The Monstrous Predicament Trump Left Behind
By Robert Reich
This
week’s Senate trial is unlikely to convict Donald Trump of inciting sedition
against the United States. At least 17 Republican senators are needed for
conviction, but only five have signaled they’ll go along.
By Matt Wuerker, Politico
Why won’t Republican senators convict him? After all, it’s an open and shut case.
As summarized in the brief submitted by House impeachment managers, Trump spent
months before the election telling his followers that the only way he could
lose was through “a dangerous, wide-ranging conspiracy against them that
threatened America itself.”
Immediately
after the election, he lied that he had won by a “landslide,” and later urged
his followers to stop the counting of electoral ballots by making plans to
“fight like hell” and “fight to the death” against this “act of war”
perpetrated by “Radical Left Democrats” and the “weak and ineffective RINO
section of the Republican Party.”
If
this isn’t an impeachable offense, it’s hard to imagine what is. But Republican
senators won’t convict him because they’re answerable to Republican voters, and
Republican voters continue to believe Trump’s big lie.
A shocking three out of four Republican voters don’t think Joe Biden won legitimately. About 45 percent even support the storming of the Capitol.
The
crux of the problem is Americans now occupy two separate worlds – a fact-based
pro-democracy world and a Trump-based authoritarian one.
Trump
spent the last four years seducing voters into his world, turning the GOP from
a political party into a grotesque projection of his pathological narcissism.
Regardless
of whether he is convicted, America must now deal with the monstrous
predicament he left behind: One of the nation’s two major political parties has
abandoned reality and democracy.
What
to do? Four things.
First,
prevent Trump from running for president in 2024. The mere possibility
energizes his followers.
An
impeachment conviction is not the only way to prevent him. Under Section 3 of
the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, anyone who has
taken an oath to protect the Constitution is barred from holding public office
if they “have engaged in insurrection” against the United States. As constitutional
expert and former Yale Law professor Bruce Ackerman has noted, a majority vote that Trump engaged in
insurrection against the United States is sufficient to trigger this clause.
Second,
give Republicans and independents every incentive to abandon the Trump cult.
White
working-class voters without college degrees who now comprise a large portion
of it need good jobs and better futures. Many are understandably angry after
being left behind in vast enclaves of unemployment and despair. They should not
have to depend on Trump’s fact-free fanaticism in order to feel visible and
respected.
A
jobs program on the scale necessary to bring many of them around will be
expensive but worth the cost, especially when democracy hangs in the balance.
Big
business, which used to have a home in the GOP, will need a third party.
Democrats should not try to court them; the Democratic Party should aim to
represent the interests of the bottom 90 percent.
Third,
disempower the giant media empires that amplified Trump’s lies for four years –
Facebook, Twitter, and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and its imitators. The goal is
not to “cancel” the political right but to refocus public deliberation on
facts, truth, and logic. Democracy cannot thrive where big lies are
systematically and repeatedly exploited for commercial gain.
The solution is antitrust enforcement and stricter regulation of social media, accompanied by countervailing financial pressure.
Consumers should boycott products advertised on these lie factories and advertisers should shun them.
Large tech platforms should lose legal immunity for violence-inciting content.
Broadcasters such as Fox News and Newsmax should be liable for knowingly
spreading lies (they are now being sued by producers of voting machinery and
software which they accused of having been rigged for Biden).
Fourth,
safeguard the democratic form of government. This requires barring corporations
and the very wealthy from buying off politicians, ending so-called “dark money”
political groups that don’t disclose their donors, defending the right to vote,
and ensuring more citizens are heard, not fewer.
Let’s
be clear about the real challenge ahead. The major goal is not to convict Trump
of inciting insurrection. It is to move a vast swath of America back into a
fact-based pro-democracy society and away from the Trump-based authoritarian
one.
Regardless
of whether he is convicted, the end of his presidency has given the nation a
reprieve. Unless America uses it to end Trumpism’s hold over tens of millions
of Americans, that reprieve may be temporary.
Thankfully,
Joe Biden appears to understand this.
Robert Reich's latest book is "THE SYSTEM: Who Rigged
It, How To Fix It." 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," streaming on YouTube, and
"Saving Capitalism," now streaming on Netflix.
