How to deal with the Trump threat (Part 1)
How to deal with the Trump threat (Part 1)
Friends,
The 2024 general election is now underway.
Like most of you, I’ve found myself immersed in many conversations about the threat to our nation — and the world — posed by Donald Trump.
Just to be clear, I’m not talking about conversations with Trump supporters. I’m referring to conversations with people who are fully aware of the damage Trump has already done and the even greater danger he presents if reelected.
Understandably, many of the people I talk with express rage and despair.
It’s natural that we want to share our anger. Someone who has attempted to jettison the rule of law, unleashed violence on the U.S. Capitol, and seeks to wreck our constitutional system is once again the candidate put forward for president by the Republican Party. Why isn’t he already imprisoned?
When rage is driving us, despair is often in the passenger seat. It’s easy to feel dismayed that so many of our fellow Americans (sometimes even within our own families) have been seduced by this man and manipulated by his Republican lapdogs and the right-wing media. Our hearts ache for our nation and the ideals on which it’s based, and for the previous generations that have sacrificed their lives in service of those ideals.
I’m convinced that Trump can be beaten. But to ensure Joe Biden’s reelection, we must communicate effectively and concretely with one another about how to do so and what we’re going to contribute to the effort. We cannot be spectators.
Over and above feelings of rage and despair, we need to emphasize the urgency of defeating him along practical lines with steps all of us can take: getting out the vote, identifying and engaging voters who are on the fence, doing our damndest to discourage potential Biden voters from voting for third-party candidates, and focusing on winning swing states.
We must not allow our rage and despair to get in the way of communicating such urgency, developing such strategies, and committing to effective action.
The next 33 weeks will test our individual and collective capacities. We need to stay focused on what must be done.
Trump is neither inevitable nor invincible. Democracy is our precious legacy, and we must do everything humanly possible to preserve and strengthen it.
Professor Reich, I fully agree with you that we must stay focused in regards to the upcoming election to ensure that primarily Donald Trump does not regain the presidency and second that we vote in a Congress that is functional.
In my view, I don’t think we’ve been sufficiently effective in driving home what it would mean to lose our democracy and how our way of life would change. Trump already has stated he would enact the Insurrection Act on Day 1 of his Presidency. He’s already spoken about rounding up his political enemies. Accordingly, we can’t relent in urging people—whatever their reasons for complacency or indifference—to imagine what America would look like were the President to start moving the National Guard around to put down our voices, our right to dissent, perhaps indefinitely detaining us. This is not without precedent. Trump had wanted to criminalize protests around Black Lives Matter for the murder of George Floyd.
Expanding upon rights and freedoms that would be ripped away, all of us must amplify our dire despair over Trump’s absorption of a party that applauds a High Court that would ignore 50 years of settled precedent in Roe and would overturn a fundamental right relied upon by tens of millions every year. Clearly, a court willing to do that with a protection, over and over again reaffirmed, would do it to other fundamental protections.
Ultimately, we have about 7 months, a small window to protect the key mechanisms of American democracy from a party committed to precipitating a fatal weakening of American institutions, let alone a presidency eager and able to consolidate power, wherein the rule of law could be subjugated to an individual. Hence, it is our job to urge uncommitted voters to listen to the things Trump says and the people he admires. No one ever should doubt that whatever the freedoms we have in this country, whatever one likes about this country, dramatically would change were Trump ever again to hold office.