POLITICS IN A POST TRUMP WORLD; Or Trump in 2024

 

The inauguration of a new President is always a time of change. This is especially true when accompanied by a change in the majority party. However, this year’s political landscape is in greater flux than normal. Donald Trump inspires more extreme reactions than any other modern President. Trump leaves office the most hated President since at least Nixon, perhaps ever. Yet, he also continues to have the most devoted core group of supporters of any President in recent memory. There are too many moving parts to make any meaningful predictions about what’s to come, that’s not what this is. In this article I’m laying out political considerations that will shape how the next several years will go. The path we go down will result from the decisions made by the American people and our elected officials.

For Democrats there’s a fundamental question they are going to need to wrestle with. Is our desire to punish the Republicans greater than our desire to make progress for the country. Stated in those terms it seems obvious making progress should be the top priority. But I can state unequivocally that Democrats are furious at the Republicans for enabling Donald Trump’s path of destruction for the last four years. Frankly, how can they not be furious? Republican’s lied, sold out their principles, made excuses for Trump’s lawlessness and encouraged his questioning of the election results. Only in the last minute of the last hour of the Trump administration did a few “brave” soles in the Republican party start calling out the President for doing what they enabled him to do.

So yeah, I get the anger and the desire for retribution. But as much as it stings, they need to keep the eye on the prize. The reality is the only way lasting progress is going to get made is with Republican buy in. Biden has signed a flurry of executive orders, but those are only good as long as Democrats control the White House. Our sense of justice says the Republicans don’t deserve a seat at the table. However, issues like health care and the environment are too important to let them languish for four years without legislative action.

Having said that there is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, the filibuster. In any normal political system, when one party controls the legislature and the executive, bipartisan support wouldn’t be necessary. It might be nice to have buy-in from the opposition party, but they could still push their agenda through without it. However, since 1806 the Senate has had a rule that requires a supermajority of the Senators to force the end of debate and allow a vote on a bill. By refusing to close debate a minority with at least forty supporters can prevent a vote by refusing to end debate. The filibuster wasn’t frequently used for most of our history. By the 1970s though it had evolved to essentially requiring 60 votes to pass most legislation through the Senate.

This three-fifth requirement is a Senate rule, it’s not in the Constitution or even a law. In other words, the majority party can eliminate it anytime they want. In fact, the filibuster rule has been amended several times with just a majority vote in the Senate. Originally all legislative action halted until the parties resolved the filibuster. In 1970 they changed the rule to allow unrelated matters to move forward during a filibuster. They also removed the filibuster from the budget reconciliation process in 1974 and later from approving Presidential nominations.

With the Democrats in the majority, they can simply change the filibuster rule and ram through whatever they want, right? Well, not quite. It’s likely most Democrats would support that action. However, the even split in the Senate requires unanimity within the party to make that change, which they don’t have. Democrat Joe Manchin has already said he doesn’t support ending the filibuster, and there may be others. They fear eliminating the filibuster will give Republican’s unchecked power when they become the majority party.

This means as a practical matter, if Democrats want to pass legislation, they will need to work with the Republicans. And newsflash, Republican support for any proposals the Democrats want to pass is going to be difficult to come by. There will need to be some balance between the carrot and the stick to move things forward. The stick may include both the potential wrath of voters and the continuing threat of eliminating the filibuster if the Republicans simply obstruct all their efforts. However, the carrot will need to be making real compromise with the Republicans. That’s not going to be popular with Democrats.

In many ways the considerations the Democrats are facing are pretty normal. The intensity of the feelings might be stronger than in the past. However, the fundamental situation isn’t that foreign to what Bill Clinton faced in 1992 or Barack Obama in 2008. It’s the Republicans who are in the more perilous position, largely of their own making. In a two-party system it’s natural that each party will have different coalitions that might sometimes bicker among themselves. The Democrats have the progressive Bernie Sanders wing and the centrists Clinton/Biden wing. But despite the occasional flare-ups, the various wings of the party generally support the direction of the party. The Christian fundamentalists and the pro-business wing of the Republican party have similarly been uneasy partners at times in a greater movement.

Trumpism is a fundamentally different type of party faction. Donald Trump’s presidency was never about ideology, it’s a cult of personality. Strictly looking at the policy initiatives, Trump’s administration looks a lot like a run of the mill Republican presidency. The isolationism, especially in trade, and extreme xenophobia are a bit out of the ordinary, but not that much. The Republican party is about advancing a particular political agenda, like all parties. Trumpism is about advancing Donald Trump. In endorsing Trumpism as a means of advancing the Republican agenda the party has found themselves in a pickle. In essence, Trump hijacked the party establishment who were only too willing to go along for the ride.

Trump brought a new type of voter to the GOP, this is something they desperately needed. But aligning themselves with Trump was a move destined to bite them in the keister. Every time Trump demeaned the Presidency, the Republicans who explained away his actions instead of condemning him moved the party further from their stated values. It took Trump surprisingly little time to co-op nearly the entire party. They became his loyal sycophants legitimizing every crazy thing he did or said. And every time Trump was able to force his will on the party without opposition, he only became more brazen. Few Republicans were willing to risk political suicide by standing up to him. Such a move risked both public humiliation from the President’s twitter feed and a likely primary challenger in the next election cycle.

This dynamic remained surprisingly consistent throughout Trump’s first term. However, cracks began forming in Trump’s political base as his rigged election conspiracies became more and more unhinged. Inciting a mob of angry supporters to storm Congress to prevent the recording of the election results may have been the last straw for some Republicans. It seems at least some of the Republican leadership understands the dangers of remaining aligned with the former President. Trump’s hold over the Republican party has clearly weakened as some hope to marginalize his standing in the party. Countering this is the strong majority of the Republican voters who continue to support Trump despite everything that has happened.

Trump is a wild-card that looms over every elected Republican and everything they hope to accomplish. The coming impeachment trial is going to force Senate Republicans to draw a line in the sand and decide which side they want to stand on. There is political peril in both standing with, and standing against the former President. Supporting impeachment will anger many Republican voters. However, we’re likely to see more evidence spring out of both civil and criminal trials so defending the President’s actions on January 6th comes with its own risk.

If I was a Republican strategist I’d be in therapy dealing with the stress Trump is causing the party. He might run again in 2024 if he’s not prohibited by an impeachment conviction. That could lock out other Republicans with Presidential ambition including some of Trump’s strongest defenders. Whether he runs or not he’s likely to continue holding rallies that he’ll use to attack anyone in the party that runs astray of his good graces. There’s also speculation Trump could bolt from the party and do a Ross Perot forming a new third party. He might bypass social media and form a new media outlet. That would give him a platform to continue promoting his conspiracy theories and attacking Democrats and insufficiently loyal Republicans. If the Republican leadership rejects Trump they risk hopelessly dividing the party. If they back him, they risk a repeat of 2020. I think some including Mitch McConnel recognize the jeopardy they face. The prospect of a Trump convicted in the impeachment followed by a criminal conviction might look nice to top Republicans. This might be only means of neutralizing their Trump problem.

On top of all that is the more mundane problem of how to approach their new status as the minority party. The last time they were in this position after President Obama’s election they became the party of “no”. In other words, the Republican’s strategy was to obstruct the Democrats by whatever means possible. That strategy was arguably successful even if it was duplicitous. But again, the shadow of Trump hangs over how the Republicans interact with the Democrats. If they fall back in line with the former President, it will ease presenting a unified opposition to the Democrats. However, that approach could backfire in the next election. If they distance themselves from Trump it might open avenues of bipartisan cooperation, but at the risk of exposing divisions in the party.

The country faces many problems that require a unified response from the government. I think most Americans want to see our elected leaders to work together in seeking solutions to these challenges. The reality is leaders of both parties will need to make political calculations going forward into the new Biden administration. However, this fact doesn’t mean that bipartisan cooperation isn’t possible. It does require political leaders to see the advantages in making progress rather than creating gridlock. Given the partisanship that has developed in recent decades it’s hard to be optimistic. The future isn’t set, and the decisions people make will determine our reality. The Trump administration exposed many problems in American politics that were simmering under the surface. This could represent a unique opportunity for political expediency and the public’s interest to line up to seriously address the myriad of problems we face. But like Trump likes to say, we’ll see.