This piece will be appearing this weekend as an op/ed in newspapers in the very red congressional district (VA-06) in which I ran for Congress as the Democratic nominee in 2012.
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Never -- in my 68 years of following the affairs of the United States -- have I felt so uncertain about the future path of the nation. So many profound unknowns!
One thing seems clear: Donald Trump has signaled his intentions to make the U.S. a very different nation both domestically and on the world stage.
(What previous President would have threatened a NATO ally – Denmark – because of his insistence on acquiring a piece of that ally’s territory – Greenland?)
But if Trump’s extraordinary intentions seem relatively clear, his ability to change the nature of the United States depends on the answer to several questions:
1) How well will the Trumpian force play its hand?
Trump commands what looks like a more competent team for the purposes of destroying the American system and replacing it with an authoritarian one.
(Musk, for example, seems to have a gift for getting himself in a position of power and wealth, and has shown support for fascistic parties in Germany and the UK. And the Project 2025 crowd at Heritage provide a lot of thought-out democracy-degrading plans that Trump can employ if he so chooses.)
So maybe this Trump presidency will wage its campaign for Fascistic transformation effectively.
On the other hand, it remains to be seen how well Trump can operate as the head of an effective organization. Trump, who always insists that he’s the man, might interfere with the unfolding of an effective plan, just to prove that he’s the one calling the shots.
Also, there’s a visible possibility that the forces behind Trump will expend their energy fighting each other. (For example, Elon Musk’s unTrumpian position on immigration has already antagonized part of the Trump base; and Steve Bannon, a “populist,” has declared war on Musk, the current leader of the tech-bro oligarchs.)
2) Will the Republicans in Congress merely rubber-stamp ANYTHING Trump wants?
There have been minor signs of independence from Republicans in our “Article I” branch of government. The Rs in the Senate refused to forfeit their role in the confirmation process when Trump bade them give him “recess appointment” power. And they quietly chased the most obviously grotesque of Trump’s nominees – Gaetz for AG! – off the field.
But we’ve also seen how gun-shy the Rs have been about going public with any disagreement with this President (who has repeatedly demonstrated his ability to weaponize the Republican base to punish any Republicans who do not go along with him).
After the successful intimidation of Joni Ernst (R-IA), it seems clear that the Senate Republicans will confirm Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. And if they will confirm Hegseth – who is unqualified and disqualified on so many levels – that would seem to mean they’ll approve anything Trump does.
Unless the public turns against Trump.
3) Will the half of the American electorate that chose Trump stick with Trump, even if he actually transforms American Democracy, with its Rule of Law, into a more authoritarian regime?
It is Trump’s voters who lie at the heart of my uncertainty.
In the lead up to the Election of 2024, I misjudged the American people. (I think of the Beattles’ lyric, “I thought I knew you, what did I know?”)
The two campaigns -- Donald Trump’s and Kamala Harris’s -- provided as stark a contrast as one could want. (Kamala spoke of a politics of cooperation, goodwill, moving the nation forward.— while on each of these dimension Trump dramatized the opposite.)
I imagined that the great majority of the Americans of today would choose the way Americans of the era in which I grew up (I still feel sure) would have chosen.
But I was wrong.
If all those people chose Trump – when Trump was so openly displaying so many of what previous generations would have regarded as ugly “automatic disqualifiers” – why should one believe Trump’s conduct as President could be so ugly and destructive that he’d lose their support?
4) Can the Pro-Democracy force win (back) the allegiance of a predominant part of the American people?
For twenty years, I’ve been criticizing the weakness of Liberal America and the Democratic Party in confronting the fascistic force that was taking over the Republican Party. (In 2014, I even published a series of articles under the title, “Press the Battle.”)
I approved the campaign Kamala Harris waged, even though it was more gentle than I’d have recommended. But her campaign seemed good because she made so vividly clear the better path that America could take. I thought that side-by-side comparison of the Democratic vs. the Fascistic forms of power would suffice to inspire an American majority to choose to preserve American Democracy.
But it turned out that just showing the positive alternative was insufficient.
Might that be because people needed more help in perceiving just how dark and destructive Trump’s path would be? Did people need a picture that vividly captured the ugliness to move them to save the institutions and values that this nation has always celebrated?
In this fearful moment, I fear that perhaps the American majority cannot be so moved. And I fear that the Democrats lack the ability to rouse within themselves the moral and spiritual passions to fight the fight that needs to be fought.
I’d be delighted, this time, to be wrong again.