It was always going to come down to the voters
The only way to beat Trump is to actually *beat Trump.*
One minute you’re talking about the need to protect liberal democracy, the next minute you’re engaging in lurid fantasies about Joe Biden declaring himself dictator for life and arresting, detaining and executing his opponent and hostile jurists.
To protect liberal democracy, of course.
Maybe one or two people tweeting about this are indeed preparing to take up arms and/or flee the country, since the Supreme Court’s immunity decision is worse than 9/11 and Hitler’s Enabling Act - yes, I’ve seen this argued by serious people, and also Keith Olbermann - but I suspect most are content to vent about it on social media.1
Everyone wants to believe they would have fought against Hitler, but there were only a few Claus Von Stauffenbergs.
Amidst a Twitter-wide freakout the likes of which I haven’t seen since a kid wore a MAGA hat when he met an elderly Native American, I’ve seen some very good, critical but fair reviews of Trump vs. United States from the likes of Russell Busch, Sarah Isgur, Scott Greenfield and Ryan Goodman of JustSecurity, who was nice enough to make a handy flow chart:
My initial thought when I saw the decision come down (after refreshing SCOTUSblog over and over again) was that it honestly didn’t seem too far from what I’d long assumed to be the status quo,2 and that my bigger concern was that it will delay Trump’s remaining criminal trials until after Election Day.
That’s still where I am right now. And the thing is, even if his trials had gone ahead, I don’t think they would have made nearly as much of a difference as people think.
I believe this because Trump already had a criminal trial, with many lurid details which would have ended almost anyone else’s political career ten times over, and which resulted in convictions on 34 counts.
And it barely moved the needle. Biden did get a small boost in polling, but hardly a game changer.
Then came the debate from Hell, in which President Biden confirmed everyone’s worst fears about whether he’s up to the job.3
And that hasn’t moved the needle much, either. Honestly, the polls have kind of been all over the place. I’ve seen some in which Biden has actually gained ground on Trump, perhaps confirming my long-held4 belief that an enfeebled Joe Biden is preferable to a Donald Trump at the height of his intellectual powers.
This is the first Presidential election where an incumbent is facing off against his predecessor, and it’s happening at a time when internet-fueled hyper-partisanship is at an all-time high.
We know both of these guys, and we know which one we like. Or, more accurately, which one we dislike less than the other. And we’re all dug in and refusing to move, like the political equivalent of World War I trench warfare.
Biden’s awful debate performance certainly hasn’t turned me toward Trump, and Trump’s [waves around hands in every direction] hasn’t moved many of his supporters toward Biden. For 95% of voters, the die is cast.
A legal deus ex machina which removed Trump from the ballot would be, well, kind of awesome. But it’s less likely than ever now, and honestly shouldn’t have been taken for granted in the first place.
It’s going to come down to out-organizing, out-campaigning and out-voting the other guys. Every minute spent doomsaying and fantasizing about Civil War 2.0 is a minute taken away from stuff that might help Biden actually win.
I always found it amusing that people who sincerely believed George W. Bush masterminded 9/11, or that the Bill Clinton Death Count was real, responded by…posting about it online and then just going about their daily business.
If you’re worried about a President now feeling emboldened to order drone strikes against American citizens outside of active war zones, well, that’s kind of been done, and by one of the “good” Presidents at that.
Which it’s now okay to talk about, apparently. This would have been useful six months ago, Mr. Second-Most-Famous-Watergate-Reporter.
Since last Thursday
Or as the Old Navy Chief said to me as a young sailor, "When you're so terrified that you've crapped your pants and pissed your drawers and your brain is frozen - if you just do your job, that's being a hero."