Here's betting that impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump prove to be a complete political disaster for the United States and the Democrat Party. Here's betting that Trumpism emerges more popular than its last showings, that Donaldism and its absurd sense of grievance gets fresh impetus and that the current, but entirely unnecessary drift towards disintegration of the republic as we know it continues.
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If these happen, it will, I suspect, be because many in the current leadership of the Democrats, especially in the Congress, see the riot - possibly insurrection - in Washington last week as a "teachable occasion"; a platform by which American "deplorables" and other discontents can be made to see the error of their perceptions. Can, moreover, be wrenched from rabble-rousers in the pulpit, the National Rifle Association, in social media, or in extreme right-wing media who have encouraged and developed their sense of displacement from society.
The big problem is that most senior Democrats are not speaking the same language as most modern Republicans. It is not merely that the nation has become hyper-partisan and that party affiliation is much more a matter of culture and religion than it is of economic philosophy, or preference as between smorgasbords of electoral goodies. Or that they have different sources of "news", attribute significance to different "facts" and have low trust in the mainstream media. It is that the differences are so great that communication seems to have become almost impossible. It is aggravated by the fact that a good many working-class Republicans sense (correctly) that senior Democrats despise them. Their loving reproofs are rightly seen as patronising. Remember when Hillary Clinton referred to the "deplorables". Words and symbols have different meanings; the relationship of head and heart, or logic and emotion fundamentally different, and there seems less and less common ground.
The result will be that the words by which Democrats believe they can discredit Trumpism forever will satisfy only Democrats and the mainstream commentariat, but have little real impact on the people and the party Trump controls. It's not about reason and logic, or correct legal syllogisms. Nor is the argument that proceedings must occur because "there must be consequences" for the incitement of rebellion. (If consequences are necessary, he could, of course, be criminally charged with this on January 21, and I doubt any self-pardons will be a bar. But a jury of nine Republicans might be.)
Perhaps it would be nice, from the Democrat point of view, if Americans "came together". But it by no means follows that they will come together under Biden, or Democrat politicians with agendas, such as Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or Kamala Harris, let alone the now retired predecessor Hillary Clinton. So personalised has been the hatred memes of the past four years, that Trumpites give an involuntary shudder, and utter an oath, each time they hear such names. They see most of what they say as elitist, hectoring, arrogant, snobbish and condescending, and out of touch with the feelings and needs of "real" Americans. Democrats did not win the election by wooing Republicans back into the fold. They won it by organising a bigger turnout from their own constituencies.
Nor is there a simple morality play by which the most alienated Republicans can be brought to understand that the election was fair, and that, the majority being Democrat, Republicans must accept the verdict and accept its decisions with the same enthusiasm as they greeted decisions by Trump. They may come to grudgingly accept Joe Biden - a man hard to hate - but it is difficult to imagine them ever identifying him - as, rightly or wrongly, so many have come to identify Trump - as brave, patriotic, a reformer, an outsider, and a person who, despite manifest flaws seemed to be an instrument of God. Most Australians, like most non-Americans, may sneer at this reverence for Trump, or the ready and emotional acceptance of his gospel, whatever that is. But his very success, before his ultimate failure, is a reminder that Trump is a brand, an ideology and a movement.
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As Democrats see it, Trump and Trumpism were decisively defeated at the election. The run-offs for Senate places in Georgia gave them legitimate control of congress. The election itself provided Biden with both a domestic and international mandate, including an explicit one of winding back many of the more disastrous policies of the past four years. It was also a mandate for a more urgent approach to the coronavirus pandemic and a reversal of anti-migration policies. They have no need, as such, to apologise to the losers. Yet Biden, and others, have talked the language of reconciliation, and of uniting the nation again. And the appalling way in which Trump extremists went too far in Washington, as well as Trump's impeachable manner of whipping up the rage has made clear the need for some agreement about common ground. Even extremist Republicans such as Mitch McConnell, who have never dreamed of making the slightest concession to the sentiments of Democrats, or of supporting any measures with which Democrats were associated, is now talking conciliatory words about cooperation. Yet the logic of this paragraph starts with the assumption, which many Republicans, despite the evidence, refuse to accept, that Biden won the election.
No doubt Democrats will feel that an impeachment trial is just the occasion for a feast of righteous preaching by winners to the losers. Who could pass up the opportunity to mock a discredited and deluded soon-to-be former president, still insisting he was robbed. A man accused of urging and encouraging a violent riot at which an array of his crazies rampaged down Washington streets into Congress. Some were armed, and seemingly determined to fight and die to prevent the winners of what they had been encouraged to believe was a rigged election using the power that election had given them. Whether as coup attempt or rampage, it was complete over-reach, susceptible even to the feeble and half-hearted attempts by police, many of them obvious sympathisers, to restrain them. The over-reach is soon underlined by the President's denial that he had incited their violence and his insistence that he had always urged peaceful exercise of rights of free assembly, not violence and destruction. To the bemusement of many of the true believers, he has even threatened the wrath of the state on those who responded to his call.
The question remains, however, whether the Democrats have the words, the language, and the followership to make mainstream and fringe Republicans look abashed and ashamed. To make them realise the error of their ways, the falseness of their perceptions and the need to play politics like gentlemen and gentlewomen. Even the orator and persuader of the age, Barack Obama, couldn't make that happen.
Trump, and Trumpism at no disadvantage in the Senate trial
No one should get themselves in a lather about whether Donald Trump has received or will receive all of his legal rights, or whether the triumph of his opponents is unfairly depriving him of the bully pulpit that his office has given him. Nor should they be concerned about the freedom of his speech. But they should continue to be concerned about the effect of what he says, even when it involves lying, dissembling, or just plain hokum.
Frankly, I would be only mildly concerned if he was hanged from the nearest tree, given his general enthusiasm for capital punishment. Arguments that his trial in the Senate should go overboard to permit him to say what he wants swing on two points. First, he should not be allowed afterwards to be the martyr claiming that he was not heard in his defence. If his guilt is obvious, as his opponents (now even in his own party) claim, who needs a kangaroo court to convict him?
Second, his opponents hope and expect that Trump, at his show trial, will put his foot in it on many further occasions, making his guilt even more obvious. He has a long record of denying having said what the record shows him to have said, or of reconstructing his words and actions in impermissible ways, of outright lying, and of inventing distractions to avoid facing the truth. But he is now out of power. He has opponents in his own party who think he went too far. Many of these want his continuing power and influence in the party destroyed. They do not want Trump back. Nor any member of his family. A good many want the process to also isolate further potential Trumps - such as Ted Cruz. They may not want to abjure populism, or many of the myths it has perpetrated, but they now feel the need to distance themselves from the mob, mob hysteria and that ever-present threat of violence that Trumpism, like fascism in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Britain always involved.
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An impeachment trial is an intrinsically political process. It may follow some of the forms of a criminal trial, indeed may have the Chief Justice playing chairman, but it is not a judicial process, and, for the most part, rulings and decisions cannot be appealed to the Supreme Court. If the Senate decides he is "guilty" (something which requires a two-thirds majority of the senate, or 67 votes) it does not amount to conviction. For the first time in the impeachment of a president, Trump will be already out of office during the trial, so he cannot be deprived of his power, although the Senate may be able to strip him of continuing privileges.
If one is sticking to constitutional theory, no one should attach any particular legal significance to the verdict. It is not that greatly different or more serious than an Australian prime minister losing the confidence of his supporters. Given that the American Senate is equally divided, a verdict finding the charge made out will show that he has completely lost the confidence of at least a third of his own party. Most expect that a few Republicans, including the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, believe that he incited an insurrection, but that the number of Republicans thinking that will fall short of the necessary 17. Many of the Republican senators will worry that their vote could cause a backlash back home, whether from the powerful Trump machine, or from members of the party's lunatic fringe. Even McConnell, now trying to play the statesman, has spent most of his recent career refusing to give an inch to the Democrats.
But it is not in the interests of the Democrats, whether in the Congress or outside of it, to treat the Senate trial as a mere political judgment, by politicians, of the deeds of the President. The impeachment charge alleges high crimes and misdemeanours. The team of people arguing the case in the Senate from the House of Representatives will be alleging distinct facts and interpretations of the law. There will be rulings on the admissibility of evidence, and procedure, by the Chief Justice. Almost all of those involved will pretend that they are considering the evidence in a detached and fair-minded way. Even as they hold media conferences and otherwise engage in partisan leaking, they will affect a judicial manner. If a verdict after an impeachment trial is to have any political consequence, the Democrats must succeed in creating an impression that they have converted a political dispute into a form of legal judgment, representing a bipartisan consensus. Good luck with that. They want the public to accept the judgment, not as the resolution of a dispute between two of the three arms of government, but, in effect, as an independent judgment from the judicial arm.
This is difficult enough in an ordinary impeachment trial, if three previous cases, involving Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Trump himself can be regarded as enough for a book of precedents. Trump himself can call evidence, and directly or through counsel comment on its significance. He can be echoed by his political supporters, who will be keen to portray his alleged sins as a mere political attack. With or without enough votes to prevent an adverse finding, their first objective will be to have Trump's supporters say that this is mere victor's justice, pure spite rather than detached judgment, tainted by everything from crooked elections, fake evidence, and the socialistic, godless and generally abortion-mongering Democrats. Defections, if any, by Republican senators will fit into a long-existing narrative about RINOs (Republicans in name only), many of whom will find their positions challenged at the next primaries. The Republican Party is as it is in part because the primary system, and Trump campaign funds, has tended to push candidates to the extreme rather than the centre. Trump still owns and controls his party, and those who want it back will have to wrest it from him, and from the politicians he has helped get elected. The Democrats hardly have a role to play.
Ambitious Republicans will still see more advantage in identifying themselves with Trumpism (with or without Trump) than in being seen as collaborators with a discredited and corrupt system, and a party whose ideas and ideals they pretend to abhor most of all.
In the dream Democrat scenario, the impeachment trial sees an abashed and ashamed Trump, desperately trying to argue that his violent, abusive and threatening words were not egging on his lunatics. It involves Republicans who are embarrassed that it all came to this, somewhat sullenly agreeing that things must change, and that the temperature needs to be lowered. Trump lawyers, perhaps, urging the equivalent of a plea of guilty with an explanation, in the hope that contrition will allow some reputation, some honour, perhaps some place in history to be salvaged from the wreckage. The Donald doesn't do contrition.
Much more likely is a perception by each of these players that the interests of Trump, his supporters in the party and in the community, and the hopes of any sort of restoration of Trumpism are in maximum non-cooperation, minimum contrition, and renewed efforts to claim it is all a conspiracy, not least by those who live in the swamp. The umpire being appealed to is not the Senate, or the new regime. It is the constituency. That's a constituency that is not much influenced by consensus in the mainstream media, or by facts. The war for hearts and minds will not be won by a manifesto or a book, let alone by an editorial in the New York Times.
Too often in the past the response of the Democrats to losing their traditional base has been to reassure themselves that their logic and intentions have been good, and to seek out new constituencies so as to override its changed mood. The Democrats are right to sense that 21st century politics is about much more than the decline of the white working class. But they are wrong to ignore it and to address them in words that have lost meaning.
- Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times and a regular columnist. jwaterfordcanberra@gmail.com