The End of Trump’s Fifth Avenue
By Robert Reich
By Peter Kuper |
“I
could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose
voters,“ Trump boasted in 2016.
Trump’s
5th Avenue principle is being tested as never
before. So far, more than 216,000 Americans have died from Covid-19, one of the
world’s highest death rates – due in part to Trump initially downplaying its
dangers, then refusing responsibility for it, promoting quack remedies for it,
muzzling government experts on it, pushing states to reopen despite it, and
discouraging people from wearing masks.
Yet some 40 percent of Americans have stuck by him nonetheless. They’ve remained loyal even after he turned the White House into a hotspot for the virus, even after he caught it himself, and even after asserting just days ago that it’s less lethal than the flu.
A recent nonpartisan study concluded that Trump’s blatant disinformation has been the largest driver of COVID
misinformation in the world.
They’ve
stuck by him even as more than 11 million Americans have lost their jobs, 40
million risk eviction from their homes, 14 million have lost health insurance,
and almost one out of five Americans with kids at home cannot
afford to adequately feed their children.
They’ve
stuck by him even though more Americans have sought unemployment benefits this
year than voted for him in 2016, even after Trump cut off talks on economic relief, even though he’s
pushing the Supreme Court to repeal the Affordable Care Act, causing 20 million
more to lose health insurance.
Trump
is in effect standing in the middle of 5th Avenue,
killing Americans.
Yet here we are, just a few weeks before the election, and his supporters still haven’t budged. The latest polls show him with 40% to 43% of voters, while Joe Biden has a bare majority.
The
most egregious test of Trump’s 5th Avenue
principle is still to come, when he tries to kill off American democracy. He’s
counting on his supporters to keep him in power even after he loses the popular
vote.
He’s
ready to claim that mail-in ballots, made necessary by the pandemic, are rife
with “fraud like you’ve never seen,” as he asserted during his debate with
Biden – although it’s been shown that Americans are more likely to be struck by lightning than commit
voter fraud.
He’ll likely
allege fraudulent election results in any Republican-led state which he loses
by a small margin – such as Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina,
Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin.
Then
he’ll rely on the House of Representatives to put him over the top.
“We
are going to be counting ballots for the next two years,” Trump warned at a
recent Pennsylvania rally, noting “we have the advantage if we go back to
Congress. I think it’s 26 to 22 or something because it’s counted one vote per
state.”
He
was referring to the 12th Amendment
to the Constitution, which provides that if state electors deadlock or can’t
agree on a president, the decision goes to the House. There, each of the
nation’s 50 states get one vote.
That
means small Republican-dominated states like Alaska, North Dakota, South
Dakota, and Wyoming (each with one House member, who’s a Republican) would have
the same clout as large Democratic states like California (with 52 House
members, 44 of whom are Democrats).
Trump
does have the advantage right now: 26 state congressional delegations in the
House are now controlled by Republicans, and 22 by Democrats. Two —
Pennsylvania and Michigan — are essentially tied.
But
he won’t necessarily retain that advantage. The decision would be made by
lawmakers elected in November, who will be sworn in on January 3 – three days
before they’ll convene to decide the winner of the election.
Which
is why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is focusing on races that could tip the
balance of state delegations – not just in Pennsylvania and Michigan but any
others within reach.
“It’s
sad we have to have to plan this way,” she wrote in a letter to her
colleagues last week, “but it’s what we must do to ensure the election is
not stolen.”
Trump’s
5th Avenue principle has kept him in power
despite deprivation and death that would have doomed the presidencies of anyone
else. But as a former New Yorker he should know that 5th Avenue ends at the Harlem River at 142nd
Street, and the end is near.
Robert Reich's latest book is "THE SYSTEM: Who Rigged
It, How To Fix It," out March 24.
He is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at
the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center.
He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time
Magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the
twentieth century. He has written 17 other books, including the best sellers
"Aftershock," "The Work of Nations," "Beyond Outrage,"
and "The Common Good." He is a founding editor of the American
Prospect magazine, founder of Inequality Media, a member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentaries
"Inequality For All," and "Saving Capitalism," both now
streaming on Netflix.