Contributors
Post-Trump
America; a Clarion Call for Reconstruction
By
Dr. Michael Sakbani
A
Presidential Term Between Two Lies and an Insurrection Finale
Twentieth January 2021 is a date in American history that will be long
remembered. It is the day that American Democracy broke out of the unsettling
Presidency of Donald Trump. One all of the sudden felt that the normal is
hopeful and the troubling reality is no more. It had been a ride like no other
in the 232 years of the Republic. A President who adhered to no norms and
respected no institution of governance began his term with a big lie, that he
won the popular vote, and ended it with a bigger lie that he won the 2020` elections. The last act of his reign was to incite an insurrection against the US
Congress when it convened to authorize the states elections results. the mob he incited were animated by lies he perpetrated for three months for which he earned a
second, and this time, bipartisan impeachment.[1]
Trump
is perhaps no more, but Trumpism has millions of voters. The 74 million voters
he got are a mass of fact deniers. However, they are not a homogeneous lump of
fanatics. Some of them are white supremacists like the Oath Keepers and the
Proud Boys, Some are misinformed nationalists, Others are struggling people with numerous difficulties. Some are evangelicals led astray and some are Republican
voters afraid of the Democrats` left. What is common among them is that they
believed the lies of the President, they mistrust the media and the Government.
They acted out of a mixture of fears, disgruntlement and bewilderment, many
believed in the conspiracy theories espoused on social media. But their drama was not instigated by Trump alone without his enablers. It was the Republican Party leadership,
Senators and Legislators, who kept mum about the lies and distortions for four
years, and refused to stand up for the truth of the election results. Sadly,they failed the so
many gullibles who believed the fictions spanned by Fox News and other
RupertMurduch news outlets.
A common thread weaved through the politicians
among the enablers: they all feared the Trump-base regarding their political careers.
A Party of
Collaborators or of Lost Identity
President
Trump hid nothing of his character or beliefs. Before the elections, he had
championed the Birthers movement alleging that President Obama was not
American- born. He was the host of a brash TV show and a veteran of
bankruptcies, multiple divorces, sexual affairs and business scandals. After
the elections, he banned Muslims (1.8 billion of the world population) from
entering the USA characterizing them as terrorists. He called Latino immigrants
thugs, druggies and rapists. He expressed his disdain for African immigrants by
branding their countries as “shit- holes”. After the Nazi-Anti-Semite riots
of Charlottesville, he declared there were fine people on both sides.
Before the elections, Trump declared that any election he does not win is a
fraud. He came out against mail -voting practiced by several states as illegitimate
and insisted that it should not be counted- (he himself voted by mail)- even
though there has been no fraud in mail voting in the history of the land.
Throughout all of these, the leaders of the Republican Party did not disavow
him and were non pulsed about his declarations, lies and acts.
On the day of
the elections, he declared himself the winner after the polls were closed but
before counting was complete; he declared he won a landslide and demanded
stopping the count !!!. The Republican leadership maintained its support and
many elected Republicans supported the lie of the President. Past the safe-
harbor day of the electoral college vote on December 5, no Republican leader
had called Joe Biden President-Elect (Sakbani,1)[2]. The
President launched 62 cases alleging fraud, all of which except one, were
tossed out by the various US courts including the USSC for lack of evidence[3]. Yet
Republican elected officials maintained their support of his lie. After the
Electoral College vote was certified by the Governors and legislatures of the
states on December 15, a frivolous case was launched by the Attorney General of
Texas against three other states claiming their vote was injurious to Texas,
The Republican AG`s of 17 other states along with Mr. Trump plus 126 Republican
House members supported this contention. It is noteworthy that 14 of these
representatives only objected to votes cast for Trump but not to those cast for
themselves in the same elections in the same states. The US Supreme Court
unanimously dismissed the case in one short paragraph( A. Liptak)[4].
Finally,
running out of means to challenge the results of the most secure and free
elections in US history, he called the State Secretary of Georgia to ask him to
find 11780 votes for him threatening him with criminal prosecution(CNN, MSNBC,
CBC, ABC and Ass. Press)[5].
In the US` Senate, 13 Senators led by Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of
Missouri, supported by two-thirds of the Republican House members, sought to
challenge the certification of the Electoral College by the US Congress. Their
claim was that the millions who were lied to by the President and by
themselves, deserve re-examining the results!! (Cruz.)[6] The
President called on his supporters to back this effort to block the
certification by coming to Washington to stop the steal.on Januar4y 6. When they gathered
near the White House, the President, his son, his lawyer Rudi Giuliani, and
congressman Mel Brook of Alabama, all whipped up the crowd and asked them” to
march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol and fight hard to reclaim their country and its
stolen elections”.(Associated Press)[7] March
they did, with abundant zeal, aroused anger and overflowing determination. At
the Capitol, they smashed their way into the building breaking everything in
their way, killing five people and calling for hanging Vice President
Pence and assassinating Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The President reportedly – Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska- was
gleefully watching the events on Television. He did not take repeated calls
from the beleaguered Congressmen, including Kevin McCarthy, for him to stop the mob and call the National Guard(Avlon).[8]
After this
insurrection against the US Government, the Congress reconvened but these
legislators persisted in their objections, which of course failed. The Vice
President declared Joseph Biden the official winner of the elections and hence,
the 46th President.
The
Republican party emerged from the Trump presidency without its old conservatism
and with right-wing mob followers “commercing” in conspiracy theories. This politics of lies,
nastiness and partisan war-fare has been seeded in the Republican Party by the
1992 Gingrich wave and has now come to full fruition under the demagoguery of Trump. Now the
abiding question is will old-line Republicans recover their party or is it
going into the Trumpian – Qanon conspiracy sphere. The easy solution is to continue winning elections by manipulating districts and restricting voting so that they can keep power as a minority body. The difficult, more healthy and lasting way is to embrace the multiracial and multireligious reality of America and offer policies that appeal across a wide spectrum.
A Country
Festooned in Anger and Discontent
Since the end
of the US civil war, many Southern Senators and Southern States officials
embarked on reinstalling segregation in their region. By the 1960s , Jim Crow was doing well in the South up till the civil-rights movement. After the voting right act of President Johnson, the South was ready to flip Republican. President Nixon Southern Strategy was indeed to turn the South into a Republican heartland permitted to go back to the old practices under Republican laxity. One of the pillars of
that was disenfranchising black voters. If the Republican Party is faced with unsurpassed demographic changes, then it should suppress black and minority votes as a way to get to power and to keep it. This
practice spread out of its Dixy birthplace to other regions. In our days,
Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina have indulged in voter suppression. Voter suppression was added to
the gerrymandering of election- districts to produce minority rule for the GOP.
Except for the US presidential elections of 2004, the Republicans have
failed to get a national majority in the last eight Presidential races. Along
with the small-state bias of the Electoral College, the minority Democrats in
the US `Senate represent more than 10 million more Americans than the majority
Republicans with a similar but lesser margin in the Lower House. This is the Republican dilemma: how can its leaders eschew the facile strategy of winning elections in the short-run by hook and crook in favor of appealing by policy offerings to a majority of diverse voters.
President
Reagan campaigned in the 1980 elections on the theme that the Government was
the problem and not the solution. This plank reinforced the Individualist
Americana mantra of anti-government. In the mid -1950s, the US government
employed 5% of working Americans who served a population of about 170 million.
Nowadays, the figure is 2.5 percent serving 330 million (Sakbani,2; Zakaria)[9].
The Covid-19 epidemic showed that the non-military parts of the Government are
poorly financed and understaffed. And this same seminal occurrence showed
that it is the Government to which people turned in the crisis as the principal
actor in protecting and managing the society and supporting its economy.
Trump gave a
focus to the anger and fears of several strata of Americans. The first of these
are blue-collar workers whose job insecurity and diminished prospects drove
them away from the educated and well-off Democrats. These so-called “Reagan
Democrats” found once more a champion in Trump`s protectionist policies, and
“America First” rhetoric. They also had a favorable echo to his
anti-immigration advocacies. With the disappearance of most labor- Unions and
corporate America`s enthusiasm for transferring jobs to cheaper places abroad,
Trump`s nationalist protectionism found them in the target.
The second
stratum was white voters whose identity and privilege and even religious
beliefs were threatened by immigration, minority overreaching and tolerance of
the LGTG. To be told that they will be a minority in 2045, stirred their anxieties and attracted them
to the authoritarian Trump with his message of making “ America Great Again”
with its sub-tunes of White reassertion. This stratum is composed of several
subgroups. Some are right-wing racists with White Supremacists bent: the Proud
Boys and the Oath Keepers, many are gun- owners opposed to gun controls. Others
are anti-government individualists who back their beliefs with their guns. And
still, others are people crushed by their poor economic circumstances and
difficulties (Pavette)[10].
A third
stratum was the evangelists whose triple – issues of packing the courts with
conservative judges, outlawing abortions and pro-Israel foreign policies
voiced out by Trump to prepare for the coming of the Messiah in occupied old Jerusalem. held sway. Despite his sacrilegious persona they
received with credibility his claim, “I am the chosen one”; the sinner
fulfilling the work of God.
The fourth
stratum was the business and traditional conservatives who wanted lower taxes,
fewer government controls, dismantling of environmental restrictions and
reduced expenditure of Government on social programs. Trump dared to advocate
all these things unlike the usual Republican elected officials.
This is the coalition of discontents for whom Trump was a political hero who dared saying
all the politically incorrect things and whose election was the road to a safe
White America.
A Post
Trump Program of Action
On his
first-day office, President Biden owned the virus problem. He signed and promulgated an action program of national leadership, held sway,
communication, mask-wearing, testing for infection, distributing the vaccine and vaccination and using the NDP act for producing what is needed. The
sad surprise was that Biden`s team found no vaccination- plan and no testing– plan. They simply have to start from zero.(Zietent, CNN)11
President
Trump left to his successor a heavy burden of a broken state. The first order
of business is to control the epidemic and achieve herd- immunity through
vaccination. Trump gave up on that last March. He is leaving with a death toll
of 410,000 running a daily rate of 3500 and a hospital- system stretched to the
limits (CDC)[12] The
Federal Government under Biden has to lead the fight as advised by the scientists,
coordinate actions of all the states and mobilize all the national
resources to test and vaccinate people and break the hold of the epidemics.
The second
crucial task is reopening the economy and rebuilding both the aggregate demand
and aggregate supply in tandem with controlling the virus. Biden`s proposal of
another $1.9 trillion to support the economy is the right move at this
time. It should aim at helping unemployed workers by extending unemployment
benefits, re-floating small businesses, securing testing and vaccination,
supporting state and local governments and alleviating the stress of insolvable
mortgage holders and the hospitality-travel industries.
There will be
the expected opposition from Republicans crying out the evils of deficits. But
this is politics as seen before: the deficit is bad when the Democrats are in
power and forgotten when the Republicans are in. This happened during Reagan,
Busch jr and Trump, each of whom ran a record deficit. Nonetheless, the
chorus will be less loud this time, because the case is very strong. Most
economists have settled in recent years on the proposition that there should be
no apriori characterization of the fiscal deficit. The Federal
fiscal deficit may be good or bad, all depending on the cost of
borrowing, the rate of return on the deployment of the borrowed funds and the
timely necessity for borrowing If Biden should have learned a lesson from
the Obama years, it is that a halfway is no way. The Recovery act of 2009 was too
little.
After the
confusing spectacle of fifty states with fifty different election systems, it
is time to reform the election system. There should be standardized rules and
protocols governing elections for the fifty states. Mail voting should be streamlined
with standardized periods of reception, sorting, counting and delays. There is
merit to taking out election supervision from politicians to judicial
supervision. Voters identification and simple registration procedures should be
enacted like in most European countries in places of residence. Perhaps it is
time to enact a new voting right legislation to solve all the above problems.
Gerrymandering has become a partisan game sapping the fairness of elections. A
good proposal is to draw up districts by independent commissions in full
transparency.
A fresh look
at the Electoral College despite the known difficulties of a Constitutional
amendment is a good thing to do later on in Biden`s term. There might be
acceptance by the smaller states for a step -function increase of EC voting by
giving one more vote for every, say, 5 million inhabitants over the first
initial 5 million[13].
The Biden^s administration has to revisit the affordable health- care act. Universal
health coverage through a system of multiple payers where private insurance
schemes along with a viable operational public option is not a pie in the sky.
The US remains the only developed country with no universal health- care. The
system in place needs radical reforms in purchasing drugs, delivering health
services and reducing the 18% of the GDP spent on a health- care system that
performs unsatisfactorily and costs a third more than the next expensive advanced – country system.
There should
be a frank and informed debate about the US tax system and the Federal budget
especially as pertains to the military budget and the social entitlements on
the expenditure side and the tax rates of the high income, high wealth
tax-payers on the revenue side. The US has a revenue-starved tax system in which the Federal Government does not spend on essential services like public
health, high education and infrastructure. Revising the tax rates would also
help in dealing with the gaping income distribution problem of the US (Sakbani,
3)[14].
Two other
areas of critical importance are investment in infrastructure and in
environmental green- technology. The US should not only rejoin the Paris Accord
but develop plans to increase public and private investment in these two areas.
Public investment can play a catalytic role in attracting private investment at
inception. Millions[mS1] of jobs can be created in these areas. At the
prevailing low-interest rates this investment has a high rate of return and
will be a boost to scientific advance. The President might find bipartisan
support and business enthusiasm for such investments[15]
Immigration
reform has been long in coming. There was a bipartisan attempt several years
ago which ended up on Mitch McConnell`s desk. This reform should provide a
solution to the DECA immigrants. The Biden administration promises to try
immigration reform. It is an educated guess that the Republicans might support
a bill that makes a clear distinction between economic immigrants and other
categories such as refugees and candidates of merit as deemed by the US. Immigration policy should be determined to a certain extent by the needs of the country and by the social expenses incurred by immigrants[16]. Advocates of open immigration cite the US historic traditions. of reception. However, the US of the 19th and early 20th centuries is not the same as the USA today with 335 million inhabitants and a nonexpanding frontier.
The question
of social media platforms is receiving urgency after social media platforms
banned Mr. Trump’s accounts. The question is whether the First Amendment gives
license to incitement for violence, for hate-speech, for speech disrupting the
public order. Chief-justice John Marshall opined that shouting fire in a
crowded -theater is not an exercise of free speech. This was what President
Trump`s tweets were. Mr. Trump defense that his pronouncements are an exercise of free speech does not hold. Free speech is defended by the Constitution, but not incitement and hate speech.
The money-
making social media platforms need thoughtful regulations by Governments. It is
not a simple free-speech question, rather one of public order. This is
beginning to happen in Europe but is lagging in the US. President Trump has
shown how effective is the use of social media platforms in spreading lies and
creating confusion and even in inciting an insurrection. After his Twitter
account was closed on the 8th of January, his approval rating
dropped 9 points in 9 days to 32 % according to a CNN poll (Chalian)[17].
To be sure, the riots of 6 January might have caused that or at least
contributed to it, but it is clear that as he fades away from the public view
without his Twitter, his disruptions will diminish and his popularity will
wither. There is herein a clear lesson in how the social order can be impacted
by unfettered social media.
President
Trump was impeached for the second time on Wednesday 13 January 2021 by a
bipartisan vote. His trial in the US Senate, however, was not scheduled by Mitch McConnell to start before leaving office. By so doing McConnell deliberately postponed the trial till after January 20 in order to furnish the Republicans with a pseudo Constitutional excuse not to convict Trump!!! There is to be sure, a Constitutional question not totally settled: whether a President can be convicted after he left office. The majority of scholars opine that the Constitution had a double purpose of impeachment: vacating the office and barring an ex-President from future public office. Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School holds that a conviction
after leaving office has legal precedent and fulfills the intents of
accountability for high crimes and misdemeanor of the Constitution.
(Smerconish-Tribe)[18] From
a layman’s point of view, it is important that he be held accountable for his
incitement of insurrection and be consequently barred from public office. If
leaving the office means escaping accountability and punishment then we would
be in a lawless place, in which any President can escape accountability by quitting in January.
Student Debt and the un-affordability of high education costs for the vast majority of Americans is another pressing issue. When the author went to graduate school in the mid-sixties to the early seventies, the costs
of tuition, registration fees and books were in real prices, only one-eighth of
what they are today.
That is why student debt is now $1.7 trillion. Education is a supreme public
good. The state should shoulder this burden by direct financing of public
institutions and helping out private ones. This is an issue that affects 40
million Americans and all the credit – banks. It needs airing and action.
US
Democracy in Peril
How did it
happen that a flawed man with a long history of provocations, unconventional
behavior and penchance for lying can attain the supreme magistrate of a Democracy
through free and fair elections? We do not live in a Plato Republic, but it is
right to ask how can democracy be protected from such individuals?
American
democracy has a classical and Anglo-Saxon heritage whereby democracy`s
health depends on the respect of the civics rules of politics. This is a form
of political virtue in which the public good is placed above the private and
factional interest and truth rules the public discourse. Today, two-thirds of the Republican voters believe the election results are fraudulent !!!. Even though no Court of law has backed this lie, the President has been saying so for 4 months and those millions believe him even though he is lying. How can President Biden reconcile such a split America? National reconciliation cannot be achieved without
acknowledging empirical facts and accepting the truth. One should recall that
in mathematics there is no equilibrium without a fixed point. In the context of
this discussion, the loser of the elections should have accepted the results
and conceded to the will of the electorate. These norms are critical for the
resiliency of Democratic institutions. President Trump not only lied but has
also not conceded his defeat, a prerequisite for the peaceful transfer of poswer.
The public
expects their presidents to set an exemplary model behavior. President Trump
has shown no such modality. According to the Washington Post, Mr. Trump has by
January 20, 2021 lied and made misleading statements 32,000 times ( G. Kessler, Daniel Dale)[19]. He
never released his taxes, and never distanced his business interests from his
personal guise while in office. He used the Department of Justice to pursue his
legal defense and to chase his opponents. We now know (all media) that in his last week in office, he tried to fire the acting Attorney General for not taking election results to the US Supreme Court to throw them out.
In the last days of his Presidency,
he pardoned convicted criminals who worked for him in order to protect himself
from what they knew. In the second batch announced the day he left office, he pardoned
contributors who in effect purchased their pardon and deplorable crooks
sentenced for long years for financial frauds. In both cases, he did not ask
the DOJ to scrutinize the pardoned as has been the norm, Again, he proved that
what matters to Donald Trump will always be what serves his own
interest. (Morning Joe)[20].
The US
constitution fashioned a system of government based on Madisonian checks
and balances and on an honor system in respect of upholding Democratic
institutions. Has the abandonment of these checks by President Trump`s refusal
of Congressional subpoenas, has his refusal to cooperate with the legislator
placed Congressional oversight in permanent jeopardy?
All of that
poses painful questions about the fragility of democracy and the brittleness of
its institutions. In the 20th century, Hitler in Germany,
Mussolini in Italy, Juan Peron in Argentina, Ruhullah Khomeini in Iran and a
host of authoritarians in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East subverted
Democracy from inside. In our days, Urban in Hungary, the ruling coalition in
Poland, Modi in India, Sisi in Egypt and Erdogan in Turkey, have done the
same. Will American Democracy succumb to such subversion after Trump?
*********************
This paper
did not dwell upon the Foreign Relation challenges facing the Biden
administration. Biden had made the correct pronouncements and picked the right
personnel to do a massive resetting of Trump`s policies. Only a full separate
paper can do justice to the numerous issues involved.
Geneva,
21/1/2021
NOTES
[1]. The vote was 232 for. Ten Republicans voted for
impeachment .Liz Cheney the third ranking leadership members led this
bipartisan vote
[6] . Statements by Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley on the
Senate floor, January 6, 2021
[7]. Transcript of Trump’s Speech at Rally Before US Capitol Riot,
in, Associated
Press, Wire Service
Content Jan. 13, 2021, at 9:11 p.m.
[8] . John Avlon, CNN,
January 17, 2021.
[11 Jeff Zieten, on Today, CNN,
January 21, 2021
[12] CDS, Weekly Briefing, January
17, 2021.
[14]. Michael Sakbani,3, “Trump the President
That Was Not to Be; Analysis of the Likely Economics, Political and
Foreign policy Consequences”, in michaelsakbani.blogspot.com, November 2016.
[17] David Chalian, CNN ;19
January 2021.. See also Morning Joe, MSNBC, January 19,
2021.
[18]. Michael Smerconish, CNN, 13/1/2021.,
interview with professor Lawrence Tribe
[19]Glen Kessler, Daniel Dell, The Washington Post,
December 10, 2020.