Trump v. The United States: An Opportunity To Recharge The Election

“Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival?  Immune.  Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune …  In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”  Trump v. United States (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) 

The most remarkable thing about our politics has been the willful blindness to Trump and his Party's plan -- in plain sight -- to destroy the pillars of democracy and create a white Christian nationalist state.  There remains, somehow, an overarching belief that our institutions are strong enough to withstand the inevitable constitutional crisis. Proof of this, apparently, is that court delays notwithstanding, Trump's attempts to remain in power after losing the last election were unsuccessful, and his efforts to steal highly classified documents were stymied. See, the system worked.

Last month, the New York Times (finally) published a frightening report on Project 2025, stating:

Donald Trump and his closest allies are preparing a radical reshaping of American government if he regains the White House. Here are some of his plans for cracking down on immigration, directing the Justice Department to prosecute his adversaries, increasing presidential power, upending America’s economic policies, retreating militarily from Europe and unilaterally deploying troops to Democratic-run cities. 

But this effort to centralize power in the executive branch -- what would essentially be a fascist takeover of government -- is treated as just one issue among many to be discussed and debated on the Sunday morning talk shows, rather than a hair-on-fire moment for the country.

As I wrote a few months ago, the Democrats – with their fetish for bipartisanship and compulsion to stay above the fray -- have completely abdicated from exposing and highlighting Trump’s past perfidies as well as the existential danger he poses if he returns to power. As always, they have ceded the narrative to the Republicans. Which is just fine with the mainstream press, which has yet to grapple with how to cover politics where one of the two candidates is a demented fascist, and one of the two political parties is facilitating a Christian theocracy. It maddeningly continues to focus on the odds, not the stakes, ignoring Trump’s incoherent rambling and his all-too-coherent plan for mass deportations, the replacement of civil servants with loyalists, and taking revenge on his political enemies. 

And now, the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled (after unconscionably delaying the case to prevent a pre-election trial) not only that many of Trump's actions to remain in power may well be immune from prosecution, but that if he returns to power, he will be able to achieve many of those things he has been threatening as long as they are cloaked in official duties -- from weaponizing the Justice Department to prosecute his perceived enemies to using the military to suppress domestic protests, and much, much more.  It is not hyperbole to say that he truly could become dictator on Day One.

The Court's ruling has crystallized the key issue in this election.  There are no longer any guardrails to protect us from dictatorship. Trump already controls one our two political parties, and now he has received a free pass -- a get out of jail card, as it were -- from the highest court in the Land.

The election is no longer about Biden v. Trump, it is, as the caption of the Supreme Court's decision unwittingly states: Trump v. The United States.  But that only highlights the importance of determining whether Biden is up for prosecuting the case for Democracy and against Trump. He completely failed to do so during the debate, and it isn't at all clear whether he can do it now. 

Biden may very well have been an excellent president but he is an awful campaigner -- and between now and November we need a candidate who can deftly and aggressively prosecute the case against Trump and for Democracy.  If he isn't up for it -- and sadly, I don't think he is -- he needs to step down and pass the torch to his successor. (I strongly believe that it would be disastrous and demoralizing for the Party's key constituencies (i.e., black and women voters) if the Vice President is bypassed. I've never been much of a fan of Kamala Harris (see Kamala's People), but she is a brilliant communicator and is well suited to make the case against Trump. She has also been a powerful voice on another critical issue -- reproductive rights. And, not insignificantly, as VP, she's the only potential candidate who can gain access to Biden's campaign war chest.)

The Supreme Court's immunity decision has given Democrats a golden opportunity to focus this election on the dangers of a Trump presidency.  They better seize it.