Republicans had their big Conservative Political Action meeting in Florida this weekend. Most notable was the confusion and conflict the Russian attack on Ukraine is having on their party. The far right has been pro Russia for years but suddenly that position is extremely unpopular. After years of praising Russian President Putin and undermining NATO, Donald Trump seemed to be struggling to find a new message as he threatened a second Trump term. When he came on stage the women in the room literally screamed in adulation. He then delivered his self-centered nonsense.
I am not alone in feeling a sense of intense foreboding during the Biden administration. Despite our success in defeating Donald Trump in 2020, the man is lurking in the shadows, gathering allies and money, and preparing for his inevitable 2024 presidential campaign.
There is no question that a second Trump term would be an unprecedented disaster for the United States. Yet the Democrats seem unable to grasp their critical role in protecting our nation from this destructive force.
Let’s look at Donald and the environment. It is normal for republicans and some democrats to cater to industry and bend policy toward the oil industry for example. Biden is doing this now to an extent and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did so in spades. Previous republicans tended to favor industry while basically respecting the rule of law.
The Trump administration was wholly different. Donald’s view of the world is purely self-centered. His clinical narcissism leads him to divide the world into friends and enemies. Further, he fully embraces the culture wars of the far right because they blend seamlessly into his friend/enemy framework and work well for dividing and weakening the country.
The bottom line is that to Donald, scientists and conservationists are enemies, part of a culture of people Donald despises because we don’t support his personal business interests and we are critical of his thoughts and actions as a politician. We don’t fit into his selfish world view.
Donald is a businessman. He builds plush golf courses in sensitive coastal habitats in Scotland and gets angry when locals complain that he is destroying their way of life and their natural world. Who knows what damage his golf palaces in Florida and New Jersey caused? He doesn’t care.
Donald sympathizes with other businesspeople, like those that own coal mines and oil companies and potash mines and payday loan businesses. The government is the enemy of the Trump business world. It taxes and regulates and stops the narcissist from doing whatever he wants and stepping on whoever he wants to create his fantasy world of gold-plated wealth. Thus, his pleasure in evading taxes and crushing regulatory agencies when he was in Washington. The government, at all levels is Donald’s enemy. He even battles the cities where is golf resorts exist.
Public lands make no sense to the far right and Donald Trump. Lands that all Americans own together? What? That makes no business sense. To him these lands belong to whoever wants to make money from them; ranchers, oil companies, coal companies, timber companies… But of course, the lands should be “raked” to prevent forest fires and liberals in California cause fires and floods and illegal immigration.
And the Democrats
Sadly, I worry that democrats and many environmentalists have settled back into the fog that pervades whenever we have one of our own in the White House. Of course the current course correction will continue we think. How could Americans be dumb enough to let Donald back in the White House after his criminal presidency? We settle into the fog of self-delusion and imagine we have a long time in power.
Two factors make this democratic fantasy untenable. First it appears that democrats may not have a strong candidate to take on Trump in 2024. Joe Biden is unpopular and he is elderly. In 2024 he will be 80. Vice President Kamala Harris is even more unpopular that Joe Biden is according to numerous polls. She badly failed in her own presidential run in 2019 and she is known as a person who is unkind to her own staff. It is impossible to imagine her winning a race against Donny Trump.
The democrats need to find another candidate for 2024 and they better start now. When I think over the field of possibilities nobody jumps to mind as someone who could take on a newly empowered Donald Trump (who will be 77 in 2024). Can you think of someone ready to lead a divided country with deep problems? Michele Obama perhaps?
Of course Barak Obama came out of “nowhere” in 2008 and led for 8 years. There may be someone out there who may pop on he scene like Obama did. We can only hope.
The Coming Coup
Meanwhile Trump is being a kingmaker from his Florida palace. He has endorsed over 100 candidates for office in 2022 who kiss the ring of his lie that he won the election in 2020. These people are true extremists, and they are ready to radically erode our democracy to help their father-figure Donald Trump. They care nothing for American democracy. Some of these candidates are running for Secretary of State in key states like Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan. They vow to “find” votes for Donald in 2024 if needed and brush aside the true outcomes of elections should Donald lose. Donald is setting up a compliant republican party loyal to him. Policy is irrelevant.
If reelected, would Trump give up power in 2028 assuming he is still alive then? Probably not. We saw his coup attempt in 2020 and his blatant effort to destroy the federal government for PERSONAL reasons. His ego just could not accept that he lost the election. His narcissism is the driving force for all that he does. It is the core of his politics. He couldn’t care less about anyone other than himself. And it is amazing that republicans don’t see this. They don’t understand he is using them and he will stab them in the back if needed to preserve his ego.
Now it’s possible that in the coming two years many things could happen to disrupt Donald’s planned return to power. He is serious legal problems and is spending millions on lawyers on multiple fronts. He has health problems and it’s possible that the electorate may reject his radical buddies in the 2022 election cycle. We’ll see.
But the democrats are not acting like a party that understands the threat to America that Trump represents. We have the far left consumed with racial justice issues that not only alienate most Americans, they alienate a large portion of the democratic party. We have people who seem to ignore that America just emerged from a far-right presidency and that democrats basically have a tiny majority in Congress. Americans didn’t elect Biden to enact sweeping liberal dreams. They asked him to stabilize the country after the Trump disaster. Too many democrats live in a fantasy world and the public is not impressed.
The Environment
During his presidency, Trump did all he could to stop all environmental protections. He tried to erase clean air regulations directed at slowing climate change. He promoted water pollution and he opened most public lands to oil and gas drilling and he promoted coal burning. He tried to eliminate emission regulations on cars and trucks. He tried to stop energy conservation programs for buildings. In other words, he worked to increase greenhouse gas emissions, calling climate change a “hoax.”
Americans need to realize that the climate crisis is out of control in the best of times. Biden’s efforts to tame greenhouse gas emissions have been tepid. But a return of Trump would be a full-on disaster for our planet and the children who are being born. It would be national suicide.
I worry about the extremism of the republican party less than I worry about Donald Trump himself. The far-right whackos like Ron Desantis and Josh Hawley lack the mental illness that drives Trump. The have extreme politics but they are politicians and the country is not all-in with their views. They would have to function as politicians without the charisma and the screaming rock-star following that Trump has created. Indeed, when Trump is gone the republican party will face a deep identity crisis.
I don’t write this to be mean or angry or pessimistic. I write to try to wake people into realism. People who care about American democracy on both sides of the aisle must work tirelessly before 2024 to prevent a Trump return. He truly is an extreme threat to our country.
(I am mindful that if I wrote a piece like this in China, North Korea, or Russia I would be arrested and silenced. In Russia I could be killed. Putin kills people who disagree with him – thousands of them.)
Excellent summary