But a Potential Disaster for America
By Robert Reich
The Grand Old Party, founded in 1854 in Ripon, Wisconsin, is now dead. What’s left is a dwindling number of elected officials who have stood up to Trump but are now being purged.
Even Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s popularity has dropped 29 points among
Kentucky Republicans since he broke with Trump.
In its place is the Trump Party, whose major goal is to advance Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Its agenda is to exact vengeance on Republicans who didn’t or
won’t support the lie or who voted to impeach or convict Trump for inciting the
violence that the lie generated, and to keep attention on his grievances.
As the Trump Party takes over the
GOP, anti-Trump Republicans are abandoning the party in droves – thereby
weakening it for general elections while simultaneously strengthening Trump’s
hand inside it.
It’s great news for Democrats and
Joe Biden.
Democrats couldn’t hope for a more perfect foil – a defeated one-term president who never cracked 47 percent of the popular vote, left office with just 39 percent approval and is now hovering at an abysmal 34 percent, whom most Americans dislike or loathe, and a majority believe incited an insurrection against the United States.
The gift will keep giving. Courtesy
of the Supreme Court, Trump’s tax returns will soon be raked across America
like barnyard manure. Expect more of his shady business dealings to be exposed
– more payoffs, cheats, and cons – as well as civil and criminal prosecutions.
The Trump Party isn’t interested in
appealing to the nation as a whole, anyway. It’s interested only in
appealing to Trump and the base that worships him.
All this is making it nearly impossible for congressional Republicans to mount a strong opposition to Biden’s ambitious plans for COVID relief followed by major investments in infrastructure and jobs.
Lacking unity, leadership, strategy, clarity or a
coherent message on anything other than Trump’s grievances, the Trump Party is
irrelevant to the large choices facing the nation. Democrats in Washington have
the public square all to themselves.
Biden is in the enviable position of
getting most of America behind his agenda – and he can do so without a single
Republican vote if Senate Democrats end the filibuster.
Democrats have proven themselves capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. But if they and Biden use this opportunity as they should, by this time next year COVID will be a tragic memory, and the nation will be in the midst of a strong economic recovery propelling it toward full employment and rising wages.
With the GOP in disarray
and rabid Trumpism turning off ever more voters, the 2022 midterm elections
could swell Democratic majorities in Congress.
But the emergence of the Trump Party
is deeply worrisome for America. It is a dangerous, deluded, authoritarian, and
potentially violent faction that has no responsible role in a democracy.
Its Big Lie enables supporters of
the former president to believe their efforts to overturn the 2020 election
were necessary to protect American democracy, and that they must continue to
fight a “deep state” conspiracy to thwart Trump. This is an open invitation to
violence.
The Big lie also justifies Trump
Party efforts to suppress votes considered “fraudulent.” In 33 states,
Trump lawmakers are already pushing more than 165 bills intended to stop mail-in
voting, increase voter ID requirements, make it harder to register to vote, and
expand purges of voter rolls.
Democrats in Congress are responding
with their proposed “For the People Act,” to expand voting through automatic
voter registration across the country, early voting, and enlarged mail-in
voting.
The incipient civil war pits a
national Democratic Party representing America’s majority against a state-based
Trump Party composed of a defiant and overwhelmingly white, working-class
minority. It’s a recipe for a harsh clash between democracy and
authoritarianism.
Plus, there’s the small possibility
Trump will run again in 2024 and win.
What’s good for Biden and the
Democrats in the short run is potentially disastrous for America over the
longer term. One of its two major parties is centered on a Big Lie that
threatens to blow up the nation, figuratively if not literally.
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.