesque obscenities, but they will not. More amazing still, not only will Trump continue to fulminate about imaginary fraud and overturned elections, but so will a significant number of GOP elected officials. At the very least, the counting of the Electoral College vote before a joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021 will see another futile and profane attempt to "protest" the lawful result of the election on the part of Republican members of the House and (perhaps) the Senate.

Trump's motives in this malignancy are murky but not entirely inscrutable. He is raising a great deal of money (more than $200 million at recent count) from supporters through repeated appeals for funds to support his efforts to "right" the election. Since we are no longer in the throes of an actual campaign, he is free to use this money however he likes, as long as he declares it as income. Beyond this pecuniary incentive, Trump obviously thinks that perpetuating the fantasy of a stolen election is strategically wise. His brand is built on grievance, and since he cannot credibly claim to be aggrieved at the state of a nation that he led for four years (at least not until Joe Biden has been in office for a few hours), he now can gnash his teeth and spit venom over election fraud. This charade, he thinks, will carry him to 2022 and beyond. 

The motivation of the many GOP office holders lining up to endorse Trump's attempted coup is less clear. In part, it may be a fear that the Biden presidency will enjoy an automatic "recovery" dividend. If Biden oversees the dissemination of a vaccine and is at the nation's helm as the pandemic ends and the economy recovers, voters are likely to reward him with rising approval rates just as the midterm election cycle begins. In order to blunt that effect, Republicans may feel they have to "pre-soften" Biden's political purchase, bringing him as low as possible lest he rise too high.

But this can only account for a part of the malicious foolishness being displayed by so many Republicans at all levels of government. At basis, they must be falling in line behind Trump because they believe that he will continue to be a kingmaker in GOP politics for the next 2-4 years. Republicans are so acclimated to Trump's ownership of their party that they assume it will persist indefinitely. In this they are mistaken. They have misunderstood the nature of Trump's appeal and the dynamics of his hold on the Republican Party. 

Trump never offered his followers a coherent vision or set of principles. He channeled the anger of different communities about waning economic opportunity, demographic change, or advancing secularism. Nothing he said or did was particularly creative or original, but it felt new and compelling because it was transgressive and came from a position of genuine power. That type of impact has a finite shelf life, however. The same memes and catch-phrases ("Lock her up!") recycled over and over again from the station of a private citizen will not garner as much attention, especially from the half of the nation that is surfeited with Trump's nonsense and is now freed from having to worry about what he will say next. This will most likely roll Trump into a vicious cycle. Losing some of the nation's attention will make him petulant and resentful, which will lose more of the nation's attention, and so on...Becoming boring will make him more boring, which in turn will make him more boring...

Trump's hold over the GOP has always derived from his power as kingmaker during the primary electoral cycle. His followers made up enough of a motivated core of activist voters so that Trump could effectively eject Republicans from electoral office with a sign of his displeasure (as he did with Mark Sanford, former governor of South Carolina, who lost his House seat in a primary in 2018). But the next GOP primary is two years away, and Trump will have to find a way of remaining relevant until then. As a candidate and president he was the perfect foil for vicarious rage. As a loser who is waiting in the wings for another chance, his anger can only be impotent and pathetic, unless he can find a forum in which it at least appears significant and influential. This last challenge will be an uphill climb for someone of little initiative, limited knowledge, and almost no imagination.

Trump's toadies in the GOP have bet on the wrong Kraken. Nonetheless, their assaults on democracy will no doubt go on through the winter and into next spring. The dividends they expect will never materialize, but will they ever pay a political price for their sins? It is difficult to say. Until they do, we will never know which of their stunts is the final insult to our collective intelligence.

America's Once and Future Fascist

 

At yesterday's press briefing on the Covid-19 vaccine, Donald Trump made comments that revealed core tenets of his political program rarely so transparently on display:

“Whether it’s a legislator or legislatures, or whether it’s a justice of the Supreme Court or a number of justices of the Supreme Court -- let’s see if they have the courage to do what everybody in this country knows is right.”

 Gone was any pretense that the vote tally itself must be corrected or that legalities must be observed. Trump is now openly inviting organs of government to exercise fiat powers in overturning the election and maintaining him in power. Nothing about this is extremely shocking or new in the context of Trump's record. 

But the assertion that "everybody in this country knows [it] is right" to set aside the election lets slip a core tenet of Trumpism. Trump's message is not that the will of the people should be ignored. It is that half of Americans are not people at all, and thus may be generally discounted in all respects. 

Any protest that this is an "unfair reading" of Trump's words is tiresome. The implicit dismissal of tens of millions of people who celebrated the news of Joe Biden's election as "nobody" aligns perfectly with the policy and messaging of the Trump White House since day one. Stranding refugees in airports. Ripping children from parents. Dismissing the sick and dying in "Democrat-run" cities and states. If Trumpism is about anything, it is dedicated to the proposition that certain individuals are entitled to the dignity and rights of "people," others are not. 

This is fascism in a nutshell. "Sovereignty" is not equally distributed throughout the human community, but resides only in those who meet some test of national "purity." Liberal institutions like universal suffrage, birthright citizenship, or equal justice under law may be jettisoned because they allow the nation to be polluted by "the wrong sort."

The most distressing aspect of our Trumpist moment is the degree to which the fascist dimensions of his message are self-consciously embraced by many millions of his followers. Trump has been very clear about his contempt for the principles of democracy and his malicious hostility toward the majority of Americans who oppose him. Many of his voters (one third? half?) understood full well that in voting for Trump, they were endorsing his promise to continue his assault on "them (people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ citizens, 'liberal elites,' etc.)" and in doing so to game the system to the point of breaking. A vote for Trump was a vote for fascist oligarchy, and many voters got on board that train with eyes wide open.

Why are so many Americans ready to trade democracy for fascism? Some part of Trump's base have become radically disenchanted with the prevailing system through  economic despair. Communities in Appalachia and the industrial Midwest that suffered disproportionately through the Great Recession and saw meager benefits during a slow recovery, where life expectancy rates dropped and opioid addiction was on the rise, have provided fertile ground for Trump's message. Many of these individuals had never voted before signing up with Trump, and since they felt poorly served by democracy they were ready for whatever Trump offered as an alternative.

But though that segment of Trump's base has garnered much attention (exemplified by the popularity of books like Hillbilly Elegy), it has always constituted a small minority within his larger coalition. About half of Trump's support comes from the religious far right, which would like to see the constitution abrogated in favor of a political order rooted in perceived biblical imperatives. This would begin with bans on abortion, contraception, and same sex marriage, but might extend into realms like prayer in school and legal sanctions against certain forms of religious practice (for example, that of Islam). 

Trump's secular support derives largely from voters motivated by race to one degree or another, ranging from those who respond to dog whistles about "anchor babies" and "welfare queens" up to militant white supremacists. Across the spectrum of these groups, panic over changing demography (exacerbated by the two-term presidency of Barack Obama) has galvanized support for the disenfranchisement of large segments of the population. The other important secular component of Trump's coalition could be described as "corporatist plutocrats": wealthy members of the donor class who would like to see minority rule institutionalized by way of solidifying the position of the .01%.

Though these groups are all very different in nature and motivation, Trump has enjoyed a powerful mystique in their eyes because he perfectly epitomizes their common orientation. The thread that binds these communities together is grievance: all of them are impelled by a passionate anger at the status quo. Trump's voters are thus enchanted by the sheer dynamism and profound authenticity of his own sense of grievance. For almost five decades his defining posture as a public figure has been to broadcast how poorly he is appreciated by the world at large, and how much better things would be if he were taken more seriously. 

Since Trump himself is not an ideologue and has shown no patience for the genuine work of political organization, the Trumpist movement has emerged from the interaction of his supporters' inchoate passions and aspirations with Trump's own idiosyncratic style of leadership. His followers supplied the targets (Muslims, "Mexican rapists," Hillary Clinton, AOC, etc.), he supplied a frenetic style of "theater only" reality-TV politics. It has been a kind of fascism through spontaneous generation.

However haphazardly it emerged, now that Trumpist fascism is here, it is likely to stay. Will the forces that produced Trump grind on inexorably toward the dissolution of the American experiment in democracy? This last question is impossible to answer with any blithe confidence. Tens of millions voted to end our democracy, one cannot assume that they will relinquish that aspiration easily. 

Will they continue to follow Donald Trump? That is not likely. The success that he enjoyed as a candidate is not going to be easily replicated. He is, at basis, a man of very limited talents and almost no imagination. His mystique is rooted in his ability to entertain, but his repetitive and predictably vulgar belligerence has only failed to grow insufferably dull because of his status as President (the Chief Executive really tweeted THAT!). Stripped of the office, he will quickly become boring and pathetic.

Other politicians will try to claim his mantle and stitch his coalition back together. This will not be easy. Few public figures can replicate Trump's assets: massive wealth, an aggrieved sense of exclusion from "elite society," and a made-for-TV persona. The figures bandied about as Trump's heirs (Tucker Carlson, for example) are pale imitations at best. Moreover, even someone with assets approaching Trump's will find his coalition difficult to reassemble. Trump's religious and secular supporters may have traveled as far down the same road as they are likely to go. Though they agree on how wise it was to appoint so many conservative judges, now that the task is accomplished they may fall out over questions such as whether condoms should be outlawed.

But none of these contingencies can be relied on to safeguard democracy. Now that the fascist genie has been let out of the bottle, this trend is likely to shape our politics for decades to come. Much will depend on external conditions. If the economy improves and an ecological crisis can be averted, the passions fueling an appetite for fascism may cool. If the future sees growing wealth inequality, deepening and expanding economic despair, and ecological degradation, a more competent demagogue may succeed where Trump failed.

All of this should serve as a call to action, not malaise. We do not have to sit by and fret as democracy crumbles. Ben Franklin famously warned us that we will have our Republic as long as we can keep it, and we know what we must do to achieve that. We must engage as citizens to make government work again, so that the endemic problems which are causing disenchantment and grievance are redressed. We must hold our leaders accountable to a more conscientious and less debased form of politics, not an insipid call to "civility," but to genuine civic virtue. We must demand that all our leaders, of all parties, respect the dignity and rights of all Americans. We do not have to agree with or fully cooperate with one-another, but we do have to respect one-another as fellow citizens and share power with one-another in accordance with the founding principles of our Constitution. If we can breath new life and vitality into these norms, fascism may not go away entirely, but it will stand no chance of prevailing.

 

Farewell: An Open Letter to President Donald J. Trump

Dear Mr. President,

         I write to bid you farewell, and to castigate you for the contemptible way in which you are leaving office. Your use of the Bully Pulpit to broadcast unfounded conspiracy theories, in combination with your complete abdication of leadership in the face of the deadly Covid-19 pandemic, is one of the most disgraceful chapters in the annals of our nation's history. Shame on you, sir.

          The chief duty of a President is communication. As a communicator you have been virtually nothing but toxic and divisive since the moment you were sworn into office, but the corrosive malignancy of your pronouncements has reached new heights in recent days and weeks. Take, for example, this tweet from December 1:

      There are at least two ways that the text of this tweet could be read. The first would be:

Do something Governor Brian Kemp. You allowed your state to be scammed. We have concrete evidence of thousands of illegal votes cast in your jurisdiction. If you check signatures and count signed envelopes against ballots, the truth of these allegations can be verified. Once that is done, there will be no need for a run off election, as we have reason to believe that Senators Perdue and Loeffler garnered more than 50% of the legal votes cast.

      The second, more plausible reading of your tweet would be:

Do something Governor Brian Kemp. You allowed Republicans to lose the election. There is a convenient mechanism to reverse that outcome. Just go back over the ballots, and on the pretext of a "mismatch" between signatures on mail-in envelopes and those on past voter registration forms, you can throw out thousands of mail-in ballots. Since we know that Democrats disproportionately voted by mail, once you have thrown away ten or twenty thousand mail-in ballots, we can be assured that all of the Republican candidates on the ballot will win handily.

       The fact that you allowed this ambiguity to exist demonstrates pernicious malice on your part, and is a violation of your oath of office. You swore to defend the Constitution of the United States, and nothing poses a greater threat to our constitutional order than a collapse of faith in the integrity of our elections. For you to use your office in the manner embodied by the above tweet is equivalent to throwing acid on the foundations of the Republic.

        Fake news! you might protest. I am insisting that the "worse" reading of your tweet must be true. I am purposefully misconstruing your intent! 

        Such protests would be an insult to everyone's intelligence. A President of the United States may not make flippant or unsubstantiated accusations of voter fraud, EVER. If you had made the accusation expressed in your tweet in a sober press conference, filled with eye witness testimony, expert analysis, and documentary evidence, then the more charitable reading of your tweet might be trenchant. For you to toss such a pronouncement onto the web without any corroborating evidence is malpractice that rises to the level of treason. It compels any thinking person to read your tweet in the harshest light, and it is only one of dozens of such pronouncements that you have made since November 3.

         I personally cannot understand why anyone is disposed to attribute benign motives to you or to give you the benefit of the doubt. Your penchant for venality, corruption, and cruelty has been on such constant display, from your verbal coddling of dictators and white supremacists to your unconscionable torture of children kidnapped into and remaining in federal custody, to your criminal negligence as tens of thousands of Americans die of Covid-19, that you resemble no leader in modern memory so much as the late President of Uganda, Idi Amin. But what is "really in your heart" is of little matter in judging your actions now. Your persistent pursuit of a coup to overturn the free and fair results of our most recent election is both illegal and immoral. Cease and desist!

          I will not close with any pleas for you to change course or reflect on your actions, as I am certain that you are deaf to such entreaties. I wish you personally no injury or ill fortune. For the sake of our nation and its social cohesion, I hope that you and your family remain healthy and safe. But I cannot help but look forward eagerly to the day when you are no longer profaning the office you now hold, and can no longer use its powers and prestige to do such terrible damage to our system and way of life. Good bye, sir, and good riddance.

                         Sincerely,

                          Andrew Meyer

What Should President-Elect Biden Do?

A full four weeks after the election of Joseph R. Biden, Jr. to be the 46th President of the United States, we remain in the throes of an absurd coup attempt to overturn the will of the electorate. Donald Trump continues to send teams of lawyers into courts on impossibly quixotic errands. He is orchestrating a growing chorus of wingnut media "pundits" and internet "influencers" to broadcast increasingly outlandish conspiracy theories and disinformation, and persists in exerting pressure on Republican elected officials, most recently issuing a call for Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia to use his "emergency powers" to overturn the election results. 

Institutionally, this coup is a zombie. With each new defeat the possibility of changing the outcome of the Electoral College vote when that body meets on December 14 recedes further, and once that vote is cast Joe Biden's inauguration becomes a virtual certainty. But culturally, the Trump Coup continues to retain momentum. About half of Republicans believe that the election was "stolen" from Donald Trump, and the coup's supporting multimedia complex online, in print, and on air grows like a whirling gyre drawing more and more new forms of propaganda into its mass. 

This is a moment virtually without precedent in the history of American democracy.  For a sitting president to be orchestrating a baseless and wholly gratuitous campaign against the public's trust in the integrity of our elections would have been unimaginable not so long ago. The situation poses real peril to our system of government and our way of life. 

What, then, should the response of Joe Biden be to this assault on our Republic? That is a complicated question. Up until now Biden has been very restrained in his comments on Donald Trump's malicious activities, going only so far as to call them "irresponsible."  This is very much in keeping with the tone of his election campaign. Biden promised to be a leader who would bring people together and lower the temperature of our discourse, and his cool restraint in the face of Trump's wild provocations presents a welcome contrast to the chaotic leadership of the last four years.

There is, however, merit to the warning that leaving Trump's lies unanswered risks allowing the distrust they sow to fester. Zombie or not, what Trump is continuing to execute is an antidemocratic coup. Past authoritarians who have made such moves tend to gain in power and influence if their provocations are ignored or undeterred.

Though this caution is valid, the institutional climate in which we are operating creates special conditions. The arcane mechanisms of the Electoral College system provide Trump with his last, slim chance of undermining the election. Right now the machinery of the electoral process is grinding predictably toward Biden's inauguration. If Biden responds robustly to Trump's attacks before December 14, he risks creating the impression, if only in a few key figures, that there is something to fear in Trump's desperate maneuvers. If this tempts one or two unscrupulous functionaries to shirk their duty or abandon norms, it could start a cascade of betrayal. As long as Trump's efforts are having no impact, the wisest course is to let the process play out under its own steam.

The situation after December 14 is different, however. At that point, Trump's attack on the electoral process itself will be truly toothless, but his attack on the deeper, long-term foundations of democracy will remain toxic and corrosive. In that moment, there will be nothing at risk and everything to gain for Joe Biden to make plain declarations and issue straightforward demands: Trump is a liar. His accusations of fraud are baseless and unpatriotic (if not treasonous). He must concede the election to Joe Biden. 

Trump's concession has no legal force and his refusal to concede will change nothing, but it is traditional and fundamentally right that he should do so, and he should be told as much. Trump will brazenly carry his lies to the grave, his vicious contempt for our democracy and its norms is total. Nonetheless, it is proper for Joe Biden, the authentic president, to be as forthright in his articulation of what is just as Donald Trump, the pretend president, has been shameless in his dissemination of falsehoods.  

Trump lost the election. He must concede. That is the truth. I would like to hear our President-elect say it. If nothing else, hearing the truth from one of our leaders would be such a refreshing change.

President Who?

Now that Joe Biden has been elected president, it is important to begin planning for the post-presidency of Donald J. Trump. Trump has been such a toxic force in our national politics for the past five years, and is continuing to do so much damage to our social fabric, that a strategy will be necessary for navigating his continued presence on the cultural scene. Speculation is of course inevitable. Will Trump continue to loom as large in our media ecosphere as he does now? Will he continue to dominate Republican electoral politics? Will he mobilize his followers to wreak havoc on the Biden presidency?

I, for one, believe that the most dire predictions of future danger from Trump will not bear out. Trump is neither stupid nor crazy. He has a real talent for self-promotion and an uncanny grasp of the dynamics of reality television. But he has committed the one irredeemable sin in those domains: he has over-exposed himself. The Trump show is exciting to watch because the authority and power he wields as president make his obscenities titillatingly shocking and dangerous. Once he is stripped of the office, his repetitive, simplistic, and unimaginative vulgarities will grow dull much faster than he or his supporters anticipate.

My purpose here is not to foretell outcomes, however, but to examine tactics. Events may prove me wrong. In any case, it is certainly true that to whatever degree the damage Trump inflicts may be variable, much will depend on how his opponents respond to his provocations and attacks and those who would follow in his footsteps. What then, is the best posture to embrace in this regard?

I would argue that, to best shield ourselves from the residual influence of Donald Trump, we will need an even stricter and more comprehensive version of "Godwin's Law." Where Godwin's Law dictates that Hitler and the Nazis should not be invoked unless the issue under discussion rises to the level of genocide or totalitarian oppression, in the future we should refrain from mentioning Donald Trump at all. 

Why would that be the case? The temptation to evoke Trump rhetorically will be very strong when he is finally ejected from the Oval Office. Whenever a Republican electoral candidate begins to speak in racist dog whistles or deploys nativist rhetoric, there will be a strong impulse to label him or her "the next Donald Trump." There may, indeed be much justification in such messaging. But it will ultimately be counterproductive. 

Again, why? The answer lies in the nature of the particular con game that Trump has pulled during his tenure in office. He has kept himself afloat by politicizing everything. Russian interference? A hoax. Likewise Covid-19. The wall is rising. China is paying tariffs. New auto plants are opening in Detroit. Anyone who disagrees with these manifestly ludicrous propositions is purveying "fake news." How do we know? Because anyone who gets these "facts" wrong is operating from bias. They don't like Donald Trump (forget the idea that Trump is, in fact loathsome- that is the fakest of fake news)!

It is a clever circular logic trap, and has proven tenaciously effective. Thus as tempting as it will be to compress exposition by pointing to his toadies and imitators and yelling "Trump!", we should not. To be sure, we should not ignore Trumpism. It is bound to rear its ugly head repeatedly in coming years, and must be vigorously rooted out. But we can talk about Trumpism without mentioning Trump himself. 

"We all know what happens when you pretend a public health crisis isn't happening." "We had a leader who set one half of the country against the other, and that ended up being torture for both sides." We can talk about Trumpism while talking around Trump. Trump has treated his entire presidency as a branding exercise, he has made himself into the key symbolic asset of his particular strain of white nationalism. The more thoroughly we can ignore him, the more effectively we can defuse the toxic forces that he has galvanized so malignantly.

Trump Voters, This Was Not A Close Election

 It has been almost 48 hours since all of the major news organizations called the presidential election in favor of Joseph R. Biden, Jr., yet President Donald J. Trump has refused to concede the election to his opponent, the President-elect. Some Republican leaders, such as former President George W. Bush and Senator Mitt Romney, have broken with Mr. Trump and offered their congratulations to Mr. Biden. But a shocking number of Republicans have supported the President in his absurd refusal to concede. 

     Two basic forms of myth are circulating among Trump voters by way of "rationalizing" the President's behavior. The first is an appeal to conspiracy theory. By this understanding, the Democrats nefariously engineered a fraud in the vote count to induce a Biden victory. Purveyors of this idea point to the fact that Trump was "winning" on election night, and only began to slip in the polls as new Biden votes were "found." 

     This, of course, is a fallacy. No votes were found. Rather, due to fears of the still-raging Covid-19 pandemic, millions of votes had been legally mailed in prior to election day, and had been left uncounted, in many states because Republican legislatures had explicitly forbidden the processing of mail-in ballots before election day itself. This last maneuver was itself a desperate and transparently malicious gambit to produce an appearance of impropriety. If the Pennsylvania legislature, for example, had made contingency plans for the pre-processing of an unprecedented flood of mail-in ballots, we would have known on the night of Tuesday November 3 that Biden had won the presidency.

     But conspiracy theories are made even more ludicrous by any cursory glance at the facts. If Democrats were capable of such skullduggery, why would they have failed to engineer a Trump defeat in 2016, when they controlled the presidency? Why would they have lost so many House seats in this election, and stand so little chance of taking control of the Senate? It just does not make sense.

      The other form of myth circulating about Donald Trump's behavior is that, because this was such a "close" election, we should wait patiently for the President to work through his pantomime of court challenges and recounts, and "let the process play out." This is a transparent sham. There is no process, and there is no need for patience. It is Donald Trump's patriotic duty to concede the election now.

      Again, this is made clear by any honest assessment of the facts. In 2016, Donald Trump won the presidency by a margin of 77,000 thousand votes distributed across three states (Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania- at the national level he lost the popular vote by 2.9 million ballots). Because the race was so close, Hillary Clinton waited until the morning after Election Day, Wednesday November 9, to make a formal concession speech. At the point that she conceded, none of the states had officially certified the results of the election. She conceded because it was her duty as an American to concede as soon as the outcome of the race was clear.  

       Why is this so? It is for two reasons: one of principle, the other of pragmatism. In principle, it is vitally important that all participants in our democratic politics foster trust and confidence in our electoral system. Without that faith, democracy will collapse. In practical terms, the constitutionally mandated interval of the presidential transition is brutally short. An incoming administration has just over ten weeks to build an entire branch of government from the ground up, and requires the assistance of the outgoing administration to do so. It is thus vital that that process begin as soon as possible. 

        Thus it was absolutely right for Hillary Clinton to concede in 2016, and anyone who acknowledges that fact must admit that it is even more right for Donald Trump to concede right now. Joseph R. Biden's defeat of Donald Trump in 2020 was much more decisive than Trump's defeat of Clinton in 2016. In the three states that gave Trump the victory in 2016 (Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania), Biden currently leads by 200,000 votes (more than twice Trump's 77,00-vote margin of victory in 2016), and that lead will continue to widen as vote counting goes on. Beyond that, Biden currently leads by about 60,000 votes distributed across the states of Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada. There can be no doubt that the people have spoken and that Biden won this election handily in both the popular vote (by a margin of more than 5,000,000 votes, when all is said and done) and the Electoral College (where news organizations currently give Biden between 279 and 290 electoral votes, where a winning majority is 270, and where Biden may ultimately garner as many as 306 votes if he wins in both Georgia and Arizona). 

         No combination of court cases and recounts will change the outcome of the presidential election. The election of 2020 as it stands right now is much more of a fait acommpli than the 2016 race was at the point that Hillary Clinton graciously and courageously conceded in that election. Donald Trump's refusal to concede is manifestly petulant, venal, and childish, but it is something even worse. It is unpatriotic. He must concede the election now, and anyone who truly loves this country should join in the call for him to do so.

An Open Letter to My Fellow Americans

Dear Friends, Neighbors, and Compatriots,

 

       Congratulations! You have brought our Republic back from the brink of self-destruction. The re-election of Donald J. Trump after four years of blatant and corrosive malfeasance would have put an end to the American experiment in democracy. His removal from the office that he has so egregiously abused will preserve our institutions from inevitable disintegration. 

       To all of those who voted for, donated to, or volunteered on behalf of the campaign of Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris I say: thank you! Your efforts embody the best tradition of our national political life. Now that the result of the presidential election in both the popular vote and the electoral college has been revealed, we may all indulge in well-earned celebration! This election is over. The result is clear. 

       Given the depraved character of Donald J. Trump (I say this without malice or prejudice, but as a clear expression of fact), there is likely to be attempts to reverse the results of the election, using the arcane mechanisms of the Electoral College. We should resolutely defy any and all such machinations, but we should not fear them. Any attempt to undermine the manifest will of the electorate will constitute an illegal and illegitimate coup d'etat. We need not entertain any debate or discussion on this score. It is our duty as citizens to reject and oppose any attempt to undercut the presidency of Joseph R. Biden by any and all means short of violence.

    But that, for the moment, is an abstract concern. Trump will rant and rave. Let him. We may yet be surprised at just how quickly his voice diminishes to irrelevance. In the meantime, we can express our collective relief and joy!

     I will not insult the intelligence of those of you who voted and campaigned for Donald Trump by offering you insincere condolences or regrets. I am happy you lost, and I have little sympathy for what you may be feeling right now.  The entire presidency of Donald Trump was an assault against me and millions of other Americans. For four years he has attacked our dignity, encouraged those who hate us to acts of vandalism and violence, and encroached upon our rights and powers as citizens. I cannot feign any sorrow that your attempts to abet a continuation of that assault have failed.

     But I can say this: I love this country very deeply, and I know that to truly love America is to accept that you are all as much a part of it as I am. I am committed to living in peace, if not in harmony, with you. I will not tolerate assaults on your dignity, incitement to hatred of you, or encroachments on your rights by Joe Biden or anyone else in government. That is what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have promised, and I and the  vast majority of those who voted like me will do everything in our power to keep them to that promise. You may not believe that, and that is your prerogative. But that is why the outcome of this election has saved our Republic from collapse.

       Donald Trump is going to rant and rage against the outcome of this election. He is going to try to stoke fear in his supporters and incite them to acts of violence, by way of terrorizing us as a nation into setting aside the lawful outcome of the election. I plead with all of my fellow Americans to ignore him. We are a nation of laws, and the law demands a peaceful transition of power whether Donald Trump assents to it or not. 

       To those of you contemplating violence, I say: think again. Violence will not be met with violence, but with resolution and justice. Violence will sway no one. Violence is impotent and pathetic.

       Be happy! Rejoice! The page has turned. The die is cast. A new day is upon us. We may not yet be ready to begin building together, but we can at least stop tearing one-another apart, and that is reason to celebrate!

                    Sincerely,

                    Andrew Meyer

Why We Believe in Stephanie Schmid

In 2020 it seems quaintly naïve to write about "believing" in a candidate. Who can believe anything anymore? Belief is a sucker's game. Belief is so 2012. But my wife Emilie and I believe passionately in Stephanie Schmid, the Democratic candidate for Congress in New Jersey's 4th Congressional District, where we have lived for the past 15 years.

If we didn't believe in Stephanie, there would be little point in my writing this blog post. The story of why we are voting for her is too boring for words. We are lifelong Democrats, we generally vote blue, and could have been counted on to do so this year. Voting for someone and believing in them are not the same thing, however.

I confess, neither Emilie or I paid much attention to the Democratic primaries here in NJ-04. Like many others who are terrified of what has been happening for the past four years, we were distracted by national politics. We were impressed by Stephanie's resume: career diplomat and foreign service officer, human rights attorney, legislative advocate for reproductive freedom. But we didn't exert any special effort to persuade our fellow Democrats to support her. Partisan cynicism: we preferred Stephanie, but we knew we would vote blue regardless.

To be fair to us, not all of our motivations in this congressional election are strictly partisan. Chris Smith has been in office for almost forty years, that is much too long for a representative of any party to effectively serve his constituents. Though he has had some achievements, he has grown completely entitled and out of touch. He hasn't held a town hall here in New Jersey for almost two decades.  Even more than that, his priorities are from another century. He has been crusading against a woman's right to choose and against the civil rights of LGBTQ citizens more generally since 1978. However much we admired Stephanie on paper, we didn't really need or seek reasons to support her candidacy beyond the fact that she was running against Chris Smith.

All of that changed when we first had the opportunity to meet Stephanie in September. Whether you are talking with her one-on-one or hearing her address a group, her intensity and intellectual firepower knock the wind out of you. She has the kind of command of the facts that only comes from a lifetime of study and experience, combined with a passionate commitment to public service. We have become so used to leaders who speak in half-baked grunts and childlike taunts that hearing someone speak in paragraphs freighted with facts and ideas is as much a shock as it is a pleasure.

But that alone wouldn't have been enough to sway us to belief. Stephanie has something much more rare than intelligence and knowledge. She has integrity. That came through in everything she said and did that first day that Emilie and I met her, but one moment stands out in my memory. She was addressing a group of voters and someone asked about the Green New Deal. Stephanie paused for a moment and took a breath. "There is going to be a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court," she said. "The Green New Deal is not going to pass judicial review. That is why we need people in Congress who understand the law, and who can achieve the goals of the Green New Deal with carefully crafted legislation."

I almost fainted. We have become so accustomed to snake-oil pitches, "miracle cures," and empty promises from on high that it was incredible to hear a candidate talk straight with voters: to tell us about what might be possible with hard work, instead of giving us a fairy tale about how all our dreams were a hand-clap away. That is perhaps the single greatest reason that we believe in Stephanie: she believes in things greater than her own ambitions (what a concept, right?). Even more than that, she believes in us. Unlike so many of our leaders, she isn't so jaded as to assume that we must be talked to like children. 

On our way home from meeting Stephanie, Emilie and I looked at one-another, and I could sense that we were both thinking the same thing. We knew we had just met someone special, someone who could confront the daunting challenges that threaten our future and that of our teenage daughter.  "How much should we donate to her campaign?" I asked, knowing that like most families our finances have been under strain recently. "A thousand dollars," Emilie said without blinking. It is more than we have ever given to a single political campaign.

Emilie and I have no illusions. Though Stephanie has performed magnificently in debate and on the campaign trail, we know that she faces a hard fight to get to Congress.  But we believe in her, just as we believe in our neighbors and friends here in Monmouth and Ocean. We know that if the word gets out about what is at stake, and of just what a special opportunity we have in Stephanie's candidacy, the best woman can and will win. If you have read this far, please give Stephanie your vote. And please spread the word. When Stephanie is in Washington and begins working for all of us, you'll be glad you did.

Chicken Little is Beginning to Look Like an Optimist

 

As we approach November 3, speculation about the regularity of the upcoming election has become a virtual cottage industry. External circumstances like the Covid-19 pandemic have obviously contributed to the atmosphere of anxiety. But the main cause for the climate of fear are the words and deeds of President Donald J. Trump. As the Executive he took an oath to defend the constitution, and nothing is more vital to constitutional good order than confidence in the electoral system. If "we the people" are not persuaded that our leaders were elected freely and fairly, none of the rules the Constitution contains to constrain them are worth a fig. 

Any president who took his oath of office seriously would work tirelessly to calm fears about the upcoming election and work impartially to implement practical solutions to the challenges of the pandemic. Instead, Trump has stridently and gratuitously broadcast indictments of the electoral process itself, warning of a "rigged election!" He has turned every effort to work around the threat of the pandemic into a partisan conflict, impugning "vote by mail" plans as a scheme to defraud. Our system requires opposing parties to come together in good faith to assess the will of the people, and Trump is making that impossible by turning every question about electoral process into a zero-sum "us versus them" dilemma.

Why is he doing this? One plausible explanation is that, like the scorpion in the parable who rides the frog, Trump simply cannot help injecting poison into the system because it is his nature. He is a congenitally insecure and belligerent character, he has spent his almost four years in office feuding with legions of foes real and imagined, and so he is just acting true to form. Even if this were the whole explanation, the situation would be bad enough.

But Trump's attacks on the election are more and more difficult to read as spontaneous expressions of his "quirky (read 'obscenely malignant')" character. The President likes to cultivate the appearance of buffoonery and poor intelligence, but he can read a poll as clearly as anyone. With less than sixty days left to Election Day, it is looking increasingly unlikely that Trump can win a fair election, even given the advantage he enjoys in the Electoral College. It takes no great feat of deduction to understand that someone who knew that he was not likely to win a regular election, and was yet determined to remain in office, would work steadily to undermine the integrity of the election itself.

 Is it silly to think that this is afoot? Let's look at the facts. In 2016 Trump made at least paltry attempts to speak to constituencies beyond his base supporters. He gave, for example, speeches in which he asked African-American voters "what do you have to lose?" by voting for him. There was a latent racism even in these remarks (as they painted a portrait of Black America that was condescendingly bleak), but they were at least pitched to giving some white Republicans the impression (or the rationalization) that Trump was not wholly hostile to the interests of African-Americans. 

Very little of even this form of fake conciliation is on display from Trump in 2020. The Republican National Convention featured set-pieces like a naturalization ceremony involving people of color (some of whom, amazingly, were unaware that the scene would be broadcast), but none of these displays of tokenism rose to the level of efforts made in 2016 to counter charges of racism. Meanwhile, despite the fact that support for the Black Lives Matter movement reached as high as 63% in polls this summer, Trump and his surrogates have persistently condemned BLM supporters as "traitors" and "terrorists." Why would you use such Manichean language about a movement that enjoys the support of a majority of the electorate, if your ambition was to win at the polls?

Race is the prime point upon which Trump is stoking conflict and anger, but it is far from the only one. On a series of hot button issues, ranging from the measures to remediate the pandemic, to questions of foreign policy, to the parameters of the election itself, Trump has launched inflammatory attacks and used radically polarizing rhetoric, without any regard for bringing together a coalition that might resolve questions democratically. To the contrary, Trump has given encouragement and voice to tendencies of the political fringe that can only ever be persuasive to a minority fragment of voters: expressing "appreciation" of the QAnon movement and hinting darkly to one interviewer that Joe Biden was in the grips of a cabal of black-clad agents flying around the country on commercial airliners, equipped with nefarious gear.

Why would you act this way, if your goal was to win an election that is less than sixty days away? Unless one credits Trump and his advisors with very little intelligence, one cannot believe that this is any kind of strategy for electoral victory. They are making very little effort to replicate the techniques ("what have you got to lose?") that secured them the surprising victory of 2016. Meanwhile, they are working assiduously to sow doubt that the election itself will be fair and authoritative.

Even more disturbing is the degree to which the president and his supporters are encouraging violence. Demonizing the Black Lives Matter movement as "treasonous" and "terrorist" has, predictably (deliberately), motivated some of Trump's supporters to take up arms against it. Trump's refusal to condemn the shooting of two BLM protesters in Kenosha by a seventeen-year-old Trumpist is a gross betrayal of his oath of office. Whatever the young man's blame or innocence in the case itself, the duty of a president in such an instance of political violence is to urge calm and make peace. Instead, Trump has pushed to keep the wheel of violence spinning, cheering on supporters in Portland who, in the wake of the Kenosha killing, rode through Portland firing paintball guns and gas canisters at BLM protesters. The death of one of Trump's supporters during that demonstration was execrable but again predictable, and one cannot help but suspect that the whole point of the exercise itself was to incite such a response.  

Creating a climate of fear and hatred naturally develops a situation in which peaceful protest becomes impossible.Trump is effectively engaged in a campaign of mass intimidation. His negligence is creating conditions in which anyone who comes out to march in defiance of his administration must fear for their lives. 

Is this deliberate? In a sense, the question of Trump's intent is irrelevant. He is already engaged in flagrant violations of the law and of constitutional and political norms. Refusing to disclose his tax returns. Refusing to answer Congressional subpoenas. Refusing to acknowledge interference in the election by Russia. Using the White House and other federal facilities for partisan purposes in violation of the Hatch Act. Virtually every day he demonstrates that he cannot be held accountable, and challenges his co-partisans and supporters to choose between their support for regular constitutional order and their support for Donald J. Trump. 

How can anyone assume that this game of brinksmanship will stop at the election? When I propose to friends or family, for example, that Trump might order the counting of mail-in ballots to cease at 11 PM on November 3 (on the claim that they are fraudulent), they typically answer, "He can't do that!" But he can't hold a campaign rally on the White House lawn either, and that is already in the rear-view mirror. The question of whether Trump can do something or not always ultimately boils down to the question of "who will stop him?" The same would apply to an order to cease counting mail-in ballots. Governor Cuomo of New York would probably stop him. Governor DeSantis of Florida would probably not.

That brings us back to the question of Trump's behavior in these last weeks of the campaign. By setting the American people against one-another, he is systemically disabling the last mechanism by which he might be held accountable. Trump does not really have it in his power to engineer an outcome for this election. But as President he can completely sabotage the operation of the electoral process itself, so that the machinery of the transition grinds to a halt. The only force that really has any hope of preventing such a maneuver is concerted civil protest by an overwhelming number of conscientious Americans. In the hypothetical case of his ordering a stop to the counting of mail-in ballots, for example, unless millions took to the streets to oppose that order, Trump would undoubtedly get away with it.

Can millions be counted on to protest abuses of power surrounding the election? Right now I would venture to say that the answer to that question is "yes." But in the next sixty days much could change. If we see more chaos, more violence, and more polarization, the will to engage in civil protest (or the discipline to ensure that it remains civil) could wane very rapidly. 

No one need believe that Donald Trump is directing a complex conspiracy to "steal" the election. However intelligent he may be, such a sophisticated enterprise would be beyond anything he had shown himself capable of before. But one does not have to posit that he is maneuvering in subtle ways to falsely "win" the election, only that he has no intention of ever conceding that he lost it. He has shown that he is willing to abuse his power to any degree in pursuit of his own interests.  Anyone who insists that Trump will not interfere with a final counting of the vote out of an unwillingness to destroy our democracy must explain on what basis they can argue that he has ever demonstrated such an unwillingness. For my part, I have no trouble believing that the man who told us he trusted Vladimir Putin over the FBI, who separated thousand of migrant children from their parents, who stole money from charity, who is on tape bragging about committing sexual assault, and who has committed a host of other obscenities in the light of day and on camera, would lose very little sleep over having left democracy in ashes.

We as citizens are faced with dire and frightening challenges in the weeks ahead. Voting is of course vitally important, but voting is very likely not going to be enough, no matter how overwhelmingly the electorate decides in favor of Joe Biden. All of the other methods of civil engagement are likewise urgent- volunteering, public displays of support, letters to elected officials, and monetary donations. But none of these might suffice. In the end, the only way that we might secure a clear accounting of the election is by taking to the streets in civil protest. And there is the rub. Donald Trump is maneuvering to make civil protest more dangerous than it has been in recent memory. By stoking anger and fear, he is trying to drown out the voices of civil debate with the clamor of malignant violence.

We cannot let this happen. We must be brave and we must be disciplined. We must repudiate violence, but we must not neglect the duty of citizenship. We cannot allow ourselves to be bullied into silence or despair. If like the heroes of the Civil Rights movement or the veterans who risked their lives defending America did before us, we accept risks and face down dangers by speaking out, we shall prevail.  If not for our own sake, we must do so for that of our children. Those of us who grew up enjoying the blessings of democracy have an obligation to preserve them for those who will come after us.

Coming this Fall: The Trump "China Crisis"

Since the first weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency it has been clear that his re-election campaign would be marked by an unprecedented amount of belligerence and polarizing vitriol, as he has appealed consistently to the same core of base supporters that gave him a surprise minority victory in 2016. But with the November election approaching, he has increasingly struggled to formulate a message. The exigencies of the pandemic have blunted some of his most dependable rhetorical weapons. His posture as a hero of the economy has been undermined by a steep recession, the usual distractions of racially charged pronouncements and celebrity feuds have been eclipsed by the daily grind of public health statistics. Anger and division are Trump’s stock-in-trade, but anger and division are difficult to sustain when everyone is in the same miserable boat.

            It is for this reason that China has become so fundamental to Trump’s re-election strategy. In some respects the choice of China as a scapegoat might seem compelled by circumstance. Because the pandemic first began in Wuhan, Trump was naturally drawn to deflect responsibility by repeatedly referring to Covid-19 as “the China Virus,” and to proclaim that the Americans experiencing economic duress are not to blame for their own misfortune, “China is.”

            But Trump’s use of China to drive an electoral narrative runs much more broadly and deeply than simple scapegoating. The intensity and variety of maneuvers undertaken by the White House in recent weeks indicate the pursuit of a much more ambitious agenda. By manipulating Sino-U.S. relations, the Trump team hopes to manufacture an issue on which they can run through November 3.

            This recent campaign is in some sense an extension of the trade war with China pursued by the White House for the past three years, but it is a new edifice being built on an old foundation. A resolution of the trade war (if there is ever to be one) has effectively been deferred until after the election. Meaningful diplomacy regarding Chinese abuses in Hong Kong (where a largely peaceful movement for democracy has been met by the imposition of a draconian and illiberal “security law”) and Xinjiang (where as many as a million members of the Uighur minority have been detained in labor camps and forced to undergo “re-education”) has likewise been abandoned, all in favor of a series of escalating and gratuitous provocations, none of which is tied to discrete long-term policy goals.

            The first clear signs of this campaign came in June. That month saw a staged controversy, played out in right-wing media, over whether the President’s insistence on using phrases like “Kung Flu” was racially inflammatory (it was). Since then, the White House has floated a series of confrontations with Beijing, each more aggressive than the last.

             In July the administration closed the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas, on the pretext that it was engaged in espionage activities (no specific evidence or charges were announced). About nine days later Trump announced a pending ban on the Chinese social media platform TikTok and messaging service WeChat, a move that had been teased earlier in a speech by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The administration’s rationale for this move was as vague as that for the closing of the Houston consulate. The information gathered from users by TikTok and WeChat was said to pose a security threat, despite the fact that this information is no different than that gathered by platforms such as Facebook or Instagram. The most recent move in this campaign was a trip by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to Taiwan. This visit from a Cabinet-level official to Taiwan was unprecedented in the interval since formal recognition of the PRC, and was deliberately calculated to provoke CCP leaders in Beijing.

            All of these provocations were aimed at eliciting a hostile and inflammatory response from Beijing. Why? What is the logic of inducing this form of artificial standoff? The perceived advantages of a “China crisis” in the current election campaign works on several levels for the Trump team.

As noted above, Trump himself is only really capable of running a form of politics derived from the reality television genre that propelled him onto the national stage. It is rooted in drama and conflict; he must show supporters that he is “vanquishing enemies” daily. From the outset his chosen antagonists were fellow Americans or residents of the US: people of color, Muslims, women, LGBTQ citizens, undocumented immigrants, Democrats.

Trump’s recent and great misfortune is that circumstance has shouldered him with an enemy that is difficult to caricature or manipulate: the Covid-19 pandemic. An effective campaign against the virus would require him to reconcile and unite groups that he had until now counted on pitting against one-another. This would require him to completely reconstruct his “brand” in a way that he lacks the will and talent to accomplish. He thus needs an enemy that will be intuitively recognizable to his base supporters, and that can produce fear and anger sufficiently intense to distract them from their fear of the Covid-19 virus.

China serves perfectly in this regard. Since his first speech about “Mexican rapists” Trump has appealed to racial animosity. He thus can rely on his most enthusiastic supporters to accept that the same information held by Facebook executives is much more dangerous when collected by Chinese corporations. If he can goad the Chinese into a sufficiently belligerent response, fear of a “yellow peril” might displace (or be conflated with) fear of the Covid-19 pandemic sufficiently to shore up support among Trump’s core followers.

            Beyond this, a manufactured “China crisis” serves Trump’s political needs in other, more particular respects. Since first taking office in 2017, he has labored under the strong impression that he may have been compromised by Russia. His hostility to any investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and his extraordinary deference to Vladimir Putin at occasions such as the Helsinki summit cast suspicion on his integrity as a guardian of US national interests.

           One of the most basic tactics underpinning Trump’s political success has been his playing of an “equivalency game.” In 2016 his personal corruption was a matter of public record, so by way of normalizing his candidacy and giving implicit permission to centrist voters to join his coalition, he campaigned (both on his own and through surrogates) to define Hillary Clinton as similarly corrupt. He is running the same equivalency game on Joe Biden, but in this instance (because of his own accrued liabilities) he specifically needs to undermine Biden’s timeworn reputation as a faithful steward of American interests in the realm of foreign policy.

To that end, the campaign to induce a “China crisis” is unspooling in tandem with a persistent message tying Joseph Biden and his son Hunter to corrupt dealings with the leaders in Beijing. The first hints that this was in the works appeared in October 2019, when (in the early stages of the impeachment inquiry launched by the House of Representatives) Trump told news cameras that not only should Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine be scrutinized, but that his activities in China, if investigated, would prove to be “even worse.”

The substance of these allegations remains hazy, but they have been churning through the right-wing media ecosystem for some time. Peter Schweizer, the author of the 2015 exposé Clinton Cash, has outlined charges against Hunter in his more recent publication: Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends (Harper 2019). What can be clearly ascertained is that Hunter Biden and his partners in a private equity firm set up an investment fund, Bohai Harvest RST (or BHR), that relied in part on capital provided by the Bank of China. The fund was set up after Hunter (and his daughter Finnegan, Joe Biden’s granddaughter) accompanied Joe Biden (then still Vice President) on a state visit to China in 2013.

The details of this business venture are not fully known. How much money Hunter acquired from the Bank of China, what his personal profit was from BHR’s investments, and what role Joe Biden played (if any) in brokering this deal on behalf of Hunter and his partners remain open questions. Certainly, there is at least an apparent conflict of interest. But no one has produced evidence that either Hunter or Joe Biden did anything illegal, or evenly blatantly unethical.

Lack of specifics has not deterred Trump from pressing ahead with maximalist allegations. In a recent press appearance Trump warned that, “If I don’t win the election, China will own the United States. You’re going to have to learn Chinese, you want to know the truth.” This was only one in a long series of dark hints at Joe Biden’s depth of cooptation by Beijing, a messaging strategy that is sure to intensify in frequency and stridency as November 3 approaches.

Where is all this going? Thus far the “China crisis” campaign has achieved little traction. Neither the CCP leadership in Beijing nor the Biden team have shown any inclination to take the bait. Biden has not been moved to offer more than standard arguments in defense of his foreign policy credentials.

Even more remarkably, Beijing has been extraordinarily restrained in its response to Trump’s provocations. The White House, for example, seems to have expected that its closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston would produce a response much more amenable to cable TV fireworks. If Beijing had been more obliging, it would have closed the US consular office in Hong Kong, a move that would have set off a media frenzy lasting days or even weeks. Instead Beijing closed the US consulate in Chengdu, a city that many American citizens could not find on a map, guaranteeing that the “consulate confrontation” would not provide fodder for more than a single news cycle. Similarly the proposed bans on TikTok and WeChat have elicited little by way of visible retaliation. Beijing understands what the Trump team is up to, and seems resolved not to play along.

If the Trump campaign understands the situation, there is yet no sign that their determination to follow through on the “China crisis” plan has wavered. An incumbent president who refuses to be constrained by any of the norms of foreign policy or constitutional good order has many means at his disposal, and Trump can be counted on to use them all. Beijing has vulnerabilities that can be exploited, and the White House has already shown that they are aware of these.

In particular, the trip by HHS Secretary Azar to Taiwan was an escalation into Beijing’s “red zone” of threat sensitivity. For four decades, successive US administrations have cleaved to a policy of “strategic ambiguity” calibrated to keep the peace in the Taiwan Strait. On the one hand, our posture seeks to persuade Beijing that any unprovoked military strike against Taiwan will be met with stiff resistance from the US, up to and including the use of military force. On the other hand, we have deliberately kept leaders in Taipei guessing as to how far our commitment to defend Taiwan extends, to preclude them rashly provoking the wrath of Beijing.

Such a delicate game is necessitated by the extreme volatility of the political situation in the Strait. Chinese nationalists (that is, the vast majority of the PRC’s citizens) view the inclusion of Taiwan within China’s sovereign territory as sacrosanct (even if that status is purely symbolic, as is currently the case). No Chinese government, even one that had been democratically elected, could survive the firestorm of civil unrest that would ensue in the wake of a formal Taiwanese declaration of independence. At the same time, most residents of Taiwan feel little emotional investment in the prospects of unification with the PRC. Indeed, sentiment in favor of formally declaring Taiwan an independent, democratic republic has steadily grown in recent years, a move that would certainly entail war.

The situation is explosive, and has only remained stable through the prudence and forbearance of all major international players. Enter Donald Trump, a figure for whom “prudence” and “forbearance” might as well be words exclusively spoken in some extraterrestrial tongue. He learned just how sensitive Beijing is on this issue when, before being sworn in in January 2017, he tweeted about his pleasure at receiving a phone call from “the president of Taiwan (Tsai Ing-wen),” drawing immediate and apoplectic condemnation from PRC leaders.

If Trump wants to elicit a belligerent response from Beijing (and he clearly does), he knows he only has to press against the open nerve of Taiwan. The trip by HHS Secretary Azar to Taipei is only the first foray into this tactical field. As November 3 draws nigh, the Trump White House will flirt ever more openly and perilously with recognition of Taiwanese sovereignty, until they induce a response from Beijing that rises to the level of crisis they desire.

          By the same token, amplifying “awareness” of the Bidens’ corrupt ties to China is a simple matter for any president who has the will and the means to manipulate the powers of the Executive. That Trump himself is game for any degree of abuse of power is beyond doubt, and in Attorney General William Barr he clearly has a pliable instrument for the purpose of exploiting the offices of the Justice Department. As the “China crisis” heats up in late September or October, so too will a new chapter unfold in federal law enforcement’s interests in the activities of Hunter Biden and BHR. There is some slight possibility that we will get as far as October 31 without seeing Hunter’s house searched under the auspices of a “no-knock warrant” and Hunter himself “perp-walked” in handcuffs and under FBI escort, but it would be shocking if that date comes without at least the announcement of a “formal inquiry” into BHR’s alleged crimes by the Office of the Attorney General. 

     Nothing about Trump’s “China crisis” charade should come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to his methods since the summer of 2015. He operates exclusively at a level of public perception that he feels confident he can control, without any regard for underlying realities or long-term consequences. Unfortunately for the US, the PRC, and the world at large, the Sino-American relationship on which he is day trading is profoundly important to the long term stability and prosperity of the global community. Hopefully, in the wake of the 2020 election, the conduct of Chinese-American relations can be put back on a basis that is not purely reducible to sound-bite politics of the moment.

An Open Letter to New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy Regarding the Sabotaging of the USPS

 Dear Governor Murphy,

           I write you as a citizen and constituent out of concern for the rights of myself, my family, and my community. In recent days President Donald Trump and his appointed cabinet official, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, have openly and wantonly attacked the integrity of the upcoming election and have engaged in a conspiracy to deprive millions of Americans of their constitutional right to vote. This profanity must not be allowed to stand.

            The Covid-19 pandemic has produced unique conditions that must be accommodated in order to have a free and fair election. Since Election Day is not a work holiday, polls naturally rely on a cadre of retired volunteers for ordinary operation. That work force is highly susceptible to the virus and cannot be expected to incur the risk of their usual work. This will mean fewer polling stations, which will delay voting and create even greater public health risks as crowds gather to cast their ballots.

           It is thus imperative that the United States Postal Service be enlisted to aid in the fulfillment of balloting. Millions more votes will necessarily be cast by mail this year, placing a strain on the resources of the Postal Service. Additional funds and new personnel and equipment will be required to accommodate this urgent need.  

          Instead of doing what is vitally necessary, the President is working to obstruct the needs of the election, openly refusing essential funds to the Postal Service for the admitted reason of sabotaging the process of mail-in balloting. His ostensible reasons for this attack are completely fallacious. Even if it were true that universal mail-in balloting posed greater risks than "absentee balloting" (and empirical evidence shows this is not true), the resource needs for using the absentee ballot system to redress the problems of the crisis would be even greater than those posed by universal mail-in balloting. Even more new personnel and equipment would be needed to process millions of absentee ballot requests, so any move to starve the Postal Service of resources is an attack on the integrity of the election, full stop. There is no legitimate defense for the course of action that Donald Trump has openly admitted he has undertaken.

        At the same time that Donald Trump is attacking the funding of the USPS, Louis DeJoy is working from within to sabotage its existing capacity. Hundreds of sorting machines have been decommissioned and even dismantled, indefinitely crippling the Service's delivery capacity in many districts. This is utterly execrable, as it not only affects the election, but is causing delays to the delivery of food, medicine, and other essentials to those most vulnerable during the ongoing pandemic.

         This sabotaging of the USPS is a crime being committed in broad daylight. It is a violation of the President's oath of office and a betrayal of the foundational principles of our Republic. The Constitution gives the states the power to set voting requirements, the federal government has no authority to effectively mandate a set of voting parameters from its seat in Washington D.C.  

          I implore you to direct our Secretary of State, in coalition with as many other state governments across the Union as may be persuaded to join in a class action, to undertake a law suit against President Trump and the federal government on behalf of the people of our state. The goal of this lawsuit should be to halt the illegal and immoral sabotaging of the USPS.  Donald Trump has confessed to his malicious intent on camera and in social media, he can no longer be trusted to safeguard the integrity of the Postal Services. For the sake of the citizens of our state and the larger United States, the USPS must be put into the receivership of an independent authority convened by a bipartisan commission.

          Time is short. The election is less than three months away, and postal delays are costing many their health and lives in the meantime. Please take action swiftly. I thank you for your attention to this matter, and hope that this message finds you well.

 

                          Sincerely,

 

                          Andrew Meyer