The damage done by Donald Trump will not end with his presidency. It will take years, perhaps generations, to flush out the toxins he has injected into the body politic.
No, the soon-to-be-ex-President did not invent racism, xenophobia, demagoguery, or disdain for truth. But he elevated these in the national consciousness, to a level his followers will seek to sustain—if for no other reason than to affirm Trump’s perverse legacy.
Biden will always be a centrist, not a firebrand. While that’s a welcome change from Trump in terms of temperament, what the nation needs now is bold and forceful leadership.
Trump has used racism as a tool to gain political advantage. He responded to police brutality by egging it on. He not only denied the existential threat of climate change but seemed intent on making it worse. He handled the COVID-19 pandemic by mocking mask-wearing, rebuffing experts, and hosting superspreader rallies estimated to have infected more than 30,000 people, killing more than 700 of them. His response to losing an election has been to proclaim it illegitimate, as he vowed to do if the result displeased him.
Trump did not lose the election because a cabal of his enemies committed massive electoral theft. He lost because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris received the most votes and won the Electoral College. Sheesh.
Yes, it’s dispiriting to see how close Trump came, drawing more than seventy million votes. Some 80 percent of the nation’s substantial white evangelical population support this known adulterer, serial sexual predator, and foul-mouthed faux-Christian.
The President has disparaged broad swaths of the public—people who serve in the military, Gold Star families, immigrants, people with disabilities, Muslims, and the media. He called Harris, now the nation’s Vice President-elect, a “monster.” He has fired those who refuse to abide by his delusions—including, just after the election, Defense Secretary Mark Esper—and used his office to punish his enemies and enrich himself and his grifter family.
Trump accused the doctors and nurses working heroically to save COVID-19 patients of fabricating death counts for money. He shunted aside experts including Dr. Anthony Fauci and centered his response to the pandemic on the advice of Scott Atlas, a crackpot Fox News squawker who thinks everyone in the country should contract the virus. He riled maskless acolytes into chants of “Fire Fauci!” His former adviser Steve Bannon called for the severed heads of Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray to be hoisted on pikes outside the White House—a threat Bannon’s own lawyer took seriously enough to drop him as a client. (Bannon is currently facing felony charges for stealing from the President’s supporters.)
Perhaps worst of all, Trump has impugned the nation’s poll workers, ballot counters, and election supervisors—people who risked their health to dutifully record the votes of their fellow citizens—as being part of a grand conspiracy to deny him a second term. It is an accusation as despicable as Trump himself.
And while it is likely that the absence of evidence will doom Trump’s chances of subverting the election result, there is no reason to be optimistic that the Republican Party will become less cultish and corrupt. Its members have continually enabled and encouraged Trump. They stole two Supreme Court seats. They suppressed votes and used redistricting as a weapon. They will make sure that Biden is met with opposition and obstruction at every turn, no matter who “controls” the Senate after the two Georgia runoff elections on January 5.
Expect Trump to keep lying from the sidelines, and for his followers to stand by him. The most un-American President in American history will not put the country or anything else above his own raging narcissism. What author Thomas Frank has called “the crassest, vainest, stupidest, most dysfunctional leadership this country has ever suffered” cannot be wiped away with a sufficient number of Electoral College votes.
Yet none of this means that Biden cannot achieve some successes or that the cause of building a more progressive nation cannot be advanced. It will be hard, but it can be done.
Biden will always be a centrist, not a firebrand. While that’s a welcome change from Trump in terms of temperament, what the nation needs now is bold and forceful leadership. Biden likely will take decisive steps to reverse Trump’s actions that have harmed the environment and undermined the country’s national security. He can rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, revive the nuclear deal with Iran, restore the nation’s membership in the World Health Organization, stop the pointless punishment of Cuba, and end the United States’ murderous complicity in the war in Yemen. He can roll back attacks on LGBTQ+ rights and explore reparations for Black Americans.
But other challenges will prove more daunting. The people who elected Biden must now work just as hard to push him in the right—make that left—direction. This will allow real progress on health care, racial justice, policing, and economic fairness.
Progressives should set specific expectations for the new administration. Here are some of them:
Reclaim the ability to lead: Republicans have shown no compunction about changing the rules to benefit themselves. They have used redistricting and voter suppression to create an unlevel playing field; the Democrats should tilt it back. Yes, do away with the filibuster, especially in such a closely divided Senate. Yes, let Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico have voting representation in Congress. Yes, add seats to the Supreme Court. Be fair about it: Put these ideas to voters as referendums, debate the merits, and abide by the results.
No pardons for Trump: As Bill Blum detailed in The Progressive’s last issue, the most corrupt President in U.S. history faces a slew of potential criminal charges for everything from tax fraud to obstruction of justice to campaign finance violations serious enough to send his personal lawyer to prison. Biden will be urged to pardon his predecessor, as Ford did for Nixon. The pressure from the other side must be greater. Trump, the Divider-in-Chief, should not be able to escape justice on the grounds that it would be “divisive.” Charge him, try him, and, if convicted, lock him up.
End the Electoral College: This accommodation to slavery has diminished our system of governance long enough. It’s time for the United States to pass a Constitutional Amendment to establish the principle of one person, one vote. There are other avenues worth considering, such as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, in which a sufficient number of states agree to cast all of their electoral college votes for whichever presidential candidate wins the overall popular vote. But it would be best to fix the Constitution itself.
Ensure the right to vote: The current election leaves no doubt that shameless politicians will continue to use partisan redistricting and voter suppression to hold onto, and increase, their power. There needs to be a new national Voting Rights Act to protect the ability of every citizen to vote and to have that vote count. No party or state should be able to make voting harder for political gain.
Address climate change. No, really: We have dawdled long enough, putting the planet in peril. Now we must work at breakneck speed to contain the damage. The impacts from our heedlessness will still be severe, but they can be survivable. This is an all-hands-on-deck situation that requires strong leadership and a spirit of global cooperation. And yes, that will be as hard as it sounds.
Reform the criminal justice system: The United States continues to have the world’s highest rate of incarceration, for which it pays enormous financial and human costs. During the campaign, both Trump and Biden broke from the once-bipartisan consensus that the more Americans we lock up, the better. Biden rued his support of a 1994 crime bill that spiked incarceration, and Trump crowed about the baby steps he’s taken toward reform. It’s time for some big steps.
Defund the police: Joe Biden won’t say it, but we will. Too much money is being poured into policing, and not nearly enough into community-based violence prevention and conflict resolution. Let’s reallocate funding from one bucket to the other. Cops are ill-suited to be first-responders when people are in mental health crises. They should be trained to de-escalate situations, not open fire every time they feel scared. There needs to be better screening of potential cops, and consequences for those who abuse the public’s trust.
Protect reproductive rights: There is no reason to believe that Roe v. Wade will withstand the enmity of the extremists who now dominate the U.S. Supreme Court, thanks to Trump’s three horrid picks. And securing protections for reproductive choice on a state-by-state basis would be a nightmarish pursuit. (Only thirteen states and the District of Columbia currently have laws affirming a legal right to abortion.) What’s needed, as Biden has noted, is federal legislation. And it ought to come soon, before the Court revisits this area of “settled law.”
The election of Joe Biden as President will not put an end to the spiteful intransigence of Republicans or the wishy-washy acquiescence of many Democrats. A loud, proud, sustained, united front of progressive advocacy is needed to help bend the arc of the nation’s moral trajectory toward justice.