Generation Trump

Act Now, but Don't Expect This to Go Away

30 Days to an election that will change things, briefly.

• The October Surprise turned out to be reality kicking Trump’s ass. In one meme, a talking Covid-19 virus says, “I moved on him like a bitch.”

• Do something, anything, now. I wrote post cards to potential voters last night, we put a Biden/Harris sticker on our car, and I signed up to make calls for the Sierra Club. With one hour of training, I was able to reach about 40 voters in Florida yesterday, reminding them that today is the last day to register to vote and that they can vote in person as early as October 19. Those are each very small steps, completely inadequate to the moment. But you have to start somewhere, and they do add up. 

• Good News: Biden is strongly ahead in polls, including in Florida and Pennsylvania. 

• Bad News: Biden is not strongly ahead in many battleground states. Michigan looks tighter than before, and North Carolina is staying red in polls. The “likelihood” of Biden winning is very high, but…you know what happened last time. A Dem got 3% more votes and still lost. Nate Silver at 538 created a revealing chart of just how MUCH Biden needs to win by, to have a secure grasp on the electoral college. Paul Waldman in the Washington Post summarized the dilema: “Biden could win by 3 million to 4.5 million votes and still have less than a 50 percent chance of becoming president.” Obviously, a 3% margin of victory isn’t enough. Even with 5%, Biden would have only an 89% chance of winning. That’s a good chance, and realistic right now. Nate Silver even predicts a 30 in 100 possibility that Biden will win by double digits. But everything is at stake, this is not time to get complacent. Do something, anything, now. 

• All this was polled before Trump went into the hospital with Covid, which can only hurt him politically. No matter how much Trumpers lean on denial and conspiracy theories, there is no way this helps him. Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil claimed that surviving Covid proved his policies right, but he gained no advantage from it; Boris Johnson got a small sympathy bump in polls, which didn’t last.

• And after the election? The future, unfortunately, holds more Trumpism. It is clear a month before the election that Trumpism is in trouble, here, there, everywhere. Yet even as Donald J. Trump’s demise at the voting booth begins to seem genuinely possible, I have to wonder how much that will change things outside Washington DC. Political junkies are watching the Supreme Court, the balance of senators, the polling in Wayne County, Michigan, and the fate of Florida felons trying to vote. But how much does politics really alter the larger movement of American authoritarianism? How different will a post-Trump world really be?

• Stop! There is no such thing as a post-Trump world. Votes are snapshots, one-day activities that move a nation one small step this way or another, like the hard edge of a pixel. Back out a bit, and the hard-edged pixel fades away into a smoother image whose moving form no longer seem controlled by small, hard edges. The other 364 days of the year are as powerful as election day. 

• Trump is not going away, even if he goes away. One of the surest lessons of my life overseas has been that authoritarians believe in dynasties. The widow takes over for the martyred husband, the son stands to replace the father figure. Family is the original authoritarian institution, typically represented as a powerful father ruling over a household of incompletely formed children. Obviously the subjugation of women stands at the center of authoritarianism for this reason, and the roots of this go deeper even than the Bible, since patriarchy and the “Kingly” model of social organization is found everywhere outside the Christian world, evidence of its universality. 

• Yet we follow kings no more. Around the world, even authoritarian leaders aspire to the title of president, not prince, and legitimacy lies with at least pretending to be democratic. Even the most fanatical evangelical Americans did not call for a king in this world. 

• But they do call for a “son.” Donald J. Trump is most likely to be supplanted in his own movement by Donald J. Trump Jr. With millions of supporters within the Republican Party, he remains the most popular and credible standard bearer for the same movement, the same belief system. Ivanka Trump is also a potential player in this generational drama, her popularity proof that authoritarianism— hierarchy, obedience, loyalty to the group—supersedes even patriarchy. This is why even deeply oppressive societies like Pakistan will choose a widow like Benazir Bhutto rather than a man, and why conservatives can pick a woman like Margaret Thatcher to champion their patriarchal visions. The “Women for Trump” signs at his rallies are held by those willing to submit themselves to male rule, even when embodied by a leader who “moved on her like a bitch.” 

• None of that is going away in one election cycle. Trumpism will return in two years, for the mid-term elections, and in four years for the presidency, and at the eight and 12 year marks we will still be dealing with the big T in politics. Just as our history includes the recurrent cycles of 1850s Know-Nothings, 1930s America First fascists, and 1990s militia madness, we are living in a generational phenomenon. Winning one election is not going to change that, only diminish it for a brief moment. The conspiracy thinking, calls for violence, and exclusion of uncomfortable realities are permanent fixtures of American life. Psychologically, the true believer must double down on all of this. Be ready for more Trumpism, even after Trump.