A Grim Thanksgiving

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Sometimes people you admire just don’t seem to be paying attention. This is one of those times.

As we celebrate on this day, Thanksgiving 2019, we are as close to losing our Republic as we have ever been. What makes our current threat uniquely dangerous is that doesn’t come from abroad, at least not primarily. For the first time ever, it comes from our own White House.

On some days, the president lies so much and so obviously that he seems crazy. On others he just seems a hopeless narcissist, beguiled by his own fictional glory. On still others he seems a master showman who cares all for the show and little for reality. But what if he’s really crazy like a fox? What is he’s able to corrupt and bend others to his will without even causing a stir?

Let’s look at the record. He invited the Russians to intervene in our presidential election. “Russia, if you’re listening, . . .” he pleaded on national TV. After all seventeen of our intelligence agencies opined, with “high confidence,” that Russia had indeed helped him win, he and his lackeys did little but try to downplay their reports.

You don’t have to know exactly what our Founders meant by the words “treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Just think of the Trojan Horse.

The Trojan warriors who pulled the Horse inside their gates probably weren’t traitors. They may have just been stupid. They might have thought the Horse a gift. They may even have thought it was a sign that the Greeks had abandoned their siege of Troy.

But Troy fell all the same. The Trojan Horse is now a metaphor for being duped into complete destruction.

Perhaps Trump’s narcissism so deluded him as to make him think that Putin’s helpful “intervention” in our election was a gift to the nation. Virtually everyone serious in government warned him to the contrary. Nevertheless, he let a second Trojan Horse in when he promoted the Russians’ disinformation that Ukraine, not Russia, had tried to hack our election, and in Hillary Clinton’s favor. Then he invited a third Trojan Horse in when he pressed Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

As James Bond’s creator Ian Fleming once wrote: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” For action by our own president, that means treason.

Trump now persists in telling everyone who will listen that the Horses are not dangerous, that maybe they’re even on our side. Doesn’t that sound even more like treason? In a New York Times column Tuesday, pundit Michelle Goldberg properly called his behavior “world-historic treachery.”

Vladimir Putin must have a soundproofed, electronically shielded room somewhere deep inside the Kremlin. He must go there at least once a day to let rip the explosion of hysterical laughter that he feels every time he thinks of our president. How else but through Trump’s agency could a failing strongman of a failing state, with an economy the size of Italy’s and no world-class institution but the KGB (now the “FSB”), have brought the world’s leading nation to such ruin?

But Trump has not just immeasurably weakened us, making his “MAGA” caps the cruelest of mockery. He’s also corrupted and subverted us in unprecedented ways.

Robert S. Mueller III spent two years and an estimated $30-40 million meticulously documenting Trump’s world-historic treachery and his lame attempts to cover it up. Yet Mueller refused to draw the obvious conclusions, apparently hoping that readers would draw their own. He was out of touch: he expected his audience to read and write, not Tweet. He thought readers might look outside of their own information silos. He was wrong.

What did Trump do? He fired the FBI director supervising the investigation, and later his own hand-picked AG. He appointed a new AG, a lackey. The lackey “spun” Mueller’s 400-plus page report in a 19-page memo with Tweet-sized conclusions, and the rest of the GOP lackeys joined the “witch hunt” chorus. The world-historic treachery simply disappeared, drowned in a sea of lies, spin and distractions. And there it lies today.

So what is Trump doing now? He just restored a rogue Navy Seal’s Trident pin. Is that just another distraction? Think again. Trump may be making a play for our military, just when, if the Supreme Court enforces all Congress’ subpoenas, the men with guns might become the “court” of last resort.

Where do you think lie the hearts and minds of every rogue warrior, everyone with a grievance, and everyone who’s broken the rules, the laws of war and our military’s Code of Honor? They’re with Chief Petty Officer Gallagher, Trump and their backer Fox.

Richard Spencer, former Secretary of the Navy—the one who believes that “good order and discipline . . . [are] deadly serious business”— is out of a job. Will someone more like Gallagher replace him? Will someone like Bill Barr do to Defense what Barr did to Justice? Do we want people of the “quality” and “morality” of Barr, Gallagher, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity giving our warriors marching orders?

It gets worse. Tuesday Nobel-Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman made the case that Trump is subverting our business titans, too. He’s already tried to corrupt them by giving them undeserved tax cuts and repealing regulations. Now, says Krugman, he’s also doing it with tariff exemptions. He’s had an apparent effect in subverting Tim Cook of Apple, at least with respect to Cook’s public statements. Trump was probably trying to punish Jess Bezos when, to everyone’s astonishment, Trump’s regime awarded a huge cloud data-storage contract to Microsoft, instead of Amazon, for no apparent technological reason.

When you look at Trump in this way, he no longer looks so crazy. He looks just like a would-be tyrant using precisely the same tricks that every tyrant in history has used to corner absolute power. First commandeer the apparatus of law. Second, take over or neutralize the press. If you can’t easily take it over because it’s strong, take over a weak branch (Fox) and de-legitimize the rest.

Next pack the courts with your lackeys, even if doing so takes one flying into a convenient theatric rage. Then stiff the legislature and its subpoenas, hoping the courts back you up. If not, get the guys with guns on your side, by putting your loyalists in their leadership. And just in case anyone with money and clout might oppose you, buy them off or silence them with carrots or sticks.

The game plan is easy to summarize. Play to everyone’s lust for power and cash. Sideline everyone with a conscience, scruples, expertise or a sense of professionalism—not to mention fealty to our Constitution. Push the just and competent out and wait for the scum to rise to the top after you appoint them to positions for which they have no experience or qualifications.

Does anyone notice that Trump is now getting down to the last few steps? Still think he’s a crazy old man? Or is he a Fox with his snout stuck right in middle of the henhouse, gnawing on his first killed hen?

Next to all this, the difference between Medicare for All who Want It and forcing Medicare on All is not just mere peanuts. It’s a politically suicidal distraction. What have Sanders and Warren been thinking?

Next to this, the Ukraine affair is a mere data point on the way to proving world-historic treachery. It’s not even a very good one, at least in the court of public opinion, because Ukraine eventually got its aid and weapons and never investigated the Bidens. So should we really be betting impeachment wholly on this charge alone? Isn’t that like playing roulette by placing all your bets on double-green-zero?

The people we admire, the ones we are counting on, are all focused on minutiae, not the big picture. Sanders and Warren debate the details of health-insurance policy that won’t take shape for years, if at all. Sanders focuses on bashing billionaires, including the ones like Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Tom Steyer, who are trying to help, or at least not to hurt.

Adam Schiff devotes himself single-mindedly to making the single Ukraine data point crystal clear, neglecting all the other means by which Trump has been and is reaching for tyranny. Nancy Pelosi appears to be encouraging him.

Who’s looking at the big picture? It shows a president busy scorning all others, monopolizing the news, and distracting everyone while he works systematically to pull every lever of corruption and tyranny at once.

So far, Republicans in Congress don’t seem to think he’s inept. On the contrary, even former “never Trumpers” and Republicans who’ve announced their retirement seem scared to death of him. House members refuse to consider his “inappropriate” behavior impeachable. Senators say they’re reserving judgment but give every appearance of falling in lockstep behind him. Both make excuses for him ranging from the implausible to the absurd.

Trump seems to control some dark magic that compels those who have every reason to hate him to fall into line behind him. No one can know he’s inept for sure until he’s gone.

So when will the people we trust to save us wake up? when journalists start suffering Khashoggi’s fate here at home? when Trump’s most outspoken opponents start disappearing into Guantánamo? Won’t it then be too late?

The Democrats’ somnolence makes this Thanksgiving a grim one. But we can be thankful for reasons to hope. These men and women are indeed good and powerful. They just need to wake up to the main threat. We also have a whole bureaucracy full of men and women who have consciences, superb training and a lifetime of professional, dedicated service to our Constitution.

Now all we have to do is get all these strong horses pulling in the same direction. We have to focus on dumping our would-be tyrant before he destroys us and our Republic. It’s that simple, and that stark a choice.

To that end, the Dems have to show Trump’s own loyalists the entirety and enormity of his misdeeds, incessantly and relentlessly. They need to find words and pictures that can penetrate the fog of propaganda and alternate reality in which Trump’s supporters live.

At the same time, the Dems must show them how much better their life will be with him gone. To do so, they need a roughly unified program of long-delayed citizen benefits. They must all bang pretty much the same gong. Democratic candidates must start marching in rough lockstep, just like the Republicans in Congress, while competing on the savvy, thick skin, decisiveness, tactical skill and sheer brass they will need to beat Trump.

Nothing else matters in comparison, not even global warming. For if Trump gets re-elected and we lose our Republic, the world will degenerate into economic and even military discord. Then the goal of reducing greenhouse gases enough to avoid planetary catastrophe will pass beyond our species’ reach. As long as Trump is our supreme leader, he and global warming will be connected, and he will be the more immediate threat.

To beat him, the Dems must unwind their circular firing squad and face their common enemy. If they continue to fight about nuances of policy, Trump will likely win a second term and become our first emperor.

P.S. What I’m suggesting here has absolutely nothing to do with being “moderate” or “middle of the road.” Voters who so self-identify may indeed lack enthusiasm for Warren or Sanders. But voters enthused by Warren or Sanders may also lack enthusiasm for “moderate” or “middle of the road” candidates.

Trying to pick the bigger or more important camp is a fool’s errand. The Dems may need both to win. Anyway, immediately after the Dems pick a nominee, voters in both camps will have nowhere else to go.

So the trick of the primary campaign is to arrive at a common ground for policy that almost all Democratic voters can support, and that can evoke strong enthusiasm from many, without killing many voters’ enthusiasm. Coddling candidates for non-presidential office shouldn’t even enter the equation: we’ve got to keep all hands on deck and all eyes on the ball: retiring Trump ASAP.

So the primaries are not tests of nuances of policy; they’re tests of political skill. As much as the Dems can (maybe in conclave), they should agree on a program of progressive benefits that is neither too rash and unattainable nor too weak and ineffective to garner real and widespread enthusiasm.

Then they should compete in showing the leadership and tactical skill needed to bring Trump down, while refraining religiously from bashing each other. Every punch thrown against a fellow Dem risks knocking out some votes against Trump.

This approach will require running the Democratic primaries by new rules, with new goals. But the old rules haven’t done so well for the Dems, have they? The only Dem to make president this century was Obama, a political “natural” of the kind who appears maybe twice a century. If we wait for another like him to save us, we may have to wait a long time.

Nuances of policy among Dems won’t beat Trump. Likely, he won’t even recognize them, let alone address them. He couldn’t remember them if he tried. (Have you see that simplistic, inch-high, all-caps list of talking points, some identical, that he used to recall his claim to be innocent of extortion?) All Dems’ debates over nuances will do is confuse voters, set Dems against each other, and take their eyes off the ball of the vast chasm between Trump and every single one of them.

Trump is a shape-shifter. He will lie about his past and his plans. He can shift his “program” on a dime, to fit the needs of his campaign or a single rally. So the nominee will have to be well-versed in his sordid history, and skillfully tactical in calling him out and quickly debunking his self-praise. The rest of this election season is not about the alloys used to make the lance, but the nominee’s skill in wielding it.

The trial of that skill among the field of Democratic candidates has not yet even begun. On this Thanksgiving 2019, we can all be thankful that there’s still time.

Endnote: Careful readers may object that I’m describing a very unusual primary campaign. I am. In normal primary campaigns, candidates compete on the substance of their programs, their ability to explain and justify them, their personal histories, and their skill and delicacy in contrasting their rivals’ programs and histories.

For three reasons, all that will be impossible in the coming general election. First, there has never been a candidate anything like Trump. He had no experience in political office prior to becoming president and so has no relevant early history to recall and compare. Second, he lies about his past, his present and the future consequences of his policies. So assessing his brief presidential history will be anything but normal. Finally, nothing about Trump is delicate, ever; the successful candidate must be prepared for everything from name-calling and gross insults to schoolyard taunts.

So it makes no sense to run a traditional primary campaign, or for the candidates to compare their proposals rationally, as if minor differences in their approaches had decisive relevance to the general election. It might be better if some Silicon-Valley genius, using artificial intelligence, could create an android model of Trump. Then each Democratic candidate could practice “debating” the android, like a medieval knight practicing jousting against a dummy.

Barring that, the candidates have to show somehow who is most likely to beat Trump in the general election. That’s the only criterion that matters.

But that criterion is devilishly hard to assess. Biden’s accumulated trust among voters is relevant. So are Sanders’ doggedness and Warren’s unmatched intellect and gift for simplicity. So are Buttigieg’s combat experience and flawless, succinct articulation. But there’s no way short of a trial by fire to determine which trait best augurs success against Trump, or which candidate has the instincts to find and hit his soft spots on the fly. It’s even possible—maybe likely—that Trump will shun debates and rely on his media skill and his big donations.

All this requires the focus to be on Trump during the primaries, however much it may have to shift to policy in the general election. Against an utterly unprecedented general election, old polls, old programs and old loyalties, let alone nuances of policy, are no better predictor of the “electability” of any Democrat than the Democrats debating among themselves as if this were a normal election cycle.

This one is going to be unique. Only the most flexible, adaptable and skilled tactician has a good chance of winning. No one now has any idea who that might be.

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