Trump as a “floater”

I know it’s rude, but when a man displays no dignity or class and demeans the presidency of the most powerful country in the world, supposedly a beacon of democracy, what’s one to do? Just match the image with the act, and the analogy of a bowel movement that just won’t go down the toilet with that of Trump, post the presidential election, is more than apt.

The presidential election was legitimate, and Biden won: Not only to not accept what to all intents and purposes was a legitimate election (something the US can be proud of by the way), where observers from other countries have been present and examined carefully; where at the time of writing this, Georgia and Michigan have officially certified their election results and Pennsylvania is likely to follow; where Trump and his enabling team have initiated over 30 court challenges of which none have achieved anything significant; and where this valid election has produced an electoral college votes total of 306 to 232, Biden to Trump, and one that has resulted in the popular vote for Biden exceeding Trump’s by six million votes. Over 160 million people cast a vote in 2020, the highest percentage of voters since 1900; Biden received 79.3 million; Trump 73.5 (with 98% of the expected vote reporting).

Trump’s (pre and post election) actions delegitimize the outcome: Trump has stated that “The election was a HOAX”. An awful lot of the electorate will come away from this believing that it really is a hoax, because their president says it’s so. What the president says, and how he conducts himself, is symbolic of a system, and his actions call into doubt the system. When there is talk of “stealing” the election, whether it comes from Trump directly or through his sycophants (Rudy Guiliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, in particular), it delegitimizes the outcome. This is particularly true in the eyes of his ardent supporters. 

Legally challenging outcomes is Trump’s first reflex, as we know from his real-estate days, even if the courts were ultimately to decide against him. This is his strategy now – except the difference is this is an election nationally for the US presidency, not some real-estate lease arrangement. These actions are beyond reprehensible. They reduce public confidence in the system. This will also result in America not experiencing true post-election closure or healing, something that will be truly needed.

Trump is President of a base, not a country: It appears obvious that Trump has not been the President of the United States for the past four years, he has been president of a base. It, astoundingly, is quite a large base, but it’s a Trumpism base nevertheless. It’s an important question to ask however to those in the Republican Party: “What do you feel about Trump just being a president of his followers, and ergo, not the rest of the electorate?”

The answer should be obvious; those who voted for Trump represent 30% of the eligible voters (or 21% of the total US population). The rest of the country requires the leadership they chose.

The Republican Party needs a hard lesson on values: Every member of Congress, a co-equal branch of government, should say whether they agree with Trump’s actions, and if they don’t, why are they not stepping forward to counter this attack on American democracy. Top Republicans have been standing behind him and have said that they will wait for the results of the barrage of lawsuits across the country before officially recognizing the winner (a standard that has no modern precedent).

Trump’s actions will further, perhaps irreconcilably, divide the two parties and the country as a whole. As the writer Omar Akkad said in a recent Globe & Mail opinion piece, “One of the defining characteristics of the modern Republican Party is its ability to shield rank hypocrisy behind a veneer of good faith concern.”  The Party learned over the course of the Obama years the “efficacy of political sabotage masquerading as principled ideological discipline”. (One recent example is the Party objecting to Obama filling a Supreme Court position in his last year in office as being an end run around the “will of the people”, and then suddenly finding it outrageous when the same situation presented itself this fall, to even consider waiting until after the election; result: the court is now likely to lean conservative for generations.) Mr. Biden’s biggest day-to-day challenge as president will be “working with a party that has learned the value of having no real values at all.”

Trump is weakening democracy: By his actions Trump undermines the moral authority of the US around the world to emulate this important fundamental of democracy: free and fair elections.

Countries with autocratic leaders are smiling. Jinping, Putin, Bolsonaro, Erdogan, et al detect weakness and decline. Zhang Weiwei, China’s leading scholar of geopolitics, will shortly be giving a Munk Dialogue on America’s growing rivalry with Beijing and his subject is why China’s unique system of governance means it will come out on top.

Unfettered media (traditional or social) continue to distribute to the US public misleading and doctrinaire views. Fox News enables the charade and feeds Trump’s worst impulses. (The reality is that Rupert Murdoch is bad for liberal democracies. His media outlets conflate facts with opinions, and Western society is worse for it.)

Consequences of Trump’s behaviour are serious in this tenuous COVID and weak economic time: In a Nov 1 Associated Press article, an election law expert and professor, Rick Hasen, who has been meticulously chronicling the 2020 race, was quoted that there would be “rioting’” in the streets “if an effort was made to set aside the vote in Michigan”, calling it “tantamount to an attempted coup.” If this happens, there is only one place to point.

This transition going out of power exceeds in disgrace the performance of the Trump administration coming in to power in 2016. A whole book has been written about the unprofessionalism and partisan approach of that transition: The Fifth Risk- Undoing Democracy by Michael Lewis, particularly the period after the November election through to assuming power in early 2017 where the Trump transition team were literally absent from the game. Trump is actively making the task much more difficult for the incoming administration to effectively lead America.

Throw into this equation the terrible toll the COVID-19 pandemic is taking on the citizens measured any health or economic way one wants, but certainly and primarily in the death count which now exceeds 250,000. The pandemic is growing at quite a rate: 47 states have had at least a 10% increase this week vs last week.

It’s not just the total that’s terrible, it’s the deaths per population; this measure is one of the highest in the world. Part of the high rate is the politicization of mask wearing, led by Trump. In a recent study by Stanford University that quantified infections stemming from Trump’s maskless campaign rallies, it was estimated that there were at least 30,000 coronavirus infections and 700 deaths as a result of 18 rallies the President held between June and September. To top the insult, unbelievably, Trump is withholding resources and information from Biden’s transition team and COVID task force.

The incoming team also needs actions to commence regarding supporting the economy. He will face the reality that almost half of the country would be prepared to endorse Trump’s decision to put the health of the economy ahead of the health of individual citizens.

America cannot be trusted: The conclusion that has been mounting around the world since 2016, and been accentuated by this election, is that America cannot be trusted. As Globe & Mail columnist Gwynne Dyer said just after the election, “Almost re-electing Donald Trump, after having had the opportunity to observe his behaviour close up for every day (literally) of the past four years, reflects very poorly on the common sense of the American public.” It will be unwise to count on existing alliances and trade deals for the long term, for as Dyer says, “The ‘other America’ is permanently just one roll of the electoral dice away from regaining power, and it is both ugly and unreliable.” 

The reality is that there are nearly 74 million people who voted for Trump. He represents the kind of America millions of Americans actively want. This election has exposed as fantasy the notion that Trump was some kind of anomaly, perhaps the product of outside influence or of a temporarily misguided electorate. 

Perhaps when the dust settles (will it ever settle where Trump is walking?) the world, and more importantly Americans themselves, can devote some effort to better understanding what America is all about. Optimistically, Biden won because enough voters didn’t buy the narrative that he is some kind of socialist who wants to take away their freedoms. It may be that voters are more complex, nuanced and have a core of decency that can bring America through this period of alienation.

As we approach the end of Trump’s presidency, the question to be answered is, now that the plunger has been pushed, what will happen to this floater?