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In judicial circles, there are enough Trump-involved cases to fill a wardrobe. There’s the former president’s civil damages trial in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s criminal hush money case, federal special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case, Fulton County (Ga.) District Attorney Fani Willis’s election interference case, Smith’s election interference case, and rulings by the Colorado Supreme Court and Maine’s secretary of state disqualifying Trump from those states’ presidential primary ballots.
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Most of the court dates are still up in the air. But it’s a good bet that by year’s end, judicial trumpets will have sounded. Whether they herald doom or joy for Trump remains to be seen.
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As Trump braces for verdicts before the bar of justice, he also will endure days of reckoning with the voting public.
In the 2024 Republican primary season, beginning with January’s Iowa caucuses, Trump will get what he believes he has coming by virtue of his self-evident wonderfulness. He will waltz away with the GOP presidential nomination and accept his coronation at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July.
Election Day in November is another matter, however. Trump will again face judgment at that time, but by a larger and more diverse group of balloters. One hopes it will be a day when Trump’s misdeeds as president — his abuse of power, his denigration of people and cherished values — catch up with him. That’s a hope, not a promise or even an optimistic expectation.
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Because next fall’s election is about more than Trump. It is a consequential day for America — a moment that forces the country to decide whether it wants to become the kind of place that Trump represents or remain a nation where quests for freedom, equality and opportunity — for all — are core values. The outcome is not settled.
When George Wallace made his first bid for Alabama governor in 1958, he lost the Democratic primary to an openly racist opponent who, Wallace later charged, had “outsegged” him. Wallace never let that happen again. He won the 1962 gubernatorial race with what was then the largest popular vote in the state’s history. Wallace’s winning slogan: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
The lesson in the story, at least for me, was not how unprincipled ambition changed Wallace from a racial moderate (by Alabama’s standards) into one of the nation’s most outspoken segregationists. Rather, it’s how well he succeeded when he chose to express and exploit the beliefs of White Alabamians.
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During the 2016 presidential campaign, I wrote columns about GOP candidate Trump’s serial insults and slurs, and the outright lies he would tell about anyone with whom he disagreed. I wrote about how he fanned religious and ethnic flames, played to racial stereotypes, fed off the worries and resentments of the White working class, had become the champion of adoring far-right nationalists — and how he flirted with the Kremlin and was sure to undercut NATO and our allies.
I and many others laid out the best case we could, based upon all we could gather, that a Trump presidency would be a danger to civil liberties, including voting, consumer and reproductive rights.
On Election Day 2016, Trump won with 63 million votes, or 45.9 percent.
In the 2020 election, running on a presidential record that included having disastrously handled the coronavirus, fueled record deficits with tax cuts and weakened rules on sexual harassment, toxic chemicals, racially segregated housing and more, the impeached Trump nonetheless garnered 74 million votes, or 46.8 percent of the cast ballots.
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A Monmouth University poll in November 2019 found that 62 percent of Trump supporters said they could not think of “anything that Trump could do, or fail to do, in his term as president that would make [them] disapprove of the job he is doing.”
It’s a waste of time trying to persuade Trump voters to turn their backs on him. Trump, as with Wallace and his White constituency, gives his people what they want. He doesn’t create; he captures, reflects and exploits his supporters’ hope and fears.
For every nasty and dehumanizing thing Trump says about immigrants, and which offend tender liberal sensibilities, there are expressions of agreement in kitchens, diners and community clubs across America. When he talks about rooting out “vermin” and using the government to go after opponents, he sends shivers of delight up the legs of his backers. Seventy million voters? He owns them.
In a politically polarized and cynically divided America, the question of reckoning next November is: “Whose side wins?”
On second thought, best be you wake up in time for Election Day.
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All is forgiven if you go to bed on New Year’s Eve hoping to sleep until New Year’s Day 2025. All signs promise that 2024 will be a year for the ages.
It most certainly will be a year of reckoning for Donald Trump in courts of law, as well as public opinion. It will be a noisy, messy and ugly 12 months.
In judicial circles, there are enough Trump-involved cases to fill a wardrobe. There’s the former president’s civil damages trial in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s criminal hush money case, federal special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case, Fulton County (Ga.) District Attorney Fani Willis’s election interference case, Smith’s election interference case, and rulings by the Colorado Supreme Court and Maine’s secretary of state disqualifying Trump from those states’ presidential primary ballots.
Most of the court dates are still up in the air. But it’s a good bet that by year’s end, judicial trumpets will have sounded. Whether they herald doom or joy for Trump remains to be seen.
As Trump braces for verdicts before the bar of justice, he also will endure days of reckoning with the voting public.
In the 2024 Republican primary season, beginning with January’s Iowa caucuses, Trump will get what he believes he has coming by virtue of his self-evident wonderfulness. He will waltz away with the GOP presidential nomination and accept his coronation at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July.
Election Day in November is another matter, however. Trump will again face judgment at that time, but by a larger and more diverse group of balloters. One hopes it will be a day when Trump’s misdeeds as president — his abuse of power, his denigration of people and cherished values — catch up with him. That’s a hope, not a promise or even an optimistic expectation.
Because next fall’s election is about more than Trump. It is a consequential day for America — a moment that forces the country to decide whether it wants to become the kind of place that Trump represents or remain a nation where quests for freedom, equality and opportunity — for all — are core values. The outcome is not settled.
When George Wallace made his first bid for Alabama governor in 1958, he lost the Democratic primary to an openly racist opponent who, Wallace later charged, had “outsegged” him. Wallace never let that happen again. He won the 1962 gubernatorial race with what was then the largest popular vote in the state’s history. Wallace’s winning slogan: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
The lesson in the story, at least for me, was not how unprincipled ambition changed Wallace from a racial moderate (by Alabama’s standards) into one of the nation’s most outspoken segregationists. Rather, it’s how well he succeeded when he chose to express and exploit the beliefs of White Alabamians.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, I wrote columns about GOP candidate Trump’s serial insults and slurs, and the outright lies he would tell about anyone with whom he disagreed. I wrote about how he fanned religious and ethnic flames, played to racial stereotypes, fed off the worries and resentments of the White working class, had become the champion of adoring far-right nationalists — and how he flirted with the Kremlin and was sure to undercut NATO and our allies.
I and many others laid out the best case we could, based upon all we could gather, that a Trump presidency would be a danger to civil liberties, including voting, consumer and reproductive rights.
On Election Day 2016, Trump won with 63 million votes, or 45.9 percent.
In the 2020 election, running on a presidential record that included having disastrously handled the coronavirus, fueled record deficits with tax cuts and weakened rules on sexual harassment, toxic chemicals, racially segregated housing and more, the impeached Trump nonetheless garnered 74 million votes, or 46.8 percent of the cast ballots.
A Monmouth University poll in November 2019 found that 62 percent of Trump supporters said they could not think of “anything that Trump could do, or fail to do, in his term as president that would make [them] disapprove of the job he is doing.”
It’s a waste of time trying to persuade Trump voters to turn their backs on him. Trump, as with Wallace and his White constituency, gives his people what they want. He doesn’t create; he captures, reflects and exploits his supporters’ hope and fears.
For every nasty and dehumanizing thing Trump says about immigrants, and which offend tender liberal sensibilities, there are expressions of agreement in kitchens, diners and community clubs across America. When he talks about rooting out “vermin” and using the government to go after opponents, he sends shivers of delight up the legs of his backers. Seventy million voters? He owns them.
In a politically polarized and cynically divided America, the question of reckoning next November is: “Whose side wins?”
On second thought, best be you wake up in time for Election Day.
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