Since we have few states that decide the election, and so far there's no possibility to abolish this clear injustice we call electoral college for 2020, I have an advice for our free, independent press.
Maybe at the end of July start distributing free copies of NYTimes, Washington Post, WSJ...
The USA Today, The New York Times, and the The Wall Street Journal occupy the top three spots of the most popular daily newspapers in the US
USA Today - 1,621,091.
The Wall Street Journal - 1,011,200.
The New York Times - 483,701.
Also some 2020 updates on best selling papers:
https://www.agilitypr.com/resources/top-media-outlets/top-15-daily-american-newspapers/
Why not just try, not everyone can have a luxury of digital subscription.
3 to 4 states it's all it takes, it could pay big to be able to spread real information to people who don't have access, and really take the fight against the deluge of disinformation unleashed and exported directly from Kremlin on all other platforms!
92
Regardless of how you feel about the results of the impeachment and ongoing trial in the Senate, does anyone now doubt that Joe Biden is dirty?
39
The federal government will remain a stupid stooge of corrupt states until federal elections are direct, and federally run and counted.
25
@Steve Bolger
Democrats love big government except when they don't get what they want out of it.
20
He could have been removed this past week, but there are so many other liars that support him, he was able to get away. What a pig.
87
It seems the Democrats have no will or ambition to actually do anything for this country.
Their only goal to beat Trump. For what purpose? I don't know.
So I will vote for Trump who has objectives to accomplish.
149
@Ichigo are you aware of the Democratic candidates proposals to fix healthcare, shore up social security, build infrastructure, make college more affordable, make middle class homes affordable, etc, etc, etc? No Democratic candidate can be successful without some solid, rational, make life better for us all, real proposals...unlike Republicans who are charmed by rants of lock em up, and make America great again. Trump promised the moon...he was going to rebuild our infrastructure, and give us cheaper better healthcare, but we got none of that. Trump gave the Middle East to Putin, and even ISIS is getting ready to make a go of it again. He got lucky on the economy by cruising on the solid foundation laid down by eight years of a Democratic POTUS, even one that was hampered by the do-nothing but stop Obama Congress.
645
@Ichigo
Upholding the Constitution and protecting the US are sufficient for me. Some integrity would is also required.
A Dem. candidate that can do these three things will earn my vote.
385
@Ichigo Not paying attention at all are you? Check out some of those bills passed in the House that are sitting on McConnell's desk because he won't take them up. See what Dems are trying to do for this country but you and Trumpists ignore, and cut the carp. You'd vote for Trump no matter what.
374
How can one beat a cheater without resorting to the same tactics? I'm not sure any honest presidential candidate could ever win again based on the fact that the republicans have given trump carte blanche to do whatever he wants. The only way to get rid of trump is to take back the Senate in November 2020 and impeach and remove him by that means.
738
@Kathrine: Wrestling with Trump means getting down in the sty.
33
@Katherine. I think Sanders is dirty enough to beat trump. I would agree the balance of democrats don’t have what it takes to beat trump
7
@Kathrine
~38% of Dems, ~50% of Americans, and ~73% of Repubs say they would not vote for a socialist.
Bernie's decent. Joe's decent.
Given Congress constraining them, they'll both achieve similar policies, as Krugman explains below: we’ll get a significant but not gigantic expansion of the social safety net, paid for by significant new taxes on the rich.
They could both lose to Trump. They could both win.
But I'm worried Bernie's chances are lower because he calls himself a socialist, says he will ban fracking immediately, and decriminalize illegal border crossing. I'm not sure how I feel about those policies, but they will lose you a lot of votes in Pennsylvania. And there is no way dems win without PA. Please vote Joe! If you do, and Joe loses to Trump, you can beat me up :)
Stats above from 538: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-we-actually-know-about-electability/
Krugman on similar policy outcomes from Sanders & Biden:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/opinion/does-it-matter-who-the-democrats-choose.html
24
Only Adam Schiff knows what a sewer the legal practice is in the US, thanks to awful appointments, incompetence and lack of supervision of the judiciary. Justice dies of old age in the womb here.
9
You just have to beat him. Of course that has been the problem all along for Democrats. One must put into context the push for impeachment from the left that started moments after he took the oath as president. One investigation after another and here we are. By any fair assessment, as the author mentioned, his first term has been in Normas Lee successful. A great economy, two big trade deals, getting Mexico to not pay for the wall but pay much much more to help us protect our southern border. And what did the Democrats offer? Crazy policies that are unpopular in the states needed to win. Just one for example is Mr. Biden’s Statement a couple weeks ago that he would be willing to illuminate 200,000 fossil fuel fracking jobs which are high paid union jobs with benefits and reprogram these blue-collar workers to work on computers At half the salary with no benefits. Do democrats really think that’s a winning strategy? At the end of the day most people vote their interests. To quote James Carville “It’s the economy stupid”
65
@Mitchell myrin
The economy is not great, and that's just for starters. It's just a lot of numbers crunching and does not reflect the well being of the average person.
The two trade deals have not to be activated and the China deal is not settled of yet well defined.
And how does one "illuminate" 200,000 jobs? By supplying everyone with a light bulb?
perhaps you were not paying attention, the impeachment hearings yielded plenty of solid evidence given by stellar witnesses. Republican obstructionists are the reason Trump is getting a pass.
I should war the Republicans though. They have just given the Democrats permission to do exactly the same thing. Think about that.
44
@Mitchell myrin: The Democrats beat trump 4 years ago but the Republicans in the Electoral College ignored that fact and crowned trump as King, er I mean President. I assume the Republican Party has a special operations group already in place to steal this upcoming election too.
51
@Mitchell myrin: Trump won his spurs flipping the bird at the NYC real estate aristocracy. He's showing them what sissies he thinks they are now.
6
Yes, we can beat him, provided the election is conducted fairly and honestly. However, Impeached President Trump is a serial and pathological cheater - past, present and future - and is willing to do anything to win, including the solicitation of foreign governments to aid him and disparage his political opponents. If the Senate fails to convict Trump and remove him from office, he will be emboldened to continue his course of conduct -perhaps even engaging in worse conduct - without any constitutional check on his authority. The Democratic nominee will have to run an almost flawless and perfect campaign to overcome what will be thrown his or her way - and that will be very difficult to do.
18
Trump underneath it all is insecure with his own ability to perform tasks that require intellectual skills and knowledge that requires hard work to attain.
He also has no grasp of risks and habitually fails to consider them resulting in consequences for which he relies upon other to address for him. Most successful business people play according to the risks which favor.
But Trump sells well himself. It seems that Trump has a narrow set of skills centered around being the center of attention, which he has developed into a successful demagoguery.
But in the end Trump was born so rich that he need never have accomplished anything to fulfill all of his basic needs except social interactions. He has no real grasp of loss nor not having enough nor any grasp of consequences that could deny him his needs for the rest of his life. He is complacent with regards to consequences.
9
In a game, rules are suppose to be fair for everyone.
He lost the last election, it was the russian intervention that got him the win.
Now he ask for at least one other country to help him, because he Knows that without outside help he will loose, but you republican now say that is ok, and then you have the guts to tell the people that we need to beat him fair and square ?
19
Pretty big presumption that any future elections will be fair. After all, this "president" was impeached for attempting already to use "desperate or underhanded means" for this presidential election.
18
I like Ross and he is often wise in analysis, but here he misses some big things.
Trump didn't win because his primary competitors were too inept. All had missteps, sure, but every candidate does. To believe that Trump had none is folly of great magnitude. He had MANY. Making fun of a disabled reporter, ripping on McCain and the Gold Star family, the Access Hollywood tape.
But he did things that none of them did. Remember when he called the CEO of an air conditioning manufacturer and bullied them not to move the factory to Mexico?
Would Marco Rubio ever do that? Would Jeb? Fiorina? Would Hillary do that?
No. He showed, again and again, he was fighting for that working class guy who has been getting the shaft, from both parties, for my lifetime. He'll fight the trade war with China. He might do it badly, but he'll fight it. Who else will? Working class folks wanna know.
This isn't about visiting states, it's about talking to people. Unless the Democrats nominate someone who speaks to those issues, the exorbitant cost of healthcare, the stagnated wages, good-paying union and manufacturing jobs replaced with poorly paying and poorly benefitted service jobs, they will have a very tough time just beating him
I am aghast at Republicans behavior over impeachment, but their loss of dignity and shirking of duty has little affect on people scraping buy. Demagoguery like Trump flourishes when the comfortable worry more about values than people.
4
Chris Matthews once said, regarding elections, "Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line."
2020 is the year that Democrats must fall in line.
Vote blue, no matter who.
===
In 2016, I voted for Sanders in the primary. And then Clinton in the general election.
- If Biden wins the primary, every Bernie supporter must vote for Biden.
- If Bernie wins the primary, every Biden supporter must vote for Bernie.
- And so forth.
Vote your conscience in the primary. And then vote blue, no matter who, on November 3.
37
Tell me again - how did Obama win 2 elections yet Hilary lost ? If the deck was that stacked Obama would not have stood a chance but won convincingly. Hilary lost because she deserved to by her campaign strategy.
11
The Media liked Trump to sell advertising because he was new, novel, entertaining. Money / advertising supported Trump and the media disliked Hillary. Many Americans are not deep thinkers, don't pay much attention to politics, and are looking out for their local selfish interests. To the extent that the media doted on Donald, he had a free advantage. No one mentioned scandals about Donald, but they liked to revisit the scandals about the Dems. Power, Money. That's politics.
The Dems don't have the money and many of the people who talk liberal don't open their pocketbooks. Cheap talk. The only walk is to the mall. Dems need to walk the neighborhoods to get people registered, and motivate them to vote, considering that the Repubs likely will have 2X the Dem money. And if the young people and the socially oppressed (minorities, LGBTQ, etc) stay home and pout, Donald and his team will get four more years. Talk is cheap!
1
Channel your despair into righteous anger.
We must beat trump.
Register voters, help get people to the polls. And if you can’t donate to the many wonderful groups already doing this.
And vote blue, no matter who, 2020.
7
Ross, all we have to do is defeat ... neoliberalism.
We need to move towards a new set of values centered around social democracy.
Trump is the symptom. Neoliberalism is the disease. Defeat it.
5
"A republic, if you can keep it."
That was Benjamin Franklin's famous response to a citizen's question as he walked out of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, when the Constitution had just been finalized and our nation was born.
On November 3, 2020, we must all answer Franklin in the affirmative. "Yes, we shall keep our republic."
It is that simple, my Fellow Americans. The 2020 election is a referendum on the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the very American Experiment itself.
Vote like American democracy itself and our way of life depends on it. Because it truly does.
I've gotten busy. Have you?
Volunteer. Donate. And VOTE.
11
Well, that about sums it up, doesn't it. The oft-erudite Douthat turns to simplicity and hits the nail with the hammer. Its that simple. All you have to do is beat him.
Republicans don’t fear Liberalism, they fear immigrants and fear that immigrants and minorities will prosper and be on equal footing with them. Republicans believe that Trump wants to make them rich. They do not understand that Trump wants the rich to get richer and give the richest class even more control over the poor, working and middle class families. It’s pathetic to vote for someone who literally cares zero about you other than whipping you into a frenzy of hate. So Liberalism may be scary for some of you, but Trumpism is even scarier. It feeds off your fear of those you perceive to be lower on the rungs of life than you are.
11
Why does CNN and MSNBC have such low viewership vs fox news. If you look at the data more Americans watch Fox and less watch the left leaning news. Why does the qtr reviews show fox with such a huge lead if what the article says is true " most Americans hate Trump". This article when compared to hard data in viewership for each news source does not match up. I am a independent voter and when I read hate mongering like this and the comments I have no desire to vote for a democratic canidate.
11
What ever happened to Melania? Barron? Mike Pence? Integrity? Fairness? Democracy? America? This country is all about Trump now, a charlatan who uses his money and position to buy members of Congress, judges, and top officials. Why aren't Trump and his crooks being charged with crimes against the country? He even got away with withholding witnesses and information during his Impeachment trial.
cover-up
noun [ C ]
an attempt to prevent the public from discovering information about a serious crime or mistake:
Allegations of a cover-up of the effects of pollution have been strongly denied.
4
Trump cheats - his wives, business partners and on his taxes. Trump is aided by Russia. Trump and Barr have weaponized the Justice department to protect him. All of this is being enabled by the Republican U.S. Senate. More people voted for Democrats than for Republicans across the country in 2016 and 2018 but our system is flawed for we are the only country in the world where the person with a lesser amount of votes can win. So its just not beating Trump, its overcoming his treason, the FOX news propaganda machine and a corrupted Republican party where everyone who called Trump a pathological liar now licks his boots because they have lost their integrity and put their personal interests above the public interest. Senators Graham and Rubio are pathetic. McConnell is deplorable. Only Romney showed any class whatsoever. Collins just voted pragmatically for her re-election. The Republicans have now bankrupted the nation with tax cuts for the few that have never paid for themselves as advertised. The deficit is now 1.2 trillion with a good economy. Republicans have lied about this since Reagan and have never stopped. But back to the point, Trump lost the vote in 2016 even with Russia's and FOX's help and only won because the system is undemocratic. Democrats will have to try harder as the lies and deceit of Republicans know no bounds. Winning by a few million is not enough. After we win, we will have to change the system. If that means expanding the Supreme Court, so be it.
9
No matter who will be the Democrat Presidential nominee every one please verify your vote registration to see is it valid and show up to vote in November rain or snow. Vote all name with (D) to follow from local to federal and send those name (R) to unemployment line.
9
So what are you going to do to beat Trump, Ross? You don't approve of him. You have your own platform here. You get paid to stand on it because we subscribers chip in to maintain it.
10
You KNOW he's not going to just walk out of the white house, right?
There will be a "national emergency" - election abnormalities... Election results will have to be voided - for the good of the country.........
Then what?
7
Ross, this is the best column you've ever writtten.
Yes, well in order to beat him, we will need to have an election where he is not enticing nation-states to help him, with public money.
14
Those who argue that the right way to deprive Trump of the presidency is via the ballot are missing just one point. Although the wise framers of our Constitution knew that the next election could always get rid of a misbehaving president, they included impeachment in our founding document because they knew that sometimes another route might become necessary. This is because it was always possible that a quicker exit would be necessary, or because the President might tamper with the results of the next election to win fraudulently. Since Trump got help from Russia tampering with the 2016 election, in which his opponent won nearly three million more popular votes, it's clear that the "removal by election" route might not work. And if the popular vote won't get rid of him, there needed to be another way: The Solons of the Senate could do their job. But if BOTH routes fail - say if the Senate is just a bunch of yes-men to the President, then a THIRD route will be to enforce the two-term limit passed by Republicans in the wake of FDR's FOUR terms. And if THAT won't do it (Who says Trump has to play by the rules? - He hasn't so far.) the U.S. may have to wait for senility or the Grim Reaper to do the job. What will be left of our Constitution by then is, of course, anyone's guess.
13
The Stockmarket is a bellwether indicator of who the next president shall be.
Paradoxically, these editorial positioning "strategies" are only gonna help elect Trump for a 2nd term.
4
This column gets one thing right, and that is that the only way to deal with Trump is to defeat him at the polls in November.
Other than that, it is strikingly naive about the president's strengths. He writes that Trump's coalition "is united only in partisan solidarity and fear of liberalism." That is completely wrong. The Trump Base of voters is united in its absolute devotion to a Leader. They are marching forwards in lock-step, with ranks closed around him.
With Democrats divided and bickering, with supporters of one or another candidate childishly declaring that they will not support some other candidate if their own is not nominated, the conditions are ripe for a dedicated minority to once again prevail over the majority in November.
9
There is another way. If the super wealthy and powerful of this country wanted Trump removed, he would be removed. The fact he is still President tells everyone that so long as Trump serves their interests, he isn't going anywhere.
Voting? If voting in this country worked as designed, he (and George W Bush) would never have been President.
19
Once again Ross Douthat, like so many others, is underestimating the state of mind of millions of voters. “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t” probably describes how many are feeling. One example...Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have both declared as president they would ban all fracking. The use of fracking has led to a boom in U.S. oil and gas production in the past decade; it has created tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs for families in critical swing states; and has enabled America to become energy independent. Sanders and Warren’s position on this issue is a non-starter for workers in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio whose livelihood and family security depends on these jobs. The issues that still matter to millions of voters are economic in nature; they aren’t about guns, abortion, culture, immigration, or religion. They are economic or, more simply, about jobs and families’ financial security. Donald Trump tapped into this in 2016. Democrats would be wise to do likewise in 2020.
7
Is this not one of the great achievements of your Constitution? Every president gets beaten either by term-limits or the voters.
6
This column is spot on - the really the only way the GOP Congressional members could not legitimately complain about Trump (and hopefully a number of them) is to lose massively at the ballot box. This will take a huge effort though, because the Trump base is rabid. They have FOX News to provide 24/7 propaganda for free for their candidate. Democrats need to unite behind their candidate, and those who stand against corruption and authoritarianism must show up at the poles - no disgruntled supporters of Bernie or Warren, etc voting for third parties or staying home in a huff. Young people must show up - no rights to complain about the environment or cost of tuition if you do not vote. Minorities must come forward and assert their rights despite voter suppression efforts. Otherwise Trump could squeak out another victory. The equally important issue though is getting a Democratic majority in the Senate. If the Democrats claim the Presidency, but McConnell retains control of the Senate, we will have 4 years of gridlock, hearing (although evidently you do not have to cooperate with those anymore), no judges confirmed, no bills passed. It is imperative to throw them all out if we want to reclaim any semblance of our democracy.
9
Really? You have to beat him? Why didn't anyone else think of this?
Clinton had every advantage running against Trump in 2016 and she outspent him. Money won't be enough to win. We will have to overcome massive voter suppression efforts and out and out cheating. How are we going to do that?
With people power. Vote for the candidate who has the most energized base of supporters and best organized grassroots campaign. We're going to need this to win.
You know who I'm talking about.
7
“All you have to do is beat him.”
How do you propose we “beat” a president who is trying every way he can to game the next election?
Trump will lose by 5,000,000 votes in November, and still “win”.
9
In an educated, civil society truly concerned with its own future, children and well-being, it would not be necessary to defeat Trump.
First, he would NEVER have been elected. He would have been in jail decades ago.
Second, reflecting reality, he would have already defeated himself. He has only ten toes (that we know of - he is defective, after all) yet has shot himself in the foot thousands of times with obscene actions, blatant admissions of crimes and guilt and overt criminal behaviour.
In this dystopian Trumpian world, lies, hatred, misogyny, total lack of respect for laws and established social norms, racism, bigotry and Fascism have become normalized by less than 30% of our population. 30%! Not a majority, not a plurality. Their partisan and authoritarian control of government through manipulation of election procedures, appointment of partisan judiciary, gun-toting mass murders, dissemination of division and hatred through every medium and ENDLESS LIES has created our dystopia. It's not literary fiction - it exists in every neighborhood and its nidus is in D.C., headed by a narcissistic sociopath and his equally-demented appointees and paid for by corporate and billionaire partisans instead of individual American citizens.
YOUR VOTE is being manipulated. You should care A LOT. YOU need to do something about this or you will be speaking Russian before your children grow up.
13
Even if he loses in a landslide or by a tight margin. Douthat assumes Trump would leave office willingly and on his own. Trump looks out from his Mar a Largo fiefdom sees a republican party that he owns mind, body, and soul. A pliant yet brainwashed base that has been duped by his favorite propaganda outlet i.e. Fox News. On election night after his defeat, he wouldn't give a concession speech. Instead give a speech on how he is 'owed' four more years and while saying the election was rigged because he lost fair and square. And the GOP would back him up without blinking an eye. For they rather serve under a tyrant than be swept from power due to a free and fair election. This will be how our grand experiment would end...strangled by the hands of a dictator. If my prediction comes true, feel to print this on the cover of the NYTIMES after Election Tuesday in the obit section where our republic was laid to rest.
5
After the Senate rejected witnesses and effectively ended the impeachment trial on Friday, the media ignored the primary reason for the defeat, which is the insistence of House leaders to impeach Trump by Christmas.
Critics of the president simply do not want to hear that the blind rush to impeach guaranteed not only an acquittal but an easy case for acquittal.
Yet the House insisted this was a “crime in progress” and there was no time to delay a submission to the Senate. It then immediately contradicted its rationale by waiting more than a month to submit articles of impeachment. The House simply could not have made it easier on the president and his legal team.
The media ignored the obvious catastrophic blunder by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership.
The House withdrew a subpoena for top Bolton aide Charles Kupperman, who went to court as a prerequisite for testimony, the same position taken by Bolton.
Before the courts could even rule, the House mooted the case by withdrawing the subpoena.
The hard truth is that House Democrats lost this case the minute they rushed an impeachment vote, and they knew it.
-- Jonathan Turley
7
So all we have to do to remove the guy who cheats at elections is...beat him in an election? That's like finding out Lance Armstrong was using steroids and saying, "Don't ban him from cycling, just beat him!"
12
To replace Trump you need to beat him at the bollot box. And you pay someone a significant amount of money to write the obvious.
4
Again, I post a part of James Madison's address in favor of Impeachment to the Constitutional Committee on April 20, 1789:
"[I]t [is] indispensable that some provision should be made for defending the Community agst [against] the incapacity, negligence, or perfidy of the chief Magistrate. The limitation of the period of his service was not a sufficient security. He might lose his capacity after his appointment. He might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression. He might betray his trust to foreign powers…In the case of the Executive Magistracy, which was to be administered by a single man, loss of capacity or corruption, was more within the compass of probable events, and either of them might be fatal to the Republic."
Magistracy is a reference to what would soon be called the "Presidency." Madison's point is why should somebody abusing Constitutional powers, acting against our national interest & in favor of himself or foreign rivals & obstructing Congressional oversight from the first day after he takes the oath (or at any time) be allowed to continue for the entire period until another election? There must be a way to remove a president committing misfeasance, malfeasance and/or nonfeasance without giving him a free ride to continue until the next election.
Since his major crimes are abetting foreign interference into the 2016 election & engineering foreign interference into the 2020 election, how can we even trust an election to remove him?
3
How do you beat someone that rigs the election, and is a master at making the lie stick.
7
Every body must vote this November. That's how we beat him.
11
Telling that the final section heading reads, "All you have to do is beat him." Why doesn't it say "All WE have to do is beat him."? Where, exactly, does Douthat place himself relative to Trump?
3
Yes you have to beat him because he will cheat. Cheating is the only way he will win. He's got Putin behind him so good luck Democrats. It is going to be a tough uphill battle.
6
@Peggy democrats alway yell they were cheated when they lose.
9
Mr. Douthat: You end with " if you want to end the Trump era only one thing will suffice. You have to beat him."
Your column would become much more credible if you replaced each 'you' with 'we' in those concluding sentences.
Moreover, although defeating him is a necessary condition for the restoration of our democracy, it far from a sufficient condition. Voting out his enablers in the House and Senate is a second necessary condition. I'm sure you can think of others.
7
Beat him and every Republican enabler on the ballot. He does not exist in a vacuum.
10
Thank you, Mr. Douthat, and although we do not always agree, perhaps an emphasis should be placed on the fact that our one vote is precious; and whether we all go to the electoral polls, or send in our choice, let us restore courtesy and chivalry to our Nation, with a sense of responsibility.
A winning attitude is all to the good. Whether it be an honorable defeat, or giving those of us who love our country under siege, hope and belief that America can do far better without Trump, vote we must to bring back the Law of The Land, and a country that is once again fit to be called The United Nations of America.
"All you have to do is beat him."
I agree. And the way to beat Mr. Trump is with massive turnout by the Democrats on November 3.
I am fired up and getting to work. Are you?
There are very few Americans (especially among likely voters) who have not already made their minds up about the presidential election. 2020 will not be determined by the mythical "swing voter."
We need huge voter registration drives. Huge voter turnout efforts. We need 80%+ turnout by Democratic leaning voters.
And not just in MI, PA, and WI. Also in FL, AZ, NC, OH, ME-2, NE-2, IA (and NV, VA, MN, and NH - just to be safe).
https://www.270towin.com/
The goal is a landslide victory for Democrats up and down the ballot, and a Goldwater-esque shellacking of Mr. Trump.
Let's get busy! We can do this. We've got this.
Volunteer. Donate. And VOTE!
12
And what, exactly, is the legal device we use to shoo him out of office if we beat him in November but he refuses to leave?
So far the devices we believed would protect us from having to endure a criminal presidency have not been working. We have no reason feel secure that an election that went against him would be accepted by this team of scoundrels as a legitimate reason to terminate his occupation of the White House.
5
I’m sure the top ranks of the Secret Service and the Armed Forces are totally as fed up with him as everyone else. Even Gen. Kelly came out against him while Gen. Mattis keeps a stiff upper lip.
If he refuses to vacate the White House, they will evict him, you can be sure.
And if the Trump stir hordes start a rebellion, police at all levels and the national guard will take care of it.
4
I worry that Trump will find a limp excuse to cancel the election in November.
2
@MLB
And we now know that if the President does something he believes is in the national interest, i.e. getting himself elected, it cannot be a crime. I guess we would just have to wait for the next election when the leader decides to have one. Kind of like in Russia.
The reality: Donald Trump had a prime time reality TV show that averaged 4.6 million to over 20 milion viewers per season for 12 consecutive years: https://www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/122916ApprentieRatings.jpg
Trump had millions of fans before he ran for President in 2016 and I suspect they comprise the majority of his most loyal following. The fake businessman with a history of fake businesses and real bankruptcies then got the help of Putin and the Russian oligarchs to promote his candidacy by attacking Hillary Clinton, promoting Jill Stein and Gary Johnson as 3rd party candidates, and providing him with a sophisticated and massive disinformation campaign utilizing social media, personal data collection about voters' habits and likes and dislikes. Trump campaign had the help of Wiki Leaks and companies like Cambridge Analytica (which Jared Jushner and Steve Bannon were associated with). And that is why the Democratic candidate couldn't beat him in 2016. The same elements still favor a Trump re-election in 2020 along with hundreds of milions of dollars more to spend than the Democratic candidates. He has the total loyalty of the Republican Party which is now the "Trump Party" and the largest news station (FNC) as it's propaganda arm. And he can utilize the Electoral College math to target specific voters with lies and memes and disinformation to win despite losing the popular vote. In face of this, the Democrats must unite millions or they wil lose.
4
Ross is correct. However, I bet Bloomberg is the only candidate who can and will beat Trump.
1
Even if he cheats and commits treason on the way to doing it. Thanks Ross.
3
True.
But you won't. And writing all the hope-filled columns won't change that
And the Dems know it.
5
If we used a rational voting system, such as Ranked Choice Voting, rather than the dumb one-choice system we have, Trump would not have won a single primary.
3
What about you, Ross? Who are you going to vote for? It's not all up to the Democrats. It's up to ALL Americans to defeat Trump. it's up to you too.
6
Yeah! This is easier said that done. One must remember we are dealing with a clown and a narcissist. He thrives in controversy in which he is good at creating to distract folks from his real issues. I just wonder why his base is so blind to this.
3
Knowing some,in his base, they like it. They see him sticking it to all sorts of people below where most of them are because they are afraid to "stick it to The Man." He empowers them too by supporting unfettered rights to firearms because firearms are the only power they have left. When people continually are cowed by their banks' unfair practices, and a government willing to let them sink rather than swim, they will fall in line for the clown who makes it look like he's sticking it to their enemies--when really that clown is sticking it to everybuddy except his own.
The dems need to take off the gloves and use EVERY tool to beat him. Every tool that Trump will use, and has used.
If they come to the fight with their B game, or with a B candidate (HRC was not even that) forget it.
4
@david s - I have written this before but all of the candidates need to step up to the microphone together and say, "Since the Senate has changed campaign laws in this country with their cover-up, if any country has any "credible" information about Trump, we're listening."
And Bill Clinton needs to state that he stained a blue dress in the public interest.
But, they will keep listening to Michelle Obama about getting high and more than likely lose while posting comments such as "Shame!! on the Republicans!!"
2
Hillary Clinton beat him in the popular vote, but was cheated out of the win by Russians interfering in several key states, thereby throwing the electoral college vote to Trump. Trump and his Ruskie friends have a plan in place for a repeat performance this year. Trump cheats. He's always been a liar and a cheater. Ask anyone that's ever worked for him.
It's clear that Trump believes he's a dictator in banana republic. As such, the only way to beat him is with a military coup d'etat. Please don't say that it can't happen here.
10
I believe that he can be beaten. I think those of us who did not vote for him were very complacent because of the polls. That complacency must end.
What can each of us who share this view, do that we did not do in 2016? Is it too late to get this work done if we wait for the Milwaukee convention?? probably.....
I think the stupidity going on between Hillary and Bernie is really harmful. Please make that stop !
7
Yeah, man, let's beat him! Easier said than done. Did you know one-third of the country elects two-thirds of the Senators? And red states assign Electoral College votes by winner-take-all but blue states tend to go proportional? Plus the Reds (I remember when that meant Communist, by the way) have their very own TV network and their very own hate - I mean talk - radio.
How are you gonna win with one hand tied behind your back? The Republicans are just better at the game, and more united to boot. First admit that. Only then can the Democrats return to relevance.
6
I had a dream that fake-president-thrump is arrested for trespassing on January 21st.
6
Just the other day, one of the democrat candidates for president stated she would have a young transgender vet her choice for education secretary. If y'all think that's going to fly in PA, MI, WI, and FL, you are totally lost.
11
So we have to cheat better then him?
1
You need to more than beat him.For the sake of America and all its cherished values,you need to utterly destroy him.
7
The impeachment was never realistically about removing Trump. Removing him would require a display of backbone/courage/moral strength that the current Senate Republicans have NEVER displayed. It was about saying, in the most serious way the Congress can say it, "This guy is unfit to be President." I am convinced. Hats off to Rep. Schiff.
12
How pathetic can a nation get? This country will break up because it cannot agree on equal voting in federal elections.
3
I think impeachment is a valid and Constitutional way to remove a president who shows so little regard for this nation, much less its founding document. Though I very much doubted he would be convicted in the Republican Senate, I thought there might exist a few semi-decent, credible and/or respectable Republicans who could identify the harm that is likely to be had by not respecting the rule of law enough to call witnesses to enlighten the ignorant on unconstitutional transgressions. Apparently Republicans desire the American electorate to remain deaf to evidence they deem to be damaging to the Republican cause and raise questions to why they wouldn't vote to convict. Democrats need to use this blatant and egregious misconduct by congressional Republicans to eviscerate the GOP from public office. Republicans have shown to all with open eyes that they are the clearest and most present danger to the U.S, if not the world, and should not be deemed credible enough to govern.
3
Trump will avoid a true contest based upon thoughtful concerns about the challenges facing our country. He’s focused upon winning elections with a loyal minority of the electorate’s support and negative campaigning to diminish the interest of the rest to discourage voting by the rest.
1
But I'm sure Ross Douthat will be voting for him.
2
If the Democrats really thought Trump was beatable, they wouldn't have resorted to a sham impeachment that only served to highlight the swampy behavior of 'Biden, Inc'. Ross is just going to have to mentally prepare himself for four more years of op-eds about Trump.
8
Unfortunately if this criminal is re-elected the 60s will look like a time of peace and harmony. Because we know if he is re-elected it was because of foreign interference and Republican voter suppression. I know how extremely angry at least 70% of us have become. We will not allow our democratic Republic to be further destroyed by a corrupt administration and a corrupt Senate. For years the Republican money mongers have been screaming "government is the problem" which was and is an absolute falsehood. Big money in government is the problem and always has been as evidenced by Thomas Jefferson's fears when he wrote to a friend how devastated he was that the founders were unable to: "...crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Trump is the inevitable outcome.
4
Beating him means: stop wasting time and energy preaching to the choir and getting to work in those swing and red states., i.e. Illinois will go blue so it’s time for trips to Wisconsin and Indiana to talk to college kids, other young people, middle-aged and senior women.
9
If you follow the rules, you can’t beat someone who cheats.
5
Douthat's subliminal message is: Democrats, don't nominate a self-classified socialist or someone who can be tarred with that scare word. Nominate Biden, or, better yet, Klobuchar.
Don't give Trump the opening he needs to escape justice at the polling booth.
3
@Orion Clemens --
I respect your observations, yet disagree with your conclusion about Trump. I fear that Trump will cut deals and step away to avoid prosecution. His usefulness to powerful Republicans is diminishing. He can't grow his and their base. Pence is a nonentity. Romney and Nikki Haley may be ushered in as the ticket to save the cunning and duplicitous party.
I work for high net worth people.. like people with “ Family Offices” and Generation Skipping Trusts. Billionaires. It’s disheartening to hear them snicker at the prospect of a Bernie or a Warren presidency... it’s an inside joke to them that it could ever happen. They inconspicuously support this corrupt government.
8
The old recipe for rabbit stew says first you must catch the rabbit. While it's true we have all fallen down the rabbit hole with the Trump presidency, I'm thinking that this particular rabbit is more like the Monte Python variety than the ordinary stewable kind. He can start WWIII with Iran, sending us into dithers, only to have the threat evaporate like dandelion seeds blowing away in the wind. He constantly does things that would cause an ordinary president to be run out of town on rails, any yet he has this magical quality of super- survivial. This guy makes teflon look like sandpaper.
All we have to do is beat him? No sure how we will be able to do that, and not even sure this rabbit is stewable.
1
"All you need to do is beat him" is as simplistic and glib as it sounds, kind of like Lamar Alexander's "justification" for shirking his elected duty to the people and the constitution.
Douthat might want to consider Trump's penchant for election interference when suggesting such nonsense.
Then again, it is what I expect from people who bow to a sky wizard and have invisible friends. Magical thinking.
2
Well said, but how? How can Democrat beat Trump, in 2020?
It seems, the political pros have run out of good ideas, now.
I suggest Democrats have idea contests to win the election.
Mayor Bloomberg seems to be wasting his money, on ads.
Why don't Democrats wise up and ask, "we the people" for ideas?
Here are a few of my ideas:
1) Focus the campaign of protecting democracy from ruin.
The danger is that Trump will spread dictatorship, worldwide.
2) Use slogans and songs, such as the "Democracy" (L. Cohen)
"Democracy is coming to the USA"
Can the Times please write about idea contests to beat Trump?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3) Use symbols, such as the inverted US distress flag.
2
Agreed, so attention please, Trumps trial date has been moved to Tuesday November 3rd 2020.
Please Vote.
11
But to beat him you have to show up. Trump was lucky that turnout in 2016 was one of the worst ever. And few news outlets pointed out that he won with a minority of eligible voters. He effectively come in third to none of the above.
Remember in each and every election that the only way you throw your vote away is to stay away.
6
Hey Ross! What a novel idea! The Democrats need to win an election instead of providing endless excuses. That, however, will not happen unless they nominate a centrist candidate. But in order to get past the primaries, all Democratic candidates must attempt to appeal to their lunatic left. See this election season's stampede to the port side of the party. Well, that isn't going to win a general election, particularly after the Democrat's recent exercise in impeachment foolishness. The Democrats need to rebrand in a serious way. If not, they simply become another Blockbuster Video...........
8
He is not a king you say? He is, in all but name only. That is what 'above the law' means and the Senate put him there last week, which added to some bizarre memo from the DoJ. There is no real chance of beating him with gerrymandering, the courts stacked, no really exciting unifier on the Dem side and a too-large portion of the electorate getting their news from you-know-where. No - the American democratic experiment is over, no matter what happens in November. Get used to the new normal, of King Trump.
1
If the clearly corrupt WH and Senate remain with the GOP, there will be civil unrest. If the Dems clobber the GOP, there will be civil unrest. We are warring tribes and our institutions rotting from within... So choose a side and add to its strength.
4
The election is in 275 days, not 30. that is a lifetime in campaign time. So much can happen. Let's stay focused on defeating
5
t rump's win in 2016 could also be blamed on a 4th Estate that chose the ratings that his clown show brought to their business models instead of showing the voters that what he was was a clown.
He also won because the Democratic Party once again relied on the idea that people were paying attention to ideas and character. If Democrats make that mistake again, if the news media makes that mistake again, we will not see an election in 2024. And many of today's journalists who went along for the ride will undoubtedly be unemployed.
4
Trump is not the problem. He wouldn't be so strong without the support of his party and his base. You can beat him but any other candidate now knows how easy it is to get away with all sorts of misconduct, abuse and lack of professionalism. Because the people who benefit from having such corrupt minds in power are there to protect them.
Beating Trump is just the surface. Deep cleaning the rot in his clan is long overdue. But that's a very hard task, one that requires difficult questioning about large sections of our population and laborious but necessary efforts to restore essential values within politics: intellectual honesty and courage, good faith, compromise, constructive dialogues, independent thinking, long term visions, the primacy of the good of the whole nation, attacking ideas and actions instead of people, open debates based on rational logic rather than just passions, beliefs and anger...
If you really want to target just Trump... he is such an angry narcissist and an easy person to trigger, I wonder why his opponents haven't tried to play his own game to the extreme and provoke or nag him to the point he makes an irreparable mistake.
4
Yes, beat him certainly. But, when bested, will he quit the White House? Or will he dispense with yet another norm, claim massive fraud, and unleash Barr and McConnell to overturn the election? We have our work cut out for us.
2
"The mix of expedience and cravenness with which the institutional G.O.P. approached impeachment ... " Cravenness is the right word: "Ignoble lack of courage". The tortured "justifications" for their votes given by Republican senators are laughable. And pitiful attempts to appear "impartial" which voters should see through completely. Yes, let's beat Mr. Trump AND his equally disgraceful minions.
4
With all that has been said of Trump's thugishness, his ignorance, his incompetence, his immorality and all the rest - it's his lies that are his winning ticket.
Lies are more powerful than Truth. Lies dominate the landscape with machoism, with strength, with black and white simplicities. Truth needs nerdy defenders, bookish professors, liberal advocates - all seemingly weak constructs that can't hold a candle to the power of Lies.
Lies are easy to get behind, especially if they line up with your preconceived notions. Lies attract the worst of our citizenry, using the Electoral College and the power-uber-alles GOP to do anything to remain in charge.
To say this is a dangerous era for our cherished rule of law, is obvious but not enough to excise this cancer from our midst.
So, as the article states - we must close ranks and vote for whomever the Dem nominee is. Period! Can true believers in the left of the party get past their immature angry egos and coalesce with the momentous task ahead, understanding they have the fate of our country in their hands.
Please!
5
Those that follow sports are no stranger to cheating. This is like a recent situation regarding a certain pro baseball team; never mind that they were cheating, you just needed to beat them. Even though they're stealing your signs, and the hitters know which pitch is coming in advance, beat them anyway. Easier said than done. Republicans are cheating, Ross! In 1974, they had modicum of dignity, and threw the bum out for cheating. Now, they likely cheated with Putin in 2016, and are looking to do it with Putin and others again, and do nothing. This is not a fair fight. I see little handwringing from many Never Trumper's because, while they dislike Trump, they quietly like many of his policies, so are in no hurry to see the situation rectified. If I were Roberts, I would have been shocked and terrified to listen to Republicans constitutional trashing last week, yet it seems even he sat quietly, because he approves of the policies.
6
Thank you, Ross! Has the Holy Spirit visited you? First time I can agree with every word in a Douthat column.
May all who read it follow your advice.
2
At last Mr. Douthat has expressed what most reasonable people have known for a long time. The best way to defeat a foe in American politics is to beat him in an election. The accepted liberal mantra has always been: if you lose an election, go to the courts, accuse the winners of being racist, homophobic, deplorable and evil; if the established rules don't work to get your agenda implanted, change the rules. If this smells undemocratic, it is. This big brotherish attitude, reeking of authoritarianism and elitist arrogance, is far more pernicious to American democracy than anything that the Trump administration has done. And that is why the farsical impeachment ploy has fallen so flat. Rant all you want, but the American people are significantly smarter than the insular left-leaning media and their enablers.
3
It should be easy, but it’s not because it’s more than Trump to beat. It’s all the Republican grifters who are extracting their “rents” from all the corruption. The billionaires who are saving billions in taxes and regulations can leave some crumbs for politicians. (Looking at you Zuckerberg and random other polluting industries.).
There’s plenty of fodder out there to beat him beyond the corruption, lack of values, and general idiocy.
I get he’s destroying American values and democracy, and big climate change issues, but more relevant and sellable is:
He’s targeting social security.
He’s still targeting healthcare.
He’s fraying the entire safety net.
Beyond climate change, he’s allowing more cancer causing pollutants.
His economic tariff policies are actually costing jobs.
His tax policies are lumps of coals for the 95%.
Dems don’t have to be so nuanced or smarty pants or visionary about this. This is what it takes to reach the undecideds.
7
Adam Schiff is the only Democrat in public view who really knows the score.
3
democrats need to understand there is only one consideration for the election - to get the most votes. The shape and color of the mammal at the top of the ticket is immaterial and all conversation of it should be set aside.
3
So if it is now apparently appropriate that the President of the United States can solicit dirt on political opponents from foreign governments, what about Candidates for President? Would it be OK for a deep-pocketed candidate to pay foreign entities to dig up dirt on rivals, given her or his sincere sincere belief that it is in the country’s best interest?
2
The reasons for a possible impeachment are something different than elections. Nothing will cancel what seems to be already decided by G.O.P. I'm telling you ,as a European, from Europe. It is almost impossible to believe that this is happening in the US. Doest it matter that Trump isn't a king while he is behaving like a king and is allowed to behave like a king?
3
I guarantee you if it looks like Trump is going to lose there will be no election, there will be a national emergency.
3
Hamlet, Act III, Scene I
“To sleep – perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub…”
lately have wondered whether the enablers have a sub conscience that emerges in their dreams as to the deeds they are allowing and abetting
steadfast with all deception, ugliness, and overall the cruelty
sacrificed to power,
Jon Meacham says we are no longer a democracy, we are a monarchy
[for which I would prefer a queen with breadth and depth]
to throw words around like treason and traitor when there is a disagreement, follow on with demeaning tweets, we have a very sick president who may be re elected. As some have pointed out we need to concentrate on electing senators of reason, not rabidity
1
Hillary Clinton called half of Trump’s supporters a ‘Basket of Deplorables’ during a 2016 speech and later regretted that turn of phrase. She was trying to appeal to those of his supporters who felt that the government and economy had let them down and that no one cared about what happened to them. She rightly called another segment of his supporters ‘Deplorables’ because, as far as I can see and hear the bulk of the racists, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic etc. American voters cleave to and support the Republican Party. I wonder how many of them are still the hopeless and downtrodden that she called them or if they feel their lot in life has truly improved during Trump’s presidency. These are the voters that the Democrats need to appeal to and win over.
Trump is not an aberration in the Republican Party. He is the culmination of decades of the Republican Party appealing to white racists. In 1964, Barry Goldwater pitched his appeal heavily to white racists and we saw the beginning of the flood of Dixiecrats such as Strom Thurmond leaving the Democratic Party and become Republicans. Do anyone think all the Southern racist segregationists just died off? They all became Republicans. The Trumpian Party (formerly the Republican Party) now has a grip on the American government and will use any means (foreign assistance, voter suppression, etc.) to hold on to power. It will take a mighty blue wave in November to oust Trump and his cult members. If the blue wave fails, this country will sink into a dark abyss of dictatorship and violence.
7
Americans and anyone here on the continent must march on Washington and have simultaneous marches across the nation and world to get rid of Trump and the GOP. We must thrust them out by the mass of people against them.
2
Trump is the least popular president in history. How to beat him? Show up and vote for his opponent. Getting out the vote is important. Of course, he will try to cheat again, so it's imperative that we have a tremendous turn out to beat the gerrymandering, voter suppression, russian hacking, etc. And vote for a blue senate, which is even more important than the presidency. We need to keep the House and win the Senate for any positive change.
4
Biden for a one term, clean up in aisle 4, ServPro, like it never happened, then Klobuchar with a no nonsense put us on a course back to normal. Biden’s been there and know the players. No other issues matter until the stench of Trump and his family are purged. And, in the cleansing process, let us not overlook the Senate. A newly renovated and sanitized White House won’t matter if Mitch and the rest are allowed to remain.
2
The Vietnam War draft dodger shall, and will, be defeated. Make no mistake about. The Democratic Party is galvanized in its efforts to defeat him and with electrifying commitment to achieve that objective. The racially, ethnically, immigrant richly diverse party is evidenced by the composition of House Managers, the party of the future. United they stand committed to summarily remove him from office. The Republican Party frantically promotes the paranoiac xenophobia and racial fear mongering they traffic in so expertly to inflame their Caucasian blue collar, less than college educated, ignorant of multi diverse cultural awareness, Christian Evangelical base. Promoting a campaign of immigrant hysteria and racial internecine, the GOP peaches that "they," their MAWA minions, are better than "them." Accentuating the acute unfounded allegation that the brown invasion threatens to displace them, to take their jobs, and, God forbid, to expose their families to racial and ethnic miscegenation, the Republican Party stresses the point that "they" must save the draft dodger in order to preserve their way of life. They prefer America return to the days of Plessy v Ferguson where Black Americans 'knew their place' and laws enshrined that judicial doctrine. Today the intensely changing demographics of America dictate that there is no regression. High voter turnout for Democrats will assure victory. Race matters.
2
This is a very rare occasion for me to agree with Ross Douthat but this time he has penned an insightful and truth telling column. Good for you Ross, you point pout the one truly important point, do not ascribe to Individual 1 more intelligence and invincibility than what he actually has.
1
Great essay by Heather Cox Richardson on how Republican overreach during impeachment proceedings very much parallels what happened in the 1850's and the creation of the Republican Party because of Democrats overreach in that era.
https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/posts/2159558720854849?__tn__=K-R
He has been beaten, but he cheats. And he has Mitch NlMcConnell and the Senate Republicans in cahoots diregarding our constitution. When laws are broken to "win," and that corrupt winning keeps happening, the only recourse is revolution.
4
Two questions:
1. Isn't it likely that some "entity" (GOP PAC, foreign government agents or Trump, himself) is behind the Bernie Bounce? All of them are heavily reliant on Trump's reelection.
2. Wouldn't it be great to witness a debate between Elizabeth Warren and Trump?
2
Ross you just rehashed what we all know. The question is how to beat him and his base that’s solidly unified and filled his coffer. How to circumvent Zuckerberg’s greed help him spread the disinformation and fake news?
I'd very much like to see him beat.
1
Maybe the Democrats would have a chance if they stopped viewing Trump as a buffoon who, through a combination of unbelievable luck and Russian interference, found himself in the White House. The first step on the road to beating Trump is to take his political abilities seriously.
2
@Jeff but he's still a buffoon. he appeals to the lowest common denominator. it worked in decaying Rome too. it's worked lots of time. still a buffoon. still an amora festering pustule of poison and national stain on our consciousness.
2
So far re our elections, the Supreme Court has recently ruled to provide favor to individuals and corporations of extreme wealth via the Citizens United decision, eviscerated key parts of the Voting Rights Act, and declined to take a position on blatantly undemocratic gerrymandering. Four of the current five so-called "conservative" Justices who ruled in favor of these undemocratic practices have been appointed by Presidents who lost the popular vote. Are Americans really so stupid as to not realize that the Supreme Court is both un-democratic and anti-democratic? I don't think we are. In reality, how different is the U.S. Supreme Court as currently constituted than the Russian or Iranian "supreme" courts?
2
“All you have to do is beat him.”
Not so fast. Beating him is a necessary first step. But only the first step.
Imagine Trump calling — or tweeting — “Congratulations! The voters have spoken. I look forward to working with you to ensure a smooth transition of power.”
TrumpBarrMitch will already have a plan in place to make sure that message is never necessary.
You think beating him is all you have to do? Check with Al Gore?
7
Ross, the “we want to remove Trump” frame is not helpful, and the vast majority of informed citizens did not support impeachment with this hope in mind. Instead, we believe in honest dealings and in the principles of our republic.
I realize yours is an opinion column, but I think that for you to repeat the republican party talking point of “leaving it up to the people” is wildly irresponsible. We find ourselves in a time when it’s essential to focus on actual issues, yet pundits still throw out the headlines that will get clicks.
You’ve got a slew of comments on this piece as I write this, mine included, but perhaps there are better measures of “success” in a time when many citizens believe the very principles of our form of government are imperiled.
3
All Hillary had to do to win in 2016 was make Bernie her VP to give Bernie’ progressive backers a reason to show up & vote on election day. It’s called expanding your base. It’s Poli Sci 101.
Reagan was faced with the same thing back in 1980. He held his nose & selected his chief primary adversary in BushSr as his VP to get his wing of the GOP to show up & vote on Election Day. He did, they did, he won, the rest is history.
Graph#2 at bit.ly/EPI-study explains our politics well. Before 1972 median (meaning everyone’s) wage grew in lock step w/ GNP. Since 72 the median wage has been flat but GNP has grown 150% w/ 90% of the gains flowing to the<1%. Because some wages have gone up that means that the majority of U.S.’s 160 million workers have suffered 48+ years declining expectations. 1972 = Great Inflection Point
A 48+year trend isn’t possible w/out complicity of elites in both parties. The phenomena that graph represents is what put Trump in office & is driving the progressive movement now.
The people who voted for Trump are some of that graph’s victims. Hillary was a poster child for the complicit elites. No one knew the dam against the inflection point of 72 would break in 2016. Still she could have overcome that if she had selected Bernie.
Apparently she rather lose to Trump than give progressives a seat at the table even if that seat is a nothing burger that is the VP. For that conceit she almost deserved to lose.
The media should ask why she didn’t pick Bernie.
3
"To eject the president, you need to beat him."
Mr. Douthat, I'm impressed. You figured that out.
My two cents:
If the Democrats nominate Mike Bloomberg, we will get rid of Trump.
If the Democrats nominate someone else, we will be stuck with Trump for another 4 years, and that would be a disaster for this country and the entire planet.
Bloomberg or Trump, take your pick.
4
As more information comes in I am convinced that convicting Trump would let the enabling Republicans, e.g. Pence, Barr, Pompeo etc and the Republican House/Senate, off the hook. We need to get rid of them all. This can only be done at the ballot box.
Thank you Ross for this pep talk. After the miserable Republican faltering in this impeachment, we definitely need it.
It reminds me that at halftime, no championship coach sighs with defeatism listing all the weaknesses, disadvantages and insurmountable obstacles her team faces. Instead, she wills her team to put their heads down and DO THE WORK to defeat their opponents.
Before the final buzzer sounds nothing else counts.
NOTHING!
Yes, “All you have to do is beat him.”
Somebody reading this - somebody? - make that anybody! - should recall that not only did the Democrats put up the worst possible candidate to defeat Mr. Trump in 2016, but they did so while skewering the nomination process in favor or Mrs. Clinton and to the detriment of Bernie Sanders. Just ask the DNC Chairwoman in 2016. Now I watch this bunch of veritable clowns (Mr. Bloomberg excepted) running for that nomination in 2020 and wonder - indeed, am amazed - , that any Democrat with an IQ higher than their PSA reading can believe any one of these folks can beat Mr. Trump. I would suggest (though it won't happen) Mr. Bloomberg, with Michelle Obama as a running mate, might turn the trick, as he might be willing to be a one-term president and then hand the reigns over to her in 2024. The alternative? We wait for Alexandria Occasionally-Coherent to declare! I suggest all of this in a spirit of bi-partisan good will, because I'm still going to vote for Mr. Trump in November.
3
As a retired high school math teacher I have, on numerous occasions, attemped to use logic, fact and plain common sense in an attempt to convince a Trumpist friend or relative that their loyalty to the president is misplaced. Although I’ve managed to dissuade no one, I’ve learned from my efforts.
1. Taking turns.
Select one very specific aspect of Trump’s behavior or presidential abilities. One decision. One obvious lie.
In one to three minutes, make a clear, non-insulting case as to why your chosen example points to Trump’s unfitness for office.
Politely request a counter-argument. It is unlikely that you will get one, nor will your reasoning phase your Trumpist friend
—> The logic that convinces adolescents that division by zero is not allowed, doesn’t transfer to Trumpist adults.
2. Try some indisputable evidence.
Use tweets or video clips to reveal Trump’s deceit, inconsistency and irrationality.
No dice. You’ll evoke claims of conspiracy, electronic trickery and Fake News.
(S. Colbert and S. Meyers have brilliantly worked this tactic for 3 years with limited success.)
Rather than listing more failed strategies, please consider the following:
10. Hit them where they live.
Disenchanted Trumpists have the best chance of discouraging Trump loyalists.
And a likely way to get the reality of Trump through to a few, is to pound away at the discrepancies between Trump’s 2016 campaign promises and his presidential actions. Stark contrast.
Divide and conquer by awakening them.
3
This is dangerously naive.
There's only one explanation for the flagrant hubris that Trump and the GOP offered in his defense: they're invulnerable to voter reprisals, and they know it.
They aren't going to be "beaten" at the ballot box. The fix is in. The narrative is in front of us. Trump will lose the popular vote again, but not by much, and he'l insist that the Democrats rigged that again as he insisted they did the first time. But he'll take the Electoral College with a margin he can crow over, and every one of those districts will yield rumors or outright proof of vote tampering, nullification, interference, and false counts. Fox News will, in Steve Bannon's words, "flood the zone" with lies about it the second the election is called for Trump.
The down-ticket traces may not go as well for the GOP. If there's a just God left, Collins, Gardner, and the other Senate shills might be repudiated by their voters. Even McConnell is in trouble. If Congress is blue and Trump is left standing, we're in for four years of ugliness that make the first four look peaceful.
The Times might get ahead of this by investigating electoral integrity in the districts where Trump is holding his rallies of later. That's what newspapers do.
1
The American experiment is over. Russia and China will put their thumbs on the scales in November to make sure that Trump will have another 4 years to tear this country apart. Trump will welcome his comrades help with open arms, as will the entire GOP. But Ross has to continue to pretend there is some doubt as to the results of the election so he can continue to get a paycheck.
1
A big hope dems have is that Trump will be emboldened to overreach and do something truly outrageous that the majority of voters feel that he must be removed. What that may be is hard to discern perhaps enlisting Putin in a violent attack on his opponents but the GOP may claim there is no proff and if there was it is being suppressed by the Trump admin as they have shown they would do. Turnout of dems and independent can do the job the economy will survive Obama did a good job all is not lost if Trump gets the boot many republicans could be thrilled to have this frankenstein politician they created off the scene. No one wants to feel constantly threatened to fear saying the truth dictatorships are no fun to live under and Americans may get a taste under Herr Trump.
We can beat him with a fair election. But perhaps not with the electoral college, with voter suppression, and with Russian operatives all over facebook.
2
GOP chose another nuclear option. Come November, We the People can do the same... assuming Trump doesn’t continue to undermine our elections. Tragically, that’s a poor assumption.
1
"All you have to do is beat him."
That's good advice, Ross, but we're not going to take it. We're going to nominate Bernie Sanders and lose to the most reviled man in America.
2
One thing's for certain - Biden has proven himself to be frail of body and mind. His son is problematic in many ways. Biden will not beat Trump and Repubs know it.
1
Trump is not an aberration of Conservative/Republicanism; he is its fulfillment. McConnell established it when he refused a sitting President the right to nominate a Supreme Court Justice. How else can we explain their slavish obsequiousness? Now there are no boundaries he cannot cross, no closely held ideal of democracy or American tradition he cannot flout, disregard or insult that will inspire their ire. Despite the public hand wringing and the assurances of former Republicans still close to current Senators and Congressmen that they all have their concerns and heartfelt disappointment in our President, when the tally is taken they are always on his side. So spare me the,”I feel your pain and here’s what you need to do..” advice. Your party capitulated decided power is the end in itself. Machiavelli, please take a bow.
But Democrats, who have won the Presidential popular vote in all but one election this century, have received 53% of votes in the 2018 congressional elections, lost three out the Presidency and lost seats in the Senate. But all they have to do is beat him. Don’t you mean again? And now we have a President who believes that he can do anything he wants to win elections. Cheating to win an election isn’t impeachable, and he’ll make the argument it isn’t even wrong.
2
"Donald Trump is not a Caesar," but with his looming acquittal in the Senate sham impeachment trial by his more than "willing accomplices" will, in fact, be "undefeatable save by desperate or underhanded means." Clearly, being exonerated for trying to rig his re-election will only ensure that he actually does it again. And now that he's been placed "above the law" by Mitch McConnell who would dare or be able to stop him? Trump is the master of "The Art of the Steal" and with Republicans all-in on Voter ID laws; purging the voting rolls of all those likely to vote against them; gerrymandering House districts to favor them; moving polling places to nearly inaccessible locations for minorities who also don't support them; and welcoming outside interference from Russia; Democrats will start at a five to seven percent disadvantage requiring a true "blue tsunami" to "beat him." And, of course, if, as it is likely to happen that it's close, Trump will, as he indicated in 2016, scream that "the election was rigged!" Trump is no Caesar, but he is now The Don of America and his corrupt mob is clearly up to the task of stealing the November election.
I think he can be beaten and the Republican Senators have to sustain a significant beating. Will it happen, probably not. Only if Sanders is not the nominee, and he does not do his Pontius Pilate imitation again. I am not hopeful.
2
It's good to be informed, it's good to learn from the opinions of others from newspapers, TV and radio, but this is not the same as DOING. Each person who wants Trump out of office must take concrete steps in the months ahead and act. Find out where the democratic groups in your area meet and get involved. You'll be inspired, I promise you, to meet others who are taking concrete action to rid our country of this demagogue. Roll up your sleeves. Don't just talk. DO something.
1
Impeachment was never the best solution. Trump would have been replaced by Mike Pence. In other words, the USA would have gone from being a plutocracy to a theocracy.
It doesn't change the fact that the senators representing the GOP disgraced themselves by refusing to do their duty. (It's disgusting to see a few of them already trying to justify their inaction, even before the actual vote.)
Trump should have been removed from office. But Pence would have been just as bad, albeit in a different way.
The way to beat Trump is to spend campaign dollars on PEOPLE POWER not television ads.
This election will be won by the Democrats going door-to-door in the cities, suburbs and college towns making sure that everyone is registered to vote and shows up on election day.
Yes, it can be done ! Si se suede !
It is not only up to Democrats. Plenty of Republicans seem to like him just fine. That he was ever their nominee in the first place is their shame, not the party that now must unseat him, if it can.
1
The early end to this impeachment fiasco SHOULD help the Dems. They need to regroup, focus on the problems of voters, prioritize, and offer solutions.
This is exactly what they did in the 2018 mid-terms and it worked like a charm (at least flipping the House to the Dems).
So for those Democratic candidates in this race, ignore Trump and focus on what matters most to most Americans. Beating Trump is not a policy so knock it off, it only strengthens his base.
I hope the Dems can see this, regroup (there’s plenty of time), and put forward policies that people care about. There is no shortage - healthcare, income inequality, infrastructure, and on.
Pull the party together Nancy. There’s a lot riding on sending this ignorant and cruel man back to New York.
2
Dems do not have to be like Trump to beat Trump. But I must say that it is imperative for them to quit being so proper and civilized for a period of time long enough to save this democracy. Trump has lived in the mud his entire life in spite of being a germophobe. The man cannot see, hear or feel goodness, empathy, or mercy. He knows nothing of politics (foreign or domestic) after over 3 years, except how to cheat, lie and con your grandmother. He has almost succeeded in stripping the US of our allies and is "King" of sleeping with the enemy. To the point: We must meet him where he is. That is where the battle will be won. So we get a little muddy ourselves on a temporary basis. We can always take a shower when the danger has passed. After the fight of our lives.
3
Let's say we do beat him. Do we still have Chuck Schumer as Senate minority or majority leader come January 2021? Because if we do, there is no point in beating him. Having Schumer in this powerful position is literally worse than having no one at all.
2
Yes. It is past time to quit whining and get to work.
There will be more lies and misdirection. Democrats must remain focused.
My worst fear is that the early primaries and caucuses will give us a nominee so flagrantly leftist Socialist or moderately centrist boring that he/she cannot win.
My second worst fear is we will have an economic recession after the election with Democrats to blame and Republicans becoming deficit hawks again to thwart all recovery attempts in the US Senate.
Rigging elections and getting foreign governments to dig up dirt on your opponents makes it extremely difficult to have a free and fair presidential election.
Haven't you been paying attention, Mr. Douthat?
2
Enron was "winning"....until they weren't.
Lehman Bros was "winning" until they weren't.
Bernie Madoff was winning, until he wasn't.
Trump continues to "win"...until....he won't.
This arrogance that is now part of what "was" the republican party is the pride before the fall. This thing is going to implode upon them because it is a house of false support.
I look forward to respect as a virtue to rise again.
4
I agree that Trump is very beatable. Even with the electoral college. Even with the Russians. Even with Facebook. Elections have always been shady affairs throughout American history. That’s nothing new. Racism is not new. Cheating is not new. Dealing is not new. You need a candidate that will appeal to large and diverse blocs of voters and for different reasons. That candidate is not Sanders or Warren. Or sadly even Buttigieg (who has my vote). Maybe Biden, maybe Yang. Maybe a Bloomberg.
1
Turnout. That's all it takes--turn out to vote. That is all it takes to beat him.
3
At this point, Trump will not increase his "base" beyond 42%. There are only so many white, angry, evangelical Christians residing within our borders. The fundamentals of this economy are as sound as they were when John McCain uttered those now infamous words just before the stock market tanked in 2009. Anybody who thinks the US's standing in the world has risen, that we've accomplished anything with destructive tariffs or Muslim bans or indiscriminately killing an Iranian general, is delusional or has been asleep the past 3 years. It's all about turnout and getting the vast self-disenfranchised out to vote.
7
Thank you for including this sentence:
"And she [Clinton} would have beaten him — even with Russia, even with Comey — had her campaign taken just a few more steps to counter his team’s long-shot strategy to flip the Midwest."
If we Democrats are going to beat him, we need to accept, in our brain marrow, that he nor the Russions nor Comey beat Clinton--she willfully ignored advice and followed her losing 2008 path of entitlement and inevitability to HER LOSS of the election, and we made the same mistake following her down that same road.
If we are to learn, and win, we must accept that we honestly have no one else to blame but ourselves. Comey and Russia and right wing conspiracies notwithstanding, Clinton ignored the upper midwest and lost by 77,000 votes.
Let's get real, let's take our lessons, let's see clearly, and let's show up and win, for a change.
2
Most knowledgeable folks understand that Trump is a simply a figurehead of a much larger plutocracy now firmly entrenched with tentacles in legislative, corporate, military, healthcare, and legal entities all with personal interests in perpetuating the gilded age status quo and with no interest whatsoever in protecting or fostering the common good.
It's no longer about 'beating him' like it's a Super Bowl game. It now will take a much more broader approach at this point to take back this country. This means making different choices everyday about those media sources to watch, what companies to buy products from, what products to buy, and what non-profit organizations to support, and how you vote at all levels of government.
Let's remember, CEOs signed a letter back in August 2019 stating, to "..invest in their employees, protect the environment and deal fairly and ethically with their suppliers." Have any of us seen evidence of this? Didn't think so. Let's quit pretending that voting every 4 years is enough or that corporate tigers can suddenly change their stripes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/business/business-roundtable-ceos-corporations.html
3
You can't just beat trump. He has implied that if he loses the election he may not go quietly - if at all. If that is the case then it's not ONLY trump that needs to get beaten. The republicans need to loose BOTH houses of congress as well. If the democrats sweep the congress as well as the white house trump will have no choice but to leave - the opposition WON'T let him stay,
2
Oh, he’ll go. Once he’s defeated his Republican flunkies will turn on him like a pack of wild dogs, and he’ll spend the rest of his life if not in jail, then in court.
The only way to "beat" Trump is if swing and undecided voters in purple states throw their weight behind the Democratic nominee. And they need to do so with overwhelming numbers.
I hope they realize that the November election is not a contest between Democrats and Republicans or liberalism and conservatism. It's a battle between America's future and soul on one side, and Trump on the other side. These voters have the power to choose wisely.
Republican voters who truly care for the vision laid out by the Founders can do their share to save America. They don't have to vote Democratic but they can refrain from voting for Trump.
Beating Trump will require an unprecedented mobilization of an overwhelming majority of voters toward a single goal.
1
Mr. Douthat,
We should wait for the elections? You mean that thing where trump asks for, and receives, foreign assistance? Sure, why not.
Liberalism and conservatism have both failed us. Yes, around the world. So people voted for trump, Johnson, bolsonaro, and other accomplished liars, out of justifiable anger, resentment, and fear.
This week on The Guardian John le Carré wrote: "One day somebody will explain to me why it is that, at a time when science has never been wiser, or the truth more stark, or human knowledge more available, populists and liars are in such high demand."
The cavernous maw of income inequality and blaming the other are eating us alive and once again opening the doors of totalitarianism, fascism, and dictatorships.
So the rats are running the ship. Again. But at least we can wait for the next election.
3
"You have to beat him." Is it left up to me? Why not "we." Will you, Mr. Douthat, commit publicly to support the Democratic nominee?
5
Beating Trump is possible, but if Warren or Bernie become the nominee, it is doubtful. There are many out there, not extreme, not looking for "give-a-ways" who have always been just folks, the middle majority who do not want a fork in the road, they want the straight road that they feel comfortable with, comfortable being the key here. Imagine not being stressed over every headline, every news report, some peace of mind. If that sounds like back to the future I will take it.
2
What the concluding impeachment charade has highlighted in bold relief is that you don’t bring a book to a gunfight and expect to win that mortal contest. What is a reasonable corollary conclusion is that if power is what you seek to accomplish noble aims, you must come prepared for bloody battle, lusting after the sight, smell and taste of that nobly sacrificed blood. Sound gory and undignified? This is and has been precisely what the liberal left in this country has been matched against in a Republican Party that has been willing to risk everything, including any pretense of respectability and honorable behavior, just to win the battle raging in their present tense—the battle that they initiated precisely because they knew they could slant the field into their favor, each time, every time. No matter how much ‘the fundamentals’ predict victory for Democratic good guys over Republican malfeasance and blatant self-dealing, one thing is certain: to wield power one must first win power. To win power, one must be willing temporarily to sacrifice cherished principles in unimaginable ways so that the greater good may some day soon be served. If Democrats do not adopt a more ruthless posture with utmost urgency, expect Republican hegemony over American government for the remainder of our lifetimes. Let the words of Muhammad Ali energize the daunting task we face from the Democratic Left, “Float like a butterfly; sting like a bee.”
2
Yes, all we have to do is beat him.
And then convince him to leave the office.
1
The Democrats are famous for their inability to focus. They need a Pearl Harbor, or a major depression, or some other national crisis to get their act together. Too many egos. Too many agendas. Too many windmills to tilt at.
3
Impeachment it seems was the only to have gotten rid of Trump. What you call hang-wringing on the part of the Liberals and/or Democdrats is a call to all to pay attention, and it should be a call to all old Republicans and independent swing voters. There is a place in the soul of many Americans that likes this Trump fellow. They find his lies to be terrible but amusing. His foreign policies seem Quixotic but tough. His removal of as many of the climate change regulations seems to hit a sweet spot in the minds of many Americans. Oh sure, they dislike him, find him crude and crass, but these folks will vote for him-and not only the MAGA hat wearing crowd ,but a lot of people who express disdain for him will end up voting for him, because they fear that a few Democrats/Liberals/Lefties will turn this country into a socialist state. You see that is what scares people in this country more than a fellow who could bring down this democracy in four more years. Take a guy like Rubio who knows what it is to be on the receiving end of personal assaults and listen to him now justifying the the work of the lunatic fringe on the right. His greatest fear and model for communism is Cuba, and the old Soviet Union, and China, so he and other Senators will wring their own hands warning about the socialists and those who want to bring some kind of fairness to our society. So yes, we need to vote him out because he will be emboldened by this and move on to the next travesty.
AMEN! And the one big take away from this simple, yet brilliant, observation is that to beat him his opponents have to work together to get the job done.
2
It's been reported that 40% of Sanders supporters claim that if he isn't the nominee then they won't vote for the Democratic candidate.
This is what happened in 2016, an election partially sabotaged by too many Democrats casting voting for third party candidate Jill Stein or writing in Bernie Sanders or Donald Duck.
Yes, we have to beat him but that means Democrats have to do something they're not very good at: coming together for the best interests of our country.
3
What Douthat needs to do is change his attitude to:
What WE need to do to oust trump is to beat him.
Douthat thinks it is the Democrats' responsibility. Accepts none for himself.
6
All concerned Dems who loathe Trump (as I do) should move to Purple Battleground States, register and vote for the Non-Trump candidate. If you choose a small state, then (due to the "Electoral College/Two Senators Per State" policy for Electors), your impact can be double leveraged.
Consider it your Peace Corp/Save America Year.
6
As sense of anxiety and desperation has set in amongst Democrats and reasonable Republicans. But, the suburban strategy of the 2018 midterms won’t work in 2020. Trump’s opponent in the general election needs to relentlessly attack in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. The Electoral College is not miraculously going away. These states can be won. All hands on deck, America.
7
@David G
Fear is a great motivator.
- The Trump Republicans will take away your Social Security.
- The Trump Republicans will take away your Medicare.
- The Trump Republicans will take away our democracy itself.
And its not just MI, PA, and WI that matter. It is also FL, AZ, NC, OH, IA, ME-2, and NE-2. And don't go to sleep in NV, VA, MN, and NH.
Channel your fear into action. 2020 is the most important election in any living American's lifetime.
This is a referendum on the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the very American Experiment itself. We must show that we can answer Benjamin Franklin's famous question in the affirmative, "Yes, we will keep our republic."
- Work to register your neighbors to vote.
- Work to get them to show up at the polls on Nov 3.
- Donate whatever you can.
- And most importantly, VOTE!
3
Some readers point out that the electoral college is slanted toward Mr. Trump. Some readers point out that Mr. Trump will try to cheat and rig the election.
I take that as a challenge. I take that as motivation to work even harder to defeat him. We can and must defeat Donald Trump on November 3.
We all need to get busy right now, and continue the momentum all the way through the election. Our goal is massive voter registration, massive turnout, and a massive shellacking of Mr. Trump in November.
So let's get busy.
Volunteer. Donate. And VOTE!
12
@MidtownATL
With all due respects, one must not forget the gerrymandering, voter suppression, fake news, bullying, distraction, and all the dirty political games that come with Trump and the GOP. It will never be a fair game. For as long as these clowns exist, we will forever be laughed at as the democracy that failed. But there is hope in this coming election. I am hopeful that good will prevail, as it always does.
@EP
The only way to stop the "gerrymandering, voter suppression, fake news, bullying, distraction, and all the dirty political games" that you speak of is to win elections first.
We can and must win elections, up and down the ballot, in 2020. Only then can we have the opportunity to correct these problems.
So in 2020, we must bring on our A game, and give it all we've got. We must win first. And we must do it within the current rules of the game (including the electoral college, Citizens United, and the other problems).
So let's get busy! I am doing that. Are you?
3
As it stands, a Sanders candidacy may regain Mid-West votes previously lost to Trump, but could lose the wealthy democrat vote and the election. Same goes for Warren.
As for Biden, the young vote will stay home. Same goes for Klobuchar.
Buttigeig sounds rational, but maybe too much so.
We need a ticket as crazy as Trump. Yang with his $1000/month UBI and legalized marijuana with a mixed ticket with someone like Republican congressman William Hurd with his foreign policy background and national security background would probably lead to the highest voter turnout in history.
1
I agree that the fight between Donald Trump and the United States people is not a fair fight at all, and that is why nothing will be done to him. If it were a fair fight in a fair court with people of the country prosecuting him, he would be out without a doubt. However when you take into consideration how the senate is run by the Republican party. To beat Trump is a big task, and with all of the misinformation flying around the news, I doubt it would be achievable.
1
The liberal Obama administration as with Europe seemed to cede the interests of their citizens to administrative state globalist interests. That gave us Trump,Johnson.., Poland, Hungary, Italy moving to the right,Merkel barely hanging on.
These people forgot power is supposed to be from the bottom up. Brussels and the Washington administrative state dictates are a liberal end run around that precept.
3
We are in a transition period leading into a technologically advanced society. Love him or hate him, Trump bulldozed the existing structures of order. Sure, It would have been nice to build from the existing framework. Unfortunately, it had a shoddy foundation, and instead of fortifying the structure and replacing the rusted parts, it was painted over and deceptively peddled as good as new. I love my '99 Corolla, but it would be unwise to retrofit an electric engine into a body that is falling apart.
Change is uncomfortable, but it is not something to be feared. The Chicago fire made way for an improved urban design, and housing that stands strong to this day. Like a loaded spring, we have great potential energy to be unleashed. It's a new decade. We can use our power to escape the cycle of repression and redirect our FOCUS on building a modern way of life.
Why are Democrats thought of as the party of yesterday? Notice that Civil Rights has disappeared from the national dialogue. What was civil rights really about? political and social reorganization, it had really nothing much to do with economics. We are now in a period of national economic reorganization--technology! That has little to do with politics. The Democrats just don't get it, they are still wedded to political issues--redistributionism, fairness, government programs to solve problems, etc.. Nobody is interested in that sort of thing at the present time, we are now all looking to technology to solve problems, that's why the Dems are dismissed as the party of old ideas, that's why they have no winning election strategy.
1
The Democrat’s obsession with Donald Trump, ad nauseam, will lose them the next election, too. Why? Because in their ongoing efforts to oust DT by any means necessary, they’ve come off as even more unstable and unscrupulous as their nemesis.
Good job, Dems.
9
It’s a very rare occasion I agree with Ross. Everybody has to stop whining and do something. About 90% of the game is showing up at the voting booth.
9
Our house is on fire. Sure, we need to fix the plumbing and patch the roof, but first we need to put out the fire.
Nothing less than a resounding victory in 2020 will do the job. Otherwise, the next Trump will be articulate, intelligent, and even more dangerous.
The arc of history is bending towards totalitarianism, and the rest of the world is watching us. Many of them will follow our lead whichever direction we go.
12
"All you have to do is beat him," is a charming chant until you think of what we are up against. Remember the Southern District of New York and the Attorney General of New York State. Trump is fighting this election to stay out of jail and keep his wealth. With motivations such as these, the power of the U.S. Presidency and the ruthless and wily ability to deploy his power, what would he not do to win and secure the protections that will come with a second term? "All you have to do is beat him?" Perhaps he can be neutered rather than beaten. Go after every single one of his enablers through the courts and the ballot box. Take back the Senate and especially defeat Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell. THAT can be done. It MUST be done before it is too late to save our democracy and our planet.
11
t's going to take pretty much everybody who isn't part of the Democratic "middle" to support Bernie if he is going to have a chance. Leadership is firmly against him getting the nomination which is probably a bigger story than who is supporting who right now. The DNC will use every trick in the book to push Bernie aside. Should be an interesting campaign.
1
@Max
If Biden is the nominee, every Bernie supporter must vote for Biden.
If Bernie is the nominee, every Biden supporter must vote for Bernie.
Vote blue, no matter who.
3
Despite being an atheist all my life I still ended up watching „The greatest story ever told“. It did not change at all my mind or belief that in the end we all are just stardust. Yet, I liked the movie for it showed you how it could have been back in Israel so long ago. The movie is long and slow and often incredibly quiet. Little is said which leads to render words much more powerful. Time seems to stand still.
Regardless if the story is true in all its elements or even if Jesus ever was, but what becomes so clear that Trump and his entourage embodies all the evils that he stood up against (Pilate, Herod, you name it) and maybe even has died for.
A true Christian should never be able to reconcile this! So, to beat Trump and his enablers I propose to create simple ads for the campaign. These ads should only show Trump speak to various topics and contrast it with snippets of that movie. This would have a powerful effect on almost everyone, not only but particularly of the salvageable part of the Christian vote.
2
Ross, Is it possible that Mitch, the most powerful man in America right now, held the Republicans together by extracting a promise from DJT that he won't do it again. And that Mitt Romney, a man of conscience, heard that commitment by Mitch to his flock and could hold him to it?
1
@lewwardbaker no, he doesn't care if Trump does it again. He knows Trump is already working on it right now. Mitch is completely and thoroughly corrupt and could not care less how corrupt Trump is either. Both men are stains on the human race.
1
I have to wryly grin when reading opinions like this. Russ Douthat focuses on morality and politics -- abstractions that certainly have some effect on the real world but are largely divorced from it.
Look at the real world, and the picture is different. At home and abroad, Donald Trump's presidency has been a success. No miracles have happened, that's for sure. But the economy is humming along (not booming, which is a good thing), and while world peace still eludes, we have more peace than we did.
I've spent my career in Silicon Valley, where results from a leader matter more than morals. Sure, a basic set of morals is needed -- you don't want a leader who breaks the law or even comes close to it. But you focus on results.
That's why people like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg achieve so much. I don't look at those people as moral exemplars any more than I do to a president. They are abrasive, flawed, selfish people. But they get things done.
Why would we want one of the Democratic candidates -- none of whom has any record of real accomplishment (save Michael Bloomberg) -- to replace one of the most effective presidents in modern times?
9
@John Smithson
What accomplishments or results can Mr. Trump point to over the course of his entire life?
He's not even a real businessman; he just played one on TV. It is a remarkable feat to inherit half a billion dollars from daddy, and then proceed to lose a billion dollars over a decade.
4
@John Smithson
You are delusional if you think that is true. GDP growth is virtually unchanged from Obama's last 3 years in office, and that is probably only because Republicans passed a massive stimulus that exceeds what was allowed a democratic president after the Great Recession. As a result our deficit has doubled, and we are back to piling up debt at a prodigious rate.
We've actually created fewer jobs under Trump than Obama's last 3 years. The income of the bottom 20% of American's has improved markedly, but that is mostly because of changes to the minimum wage laws that Trump and his cult opposed.
North Korea has been building it's nuclear arsenal unabated. Iran is closer to building a nuclear weapon than they would be. Europe is trying to free themselves of our economic dominance after the heavy-handed tactics on sanctions that they view as gross violations of their sovereignty and most of our allies think Trump is a greater danger than Putin or Xi.
Every step he takes on global warming is backwards. A bill that the boomers won't have to pay, but yet one more "deficit" that they will leave to the next generation.
2
MidtownATL, I don't think you give Donald Trump enough credit. Look at the deals he's done, the buildings he's built, and the billions he's made. He's a shrewd and savvy businessman who knows that with rewards come risks, and with risks comes failure.
I've worked with a lot of megarich and successful people over the years, and have found what to look for in telling the simply lucky from the good. Donald Trump is good. His technique is excellent. Look, for example, at how he handled Iran just recently. Masterful.
As for inheriting money from his father, sure, that certainly helped. But building a fortune of billions over the years is still a big accomplishment. Unless you are good you will lose your money, not make more. Remember the old joke: "What's the best way to make a small fortune?" "Start with a large one."
2
For what it's worth, the Financial Times thinks the US market won't do as well later in 2020. If it's right, perhaps, the Trump juggernaut may lose some steam and will have a tougher time at the polls.
1
Bernie is certainly the most honorable candidate in the field. I'm not sure that's much of a complement as honor is not something frequently found in politics. It is unfortunate that most Sanders supporters don't really understand who Bernie is running against. No, it isn't old Joe, or Mike or even Liz. Bernie is running against Democratic Party leadership who are desperate to deny him the nomination just like they were four years ago. Progressives need to band together and speak with a single voice if the Sanders candidacy is going to have any chance at all. To that end, you should all be urging Liz to give it up and support Bernie. At the beginning of the campaign there was talk of the two of them cooperating. What happened? It appears that leadership has gotten to Liz and enlisted her in the fight against Bernie. If she doesn't drop out and soon, she and Bernie will split the progressive vote dooming the Sanders candidacy. Fortunately, leadership isn't particularly enamored with any of the current candidates. So write or call Liz and tell her that if she's a true progressive, it's time to support the only one who can win the nomination. Go Bernie!
3
@Max
I fear Bernie can win the Dem nomination but like McGovern in 1972 lose almost every state. Most Americans support private property and capitalism, even the poor! Winning over Trump is everything.
1
"improving national conditions have sealed their base to him". Improving national conditions? Really? What metrics other than a stock market bubble are improving? Environmental regulations gutted; partisanship is more toxic; the rule of law no longer holds; families torn apart at the border; corporations and rich folks reaping tax windfalls; corruption from the top down worse than any swamp ever imagined. Improving national conditions? I think not.
10
Except the contest will not be fair. Beyond the travesty of the Electoral College, Trump/GOP are systematically suppressing votes and using slander whenever possible. On top of this, they have solicited the help of Putin and secret services to attack our machines that the GOP have refused to make more secure.
3
The article assumes the next election will be fair. It seems to me that Trumpers will find a way to stop people likely to vote against him from being able to vote. There are many ways he and his followers can do this (and have probably already done it in the past 4 years.
3
How much will Trump’s cognitive, balance, gait and speech issues have declined by the election? Why are MSM and Democrats not focusing on this issue? He will continue to decline and be unable to serve 4 more years. No wonder he (or his handlers) has already proposed that he will not debate the Democratic nominee. This needs to be front and center or we will not survive!
7
Pam Patterson "How much will Trump’s cognitive, balance, gait and speech issues have declined by the election?"
I haven't noticed any such problems with Donald Trump. Are you sure you're not thinking of Joe Biden.
2
Since all I have to do is beat him, RD, talk to me for a moment about what I'll have to overcome in terms of perception of the "improving national conditions" (as you put it and apparently perceive yourself.)
The holy trinity of the Trump defenders - on fulsome display amid the GOP senators' lamentable apologies for their man - seems to be conservative judicial appointments, de-regulation of about any and everything and what they like to portray as entirely Trump inspired economic boom times.
So I turn to you, Ross. Take these highly arguable if not outright indefensible high-points of "improving national conditions" and start putting truth to power and debunk them with us. Throw in the passes on healthcare, prescription drug prices and the infrastructure. Season with the cruelties of immigration policy, and a non-existent infrastructure plan and have at it.
Cuz, Ross Douthat - it's not just me who has to beat Trump. WE do!
5
@Jerry Farnsworth: Trump's judicial appointees will indulge his kind of barratry without limit.
I agree with the broad sweep of what has been said. But I think all eyes should be on the senate and congressional races: my understanding is that there are 23 Republican senate seats in play. Each one of those seats should go to the Democratic candidate, with no splitting of hairs: see Doug Jones and even the poor benighted Manchin. That means turning out every single responsible human in all states. Including you, Mr Douthat, and you, Mr Stephen, and all the pundit class.
7
In view of Pelosi's questionable gamble that was always destined for failure, one must question whether the Democrats are terribly concerned with defeating Trump. Given how said party's establishment strongly backs Biden, it appears that the DNC is primarily concerned with self preservation, rather than the welfare of the American Republic; after all, it doesn't want an imitation of how Trump successfully rebelled against the GOP party establishment four years ago.
Dismiss me as cynical, by it seems the Democrats will again proceed on to electoral defeat with another flawed establishment candidate representing yesterday, just as they did four years ago.
8
@Arcticwolf; The key word here is 'yesterday'. You're exactly right, Democrats are the party of yesterday, of political ideas that resonated in the 60s or 70s--the voters aren't buying it.
3
@Ronald B. Duke Wrong, they are the ones that will protect my SS, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs, been repub most of my time, not any more.
2
@Arcticwolf: We have seen that motion practice in US courts is a black hole of delay that makes justice DOA when it does happen.
You accurately mention the Midwest and how Trump captured those states in 2016. He'll do it again in 2020 unless the Democrats nominate Biden. He may not do it, but he's the only Democratic Party presidential candidate with a prayer of winning back enough Midwest working-class voters to swing Electoral College numbers back to the Democrats.
People argue that Sanders can also attract Midwest working-class voters. Yes, but that assumes a Socialist can win the presidency. Sorry, it won't happen. The nation's voters are moderate at best and leaning right. Note how many voted for Trump in 2016
I hope your next column's theme is titled: 'How we can beat him.'
11
The problem is that in order to beat Trump, you have to play to win, like the Republicans do. The Democrats were not playing to win in the impeachment hearings; they had already decided they would settle for defeat, the question was simply to what degree of defeat. In contrast, the Republicans sent tens of millions on Facebook ads attacking the impeachment process, while the Democrats sat on their hands.
Democrats don't understand that this is a propaganda war and many Trump supporters are simply ignorant of the facts since they get their news solely through Fox and Facebook feeds. You can't expect them to have different views if they aren't exposed to them. For example, how many Trump supporters are even aware that the Trump foundation was fined $2M for fraudulent transactions?
Democrats should drop TV ads and emulate Republican campaign manager Brad Parscale's strategy and focus on social media. Otherwise, it's 2016 all over again.
9
I notice that since Trump has, in effect, 'won' the impeachment battle, I'm starting to read again about Trump as a Russian puppet, something I hadn't seen for a while, and again, as ever, complaints about the Electoral College. Democrats are using the same excuses for losing as before, over and over, they aren't talking about a realistic plan for winning. Do they have such a plan? And yet it would be so easy for them to win, they only have to move a little toward center. What are they doing? Moving more to the left. They must have some sort of political 'death wish', they want for some reason to lose. Why? What is it?
5
Even the supposedly "moderate" Democrats are currently running on a platform of:
- Dramatically increasing the cost to gas up the car and heat the house
- Forcing the public to pretend men are women because they believe they are
- Forcing evangelical private business owners to choose between violating religious beliefs that were considered mainstream 15 years ago or loosing their livelihood.
- Taking away good paying, US based, mining an manufacturing jobs because they are bad for the environment, while ignoring that these jobs will just get shipped to China where business owners can take advantage of slave labor and a complete lack of environmental regulations.
- Claiming that abortion should be celebrated and fully supporting idea that the late-term abortion of a healthy viable fetus from a healthy pregnancy is no different that removing a tumor.
Yet y'all seem confused as to why so many of us will look at Trump's buffoonery and near daily violation of the norms of presidential behavior and conclude that the's the lesser evil.
5
No, given your litany here, I’m not confused about why you’ll violate any behavioral standard you *claim* to hold and vote for trump.
Ross, not to worry, whoever the Democratic nominee is will beat Trump handily in November. Count on it. The Democratic nominee in 2020 will beat Trump in the popular vote count, once again.
I say this as a Democrat, Trump given the current state of the economy and being an incumbent should otherwise capture somewhere in area of 55 to 60% of the popular vote in November, if it were not the fact that he is Trump. But, most Americans do not want Trump to be President of anything, and 2020 is a referendum on Trump, it is not an open seat election. The Democratic nominee doesn't really matter. It comes down to - do you want four more years of this behavior, and most likely, much, much worse behavior.
Ross, my prediction is that Trump will lose both the majority and plurality of the popular vote once again in 2020 as he did in 2016. Also, there is a real possibility that if Trump once again threads the electoral needle he could lose the popular vote by more than 5 million votes.
So, we Democrats, will win if we can close the Trump eye of the needle. It's all about the right strategy in about six states. Turning out the vote in Massachusetts, California, Alabama and Mississippi will have no impact. Maybe, we should focus on visiting Wisconsin this go-round, and Western PA, too.
2
I see commenters here who seem to be as anti-Sanders as they are anti-Trump.
I hope they’ll change their opinions if Sanders does well in the primaries, because if they buy into the idea of getting him back for what they feel he did to Hillary Clinton in 2016, and support changes to party rules for the convention, it will be damaging to our democratic process.
5
So I am putting this to you and all Sanders partisans out there: If another Democratic candidate wins the nomination, will you vote for that person? If you don’t make that commitment, you might as well be for Trump. Sanders is the last person on my primary list, especially after texts from his supporters, but I will vote for him if he is the nominee. Will you do the same if Biden, Warren, Kobuchar, Buttigieg or Yang are the nominee?
2
@Tombo
I confess, honestly do not like Sanders.
I probably agree with everything he says, but I find his public speaking repulsive and the misogynistic undertones that birthed the “Bernie Bro’s” myth offensive. I think if he valued the country over his own ego, he would throw his support behind Warren. And I honestly do not think Sanders has the ability to assemble the support he would need to bring anything from his platform to fruition.
And, yet, should Sanders get this nomination, you better believe I’m all in. I just pray Sanders’ supporters can do the same should he not get the nomination.
2
If his base were reasoned, this approach: focusing on only policies; expanding the Democratic tent; leaving no one behind might work.
But how will that appeal to those whose basic love of Trump is their shared absolute hatred of liberals?
It’s a new game - it has to be. Gloves off, suit up - we’re playing to win in Virginia and then we’re coming for every other state.
5
Beating Trump by small margin may be not enough. Trump t will likely declare that election was rigged in such event. So who will force to leave and/or evict him from White House. Mr. Douthat's Republican Party or Trump's packed Supreme Court. The only way Trump would be forced leaves a landslide victory of the Democratic Party candidate in the Electoral College and with control of the House and Senate by Democrats. I believe this will be hard to achieve since the moderate and disaffected Republicans feel that the second term of Trump is preferable to Sanders or Warren's presidency. I hope the the independents and moderates of both party will assess the danger of second Trump term and perhaps further term to his children or choose successor on constitutional order and rule of law in USA.
4
The certain way to beat Trump is to defuse the fear he inspires. Not fear of him, which the craven Republican establishment has, but fear of what "the liberals" are trying to do to "the real America". Well, I'm afraid it's too late for that because the moralizers seem well in control of the Dems. So convinced of their truth that I think you will see lukewarm support, at best, from opposing factions for the eventual candidate. Yes, Trump has weapons, but he can only inflict flesh wounds. It's your buddies who will administer the coup de grace.
6
@chairmanj
The culture war that is driving that fear will be on full display during the Super Bowl and its ads tonight.
I wonder how trump's supporters can watch ads that now routinely feature interracial couples of all ages, gays couples, lesbian couples, white grandparents playing with their mixed race grandchildren, and more and not recognize that our future is one of inclusion.
As Madison Avenue figured out a long time ago, there's a lot of money in those representations. It is our future. As Mick Mulvaney stated, "get over it."
2
@Arancia
I don't think you understand how advertising works. Marketing divides people by design and tries to get them to identify with unique images. That's why women's razors cost twice as much as men's razors, despite being literally the same product.
If the future is one of "inclusion", then perhaps you can explain the many ethnic enclaves in the US? There are thousands of employers, landlords, banks and other service providers who curiously employ and cater to select ethnic groups. They do this by not offering services in English and demanding that their hires speak foreign languages. When Al Sharpton tried to point out exclusionary practices in minority communities of NYC, he was (and still is) roundly derided and mocked for it.
1
@Arancia Easy for you to say. Easy for me, too. Maybe not so easy when "religious freedom" allows you to be fired for expressing such opinions.
1
I am still trying to decode Sen. Alexander's public rationale. He openly admits that trump's extortion of Ukraine was inappropriate behavior for a U.S. president. Further, he seems to be saying that he won't remove a president in an election year - that it is up to the voters.
Maybe, after Wednesday, and once behind closed doors, some of these Republicans will not endorse trump for November. Many of them don't need him to win their own re-elections. It's just a handful who will be in his aim. Mitt clearly does not require anything from trump for the next four years, if ever. There are many others in the same situation. We can only hope they will do what they're telling us to do.
What Alexander left unaddressed, however, is that trump now believes he can collude with other foreign and domestic groups to con some voters into voting for him. And, if he believes it, he will do it.
I feel very sorry for the people in those battleground states, e.g. WI, MI, OH, FL, and PA. They are probably going be the victims of all kinds of disinformation ads. I can only hope they will see through the barrage of lies coming their way for the next nine months.
7
@Arancia - I suspect that Lamar Alexander gets thousands of threatening emails, phone calls, letters and personal confrontations from the rabid right wing. He sees his constituency as they probably are: rabid, angry voters who promise not only to punish Republicans who cross Trump and are even threatening civil disorder. Lamar and his fellow enablers have been intimidated by the threat of social disorder and they show extreme cowardice in the face of the mob who would willingly take up arms agaisnt this Nation. Where is their respect and honor for our first Republican President who stood up for our national principles and was murdered by those who took up arms against the USA in 1861?
@Arancia You don't understand Alexander's rationale? Let me explain it to you: #1: He's abdicated the leadership that was bestowed on him by the voters of his state when they elected him to be a Senator. He wants to "leave it in the hands of voters" because he's too chicken to man up and be a leader. #2: His Republican kin in the House and Senate would get all the same policies they love with Mike Pence as president, but know's he's about as exciting as watching paint dry. Therefore run Mike Pence in November and the diehard confederacy of dunces supporting Trump don't bother to go vote. They need Trump because Pence motivates no one to vote.
2
At the ballot box is the only way it should happen. Each party and each candidate has the same resources at this disposal. Both parties are equally guilty of actions that we would rather not see. If you are a Democrat, the Republicans look the worse. If you are a Republican the Democrats look the worse. It is a "fair contest" and the contest has no rules. The Electoral College is there for a reason-New York, California and one two other States should be elect the President!
2
@clayton e woodrum it's not big states v. small states. The EC means the states elect the president, not the people. In a statewide election the candidate with the most votes wins, not the one who wins the most counties. The EC is fundamentally undemocratic by design, like the US senate was until a century ago.
2
When/if Trump wins, foremost Democrats will move on, move on to high-money jobs as lobbyists and in large law firms. They will say they care about those ordinary folks left behind but soon we won't hear from them again. A few will publish books with million dollar advances but, get the point, their candidacy will be a stepping stone to greater things, such as vastly greater wealth plus the advantage of fame but without having had scrutiny about their own plans to win, "to beat him." "All you have to do is beat him," how true. But how many Democrats asked their favorites what was their personal plan to beat him? What was their personal plan to win? I didn't hear that. That's not the same as deciding based on liking a candidate. Maybe the candidate you like has no credible answer how he/she will beat him. Then you move on. How many Democrats evaluated candidates on that, having a lot more information than just a hunch or some affection to decide? In the time remaining Democrats need to pin down that answer by insisting on one, clear and sensible, not a repetition of a stump speech. Then they must go out and vote in numbers so great that it's not a slide-by victory but one that resounds for years.
1
We live in interesting times. We have learned a lot from the impeachment drama about how our society addresses a thorny problem.
We have seen again that American Democracy is a very bad form of government, even if it is still better than all the others. It does not guarantee that only the only the most public-spirited will lead.
The President’s election is closely though not strictly aligned to a popular vote. That is the strength of democracy. When a president may be failing, there are two ways to discharge him. The cabinet, appointed by the president, can choose do so by vote. This has never been done.
The Congress may remove a president by a political
process. The House must establish evidence and agree it is sufficient to consider removal. The Senate must judge if the evidence is sufficient to fire the President. There are only three examples in which the House presented evidence of misconduct. There is no historical example of the Senate deciding the evidence warranted removal. Thus, we have no example to assess the consequences of firing the president.
Today's Senate will not vote to fire President Trump, even though several Republicans agree the evidence supports the claims. The Senate decided it did not need to question John Bolton to make that decision. That may be unwise for the Republicans, but it is not unreasonable. The world is not going to come to an end just yet.
Mr. Douthat is correct. All we have to do is beat him. Don’t despair.
@swordfsh2: Everything government does is political process. You can't let anyone off for bawling about that. Trump thinks he washes himself clean with this nonsense.
Trump is going to run on the economy and protecting our Bill of Rights, including the rights of states to protect rights not enumerated in our Constitution. Above all he will run on making other countries pay for not only our border wall but for our defense of their freedom. So if other countries start paying for things that we have provided them, our taxes will be lower, and our friendship will have greater value to them. The Democrats will run yet again on limiting our personal freedom, more restrictions on our protection from government or Deep State power over us, and higher taxes to pay government for more salaried government bureaucrats to monitor our activities. If the Democrats choose someone pushing more government in our lives to run against Trump for President, he or she will lose, as either One will deserve.
8
"...best economy in 20 years"
I don't understand why the media keeps repeating this. GDP or economic growth, is the same 2% it was for Obama. Yes unemployment is a bit lower but wages are still stagnant. Why does the media conflate a stock market built on a $24 Trillion national debt and an irresponsible 40% cut in corporate taxes to a "great economy."
17
"A failed impeachment doesn't give him new powers or new popularity." Actually, not only does it give this president more power, it gives all future presidents more power by reducing the power of congress as a co-equal branch of government. Our democracy has been damaged beyond repair if not permanently, then for many decades to come. This at the hands of the Republican party who has essentially given their blessing to an impeachment version of jury nullification. They know he's guilty, they know he's impeachable, they just think it's "bad for the country". (Never mind that it's "good" for their party and each senator's particularly job.)
And all this is apart from the volatile temperament of this particular president who will not just gloat over this victory, but will seek revenge on the brave and honorable witnesses who came forward during the House impeachment inquiry.
6
Trump was beaten soundly at the polls in the 2018 elections. The People took back the house. The claim of Executive Privilege from the White House, supported by the republican senate has nullified that election.
Hopefully the voters will have a long memory come November.
5
I think Ross underestimates Trump's achievements in Republican primaries; he took on Fox news, and won! He attacked Jeb Bush and GWB, and he convinced his supporters he was going to take the fight to the liberals.
Also, Trump goes all in - and either wins big (Presidency, even if by the slimmest margins) or loses big (Taj Mahal casino and other bankruptcies).
As Ross mentions: "Of course, in trying to beat him they have to cope with the fact that he is chronically unscrupulous, as the Biden-Ukraine foray shows." So, it will go down to the wire. He will do anything and everything, unconstrained by norms that apply to all other candidates.
I ferverently hope the democratic candidate beats Trump.
5
@RR
RE: Also, Trump goes all in - and either wins big (Presidency, even if by the slimmest margins) or loses big (Taj Mahal casino and other bankruptcies).
Actually in the casinos he won. You can bet (pun intend) he was well compensated. He was gambling (pun intended) with others' money. The gaming in Atlantic city was saturated. Not unlike the internet retailing market when it started. Remember Pets.com and other failed start ups? The C level management got paid very well. They just would have made out much better had the business suceeded.
2
Yes, "all you have to do is beat him." But how? More important, who? With Facebook and Fox News on his side, and a peak economy at his back, it will not be easy. I personally think Biden is severely handicapped by the negative exposure he received during impeachment -- which Trump is sure to double down on if he is the nominee. Sanders and Warren have positions so far to the left of the mainstream, either would be a Republican's dream to run against. Buttigieg is just too inexperienced and Klobuchar fails to catch on. Bloomberg?
2
If Dems wanted to really beat him they should have fielded a candidate that could do it! Winning now for the Dems would be disastrous anyway. You have a president with a Midas touch that got the economy humming on all cylinders. Even if you don't like how he does it, he got it done. You don't want to take over that kind of an economy and say "now were going to undo everything Trump did." It would bring the American economic engine to a halt and millions of 401ks with it. Guess who would take the blame? Sanders, Biden, Warren or whomever. The Dems wouldn't win another election after that presidential debacle for a generation. By the way, you want to know who would win the presidency for the Dems? Field Gavin Newsom and get him to say moderate things. He'll win.
3
...As long as you disregard the National Debt which is now above 23 trillion. Trump goosed the economy with his tax reform bill, which mostly benefitted the very wealthiest Americans. Everyone else got a pittance in the relativity of it all. Some got nothing. And while middle class Americans tax relief, such as it was, lasted a few years, things like permanently rescinding the inheritance tax was the gift that keeps on giving. I suspect as usual, Republicans will look the other way, until the bottom falls out in yet another predictable recession (signs are already there,) and when a Democrat comes in to clean up the mess, they will blame it all on the Dems and cry foul at the efforts to save the economy. All of a sudden, Republicans will assume their fiscally conservative alter egos and cry foul. Sadly, we are going down that same path yet again.
4
@Mark
GDP growth is hovering near 2% (last three quarters), which is lower than the last three years of the Obama administration. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2020/02/01/trumps-economic-growth-is-slower-than-obamas-last-3-years/#6bbb3d0f4fed
Farm foreclosures are at their highest level since 2011. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stock-market-at-record-but-farm-bankruptcies-at-highest-since-2011-2019-11-16
Suicides are at their highest level since World War 2. https://time.com/5609124/us-suicide-rate-increase/
The national debt stands at its highest level ever despite a growing economy, meaning that the US Treasury is not collecting enough revenue to cover expenses, much less pay back the debt. https://www.npr.org/2019/02/13/694199256/u-s-national-debt-hits-22-trillion-a-new-record-thats-predicted-to-fall
Income inequality - which is the issue that finally destroyed ancient Rome - is at an all-time high. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/26/income-inequality-america-highest-its-been-since-census-started-tracking-it-data-show/
Anyone can have an opinion, but the facts speak for themselves.
1
@Mark: The trick in car racing is not to kill the engine.
Ross spends his space here outlining Trump’s obvious deficiencies and suggesting Dems could win because of them. But Ross does not point out the powers behind Trump: an unparalleled disinformation machine ranging from Fox, the specious Bible pounders, to robot web accounts and paid Google search results. Propaganda works. Spreads division and suppresses reason.
Also, for decades and through several Democratic presidencies the Dems have failed to address the shrinking of the middle class and the inattentiveness to everyday concerns foreign to the 1 per cent.
The present Dem focus on labeling real reform as “extreme” is a continuation of blindness and indifference to facts.
5
@John♻️Brews: The Democrats will not take up the sword to cut the Gordian Knot: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". Enforcing that becalms their sails.
Douthat's OP-ED is a recipe without directions. And without directions, no cake can be baked. The most important ingredient in the recipe is the Democratic candidate. That is also the ingredient that is most problematic. The only model we have is BHO, the only Democrat to win the presidency in the 21st century. He can't run again but the Democrats can choose someone with similar credentials. They are, IMO, and in no particular order: forceful but soft-spoken and articulate (he never yelled), legislative experience (he saw how sausages are made as a senator), appealing to a wide swath of Americans, particularly in the rust belt and finally, never cowed by demagogic rhetoric. I don't think he was a great President, but he perfectly suited a post-Bush America. Now is not the time for socialism or a chicken in every pot. Before we can regain our national balance and proceed with a steady gate. We need to drain a historic swamp before we can achieve a higher ground.
2
But you seem to still have faith in the system, the institution when Trump has made all that irrelevant. He is the epitome of relativism, of individual "truth" over universal, collective, or cooperative truth. And his faithful are 100% bought in. Everyone of his followers positions were on display in his Impeachment trial defense. Facts, evidence, and truth don't matter. A system or an institution are not facts, evidence, or truth. A system or institution at best is merely a vehicle. Trump won but no playing the same system or institutional game everyone else was playing. There is no beating him when he is defining the game. Beating him requires defining a different game. Beating him requires playing his game better than he and I don't think that is a person we want as president.
I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
Joe
1
@jfutral: Many who believe in life after death don't understand that corporations are human institutions invented to carry on designated functions that transcend the individual lives of the participants.
@Steve Bolger ergo they are NOT individuals and outside of constitutional protection.
1
Yes, he wasn't convicted, but he never was going to be.
But look at the gift Trump gave the nation, and especially the Democrats, with his Ukraine escapade: he united the Democratic Party. Remember that the Mueller report and its aftermath was dividing the Democrats -- while uniting the Republicans -- over impeachment. In one fell whistleblower report, that went away. Yet one more move by "genius" Donald Trump.
The takeaway is that the *first* step to defeating Trump is for the Democrats to stay united. I'm sure the primary campaign will be tough, and sometimes ugly, but I beg of all my fellow Democrats to come together at the end and enthusiastically support whoever leads us into November.
9
“All you have to do is beat him.”
And all the institutions have to do is withstand him. They have fared poorly.
Hypnotic gimmicks aside, no amount of simplistic, reductionist rhetoric will alter the likelihood of what America is truly facing. We are at the precipice, and it’s time for a few thousand votes, spread over a few swing states, to determine the fate of hundreds of millions of people.
4
What you can do to help Mr. Douthat is getting together with other religious people of conscience and persuade as many religious minded people as possible that the Trump presidency is not god's plan to save America. If any divine intension to be speculated, it's a divine test that religious right leaders have miserably failed at. Giving a man of many flaws and sins absolute power in exchange for Supreme Court seats is the ultimate devil's bargain.
Trump wouldn't have been president without the fervent support of evangelicals, and cannot be re-elected without their support. They own the man and his sins. Hopefully enough of them will be awaken to repudiate the ugliness this time around.
Saying all that, maybe it's naiveté hoping for a few religious leaders to do the right thing, the same way it was naive to hope a few good senators do the right thing. But you should never give up hope.
12
@Sha: The evidence that prayer enrages God is equal to the evidence that God is mollified or moved by it.
An educated citizenry is required. The failure to prioritize public support for public education is the ground for this catastrophe.
5
@sRh: There is no excuse for public subsidies of anything that undermines critical thinking. Decrees do not link to physics.
Why do so many people believe the election is rigged in a Trumps favor, beyond the fact he is the incumbent? 90%/of media coverage is anti-Trump or at least negative towards Republicans in general. This assertion makes no sense unless those oh so technologically advanced Russians have hack our voting machines! They aren’t and they haven’t.
4
@T Smith It depends on which media you consume.
Voting machines can easily be hacked, by, say, a middle schooler. They have been and will be hacked, by whom is the question. Paper ballots, please!
@T Smith - Because it's easier for them to tell themselves it's rigged than it is for them to accept the truth. Most Americans don't want an ideology imposed on them or get taxed to the hilt to provide handouts a la Bernie or Liz. Creepy Joe is just woefully out of touch, and the others probably won't get any further (unless the DNC decides that they'll replace Creepy Joe with Bloomberg as their establishment pick).
Dems also won't accept the fact that they will lose votes to Trump because their platform doesn't resonate with many Americans (ie: pandering to illegal aliens, Medicare for All etc.).
Dems need to wake up and listen if they want to win an election.
1
I remember a line from the Vietnam era: We had to destroy the village to save it. This is just what the Republicans are doing to our country. The bitter heart of the Republican party has been scheming, planning, funding, and implementing a strategic plan to remake America in its image since the Civil War, and all the more so since FDR ushered in the New Deal policies that enabled the rise of the middle class and truly made America great. Education, jobs, healthcare, housing, opportunity, protection to those who need it, responsible stewardship of natural resources, equal justice under the law. Though we've always fallen short of our ideals in the fight against powerful and corrupt interests, we were united in our desire for the blessings of freedom, of liberty and justice for all. Autocrats, oligarchs, and demagogues throughout history have tried to concentrate power and wealth by playing to the basest human instincts, by feeding the public lies that keep them divided, enraged, and desperate. They'll do anything to impose their cruel vision of how things should be on the rest of us until we eventually rise up to stop them. Until that happens, we'll lose all we've gained in our fight toward justice, prosperity, and peace at home and abroad. We're returning to the days of robber barons and angry mobs, of soul-crushing inequities. We'll make no progress on the most pressing challenges of our time. We still have a choice. I only hope we make the right one.
6
@rb: The US still loops to Vietnam reasoning. Trump's unspecified time when the US was great dates to the immediate aftermath of WW II. If Trump had been there, Patton would have been ordered to attack the Soviet Union on VE Day.
“And they have to overcome the advantage that his particular coalition enjoys in the Electoral College.”
That is the most telling sentence in this well-written and thoughtful column. Mr. Douthat goes on to say that in his next paragraph.
Right now there’s no other way to defeat Trump, his appearance on the television during the Super Bowl non-withstanding.
The campaign will be grueling. But regardless of which candidate the Democrats field, it will be won only with voter-by-voter conversations to illuminate everyone about the dangers of reelecting the worst President of our time, and perhaps all time.
4
For the record, I think some of these anti-democracy comments are made by foreign interests who want America to fail.
Sorry, comrades. YOU fail!
America is still a democracy despite this orange haired king you've temporarily installed on his crumbling throne.
We will survive and thrive and live to see a brighter future.
6
Democrats are fighting by the Marquis of Queensbury rules and wearing 20 ounce gloves, while Republicans recognize the contest for what it is and enter the Octagon with fists clad in Roman cestus and ready for a no-holds-barred MMA match.
7
When it comes to democrats and learning from their electoral history, I would ask, what do Walter Mondale, Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton have in common? These four Presidential nominees were designated by the party as the "safe" choices who had the best overall chance of winning and defeating their Republican opposition.
They ALL LOST!
In between we have had Barack Obama and Donald Trump, "outliers" who were projected as being "not electable".
IF democrats make the same mistake again (which looks like they are attempting to do) with their so-called "safe, status quo" choice like Joe Biden or another corporate/establishment centrist candidate, democrats will lose AGAIN, the Oligarchs will have won and democracy in America is dead.
7
That’s inaccurate.
Mondale ran against a popular president. He was a placeholder, like Bob Dole in ‘96.
Gore actually won.
Kerry and Clinton both failed to connect in key midwestern constituencies.
At the risk of appearing a bit dense, I read the article twice and besides the "you need to beat him", the How escaped me. If it's a matter of flipping the mid west then I get it. But could someone with a better grasp of the situation tell me exactly how?
I totally agree that his apparent invincibility and invulnerability are just that: apparent.
But how? Could someone show me in 25 words or less?
6
@Larry
Recognize that most of America is center-right culturally and center-left fiscally. Dust off the Democratic Party platform from 10-15 years ago and defeat Trump in an electoral landslide.
Only 5 words over.
1
@I want another option
Got it. Now all we need is the right champion to advance this vision. Your comments seem to point to Joe. Thanks
@I want another option
I suppose the closest time period you wish to imagine is Barack Obama, the "outlier" who few thought could win and preached his mantra of "hope and change". When he proceeded to govern, got no co-operation whatsoever from an intransigent Republican Party, he became just another corporate/establishment President whom because he failed to live up to his slogan,during his term lost BOTH the Congress and Senate to the Republicans.
It was this failure that led to the emergence of a clown like Trump and you want to do it again?
3
The "rules" don't apply. Dems need to "play" the game--down and dirty. Forget about the optics. Fight as hard and then harder still to convince the voters that potus and his senate acolytes need to be defeated. Restoration of the "rules" can begin Jan.20,2021.
""Victory belongs to the most persevering." ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
8
Well, it is in the hands of the DNC! If they nominate Bernie as their candidate, this Democrat will vote for Trump. It is more important to me, to stop Socialism and particularly AOC, who shows every sign of being a Latin American dictatoress! More particularly actually Imelda Marcos, with her bags and shoes!
7
They did beat him in the popular vote. Another hole in the system. There is no fair competition when cheating is is thrown into the system.
5
“And they have to overcome the advantage that his particular coalition enjoys in the Electoral College.” And efforts to disenfranchise the voters who would help do that. Just beat him? Reminds me of an old Steve Martin joke...”You can be a millionaire and never pay taxes! First, get a million dollars...”
3
Bravo, Mr. Douthat, a brilliant article.
2
Trump's sustained invulnerability and now his crowning victory the Senate is about to hand him says one thing loud and clear. It is that we are living in Trump's America.
And we will continue to live in his America because he has bent the Republican Party and many millions of voters to his will.
It's time to give up the wishful thinking and wan hopes that a better qualified opponent who would heal the nation will prevail.
That may sound like defeatism, but I see it as the disquieting reality.
Ugly tribalism, hatred and above all anti-democratic fervor have prevailed giving us an appalling caricature of a president.
Too many fellow Americans are thrilled at Trump's success in batting away attempts to bring him to heel.
And they are beyond eager to extend his rule in November.
It's time to wake up and realize we are living in a nation that is radically different than America pre-Trump.
4
Still, no matter how unscrupulous they are, Republicans are a minority and can win only by cheating plus dividing the opposition.
1
Haha Mr. Douthat. Why don't you and your Never Trumper friends take him out. After all your created this monster. A party that shamelessly panders to Americans racism and love of gun violence. Making abortion an issue that creates unnecessary divisions in this country. A party that only cares about winning and ethics and morality be damned. Giving endless tax breaks to the rich that have never benefitted society as a whole. You and your intellectual friends stood by for years and let this happen. Don't tell Democrats to beat him when you created this mess. Put down your pen and get to work.
9
Give folks in Flint, MI a reason to vote. The reason ain’t “beat Trump”. Tell them what you’re going to do about clean water.
Give folks in Kentucky a reason to vote D. It isn’t not enough to talk about how Trump is siding with Russia. No one there cares. You need to talk about how coal jobs are going to become jobs jn renewable energy IN KENTUCKY.
Give farmers a reason to vote D.
I mean, come up with policies! And then when you get in power stop pandering to your special interests. Let’s stop pretending Dems don’t have special interests in Wall Street and Blue Chip companies
8
@Tough Call You put your finger on exactly what hasn't happened. Any candidate's campaign needs to go to these places with solid proposals. From my view, that's what Hillary did exactly wrong. I saw it first hand in two states. Her campaigns were hardly visible in Ohio and Michigan. The candidate who does this is the one who wins. If you have a choice between campaigning in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and coastal states, it's a no-brainer.
1
All you have to do is to stop writing about him or giving him so much coverage. The media has a tremendous role in allowing him to clutter the airwaves and not give equal time to other candidates. I hope his curve balls don't take you off-course and chase a mirage.
5
The underlying and often unstated premise for many Never-Trumpers such as Mr. Douthat is that the country is in ruin because of Trump. But many Americans just don’t see it that way. Despite all the doomsday predictions from the media for years, by many measures our country is doing very well - economy is good, the world is at relative peace, new trade deals, and things seeming to function as normal. So I don’t think the supposition that Trump has ruined the country can be taken for granted, especially for those who don’t obsess over his Twitter feed everyday. Most Democrats are pinning their election hopes on convincing voters of these doomsday scenarios.
But, the more apocalyptic events predicted by the mainstream media that fail to materialize only lessen their credibility and strengthen President Trump’s.
4
It’s not necessarily just up to us voters to beat Trump. If Trump is successful in rigging the 2020 election through Russian interference, voter suppression, and Republicans’ enabling, Trump will reign again!
3
stop promising far left giveaways like free college, student loan forgiveness, universal income crumbs, and free medical for everybody including those not citizens yet.
start doing research and targeting voters with a truth campaign. how many will lose health coverage due to pre-existing conditions? send them a direct mail every monday. how many will suffer from trump's planned cutback in social security? send them a direct mail every tuesday. how many will lose benefits from trump's planned cutbacks to medicare as we know it? send them a direct mail every wednesday. how many will get cancer if factories start flushing toxic chemicals into their nearby watershed again? send them a direct mail every thursday. keep it up every day of the week.
trump ran on one big thing, getting rid of immigrants (not the economy which is a matter of luck and cycles, not gun reform which is easily sidestepped in the black market). whatever he wants to snow job with this time, change the conversation to the stuff that goes on when nobody is watching because they're too busy huffing about some 11-year old access hollywood crude remark. just change the conversaton.
3
@Aubrey: Nobody really wants to know the truth, from the Senate on down.
There is good news: Everybody gets to Nirvana on their first death. You only have to live once.
1
Now that he has carte blanche to cheat on the election and commit as many crimes as he wishes, he will be harder to beat. However, I believe the level of national hatred toward him is so intense and ubiquitous that it may overcame all possible lesser Democratic campaign tactics and get him out of office. Massively so.
Let’s hope so.
7
The problem with beating Trump will be greatly compounded now that he has a green light to use government funds to extort other nations in any way he decides.
2
What's going to really gall is after he is out of office and we hear from all the Republicans who were appalled by him, and yet they silently supported everything he did while he was in office!
4
Ross:
I think you are one of the most incisive journalist out there even though our politics are different but you are missing the point.
Trump is willing and able to make this a corrupt election. That is the point with impeachment. You can’t leave this to the election to decide if the election is going to be rigged!
How it that the GOP won’t acknowledge this!!!
3
What Douthat is really saying is:
"All you have to do is beat Trump as we Republicans and Conservatives use every illegal and unconstitutional means, and every form of chicanery, to stop you." This means covering up Trump’s offenses, rigging the upcoming election, bribing or extorting foreign powers to interfere in these elections, and illegally purging millions upon millions of voters who would have voted against Trump off the voter rolls.
"All you have to do is beat Trump by voting him out of office when we Conservatives and Republicans have made it impossible for you to actually do that as we've made sure to so thoroughly rig the system that Trump will remain in power no matter how many votes you cast."
4
Douthat is really channeling his football coach persona on Super Sunday. Thanks for the pep talk Ross! Our opponents have vulnerabilities, they are not invincible, they put their pants on one leg at a time, just like we do--all true. But maybe Ross is in the wrong locker room. Why does he spend so much time giving advice to Democrats while ignoring his own? There are--there must be--conservatives and Republicans who actually have principles and once really did believe in lofty ideals like constitutional democracy. He needs to convince them that the pleasures of short-term tax cuts and environmental pillage are not worth the trashing of the constitution in service of an infant king. It's they who must be convinced that for the long-run good of the country and viability of a center-right party, Trump must be beaten.
5
A wonderfully naive column! Between voter suppression, gerrymandering, and foreign interference, I wonder whether we’ll ever see a legitimate election again.
7
Th election in the US is a binary choice. The Democrats are not running a party list as they would in a parliamentary system. They are running a candidate. And the only candidate who can realistically win at this point is the one whose presidency could be worse than Trump: Sanders. I despise Trump with every fiber of my being. But if Sanders is the Democratic nominee I am voting for Trump. Trump is a grifter who is abusing our system. Sanders will destroy it. The greatest mistake voters can make is not to listen to what politicians are saying. Even when they lie, they inadvertently tell the truth. Trump told his voters what he was and they liked it. Sanders is telling his voters what he is - a socialist - and they like it. And in between, there is a huge swath of rational educated people who are despairing of the direction this country is taking, torn between two ideological extremes, just like Germany was in 1933 or Spain in 1937. Neither of those situations ended well. I wish there was a third way but right now, I don’t see it.
@Mor Democratic Socialism is a part of the system in all or nearly all first world countries. This is not Marxism, which was heinous everywhere it was tried. The number of people murdered by Mao and Stalin, etc went far beyond Hitler. It is a truly failed system.
Both unrestrained capitalism and unrestrained marxism are the extremes. The Congress would never go for Marxism, and I'm glad about that.
Bernie is nearly mainstream in the first world as a candidate. He's not near the top of my list, but I'll vote for him if he's the candidate.
You have to look at the big picture. Trump and his followers are a danger. The extremists of Sanders' followers, who are a minority, are not to my liking. I have very sensible friends who are for him.
Vote for the moderate Dems down-ticket. If most people do this that is the safeguard against extremists. If you feel you have to vote for Trump, vote for down-ticket moderate Democrats to rein in extremes on both sides.
2
@Mor
His name is Michael Bloomberg!
1
Please retire the acronym GOP. As Douthat's own essay amply demonstrates, the current party is anything but grand. In addition, it is not even as old as the Democratic Party. Why continue to give this craven, complicitous party free brand publicity, especially when the moniker itself is now, like so much else, a lie?
2
@Mattthew Stroud
Actually I use the term in jest because, as you say, they are anything but grand.
1
Yes, you have to beat him, but he's also a cheater. A cheat on wives, business, and getting elected. And now, he is in charge of the very bodies that are supposed to protect us from cheaters.
If we somehow still have a fair election in 2020, Trump will be gone. And then, I'm sure you and other conservatives will be back to talking about how offensive and over-reaching it will be when a democratic president wears a brown suit. I sure hope the democrats don't fall for that anymore.
If democrats take back control of the 3 branches of government, it should be a day of reckoning for the GOP that starts with criminal probes into the cover up currently taking place before our eyes.
3
Trump is riding an economy that eight years of Obama & Team put in place following the Great Recession of 2008. You don't "turnaround" the USA economy in three short years. Who ever is elected in 2020, they'll have an economic disaster on their hands as a result the 2-trillion-dollar GOP tax boondoggle for the upper 1/10 of 1%. Count on it.
4
If he loses, he will continue thinking of himself as the center of the universe and with Fox News, his partisan base and Republican underlings in both houses of Congress Mr. Trump will make life unbearable for his successor and for the country.
Whether succession happens next January or after a second term we will unfortunately have Trumpism in some shape or form for many years to come and continue debasing and degrading life as we know it. Wish I am wrong.
2
And he must be beaten by a wide margin, with a sounding victory that cannot be disputed. If it's a close call, Trump and his enablers will go for endless recounting and if needed appeal to the courts. That would be Al Gore all over again.
5
As usual, the election results will turn on voter turnout where the GOP traditionally has an edge because they are easily rattled by fear and Trump does a great job of inspiring paranoia in his base. It is from evolution, yet it seems nobody gets it. It is much harder to rattle Democrats to get out to vote, pathetic really. But the mere thought of another 4 years of Trump may be enough to get them off their seats and go to the polls or at least mail in their ballots in progressive, modern states.
1
I’m certain Republicans and Trump have made the majority of voting age people in this country, especially Independents and Dems totally distrustful of voting for virtually any Republican for a long long time regardless of how good a candidate might be. I switched over and voted for Young Bush but quickly regretted that after having voted every election before or since to elect Democrats. I certainly can’t imagine myself ever voting for a Republican again. Ever. Even in my home state of KY where most Democrats that run for office switched to Republican because of the ridiculous notion that the poor folks n KY have of the GOP and that it best represents them. They have seriously hurt their chances in elections all over the country at a time when Demographics are already taking their toll on the GOP. Their hopes for the future are the one silver lining for Democrats most of whom represent politicians who support basic Justice, civility, law And honesty. And I would never trust another Republican based on their support of Trump and his crooked, pathological reign of terror on our country. Ever.
2
Wake up!
Get Ballotpedia's list of all the senators that are facing an election including the year they were first elected and the percentage that they won their latest election by
For example:
Alabama Democratic Party Doug Jones 2017 1.7
Alaska Republican Party Dan Sullivan 2014 2.2
Colorado Republican Party Cory Gardner 2014 1.9
Any republican that won by less than 10% of the votes is endangered. Pick a democratic senator to support or a democratic contender against a republican and send them money every month. Cory Gardner and Dan Sullivan are in trouble there's others.
3
@wanderer That is an excellent suggestion. I'd also add that anyone who feels they can't vote for any particular candidate still needs to vote down-ticket. This is just as important in some ways as the president. Ballotpedia is a great resource.
2
Support Mark Kelly in Arizona.
Support John Hickenlooper in Colorado.
Get rid of Susan Collins in Maine.
Defeat Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.
Beat Tillis in NC.
Elect a Democrat in Tennessee.
Democrats need to pick up 5 seats in the Senate. That’s doable. It will prevent Trump from doing anything more to ruin America.
1
@wanderer
Anchorage orthopedic surgeon Al Gross is running against Sullivan. He has a decent chance of winning !
Give me a break. His first term has been the most absurd in the history of the presidency. He's demeaned the most important executive office in the world, fueled divisions in this country that will never be healed, coddled up to dictators, offended struggling foreign countries, caged immigrants and broken up families, made racist quip after racist quip, and bragged about grabbing women where they should never, ever be grabbed.
The economy is fine but no better than during Clinton and Bush II years. And, remember, it was Obama's decisions that saved this country from full out depression.
I fervently pray and will work towards splitting this country up into two countries, Blue and Red. I hope Red states will agree. The two groups have completely opposing visions of the future. Many Red states tried to leave 150 years ago. Will they now if offered?
1
You left out that Trump won at the perfect time against the perfect candidate- Hillary Clinton. What a disaster she was for my Democratic Party. Now she’s attacking candidates in the party like Gabbard and Sanders. Can’t she and her family just go away? It’s almost like she is Trump’s secret agent.
5
It is reassuring that Mr. Douthat finds Trump’s random incompetence encouraging. But I’ve seen so many others argue that Trump’s incompetence is a chink in the armor only to see Trump win again and the columnist disappear to prepare for next months campaign, I no longer believe that the story is reassuring. But within the past few weeks I have seen a story or part of a story (I don’t remember the source) that says several Citizens United Superfunds pass their money through McConnel’s office and it is to that office that Republican Senators must go to get funding for their next campaign. That is not enough data for me to write as column but it certainly hints that “following the money” could be the basses for a break through story, one that explains the impeachment outcome and also puts some rich Republican whackos into the national conscientiousness. We need some news source to explain the unbelievable support Trump receives to overcome his incompetence. Its not just the ‘working class is unhappy’, someone has to be organizing that unhappiness and that piece of information is completely missing. I beg Mr. Douthat or some of his excellent colleagues to follow the money and make a dent it the mysteries around todays’ public understanding of political thought.
1
"It’s worth remembering, too, that liberalism is not just struggling in America..."
Epic fail.
Liberal ideas like raising the minimum wage, protecting womens rights to control their own bodies, raising taxes on the rich, improving the healthcare situation (somehow - as opposed to Republicans making it worse), passing sane gun safety legislation....the list goes on....have only gained massive traction over the last three years.
The Overton Window has move to the left....a lot.
1
What about the electoral college?
1
Sadly, no, that is not true. Because when he has been beaten and declares the election fake and refuses to leave, like Vladi, what will you say? What will we do? Ask Mitch to do the right thing? If his majority is threatened he will echo Dear Leader Trump, the election was stolen. Ross, face it, it is over and the crowd you left behind, far too late, made sure to kill it.
1
Trump is not smart, he is slick and sly.
Trump is not honorable, he is dishonest and despicable.
Trump is not truth worthy, he lies more times than he can remember the truth.
Trump HAS proven to be all and then some of what millions of voters feared - corrupt and unimpeachable - thus far.
It's not the voter I worry about as much as the members of the Electoral College. Hopefully more members than not can see Trump for what he really is - a person ill suited to lead this country much less be a positive role model and partner for our allies.
1
Yes, and you do not beat him by focusing on identity politics while ignoring real people. And hete is another tip for Democrats: the term "diversity" goes way, way beyond the color of your skin. Real diversity includes our diverse set of values, emotions, and worldviews that have little to do with our skin tone. We are a collection of very diverse people, and to focus only on the outward to define diversity is a bigoted position. We know this to be true, but will the Democratic candidates know this? Vamos a ver.
5
Yes, we just have to beat him. We know that he has already tried to cheat in the upcoming election with his Ukraine scandal. Now, with his (all but final) acquittal in the Senate this week, he will be free and emboldened to continue to try to rig the election in his favor. Alan Dershowitz just said he could as long as he feels it is in the country's best interest! Electoral college rules, gerrymandering, voter suppression... Is it any wonder why Americans have lost faith in fair and free elections? By the looks of Trump's impeachment trial, seems that the Republicans aren't too concerned about the terrible optics of disallowing evidence or witnesses even though 75% of Americans wanted that. What do they know that we don't know? Do they know that the election is in the bag?
2
J.B. Wilkes also offers another idea about how to remove a President, even if the one he removed was great while DJT is absolutely beyond horrific.
On this one, Douthat is right on...and I don't say that much.
1
How can we beat him when he gets help from other countries who are skilled at election rigging? How can you beat him when the Democratic base is prevented from voting by many illegal means?
5
Trump represents a need that desires to be fulfilled, even if it smacks of self-destructive impulses, like the alcoholism that killed his brother or the addiction to money that justifies destroying the environment.
Addicts feel very driven. Power is very addictive leads toward the kind of casual acceptance of corruption that the Senate has just illustrated.
Get rid of Trump? Words for tossing in a salad.
We need to find out what the nature of this disease is and start freeing ourselves from it. Or not. Planet earth and America don't really need humans on it. We're all just illegal aliens from my point of view.
2
@Max Shapiro
The crisis we name "Trump" is one that is rooted in a pathology and expressed, through democracy, as the thing we hate about ourselves, which is our inability to have power over our own corruption.
When people turn their attention toward what can be done to make things better, instead of responding to what "should" be done (obedience as virtue) then maybe this flirtation with our own demise will be over.
1
One thing I'll say for Douthat, he has made his negative opinion of Trump clear from day one, unlike the congressional Republicans, who lick Trump's boots.
4
The fact is, most Americans are intellectually lazy and not civic minded. Not enough Americans care and trump and the entire Republican Party know this. I wish it weren’t so but it is our reality. It’s goi g to get much worse before it gets better.
3
Nonsense. Trump just won the right to continue rigging America's 'elections'.
Even before Trump, elections were already rigged in that voters only get to select from a list of candidates approved by the moneyed elites.
1
You had me until you referred to Boris Johnson as disciplined and competent.
3
@Byron "You had me until you referred to Boris Johnson as disciplined and competent. "Also articulate. Yes he is. But only when he is compared to Trump!
1
If Trump loses in November he will never concede. He will claim the election was rigged and reject the results. Then he will use his Presidential Powers to hide the results and no one will be able to stop him.
By now, is there any lingering doubt that he can, and would do this?
Be prepared......
4
I often disagree--vehemently--with Ross Douthat but today we're in perfect accord.
2
Based on the comments of the liberals on this website President Trump will win easily. The liberals really are clueless about what is important to the average voter. Keep it up liberals. Vote for America--Vote Republican.
2
Enlighten us, o sage of the Northwest. What IS important to voters?
Fear of nonwhite, nonChristian people?
Guns?
Abortion?
Christ back in Xmas?
Money Uber alles?
Gay wedding cakes?
Tax cuts for the rich?
Sink or swim healthcare?
Tariffs that harm farmers and squash manufacturing?
Golf?
1
Democrats don't win without a superhero single-handedly storming the countryside w/super-human intelligence, charm, soaring oratory & charisma who'll do all the work.
Lacking that hero, Democrats inevitably fail.
American politics was made ruthless, mean & brutal by hyper-radicalized haters. You simply can't be as destructive as the post-Gingrich Republican political style without viciously hating an 'enemy'.
Despite Trump & Dobbs & their mantra of 'radical dems' (or 'dimms' as Dobbs likes to say in every tweet, case in point), liberalism just isn't a radicalized set of ideas.
Progressives don't want to dumb down into some hate-filled hot civil war. They want thoughtful, tolerant, caring & you know, Progress.
But that's not the American Way. The USA wants war, they want to bully the world & bend it to our exceptionalist dominion. Peace is unamerican.
Americans constructed their ill-gotten territory on rabid exploitation of a virgin, pristine continent denuded in a few generations. To them, environmentalism is unamerican.
Americans built their wealth on human exploitation, to be humanitarian justice is unamerican.
Americans' national sport is second only to Rome in its violence & brutality. To be sensitive & compassionate is unamerican.
The only way to fix this is the sort of sacrifice of the Civil Rights era, only to have the confederacy rise yet again.
Who has the energy to beat back radical hate built into the psyche of our society?
No country for old liberals.
3
Trump will be beaten. Democrats will come out to vote in record-breaking numbers. The voters have seen who he is for 3-4 years, and only his rabid base will support him - not enough.
Good riddance.
4
The only way to remove Trump is to beat him, but first you have to have a credible candidate. The Democrats have failed in this one critical necessity. Trump may not be pretty, but he does the job the American People want with policies that are held by the majority of Americans. Listen to the comments running here; they have nothing to offer but there hatred and they can't even tell you what it is they hate. Pathetic.
2
It probably doesn't matter at this point. It's likely that we are going to have a government that ignores the laws from now on, whether Trump is there or not. Precedence has been set, and there will be no lawyer or judge who will now say that the president is not king. This is because judges, lawyers and cops do not believe in justice or the rule of law. So, keep Trump for all I care. The country as a whole has decided that freedom is overrated and what we really need is wealthy overlords to protect us from our own stupidity.
For most, that is likely correct.
2
Douthat thinks that trump is "undefeatable save by desperate or underhanded means." I think he means trump is invincible and a dishonest crook, and for once I agree with Douthat.
The only way trump got wherever he is was through means at best dishonest and unfair, and at worst criminal, certainly not through any intelligence or talent, as is painfully obvious.
trump's power comes through his ruthlessness and a peculiar brand of scary lunacy. His mob thinks he tells it like it is when he is just pandering to their own resentments and fears.
The GOP built trump piece by grotesque piece and unleashed him on the country. His stain will last decades but the GOP will be slimed by him forever.
Intelligence and competence may yet prove as appealing as third-rate mud wrestling. Truth and fairness as beguiling as preadolescent sniggering insults. The rule of law revered as the stable floor on which we all build our social lives.
These things are ultimately "undefeatable" or the country really is doomed.
1
With all due respect, the motto "All you have to do is bet him" is not a great deal of help--it is too general. The real problem with the US election process is that money has too great an influence. The GOP will not change this, since they have rich donors, who have profited from the Trump Tax Cut. Which profited the well-to-do and no one else.
Maybe, just maybe, the entry of Bloomberg and his promise to spend lots to eject Trump from the White House may help.
On a level of individuals, I believe that Biden is the only Dem candidate who can take on Trump and make him weep. Maybe in pubic.
2
The Senate non trial and the probable restoration to glory of one of the most corrupt men ever to have risen to public office is de facto a peaceful takeover of the country by Russia. All roads lead to Putin. The dark money, the oligarchs funding huge projects for McConnell, the NRA....... How do people not see this? Or care?
3
over the head repeatedly with a giant Kielbasa!
Woo-hoo!
When they were all dressed in their pant suits, curled into the fetal position, sobbing on the floor, I screamed (in my head) "Get up! Get up and find a better candidate! Now is the time!"
Instead of finding a better candidate, they pulled themselves up, sniveling and muttering "we will impeach you."
Now, instead of a shining star of a candidate we have that bunch that do nothing for me (anyway.) Too much time and effort and emotion was wasted on trying to "get him", when in fact they should have been trying to "beat him."
It will be four more years.
2
So, if Trump wins by a landslide in November, is the whole electorate corrupt and dishonest, or is it that he's the devil we know?
2
@David W.
If Trump wins, Democrats will claim it was a flawed election. If they win, they will claim the people have spoken! Laughable. They won't win.
More pablum from guilt-ridden Republicans who can't face the facts. How do you beat a cheater? And how can we assume that our elections are safe?
1
Democrats have never learned to play dirty. The Republicans would never be in power if they didn't play dirty and have done so for many years. When will Democrats realize that voters want tough people to represent them? The new crop of House Democrats didn't hesitate to be tough during 2018 and they won in a blue wave. We voters want them back and more of them. Why would you vote for those wussy Republican Senators? They only speak when spoken to and are robots. Vote them out!!
4
Eject DJT from offfice by showing up in record numbers at the polls on Election Day!
Go Bernie! Go Dems!
1
The Democrats made a major political mistake by going after Trump since the day he was elected and before he was sworn in and did anything as President. From the day after he was elected the Democrats and their BFFs in the media are on record, somewhere, saying they were going to try to remove Trump from office before his term was completed, impeachment, or tarnish him so badly he would not be re-elected.
The last 3 years have been a nightmare for our country in more ways than one, but not because Trump acted inappropriately but because the Democrats falsely accused him of something, anything, on almost a weekly basses since he took office and tried to block everything without exception that he prosed to do to make America better and safer. The Democrats didn't just falsely accuse him of things they could not prove but they launched loads of investigations that all failed including their latest which was impeaching him without a legitimate impeachable offense.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/donald-trump-2016-impeachment-213817
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/democrats-pave-the-way-to-impeach-donald-trump
2
@NYChap
Exactly THIS! But we'll never get to hear about the hypocrisy of the Democratic party on this site. Trump will likely get re-elected because the presumed moral superiority of the Dems is a fallacy that those of us who are paying attention can see right through.
Can all Democrats and Independents just agree now that the Republican Party of Donald Trump is a breathtakingly corrupt, sycophantic zombie cult of self-interested, reactionary, fascist cultural extremism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, white extremism and racist hatred; bereft of any modicum of human decency, common sense or compassion, vigorously opposed to a free press and hell bent on staying in power seemingly forever while lining their pockets with illicit cash at every possible political opportunity?
Clearly the Republican Party of Donald Trump stands monolithically united behind obscene profits for already wealthy donors, piles of cash for hate-filled re-election campaigns and brazenly partisan party politics before people, and blithely defends the illegal acts of a monumentally unfit President to further the rule of their corrupt oligarchy. Isn’t that what this impeachment process has finally made abundantly clear about the Republican Party of Donald Trump?
How much more corruption, criminality and moral bankruptcy do we need to uncover to declare emphatically that today’s Republicans are simply a dangerously grotesque political malignancy threatening the very health of our democracy and must be removed from elected office at every level of government?
Can’t we all just agree now that that’s what must be done? Can’t we all just work our tails off now to do that?
1
I was thinking instead of celebrating this July 4th we would have a 'protest' in every town square (mine will be 'Pershing Square' in downtown LA) at how our Government has failed us, in particular our Senate in not finding Mr Trump guilty during the Impeachment. The house did the Grand Jury and the Senate does the Trial, BUT this time without any witnesses. OMG.
I will speak to as many people as I can explaining the need (some one can create a hashtag #IwillvoteinNovember) and have a small American flag in my hand for each person who CANNOT be there and agrees with this action. I am sure Mr Trump will have his
counter groups but we cannot allow this to go on. Let us keep this civil, suck it up until November and vote him out. If the NYT would stop mentioning him by name or quoting him, just give us the facts of orders that have been signed by the executive branch, that would help.
1
You guys need a new constitution
5
Given his embrace of winning at all costs (to the country, not to him, thanks GOP), it's a bit of a Catch-22, no?
The assumption is that people are somehow tricked into voting for Trump, when in fact, they just don't like what Democrats are offering.
5
@M
Unlike Trump-Republicans, Democrats have a vast field of candidates with different visions.
It would be a mistake to simply lump them all together for the sake of an argument.
1
There are a few, a happy few, who voted Trump in support of their own selfish interests. They drive Mercedes Benz sedans and play golf at ritzy and restricted country clubs. They have a day to day interest in the gyrations of the stock market. The rest of Trump voters drive pickups, shoot guns, stop caring about children as soon as they’re born, bring casseroles to church, think stock means cattle, always admired Mussolini’s effectiveness with the trains, are scared of anyone different than themselves, and are, indeed, hoodwinked by Trump into voting against their own interests.
1
Unfortunately, closet-skeletons tend to be the undoing of candidates everywhere. Even the most charismatic candidate can be undone by earlier connections, questionable votes, etc. And Trump, the world's most adept exploiter of all things exploitable, will continue to search, through his various henchmen like Giuliani, for dirt on his opponents. To beat this win-at-all-costs monster, the Dems need to have a candidate that is at least furthest from reproach. And if there's something that they should apologize for, or explain their change in thinking about, they must get it out early. They must do everything to undermine Trump being able to formulate an October surprise.
No matter what, Trump will kick away at Joe Biden's son's Burisma connection, and that will be insurmountable. Biden is not charismatic enough to overcome Trump's coming onslaught on Burisma.
So as far as people I believe can beat Trump, well, I'm gonna say that Sanders has a chance, but he will be a poster boy for a battle between capitalists and socialists. And with the money on the capitalist's side, victory will be difficult. Warren has similar problems. Buttigieg is good, but comes off as a bit too polished. However, I don't think he has any achilles heal problem that isn't already known. And a David v. Goliath image (Maybe a sling prop?) works well for him when Trump chest-puffs him on a debate stage. But ultimately, I see either Klobuchar or Bloomberg as having the best chance to send Trump packing.
4
The “great” economy is fueled in part by borrowing, but also by outright theft from future generations. Air, water, natural spaces and even the land itself.
Donald Trump was successful not because he stood for anything, but because he stood for nothing. It would be a world of “anything goes”, where promises could be broken and toxic waste dumped anywhere. It would be a world without responsibility. Good for grifters, but also attractive to the purveyors of false responsibility and their obedient believers.
Unfortunately, there are too many Americans who see this dysfunction as an opportunity.
Against Donald Trump, the responsible members of American society face a difficult challenge. The man himself is nothing. The problem lies in the American culture of irresponsibility that enables him, and which he enables in return.
4
@Global Charm
Reads almost like a post-mortem for an empire in decline. The founders knew trust as the basis of democracy was a bad bet. Combine that with trends of toxic partisanship, indifference, and instantaneous and opaque media, and the future is even less promising than the present.
1
I believe that Trump is exactly who Republicans wanted. They don’t believe in the Constitution or the rule of law. They want to hit all entitlements except those that benefit the rich. They go along with whatever Trump wants including election fraud with another country. It’s not that Republicans are afraid to go against him (this is still America) but that they agree with him and have all along. Stop making excuses for them . Vote Republicans out now.
4
What makes anyone think he will leave office even if he loses?
He could start a war and declare a national emergency.
One precedent Rudy Giuliani himself who did not cede his mayoralty to Bloomberg at the appointed time after 9/11.
Might I add. None other than Bloomberg flouted NYC law and bought change allowing himself a third term.
Don't put that behind us either because Trump will use it to both attack bloomie and and use as an excuse to help himself to a third term to boot. If he's still around.
1
Fox Business News was on at the gym yesterday. The sound was turned off, but the headline at the bottom of the screen in bold letters said: Democrats create Constitutional Crisis.
In other words, in response to the sham impeachment trial that is concluding without documents or witnesses at the Republicans' insistence, we now have Fox Business News badly stating the Democrats are defiling the Constitution when the truth is precisely the opposite.
This unfettered propaganda broadcast in the minds of millions is one reason we are saddled with the worst American who has ever lived as our President.
10
What Ross Douthat's column doesn't take into account is that, I predict, Trump will never concede the election.
This by itself might be a manageable problem. But the true disaster manifests itself when the entire Republican party, from the crowds at his rallies to congressmen and senators, fall in line behind whatever conspiracy theory he's employed to justify the power grab. Douthat has called them craven in this column, and indeed they are. And their cravenness will surely sink to this new low.
It's all over for American democracy. The old rules -- "All you have to do is beat him" -- no longer apply, though of course it's hard for this terrible thought to sink in.
Let 2020 be a year where we loving say goodbye to the beautiful, inspiring democracy we once treasured.
4
My advice to Democrats echos what President Obama said not too long ago, "Don't boo. Vote!".
And he meant that literally but he also implied something larger than that. We can sit back and be twitter- and NY Times- outraged about children in cages, being on the brink of war with any number of countries, tax cuts only for the rich, 15,000+ lies, and the complete disdain for our Constitution and governing principles. But that's just to get the left focused away from winning and to turn off unaffiliated voters. If you haven't been out there registering others to vote and canvassing for your preferred candidates, then go DO something.
The right-leaning comments here should tell you, the Right cares only about winning, and they love winning and making Democrats feel powerless and angry. That's what McConnell is all about. Take that joy away from them and stay focused on winning. Democrats may be liberal and progressive leaning in their ideals. They need to stop being so conservative in their tactics!
2
Time to face reality:
1) Regardless of facts or what should be obvious to even a mentally-challenged individual, Trump maintains very high popularity in flyover country. He can lose the popular vote and still win the election.
2) Except for a Mike Bloomberg or even a Pete Buttigieg, I see no one in the political center who has any sort of dynamics. (Mayor Pete would benefit from running for Congress, Senate or Indiana governor before doing this again.) The Bernie/AOC wing of the party is indeed killing it with the primary voters, but will easily go down in flames before a larger electorate that includes more than just coastal states, big cities and college towns. That is a no-brainer.
3) We cannot credit Obama for the economy now, any more than Obama could blame Bush for economic issues in 2012. Trump does what any President with a good (on paper) economy does, and that’s to take credit for all the good things happening. Trump will of course exaggerate and make things up because that’s what he does. Again, truth matters less than personality and bluster with the Trump followers, and he has successfully sublimated a good 35-40% of the country. The more Democrats stay home (like they did in 2016), the more Trump will walk back in.
4). Do not assume if he loses he will go quietly, or even intend to leave the WH. He’ll use whatever means necessary to reverse the results, or take down the Constitution. His followers are OK with that.
1
So in order to remove the guy who cheats at elections we have to beat him at an election? Are we expected to play fairly in order to demonstrate that we are more honorable or should we try to actually win?
No, we must demonstrate our will through peaceful protests and we must do it now. We must demand sworn testimony before he gets acquitted.
1
The Democratic challengers to Trump had better not be bashful about enlisting the aid of foreign countries and individuals who are sympathetic to the idea of removing Trump — otherwise they’ll never be able to compete in political dirt gathering and fund raising.
3
The move to the radical left is the biggest problem with the Democrat party. This move creates a huge spectrum of ideologies from which potential voters have to choose. This has the tendency to weaken the overall effort and provides little that the voters can sink their teeth into. Any candidate the Democrats choose at this point will not have this spectrum of voters behind it.
1
@SinNombre: The Republicans have it easy. Their voters come with only one issue each.
2
The Democrats need to pour huge resources into several swing states with Wisconsin being the most critical (win that state and the election will be won). These additional States are Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa, Arizona, and North Carolina. The first three tend to lean Democratic while the latter three lean Republican. But, all are winnable by the Democrats.
4
@MVT2216: What is the message that will reach a common denominator.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. The US Federal Government is only a special corporation with specified powers we consent to be governed by because our individual citizenship is one share in it.
And if it were a fair contest, beating him would be easy enough. He does not and never has had the support of the majority of US citizens.
Between the structural advantage that the Electoral College gives Republicans, vote-suppressing laws and actions, unchecked Russian interference, the constant stream of disinformation from the administration, a corrupt GOP that seemingly will stop at nothing to protect itself, AND the truth-suppressing nature of "the right-wing media", the contest is nothing like fair.
I'm not calling the Democrats, or "the left" in general, angels in all these regards by any means, but their faults are tiny by comparison.
All you have to do is beat him? I wish.
842
@Bejay The most truthful comment I've seen here.
34
@Bejay Trump has immense power now.Democrats;please stop fighting and realize who the real danger to America and Democracy is Trump/GOP
33
@Bejay
The right-wing media only has one network, Fox. All the rest of the MSM pimps for the Democrats. So, yes, the contest is anything but fair.
14
In a fair fight he would be toast. In a world of rational, honest debate he would be toast. But gerrymander, voter suppression, the constant pounding of Fox disinformation (acting like Pravda), the cynical manipulation of social media and the internet, and the likely repeat of Russian help to elevate their friend and merchant of distraction ... it is a daunting and the possibility of failing is frightening.
Democrats are not wired for an unfair fight, yet.
797
And may they never be, Gerard! May the democrats ever be beholden to the rule of law!
11
@Gerard: Gerrymandering doesn't apply in a Presidential election. The Electoral College does, unfortunately. But, it does no good to complain about it at this point.
2
@Bonnie Huggins: The law is a tool, not a shrine, with the objective of a mentally-healthy public confident in the future.
I know only a system that lines the pockets of lawyers who have first hand knowledge of the alleged crime(s)s acting as forepersons of juries.
7
If only it were that simple.
Once Trump is acquitted on all charges, there will no longer be any restraints holding him back from taking any action he deems necessary to hold on to the White House. He Controls the Senate and the Judiciary. Getting rid of him may not be that easy,
The Republicans are masters of voter suppression. With the full baking of the president, the party may employ tactics we have never seen before.
The problem with us Democrats is that we are too principled for our own good. As soon as we can get it into our heads that beating Trump and insuring that he can't pick another Supreme Court justice is more important than free tuition, wealth taxes and universal healthcare, we may stand a chance. If Trump manages to win a second term, the progressive liberal dream will die and it could be generations before it can be revived.
Regardless of who the Democrats chose, and I am speaking as a Democrat, that candidate will have to be exceptional and centrist enough to pull in the Independents and moderate Republicans. Right now there are only two candidates who can do that, Biden and Bloomberg. Biden may find himself more deeply mired in Trump's Ukraine joke. Bloomberg, who is eminently qualified for the job, may be the only candidate who can successfully go head to head with Trump and win.
I truly fear for the future of out nation. There is a cancer in Washington that needs to be cut out starting with Trump, McConnell and the rest of the feckless Republicans.
5
Keep the investigations going. Crazy they impeached without even stating that he broke the law withholding funds without regard to motive.
Keep the lawsuits going to release records, including tax returns. The courts need to rule to show he can't just block all records requests.
Keep up the pressure since the stable genius is clearly getting less stable due to his mental illness being unable to handle being questioned and hounded.
Then vote for equal protection and liberty instead of R vs. D. Most people will find they'll prefer a country that delivers to the People (flesh people, not corporate ones) over special interests. You don't have to discard capitalism to embrace free trade, free markets and taxation that doesn't prefer corporations over people. Corporations have no constitutional rights and we need an amendment that makes that clear, but does give them the rights we agree they should have, like the right to a trial by jury, to be secure from warrantless searches, to have access to federal courts, and that's about it.
4
One peculiarity in the mix with regard to “beating Trump” - a very encouraging article, by the way Ross, thanks! - is that that no one seems to be talking about how to counter the demagogic identity politics of Trump. The oddity, psychologically, is that the more you attack Trump, the more his supporters glom onto him. For them, his presidency is their hedge against existential annihilation. How do you counter that?
9
Numerically. Yes, any attack on Trump and Trumpism cements his followers ever more tightly to him. But it doesn’t gain him any votes, and probably stimulates the opposition. So, the answer is getting out the vote and unity behind whoever becomes the Democratic nominee, even if she or he is not your favorite.
We now have about the worst President imaginable, so we don’t need the next one to be perfect, only not nearly as bad, to be an improvement. Which throws it open to almost anybody.
3
Taking a majority of both house and senate will do, actually. Thus constrained he will implode mightily.
Leave a tree, take the forest....
13
Democrats have not yet learned the hard lessons that Enlightenment liberalism and post-modernism have failed and turned in on themselves. Ken Wilber's observations in "Trump in a post truth world" explore the extent of the failure and the growing rejection of those value systems, here: tinyurl.com/y2owb7x9. Leading with those values will result in another defeat at the polls, and yet not one of the candidates has broken away from them. Trump was not an anomaly, but rather a warning shot across the nation's bow. Half the country already thinks that the republic has failed them, and until Democrats come up with something better than universal healthcare, free college and a wealth tax to pay for it, they will not secure a majority coalition. Evolution has selected the old value system for extinction. Better come up with a new one soon or we'll find ourselves with 4 more years of Trump.
2
I no longer believe in evolution - I always thought its claims were spurious. I think humanity has been going backwards for a long, long time.
3
Yes, you have to beat him. And you have to beat him solidly to get over the Electoral College hump. But Trump is a minority President--he lost the popular vote by almost 3 million voters. His base is only about 35% of the electorate, and that's not near enough for him to win. If the Democrats can pull together under a presidential candidate with broad support in the center, they can easily win by a large margin.
Trump also actually lost the Senate impeachment trial: He was not exonerated as the vote for more witnesses made clear. Although the corrupt Senate GOP led by McConnell abdicated its constitutional responsibility to conduct a fair hearing, hear key eye-witness testimony, and subpoena and evaluate relevant documentary evidence, a sizeable number of Senate GOP members (emulating Lamar Alexander) publicly found Trump guilty of wrongdoing (inappropriate conduct) with respect to the Ukraine matter. Trump can continue to call the impeachment hearings a "hoax" because he's a corrupt, inveterate liar, but even the highly partisan Senate GOP members recognize that it was not a "hoax." (Just as the Mueller investigation was not a hoax.)
So Trump has less to run on now than in the 2016 election. And if our intelligence and law enforcement agencies can keep the 2020 elections clean, the American people can throw Trump out of office kicking and screaming and we can get our democracy back.
9
@Bert What’s the price of freedom under a functional democracy?
1
@Bert
By your sanctimony, you seem to think all of those voters are better off. I would disagree with you, and indeed, I would also disagree that it’s in any way fair that a handful of voters in states with low population have the same seats in the senate compared to densely populated ones. That means a minority ends up dictating to the majority: where I come from, we call that totalitarianism. And your country used to be the first to stand up and decry that, but you have zero, repeat ZERO, moral credibility to do that anymore. And you have no idea what a mess that’s going to lead to.
1
Beating Trump is hard when the electoral college, Republican voter suppression, and Trump's enlistment of foreign meddling are factored in. It is fine to say "just beat him" but when a President cheats, it is a whole different story.
5
@FilmMD: Not to mention the high potential expenses of getting mired with the core extortion racket of Trumpism, lawyers practicing in the style of Roy Cohn in courts that would boggle Charles Dickens and Franz Kafka together.
2
You mean illegal voter repression, right?
@FilmMD really? So, thousands of smart Democrats, suddenly changed their vote from Hillary to Donald because they detected a pro-Trump ad on FB out of the corner of their eye? Hard to fathom if Donald was as deplorable as they say.
1
I hope and pray that we can put aside our disappointment if our candidate does not get the nomination. No more “righteous” third-party votes.
7
Great column, Russ. I'm an old woman and I've been interested in politics since my first vote, in the 1950s.
At that age, I didn't really know what I was doing when I endorsed a candidate with my vote, or how important the individual's vote
can be. I didn't understand the difference in the philosophies of the Democrats vs the Republicans. My father told me that the most important factor to consider in electing a leader is whether or not that man (because it was basically all male then), is a good person, a moral person because that person would make the right and the good decisions.
My father served in WWII, in Northern Africa, in Sicily, into Italy and beyond. He was a student of history. I cannot imagine what he would say about our country today, but I'm happy that he and my mother have gone to their rewards so they don't have to see it.
I was extremely disappointed in Robert Mueller's milquetoast "2 years in the making"report and Lisa Murkowski is an enormous disappointment. A woman should know better than to endorse a man of no good reputation. The sad part is that the senator does know better and yet she went along.
11
You had me until "improving national conditions." Really? It speaks of serious elitism if the only yardstick used to measure Trump is the stock market and adding some menial labor jobs. Any president can produce the former, by goosing the tax code, which Trump had no problem doing. By any measure, national conditions are not improving. We are more divided, less equitable, more prone to violence, destroying the planet faster, worse off when measuring almost every aspect of society that I had to laugh and stop reading right then and there.
8
Beating him this time around will require that not every mainstream media outlet (I’m looking at you, network news) give him millions of dollars worth of free coverage every time he opens his mouth or taps out a distracting tweet.
12
@Deborah Howe: Word of mouth is still the best advertising. This place is worth paying to read, and one can write too. Please pass the word.
1
Yes, the excessive NY Times coverage of Trump the first time around helped him win the election.
2
Liberalism is doing just fine in Western Europe. Have you ever been to Scandinavia, Holland, Canada or anywhere outside of the USA?
11
@tom: Liberals liberate, conservatives conserve, and revanchists promise to restore utopia that never were. Liberals and conservatives must ally to defend against revanchism at this critical moment of history, or we are both lost.
2
Because running a country with 330,000,000 people is just like running one with 8,000,000?
1
Oh they are having their share of problems. Besides, I’d never want to live in an over-regulated State.
Trump is the symptom but not the disease. The Democratic party continues to mis-diagnose the disease and applies the wrong medicine, making the patient sicker (more symptoms and side effects). Political correctness, identity politics, open borders, the evil of being a white and straight male, the backwardness of religious people, the moral superiority of college educated people (especially Ivy League schools), the evil rich (even though our leaders themselves are rich), abortion on demand, are not the right medicine or treatment for today's US society.
4
The disease is that we have no affordable healthcare, an unfair tax system, and a rigged economy for the rich, and plenty of the Democratic candidates seem to be addressing those issues.
6
@Stephanie Wood Those are symptoms. " A fool stares at the finger that points to the sky".
1
The Democrat National Committee just changed the rules that were in place from the beginning, that forced all the minority candidates off the debate stage, to make room for an old white billionaire who didn’t play by the same rules.
Is this how you intend to beat Trump?
They are also conspiring (see Politico) to keep Sanders from getting the nomination - again.
Oh the optics!
6
@Free Markets "Old white billionaire". Again with the identity politics of shaming people based solely on their skin color, or age, or financial position. Shall we randomly pick someone off the street who is black, younger, and poor just to punch all the SJW's merit badges?
2
Excellent and I agree.
I also think it wise to point out the potent cocktail he serves. He plays on anxiety and self-pity (strong unconscious forces).
“You have every right to feel anxious! - Furthermore your present circumstances are not your fault! Only I understand you and can save you! From:
These OTHER people (elites, libs, people of a different skin tone, etc)
Choose your scapegoat...
2
Even if he is beaten, he will not leave.
3
One start to the road to beating Trump would be to get a grip. You won't beat Trump with Sanders, or Biden, or Warren, or, heaven forbid, Bloomberg. Just nominate Amy Klobachar -- a real return to normal (as opposed to senility), a real democrat (as opposed to the admitted socialist), and a real politician (as the person who hides behind innumerable plans).
2
How is my blue vote in a blue state going to help one iota? It’s like tossing a paper airplane into a gale.
8
Hey, gang! What if we get some money together, buy a house or two in each contested or bright red precinct, all register to vote at that address, and then vote by mail, moving the red states out of the dark ages but barely making a dent in the blue states’ don’t count anyway voting population? Remember, CA has about 40 million people (but we don’t make a difference) while a state like Montana has about 900,000 people, and they count both in elections and especially in the upcoming Senate vote on removal.
By and large, the key places to overcome the Trump advantage have what we (in blue places like CA, MA, NY, HI, etc.) would call very cheap real estate. You can probably get a whole house in a forsaken rustbelt berg like Youngstown for what a bathroom would cost in LA.
2
Sorry, Ross Douthat. "Just beat him" is easier said than done.
Don't forget. We're dealing with a world-class cheater and schemer who once sat at the knee of the nefarious Roy Cohn.
Add to that the fact that Trump has successfully hoodwinked a minority of the American electorate into thinking that they are more patriotic than other Americans by voting for him, and even more alarming, he has a strangle-hold on Mitch McConnell and congressional Republicans.
And don't forget the Electoral College, Citizens United, the fact that Democrats are too busy fighting amongst themselves to matter and of course, the RUSSIANS!
Besides, you saw how that impeachment trial went, didn't you?
The Supreme Court can't even be bothered to do anything other than sit and watch while this administration dismantles the U.S Constitution.
"All you have to do is beat him."
Fine. I agree.
But it's easier said than done.
5
But he is cheating using the Russians to do their dirty work. The point Russ is that this is not going to be a fair election. Naive to pretend it is
4
Can he be beaten like the Joe Pesci character in the movie casino? Just beat him.
Nonsense. You don't have to beat Trump. You have to beat the people who voted for him. We can debate how or if Trump is Hitler. But it is clear that the people who voted for him are the same people who voted for Hitler. They are scared angry resentful people who think they have been wronged more than anyone else, and are happy to scapegoat those who are most vulnerable. They voted for a man who introduced his campaign by saying that Mexicans are rapists, and were delighted by his performance of hatred.
Trump's defeat will be followed by scores of equally talented charlatans in the GOP who are ready to take Trump's placel. Justifying their perchance for cruelty and discrimination, the GOP base has embraced a sense that they are perpetually humiliated, and so Americans of sane perspective have found that the slightest criticism of this fascist mob just reinforces their state of grievance.
Sadly, rational conversation has failed. Trying to understand their plight has just become a way to excuse and explain away their cruelty and hatred. We just have keep hitting harder. Cruelty appears to be the only message that cruel people understand. And yes, people who voted for a man who introduced his campaign by saying that Mexicans are rapists, no matter what their grievance, are cruel people.
10
Trump was only able to game an already corrupt and unfair election system that denies the popular vote in favor of the political descendants of slave owners.
1
An absolutely essential part of Donald Trump’s coalition is the racist racist, white supremacist contingent—a group he never criticizes much less disavows because he depends on their support. If you’re the kind of person who willingly associates with the white power mob, anti-American militias, synagogue shooters, Wal-Mart massacrers, Qanon, Alex Jones, etc., then by all means vote for Donald Trump, because that’s where you belong.
5
All the Democratic nominee needs to do is keep pushing Trump’s buttons, exposing his craziness. Laugh at his fake friendships with oligarchs. Keep banging on his taxes, his fake university, fake foundation, how he turns on everyone he hires, his nepotism, and his embarrassing hairdo. His lousy deal making, tax cut that gave away billions while average Americans didn’t get enough to buy chewing gum.
But if the Democrats keep banging away on immigration, Ukraine, etc, Trump will eagerly pose like a wrestling champ clutching a fake trophy, while his “base” scorns the “hurry up and wait” policies that Democrats are so fond of.
1
Translation:
All the Democrats have to do to stop the Crossfire Hurricane investigations and likely indictments of Obama era bureaucrats is to defeat President Trump.
1
Spot on.
Republicans are not interested in morality, they are only interested in more money for themselves and their rich friends.
And if that means installing a dictator, they will hail dear leader Trump over the Constitution.
5
Beating Trump won't matter when he, with full Republican support, then declares the election invalid.
Anyone who thinks they won't go there is a blind fool,
5
He pulls a Russian oligarch.
You pull a Chinese Super PAC.
And that’s how ya get Trumpone.
2
What Douthat, the Times and it's readers continually miss is that Trump is actually smarter than they are. Way smarter. And he has a goal in mind - just watch Steve Bannon's explanations of the Trump agenda combined with current events and movement forward. What you don't get is that the radical, game changing ideas of the think tanks, academia, the political and business establishment have not worked as promised and Trump is the first leader since Reagan who is giving VOTERS a choice.
Those voters are rejecting globalism, one worldism, multinationalism, and casting a vote - in our DEMOCRACY - for an alternative. And while Trump is imperfect in accordance with the views of many, he happens to be utterly perfect for the job he's doing.
I laugh at your obtuseness, in decrying Trump. You say he lies; have you ever listened to Joe Biden? Do you ever read this (the Times) newspaper? You say he's a narcissist; do you ever look in the mirror? (How could you ever top Mayor Pete, a 37 year old aspirant to the Presidency, when it comes to narcissism?)
The most laughable claim is your constant diatribe that Trump is stupid. Given how often he wins, that would make the Establishment and this paper, even more stupid... Which is my point, you just don't understand that we don't want you or your ideas in charge of the nation anymore. We gave you a chance and you failed miserably. You're the real reason we have President Trump. God Bless You.
3
@Arthur Taylor Do you really think you are voiceless? The most vulnerable people never took your voice away as you claim. The most powerful did, but the poor, the disabled, and other minorities are convenient scapegoats for you. Will you still blame these people when he guts your Social Security?
1
@KS No, I don’t think we’re voiceless and nowhere did I claim the most vulnerable took my voice away. Nor do I believe Trump is going to gut social security.
1
All this crying about a “fair” election ... you lost faith and square. Russia didn’t pull levers. Memes didn’t fill in ballots.
You Democrats lost because you supported people looting and rioting, and kept quiet when people were assassinating police officers. You’re knee deep in your own racist ideology and communist party economics. You oppose freedom of speech, conscience and faith. You’re anti-vax and pro-thought police. You use the courts to seize what you can’t do in legislatures. Judges aren’t supposed to make the law. They enforce it, not write it - at least before you lost your minds.
You got the electoral loss in 2016 that you deserved, against the least qualified candidate in 100 years. Keep it up. Let’s do it again. It was fun for four years. Make it eight. Go ahead.
3
"To eject the president, you need to beat him."
You also have to beat his enablers, i.e., the entire cult lickspittles holding office at every level: federal, state, local.
3
The other path less talked about is to just win the dang Senate. With control off House and Senate, a second term of Trump becomes lame duck from day one. Legislate away idiotic Executive Orders. Heck, impeach him again. For fun.
6
You can’t get blood from a turnip. Ditto electing Democratic Senators from just about any red states.
Ah, yes: "beat" him. You certainly aren't referring to the Democrat-won Popular Vote!
So you must mean, beat the Russian bots?! Beat the Russian/Wikileaks hacks?! Beat the Nat. Enq. & the Murdoch Faux Noise & the Limb?! And the illegally paid prostitutes?! And the lopsided Electoral College?!
Yup. We've got this.
5
Russian-Wikileaks ... yeah, don’tchya just hate when people learn what your party is really doing behind closed doors?
" At the risk of appearing to talk nonsense I tell you that the National Socialist movement will go on for 1,000 years! ... Don't forget how people laughed at me 15 years ago when I declared that one day I would govern Germany. They laugh now, just as foolishly, when I declare that I shall remain in power!
— Adolf Hitler to a British correspondent in Berlin, June 1934
5
You're right- he is no Julius Caesar. He is CALIGULA! And when he selects a horse for Secretary of State the Senate rubber stamps it.
If the GOP is to be other than PoT (party of HIM), to reconstitute after HIM, then its stalwarts must make sure HE is gone in Nov.
The message for you all to push this time around, with an eye to the future, is (I wish there were ital here) "stay home".
Do not ask for any GOPs to vote Dem. Hopeless move.
But, those with a bull horn can do more... by making sure the Dem candidate is one who can win. By saying stuff like Klobachur is boring (and gone, under 15% in IA, anyway). Pete? No experience and Dukakis all over.
Warren? Disqualified herself. Only in part by using the gender torpedo to try to sink the big lifeboat of "we are all in this together", only in part because she had that breathtaking ambush ploy with the hot mike on stage- everyone sees the cynical calculation-, but because she can no longer be trusted in the Oval with keeping conversations/negotiations in confidence. Exposing for political points...
Up for that?
Beating the Dems at Their Own Game
In the memory bank, the Trumpster’s impeached,
All farcical turns, no conviction is reached,
Speeches will sputter, gutter out with a vote,
Good deal for the Trumpster, (Pelosi what choked);
He’ll claim acquittal, a triumph for him
Beating the Dems for an election he'll win.
1
@heyomania Leave the poetry to Shakespeare.
1
Oh yes, gladly beat him, with an ugly stick!!!!
1
There are too many comments shedding doubts about the fairness of elections. Free elections is one of the fundamental Democratic institutions and weakening this institution is dangerous. If we convince the American people that the elections are rigged, we have something else coming. Going after the electoral college thinking this would solve the problem is ridiculous. We cannot predict the outcome after fundamentally changing the rules of the game, and we may end up in a worse place. Gerrymandering is probably the one issue that raises eyebrows on one end and perhaps voter ID on the other end.
2
"...a difficult re-election?" I don't think so. I think his re-election has been a sure bet for some time, which is why the democrats haven't stopped going after him. If his re-election was going to be difficult they would have waited it out.
2
Nice try, but no. They impeached him because they had evidence he committed a crime that if allowed to go unpunished might have affected the 2020 election. Democrats were/are worried that Trump will cheat in 2020 and this would at least bring it all out in the open so voters knew what was going on. Or at least that was the way it was supposed to work, before the Senate decided documents and witnesses don’t matter.
4
Well, I appreciate your encouragement, although I wonder what you mean by "improving national conditions."
People keep saying this, but none of the republican candidates could. Nothing quite worked. Clinton actually earned MORE votes and contrary to popular wisdom, she lost a few key states like Pennsylvania/Florida--that she actually showed up in. I'm not sure that going to Wisconsin instead of Florida during the Pulse Club mass shooting (when she was supposed to go) would have won her Wisconsin.
And she did have Russia, and a congress that refused to act. She did have Comey. She did have Bernie Bros and Jill Stein voters. There always seems to be something that prevents him from accountability. And she had Never Trumpers who did not vote for her.
As people will again pretend there is not an existential threat to the republic.
5
To realize "all you have to do is beat him" it
is incumbent that swing and independent voters of all shades
do not vote for him even though their own
economic interests have modestly improved thanks
to their portfolios of investment or the net decreases in
their taxes.
The same can be said about the trumpican
incumbents. They too must feel the indignation
of those outside the cult and too sickened by what they've
witnessed.
Unfortunately the author does not address how to
accomplish this. It will surely require many voters
to swallow the ideological impurity of the
candidates opposing both trump and their trumpican
representative/senator.
But this November is not an election to insist upon ideology to determine how one votes. What we need do is first purge ourselves of this malignant force.
Only then can we go back to
the usual business of trying to figure out how to find consensus around reasonable compromises in order to help address and solve as many of our problems as possible.
If we don't actually do this in November, things are going
to get much worse once the sugar high of the 2017 tax cut
dissipates, and all the suicidal delusions underlying
our current responses to climate change confront what
will be a mere fraction of what daily reality will be like for
our children and grandchildren.
2
Don’t vote against Trump
Vote for your grandchildren!
1
@Pottree
Grandkids don't let granddads vote for trump.
1
Yep. Despite evidence showing his willingness to used foreign governments to help him win, and his minion McConnell blocking any attempts to prevent Russian (or other) interference in the election, we should use elections alone to
remove Trump.
As Dershowitz said- If the President thinks its in the national interest to be reelected, anything he does to ensure that is
"national policy", and justified (essentially a paraphrasing of Lenin and Nixon).
Meanwhile, the GOP proceeds with voter roll purges, voter ID and no one knows until election day if Dem areas are devoid of sufficient voting machines, or if some polling places will be mysteriously closed.
If Trump is reelected under suspicious circumstances, particularly through the electoral college, we may be heading to a point where the people seek extra-legal ways to remove him.
4
The only way to remove Trump is to beat him. The only way to beat him is to pick a Democrat who can win and to have those whose candidate lost vote for the one who won the nomination. Biden and Sanders/Warren supporters MUST realize that if their candidate does not get the nomination and they stay home out of anger, Trump WILL win.
5
Trump disrespects the Constitution and the people of the US. When a Congressman called out “liar” during Pres Obama’s state of the union speech we were “shocked”. (I recall the look of horror on Ms Pelosi’s face and the sound that arose from the audience.) Perhaps it is time to demonstrate our feelings about Trump. It wouldn’t involve an audible; silent behaviors are sometimes more effective. Suppose the listeners at the state of the union rose to their feet AND TURNED THEIR BACKS.
7
Trump would shoot them in the back.
3
Excellent column. This is exactly what I tell my liberal friends. Last night I was bombarded by them with all the reasons why Trump cheated his way through the impeachment and should have been found guilty. And when pressed on the facts like of course they heard witnesses at the House (everyone believe zero witnesses had been heard) or of course if they heard from Mr Bolton they would need to hear from Mr Biden each one of them just fell back to even he’s no criminal, he’s just not Presidential. Well one does not get impeached for not being your own individual definition of presidential; they just (maybe) lose a vote. Mr Douthat nails that point. Go to the polls and god speed.
2
He obstructed justice right out in the open. Since when does a subpoena not have to be obeyed? None of the rest of us could get away with that.
4
Trump has done so many good things for America that more people will vote for him this election than last election. Landslide
1
Name any two.
2
The message by the Dems needs to be get out and vote. Not who is running against Trump.
3
When was America "Great" in Trump's mind? When it was the last nation still standing after the last world war.
3
Actually, no. It was when the white man was in charge, women were chained to the bed, the black “boy” was shining his shoes and everyone without exception was wishing Merry Christmas and not the detestable Happy Holidays.
3
BTW, that was before the president himself could stand. So, you can see his support is mainly in the 80 and over set, and among younger voters who believe Leave It to Beaver was a documentary.
And those who don’t really,care because they’re busy packing for their Rapture.
1
You just have to beat him is easier said then done when a huge chunk of the country feels exactly the opposite and the system is set to "ties go to republicans".
This will play out eventually to a republican minority (it seems) as the days of USA resource control and an Ozzie and Harriet vision of Americana eventually disappear completely but Democrats better mentally prepare for another 4 years of this guy.
Well, Ross, Democrats will be working mightily to beat him. I hope that you will develop and share a plan to persuade and get out the vote of your conservative colleagues and readers. We're all in this together.
4
"You have to beat him." This sounds like a heavyweight fight. Will it be Corbett vs Sullivan again, i.e., rules and training vs brawling? Whatever it is, the victory has to be obvious. You shouldn't get the crown by winning on points.
1
Except this is missing the most salient point. trump understands his base and he unifies his base with "gifts" to each element, some tangible, some only hortatory. The Democrats may be as disunited as they could possibly be with feckless arguments about unrealistic policies taking the place of convincing voters why trump should be defeated. The republicans in the House and Senate understand this and know that if they hang together they won't be the ones to hang alone.
I think we all know we have to beat Trump. A couple things come to mind.
1). Democrat’s always try to play fair and play nice. That is what makes them democratic! To beat trump, Democrats will have to find a way to get down in the dirt with the republicans. I, for one, feel ready to do that, but does that mean we have to cheAt like trump?
2). I pretty much expect that trump’s last scruple is gone now that the impeachment failed. Who’s to say that he will not start a war with some country and postpone the election, permanently. Or say he does lose the election. He is still president until January. I could see him just refusing to leave, or asking Barr to change a law so he can stay. Dershowitz has pretty much laid out that groundwork for him. He could arrest journalists, arrest the Democratic winner and put him/her in jail on trumped up charges. With the current Republican Party and William Barr as attorney general, there would be little or no recourse.
So, Ross, I think you are still being naive when you say Dems just have to win. There are lots of things that could happen even if they do.
3
It's hard to defeat a cheater when 90% of one political party and his entire base cheer as he cheats and believe themselves that doing anything one has to to win is perfectly okay.
2
Doubtful. Even if he's legitimately beaten (unlikely - for the same nefarious reasons as in 2016)-> he'll claim 'fake news', or, 'voter fraud', and not leave. The GOP will support that fully. And no, neither the military, nor Secret Service will remove him. It might drag on in the courts for years and years .. while he remains in office. Rinse and Repeat for 2024, 2028.
2
One of the few times I can agree with Douthat.
You have to beat him. That will clearly be an effort. He will cheat, and it will be a messy election.
And you have to beat the Republicans as well, as many as you can.
I'd like to hear what Douthat thinks about that.
1
You mean that Democrats have to best Trump in the electoral college. We already beat him by nearly 3 million popular votes in 2016. And we will beat him by even more electoral votes in 2020. It all comes down to beating Trump in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania where the Trump cult thrives despite the fact that Trump’s economic and healthcare policies are destined to destroy these very deluded voters.
5
Those against Trump must unite to work against him and to register voters and get out the vote. All the Democratic candidates must promise to support the eventual nominee. All those who gave to any Democratic candidate should give to the eventual nominee if they can.
United we win, Divided we fall.
Blue Blue Blue. Let's get a really popular rock/hiphop/band to do a special song for the Democratic nominee and everybody play it all the time. Play it on your phone on the subway!!
Wear BLUE every day. Suggestions solicited for how to publicly support our Democratic nominee.
3
"if his rivals had recognized the threat earlier, campaigned against him consistently, strategized with one another more effectively"
That overlooks a key failing in the Republican Party of 2016: They were ALL horrible candidates.
The best of the bad lot from the Party point of view was the presumptive front running for the first year of campaigning, who had the huge war chest and all the contracts: Bush III.
After the discredited disaster of Dubya, their "best" candidate was his even less charismatic brother, who as Governor of Florida had cheated in the 2000 Election to get Dubya elected.
Other than that, the one candidate who stood up longest against Trump was the most hated man in the Senate, whom I consider Satan in politics, Ted Cruz. That was their final choice, their last alternative.
Look at that hot mess, and see that the failure to come together against Trump was the least of their problems.
4
Well Ross, how are you voting?
Like your colleague Bret Stephens, who regards Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as dangers to the nation, no matter that neither is proposing anything like France, Germany or Denmark -- those anti-capitalist dungeons, where everyone's miserable, quite unlike the paradise we have here?
Or will you accept that your life-long promotion of the Republican party has had disastrous consequences for the nation, and that it's time to vote against the beloved party?
2
Again, the legacy media is refusing to accept that everything has changed in American politics. Editors and columnists persist in purveying the fantasy that the country remains under-girded by democracy and fairness. This naive ethos permits readers to cleave to the pretty fiction that they still have agency. They do not.
Donald Trump will not lose the 2020 election. This assertion has nothing to do with the intention of American voters. Trump will steal the election. He will cheat. I could not be more serious. Trump has learned that he is entirely above the law. The Mueller Inquiry proved he cannot be indicted, and Bill Barr is his reliable lackey. The sham Senate trial has taught him that he cannot be removed via impeachment.
America, including the genuine media, must come to grips with the facts. Trump is untouchable and he knows it. He will cheat with abandon. He will encourage foreign interference. He will suppress votes. He will flood airways and phones with fake news, and with bogus voting information. He will intimidate likely democratic voters at polling stations. He will rig voting machines. He will do these things with the knowledge that even if he gets caught doing some of it, he cannot be removed from office for it. There will be lawsuits. Trump has vast experience with drawing out court cases, and meanwhile he continues to appoint federal judges at record pace.
America entered a new phase in its history the day Senators let Trump off. The age of Trump.
4
Coulda’, woulda’, shoulda’ - the Democrats have squandered every opportunity that has been presented to them, and there have been quite a few. Either they are spectacularly inept or Trump isn’t as bad as they say he his. I strongly suspect the former and this leaves me with little hope for the 2020 election. I mean, look at the choices: a superannuated retiree, mix and match bolsheviks, a couple of politically homeless billionaires and a gaggle of wannabes. On the other hand, Trump may also be rewarded (fairly or unfairly, it doesn’t matter) for a robust economy that features full employment and improving trade relations with the rest of the world. I think all that’s left is the over/under on electoral votes.
2
The impeachment makes it harder to beat him, which is one of the reasons it was such a mistake. It was like taunting a junkyard dog. Since it wasn't going to succeed, it was entirely pointless. Left on his own, with one year left, the chances that the President would self-destruct were reasonably good. Instead, all the Democrats have done is to make him and supporters even angrier, and determined to administer an electoral beating in November similar to what the UK Labor Party experienced last December.
1
The famous Roman historian Tacitus who wrote on the perfidy of the early emperors most probably would be chucking if he were alive today to see history again repeating itself centuries on when viewing the the now great American ‘experiment’ . An experiment that may have the potential to reframe the framer’s intentions.
Between an obsequious and sycophantic Senate and a chaotic, arrogant and unprincipled Trump Principiate, the country will need to reckon this period with its future since what has occurred at the highest levels of government will have great import for its function in US democracy. Trump apparently has suffused the presidency with new more pernicious actions where Congressional ambition looks now to the President for advancement and that presidential habit will be picked up by those who report to him. It is a devotion to autocracy not to the American ‘common good’.
This is a perverse emperor who now looks acquitted for ‘high crimes and misedemeanors’. It is now up to the nation now after a Senate cowed to their benefactor to unseat a President who sits in the Oval Office only for himself.
Tacitus writing away from the ‘bad days’ he wrote on:
‘ It is the rare fortune of these days that a man may think what he likes and say what he thinks’.
Histories
Point to ponder for Republicans. They are shaking hands with the devil because they’ve already have seemed to lost their tongues and mouths. The emperor has already taken it from them.
1
"All you have to do is beat him."
Yet, the Democrats are on the cusp of losing it because they let a far left wing (by the standards of the US electorate) politician repeatedly join the party conveniently only to renounce his membership as soon after losing as possible and compete to run under its banner. The margin of the party then promotes this ridiculous caricature of a politician to near the front of the pack.
The Democratic party should, at least, only allow candidates on their stage in Presidential elections who have been registered members of the party for the past five years.
If Sanders wants to sit in the oval office, let him run in the primaries for the Socialist Party of the United States of America and then stand in the General Election against whoever the Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, etc. put up.
2
The only way to beat Trump is through the democratic process? Of course. Why are Democrats so afraid of democracy? Do they think the deplorables will outnumber them?
Trump didn't cheat in 2016 and won't need to cheat in 2020. If anyone cheated it was Clinton - who's campaign hired a foreign national to obtain dirt on Trump from Russian (likely government) sources.
1
Mr. Douthat:
So, you are leaving outrage to your liberal friends. Doesn't that tell us everything we need to know about you and you're conservative friends? Isn't that what Mitch McConnell and the Republicans did in the impeachment trial? I'm afraid you need to do better than this.
Stop telling the Democrats what they need to do. Tell your conservative friends. Convince them. You have nine months
to use your column to advocate for their outrage, if not yours.
2
the bigger issue, in order to "cure " Trump GOP lackeys, is removing Mitch McConnell and the likes, who are using Trump ignorance to facilitate their own agenda, even though their "strategy"brings disaster to America's Constitution, justice, law and order. it is mind-boggling: without a strong and just country, WHO are YOU ? with a KING-like president, who can do "anything he wants", as Trump claimed, is it still an "honor" to be American ???
2
After thirty years of rigging, gerrymandering, voter fraud, and most importantly, highly effective propaganda from the extreme right has left the country damaged beyond repair. That a country would come to hate education and the environment, want children with pre-existing conditions to never have health care, and desire a justice system run by molesting drunks because they've read the gospels - and is sanguine about children at the border in cages - is a country that is too far gone. A democracy elects whom we want: Trump is whom we want. We want him more now than we did in 2016 - where there was an alternative. Now there is no alternative.
So, Trump is Caesar, he is colossus. Republicans have won, and democrats have lost beyond hope and repair. Every single thing said by every single democratic candidate is a losing issue. They say they will make everything free and tax the rich; no one except the far left wants that. Worse yet, they are little lambs speaking meekly about bipartisanship to a pack of republican hyenas - i.e., laughably out of touch.
I.e., if Trump is Goliath, there is no David in sight. If democrat David shows sign of emerging, it is the divided left that will eat her or him alive, and refuse to vote.
Mr. Douthat,
What is so unbelievably tragic about all of this is not that this miserable misfit can't be beaten; it is that he ever "won" in the first place.
If a man like Trump can be president of the greatest democracy, the greatest country on earth, then something is terribly wrong with your institutions and your elected representatives.
BVB
1
Since Clinton lost his license to practice law after the House voted to impeach him, shouldn’t Trump lose his LICENSE TO STEAL?
2
Oh, yes, all you have to do is beat "him." What you mean is: all you have to do is beat cravenness, expediency, self-interest, and all the worst tendencies we humans have in us. I sigh and hope for the best, but expect the worst. Rarely am I disappointed by folks as a result.
1
Just beat him - tells only half the story. Getting him to actually leave may be even more difficult. How does this work? Who enters the White House to physically remove him? How does this work when the loss will be disqualified by claims of rigged election? When Rubio and his loser group of Republicans will fall into line.
The trump era will not end well.
Someday we will all look back at the US Senate, ready to vote to exonerate, as the first shots fired in the second violent civil war.
2
I often wonder what the Republican Party will be like after the cult of Trump has collapsed -- which it hopefully will in nine months.
I envision his congressional lackeys wandering as zombies in the Dresden-like smoldering embers, almost unrecognizable from blood-and-dirt-smeared faces, clothes ripped and torn.
Will they, at that point, wake as if from a hypnotic state, and realize the destruction that they have wrought? Or will they turn on each other for whatever scraps of food they can still find?
4
In a comment on another article, someone quoted McConnell himself in Kentucky speeches as saying what this column starts off with, that the Democrats are fools to think the Republicans will ever play fair or even have that idea anywhere in their minds. That comment goes on to remember McConnell saying that the only value to the Democrats' dogged sincerity is that it gives you something of theirs to pretend to engage with as you take them down. So yes the Republicans are Trump's perfect party and McConnell his perfect court jester. But not all bullies back off when their bluff is called. And what if sincerity is all we've got?
1
Mr. Douthat, I don't know if you ever played sports. I did. For many years. There is always a way to beat a team or opponent (name any sport) when you are outmatched. You play dirty. You bribe the refs, etc. Give it name. It's called cheating. But cheating is based on one thing: that the other team plays by the rules. If the other team decides to cheat, then there really is no game at all. To 'beat' the team that keeps Trump in power Democrats need to cheat. Because Trump's team is outmatched. They have been for decades. If the Democrats cheat, then they will win, for sure. But then there will be no game. And that game is called Democracy.
2
Bless you.......Watching the GOP devolve into complicit criminal accomplices has made it hard to believe in elected patriots.
The real crisis of confidence comes in watching people we trusted enough to vote for turn into obedient lackeys and somehow expect they will change. Sadly, we know in our hearts that the selling off of our Democracy came easily for them.
I truly believe in the two party system and want it to thrive. Sadly, until we the people, put the worst Scotus decision in our history, Citizens United, in a judicial grave, we will live with the basic unemployable enablers that get bankrolled to represent corporate America and pretend voters are invisible.
We just finished a sham trial where every single poll made it very clear what voters wanted. Did they care what we felt was important?? Hardly....Talking point central turned them into pathetic spin puppets.
Time for voters to do some serious house cleaning and send some very rich, easily corrupted politicians back to mess up their own home states. The "radicals" Trump screams about are what he truly fears.....He knows how to buy up the willing.
People who have their own code of values and are not afraid of him create an obstacle he can only name call and bluster at.
Anyone in command of facts can demolish him in seconds. His retreat to nasty becomes impotent after too much bluster and not enough truth.
We just need to show up and stand in line on election day. Rain, snow or shine.
2
You have to beat him! What if there were an incredibly simple strategy? We are a visual specific species. Images are powerful influencers.
If some clever photoshop artists created a virtual image of a bald Trump and if that image went viral... I wonder if that visual of an old man without his trademark orange mane would affect his devotees.
1
@Maggie C.
There are such images out there, I think they make Trump look better. More 'statesmanlike'.
Make me believe that Trump will leave when he loses, or that "today's GOP" will stiffen and push him out... then I can sleep.
2
Thank you for this clear and cogent editorial. Democrats are afraid of “going low”, because they are afraid they will become like Donald Trump, but if going low means being honest and clearly showing what an incompetent, and emotionally disturbed individual Trump is , such commercials should be run over and over and over again until the American public finally understands that the country is being run at present by a psychologically disturbed/ deranged man who thinks only of his own interests.
And as we know, there is more than enough footage to bear this out. Focus on his incompetence, ridicule him every single day until he becomes an object of derision which is what he deserves to be.
That’s a good start in beating Donald Trump. The time for “going high” is over....
1
All we have to do is figure out how to lie and cheat more effectively than Republicans. That's a tall order, especially for the Democrats, whose political ineptitude is seemingly without bounds. Autocracy here we come!
President Trump knows how to win. Please keep winning Mr. President!
The American people will give the President another 4 years in November, as well as an overwhelming majority in both houses for the misdeeds the Democrats have put Americans through the last 3 years.
Count on it.
1
How can we beat Trump? How about by answering his own campaign question? In 2016 he asked "Elect me -- what have you got to lose?" Now we know the answer: the environment, our status on the world stage, competent judges, any chance to control global warming, equal childhood education, civility, respect for each other....and that is just the beginning of the list. But the Dems still need a solid message: what do we have to gain by electing them?
1
Those who believe in the democratic process will allow themselves to be removed by an election.
2
Ross does not say how to beat Trump. Whoever want to beat Trump, they have to put forward ideas and persons better than Trump. A lot of Americans like Trump's ideas and the country is in a better shape than at any time in recent time. They need better candidates than Hilary. Is anybody running in the Democratic party like that? I doubt it.
2
According to Douthat it is up to everybody but him and his fellow Conservatives and Republicans to stop Trump. It is the GOP which has wrecked our constitutional order and trashed the rule of law to shield Trump from culpability for offenses every Republican knows he committed. It is the GOP which constantly disseminates disinformation and gaslights Americans on Trump's behalf.
All we need to do, (as Douthat tells us ad nauseam), is to beat Trump by voting against him as Douthat votes for him.
Douthat instructs us to do this as Conservatives and Republicans do everything in their power (with the help of any foreign power Trump can bribe or extort into helping him) to make it impossible for Americans to vote against Trump even if they want to.
Republicans have made it impossible to stop Trump through any Constitutional process, so Douthat inanely tells us not to worry, all we have to do is vote against Trump in the 2020 elections as Republicans purge millions upon millions of the very Americans who would vote against Trump off the voter rolls.
Douthat can only make his specious arguments by constantly pretending that Trump was not caught red-handed rigging the upcoming 2020 election, and that the GOP, an authoritarian party, is not fully complicit in rigging our elections.
Douthat is therefore actually saying:
"All you have to do is beat Trump as we Republicans and Conservatives use all illegal and unconstitutional means to rig the upcoming election and stop you."
1
We're still sounding pretty naive here, folks, beginning with Mr. Douthat. Aside from the issues of the Democratic Party, fully capable under the best of circumstances of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, there is the issue of what Trump and his enablers, domestic and foreign, are capable of and what their limits are.
I doubt a majority of good citizens voting in the next election to toss Trump from office will suffice. My sense from long stints in other poorly functioning democracies, like Guatemala, Honduras, Bolivia, Moldova and Rwanda is that we have now entered the realm of forceful exercise of crude power. Precedents of past elections, the Constitution, Congressional norms, a free press, our hallowed institutions and American sense of fairness no longer matter. It's now a game for all the marbles all the time.
What will it take to beat him? My guess is we'll be in the streets before the summer of 2021. Let's hope that will be enough. God I hope I'm wrong.
1
Excellent analysis. A unified party could beat him, but we’ve seen no evidence of that.
It will not be the politicians or media who will decide the 2020 election. It will be the people. The voters will decide whether or not they want President Trump to remain in office. Those are the ones who must be convinced whether or not to pull the lever for our president. I think the answer is in the positive.
@KMW
Wishful thinking.
But you seem to forget just one thing.
It's not "the people" who elect Trump because the MAJORITY of Americans didn't vote for him last time either.
It's the Electoral College that will reelect Trump.
May God help us all.
1
I take it that by, “the people,” you don’t mean all those Trump and his gaggle have been throwing off voter rolls, let alone the majority of voters who poll against him.
I’d ask who you think, “the people,” really are, but nah—I already know who you think they are.
1
The Democrats will beat themselves. They will either nominate Bernie who will lose or pick a candidate that Bernie's supporters will abandon. I will still vote for whomever they nominate. This is the the most important election in our history. Please don't employ the circular firing squad.
2
@Roger: The party as a whole needs to take on an identity and a purpose that appeals. Politics is a stage for prima donnas. But nobody writes good scripts.
1
"Those columns [warning about Trump] were morally correct but structurally naïve, based on theories of party decision-making that no longer obtain in our era of institutional decay."
In fact, the "institutional decay" is far more specific: it is the result of a series of SCOTUS decisions allowing big money to rule in US politics. The electorate actually has a little voice in public policy now, thanks to Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United. Gilens and Page present data (http://tinyurl.com/hlov4ou) that show that average Americans, even when represented by majoritarian interest groups, have negligible influence in shaping public policy. Economic elites and their business-oriented interest groups call the shots. Ordinary people now have close to zero voice. Reason and good sense, like columns pointing out the GOP intellectual bankruptcy, no longer matter if they are arrayed against huge economic interests.
Say goodbye to our representative democracy.
4
About those polls that figured in the nomination of trump to begin with... of course people said they’d rather vote for the man they’d had on their TV sets, in their living rooms, for however many years his show was on. His was the only recognizable name on the primary ballot! You can blame the polling apparatus itself for his rise to the top of the field, then our baser instincts took over. The rest is history, still to be written. And I fear the resemblance to other despots is too similar to be ignored. How to get rid of him is a harder question to answer than just beating him.
As most of us remember, Hillary did beat Trump - and by about 3 MILLION votes - in 16. Trump managed a squeaker in the Electoral College because his popularity, such as it is, is concentrated in states that have outsized EC importance, partly due to arcane rules (some of which have supposedly changed, but let’s see) and partly because our 18th Century system was designed to favor agrarian interests - sometimes described as insuring the big population states where most Americans live don’t overwhelm the small population states. IOW, it’s basically a system created to insure the continuation of slavery and favoritism to small family farms, neither of which exist today as block interests.
This is America, not Japan, and farmers do not deserve more equality than everybody else.
If anyone deserves an outsized say in how we conduct the politics that set the course of the nation, with all its effects on our future rather than a nostalgic nod to the dim past, it should be young people, the Americans who will live in the future. If we cannot rid ourselves of the obsolete burden of the Electoral College, perhaps we can repurpose its unfairness to favor not the mainly white and elderly rural and rustbelt segments of our population, but those precincts with the youngest population.
That will go over great with the basically old-person GOP. But, let’s face it, Mitch: your white geriatric cabal holding onto power with a palsied and arthritic grip is not long for this world.
3
I rarely agree or have sympathy with Ross Douthat, but I have to admit that this is a terrific column. It hit the bull's-eye. All we have to do is beat Trump to save democracy and Western Civilization!
3
Just beat him. Sounds good, except that when he "fixes" the election (again), it will not be possible to beat him.
8
@al
Hear this a lot. Do tell how you believe he will "fix" the election? What evidence do you have?
The Mueller investigation thoroughly investigated the allegations that he "conspired" with the Russian and found no evidence.
Mr. Douhat's best opinion piece so far. Of coure Trump can be beat but the probelm is by whom? The big tent Democratic party is on the verge of extinction. What used to be liberal wing of the party has morphed into a bastion of uncompromising socialism which makes it impossible to elect a candidate that the whole party will rally around come general election time. Yes Trump can be beat, but chances are he won't be.
3
I strongly disagree.
It is not just to Democrats to get rid of Trump. It is up to American people to do so. Trumpism is an American plague and need to be fumigated by all Americans. Trumpism is a terminal disease that will destroy the host if there is no concerted effort of the whole body to squash it.
3
Mr. Douthat I agree 100% with you. But how? It's easier said than done. It just got even harder by his acqittal by the dirty Senate Republicans. Defeat him at the polls? That is so naive. They are already rigged by Russia, Republicans and Facebook.
4
Trump is the logical and completely obvious outcome to 30 years of Republican and Fox News fear mongering. It is in fact the conscious or subconscious desire of every pro-Republican pundit and politician who has been promoting the regressive and abusive Republican platform. Mr. Douthat's sudden disavowal in the presence of the results that he has been helping to create for oh these so many years is absurd and laughable. You built Frankenstein you don't get to just pretend you weren't involved. Next the New York Times will publish an article by a former Oil Executive decrying global warming saying 'if only someone tried to do something'. Ross, this is exactly what you have been fighting to create for years. Nothing you write now will ever change that.
5
I see that Ross Douthat continues to explain everything as a product of our decadence, which may only be fixed by—wait for it—a general retreat to precisely his values and beliefs.
Oh, well. It’s easier than analysis or pointing a good strong finger at, say, George Bush and Cheney and Steve Doocey.
5
you apparently do not believe in the rule of law, handed down to us from decades of human history, from the Magna Carta to the Treaty of versailles..
Don't you get it - haven't you ever been to a country that has been overtaken by a dictator? That the police have been overtaken, the courts, and the voting system? Are you so innocent, and yet still feel the confidence that only white men in this system feel?
Dems belive in the rule of law..I do not want the rule of elections without law..It doesn't work.
2
But because Republicans hate democracy and are trying to dismantle it, and because they love to lie and cheat, you cannot just beat them. They will lie, cheat, and steal to win. (For example, Georgia, Florida, Wisconsin.) You must beat them, and you must also overthrow them!
8
Yes, thanks so much Capt. Obvious.
And tell me, what are the appropriate measures to have in place for when Pvt. Heelspurs loses the Electoral College by a small margin, screams “I wiz robbed!”, and refuses to vacate the premises?
This from a man who claims the Constitution authorizes him to do “anything”.
Who roundly reflects the Constitutional authority of Congress.
Who isn’t actually, literally, claiming monarchical powers.
This of course with the enthusiastic help of Barr’s corrupt DOJ, Robert’s corrupt Supreme Court, McConnell’s corrupt Senate, and of course, all those “good people” on one side, lately seen in Richmond, and before that in Charlottesville?
What if he has a few generals on his side?
What then Capt.?
2
He cheats - but all you have to do is beat him.
He lies - but all you have to do is beat him.
He lies on Fox - but all you have to do is beat him.
He lies on Facebook - but all you have to do is beat him.
He suppresses votes - but all you have to do is beat him.
He intimidates others - but all you have to do is beat him.
His supporters intimidate - but all you have to do is beat him.
He's corrupt as heck - but all you have to do is beat him.
Goodbye Democracy - all you have to do is beat him.
Good Luck to All of Us.
6
Well put.
Liberalism is under attack all over the world, the masses have risen with their pitchforks and fanaticism.....why and what triggered this is incomprehensible...
1
To beat this desperado, we have to cut his gang off at the pass. His gang is disaffected with the law, with the politicians, and with God. His gang is nervous. Nervous that the privilege, gold and hired guns that their daddy. grand daddy--and many generations before them, have had the pleasure to possessed.
His gang is ready throw the baby out with bathwater--which is to say free and fair elections, honest courts and shared responsibilities--to hold on to their privilege, gold and hired guns.
His gang has made a terrible misassumption: that we, the non-gangers--can hold 'em off at the pass. Once we do this, we can corner the desperado, and thru his stinkin' hide in jail till his teeth fall out.
1
We need a fair election, yet even the DNC is shifting the rules because they think they know what’s best for our country. Hey look the new norm... presidential office goes to the highest bidder. It’s extremely disheartening.
1
All you have to do is beat him.
See here's the problem with that statement. Trump is actively trying to rig the system to ensure his re-election. It's all well and good to say you can beat him at the ballot box. However, the trend is showing that Trump and the Republican party is actively disenfranchising and purging voters in swing states like Georgia and Wisconsin. They are also trying to have foreign countries meddle in the election again.
That Republicans aren't going to force Trump to act within the bounds of the law just reinforces that cycle. You can't remove the President for breaking the law to meddle in the election, say you need to beat him on election day while he's pulling out every stop to rig the odds in his favor regardless of illegality.
It's like saying we're playing a game of Monopoly. I give you the standard $1500 to start with but I decide to change the rules to give myself $2500 and all the railroads to start. Can you win? Yes you still have a chance but more likely than not you are going to lose.
7
Put up a decent candidate and they will come (to the polls).
1
Trump exploited so many plain-sight problems--the ease of spreading misinformation & sowing division online, the massive loopholes in election process & campaign funding, and the biggest one, perhaps--that few people will stand up to a bully or challenge lies in public.
We need to enact a law requiring presidential candidates to disclose tax returns. It also makes sense presidential candidates should be able to pass some sort of test on knowledge about the US, its laws, history & role in the world-- basic job qualifications.
At the very least, it would help voters if presidential debates included some factual questions like this (& good for ratings, too, no doubt).
3
Fact is the Democrats did not want to take the time or take the chance to go to court.
Since the House Managers found no crime, they feared the courts would support Executive Privilege.
2
@Dr. John
The SCOTUS has handed down quick decisions when necessary.The claim that a court challenge would take too long is wrong and allowed House Democrats to bypass the process.
Jonathan Turley has pointed out it was the shortest impeachment investigation in American history and on the narrowest grounds and thinnest record for trial ever.
If only the House had conducted a thorough investigation and gotten court orders to compel testimony. That it didn't exposes its impeachment efforts as pure political theater.
2
@Dr. John We’re done with the sham trial. Trump is impeached forever. Move on.
1
@Doug Lowenthal
6th grade civics. When a person is found innocent by a jury they are no longer indicted.
Bravo! Mr. Douthat, bravo! Wholly concur! No easy exit for this President. Let's work towards a resounding loss for him at the ballots.
4
Thanks, Ross, for a first-rate piece! One point I will quibble with: "Trump could have been stopped in the Republican primaries [in 2016]" -- Not really; Trump was the most authentic person on the stage. Which demonstrates how lean the pickings were. Two thoughts seemed to emanate from the other "contestants:" I love Ronald Reagan and I hate Barack Obama. How novel! And the GOP establishment was going to foist a third Bush on us. Our crises is in our political institutions: Politicians are talking-machines stuck in a medium that does not wish to govern because the choices are too hard and there is no money in making sense.
2
As always, the fault, dear Brutus, is in ourselves, not in our stars.
1
@Lar Authentic? He lied then and he’s lying now. About everything.
2
It's pretty clear that the Senate will not remove Trump from office, even though he richly deserves to be convicted. But what about censure? An on-the-record condemnation of his egregious conduct? Surely some Republicans would embrace such a move, I would hope.
4
@JM
Sorry, but after dragging the country through a lengthy investigation of Russian collusion, for which no evidence was found, and an impeachment, do you really think Americans have an appetite for any more of this?
I almost wish they'd try so Americans could weigh in during the next election.
1
@AACNY Censure, for good or ill, will keep Trump in office. And one has to ignore a tremendous volume of evidence from the impeachment trial to just do nothing.
2
Yes we have to vote Agent Orange and his minions OUT in November. However I am wondering if the election will be honest - i.e. no interference. And my question is - why not take on the enormous task of converting the voting "system" to mail-in ballots. We here in CO are fortunate and proud to have it here. We can do it nationwide if we start NOW.
10
The Ryan / McConnell / Trump 2017 tax cuts for the rich are increasing the deficit from $600 Billion to $1 Trillion.
The projected ten year increase in the debt is $12 Trillion which is $80,000 per taxpayer.
All to be paid for by us, our children, and grandchildren.
Every Republican senator voted for it. Not one Democratic senator voted for it.
This is after eight years of Republicans relentlessly railing about the debt when it was Obama.
What they didn’t tell you was that W Bush took a balanced budget, zero deficit, from Clinton and handed Obama a whopping $1.4 Trillion deficit.
W Bush also doubled the debt.
And with two “tax cuts for the job creators” we got 3 Million jobs.
W Bush also handed Obama the worst recession since the Great Depression.
Obama got us through the Great Recession, cut the deficit by almost 2/3 to $550 Billion.
We got 11.5 Million jobs, almost 400% more than W Bush. And that was with the “jobs-killing” Obama-care.
And 20 Million people got health-care.
I wouldn't mind if Trump voters got fleeced but the rest of the country is getting fleeced, too.
JOBS:
2011 - 2.09 Million
2012 - 2.14 Million
2013 - 2.30 Million
2014 - 3.00 Million
2015 - 2.71 Million
2016 - 2.24 Million
2017 - 2.06 Million
2018 - 2.40 Million
Make America Smart Again
29
Facts don’t work on Trump supporters.
2
I don’t often agree with Ross, but this piece is excellent. I agree completely!
Let’s cut to the chase here. Trump’s base is unshakably voting for Trump in November, come he’ll or high water. Lifelong Democrats, especially progressives, will unshakably vote for the Democratic nominee. The outcome of the election, and possibly the fate of our country for decades to come, rests with convincing undecided voters to vote against Trump.
But many fear a far left democrat may be a disaster (for them and the country) too. We can argue the validity of that but always remember, “perception = reality” in the minds of most. And they’ll vote on that perception!!
The election is the Democrats to lose! Put up a nominee that the center can also feel comfortable with and Trump will be relegated to a very embarrassing spot in our history. Put up someone who is extremely radical left, whose programs (rightly or wrongly) worry a lot of moderates, and we may face certain disaster with another 4 years of Trump. Perish the thought!!
The only game that counts now is ousting Trump. If that fails, NOTHING progressive or otherwise gets done!
18
And it's not enough just to beat Trump. Voters need to throw out of office as many Republicans as they can. The only hope for this country to restore our democracy and respect for our Constitution is for the Democrats to take control of both the House and the Senate as well as beating Trump. That way we can cleanse the nation of the corrosive criminality and division that Trump has inflicted upon us.
The key to removing Trump is to break the spell he has on people that America can only prosper under his Svengali like leadership. And the way to do that is to project what a second term of his reign will bring. No one will believe that Trump will suddenly pivot and become presidential. It should be easy to show that in his second term it will be more chaos, more criminality, more natural disasters, more cruelty, more revenge politics, more division, more Putin influence, etc.
So far Trump has been incredibly lucky in that no major disasters have struck America. You have to assume that his luck will continue, so it will be up to the Democrats to break his spell. But do they have a leader who can do this?
9
It is so easy to blame Trump on McConnell, Republican leaders ,the electoral college,Putin and everything and anything except the one truth about Trump. He was elected President by over 60,000,000 Americans. And everyone knew exactly who and what we were getting. In the year 2020,this IS who we are. This is America. Sad.
8
@Doug Pearl you really think these americans who see trump as 'not a politician' , or as a 'contractor with the rough ways of a contractor', etc. - do you really think they know who Trump is? I beg to differ..It seems with our new social media glut, you can fool at least 60 million people, all the time.
3
@Doug Pearl He was elected by 77000 votes in 4 states, less than Jill Stein got in those states. It was a mistake, an aberration.
3
Of those mainly duped 60 million voters, how many would have voted for someone other than Trump if the Democrats had announced the platform would absolutely outlaw abortion, guarantee all the guns you could carry, and declare Christianity the official national religion? What about the popularity of bringing back the 3/5 rule? How about just a blanket outlawing of any sort of environmental regulation, or regulation of business practices?
How much of a bribe would they need to vote in their own interests? Hint: an inflationary $1000 a month has a certain appeal but it wouldn’t be nearly enough to do the trick.
Does this voter segment have to see the smoke rising from the crematoria to see what’s going on?
1
Relative peace and prosperity keeps even bad leaders in power. Trump IMO is an excellent leader in that he pokes the eyes of the elite like Douthat and Max Boot daily. He also has a script-the reality TV President, impeached and then triumphant in 2020. Cue commercial
3
@Douglas
I keep hearing this term "elite." It seems to be a catch-call phrase used by Trump supporters who don't like someone.
1
@Douglas
Trump's presidency is a big win for democracy. It's managed to die a million deaths now and still be left standing.
1
I hope and pray you are right. Trump won his party's nomination because there were so many candidates that the primary votes got split to the point where scoring 25% of the vote was enough to win a primary. It's when anomalies like that happen when democracy sometimes finds itself in peril.
Now I hope you are right and the American people can solve this peacefully. But remember, Trump has been threatening civil war and sedition should he lose, or especially if he feels the election is "rigged" against him. So he is inciting violence and scaring many of us.
Things can get a lot uglier in America than trials in which the accused can collude with the judge and jurors after obstructing the investigation. set the rules and process, allow no evidence and witnesses, declare himself above the law and say there was no need for a trial. You think this is going to be decided via a peaceful election? Ask the president that question and see what his answer is. Let's see if he bring up civil war again. Better yet, let's not give him any ideas. We all know how vulnerable people with extreme narcissistic disorders are to conspiracy theories and how far they will go to feed their egos, no matter what law or person they need to trample to do so. Yeah, let's not ask him that question -- we've heard the answer already and it is a scary one.
8
Ross, Trump will enlist Russia, China, Ukraine, etc. Maybe he'll make a deal with a Nigerian prince to allow him into the US in exchange for FaceBook ads against the Democrats. And the GOP gerrymanders the election and the census. What are you thinking? American democracy is a fantasy at this point.
4
Sounds fine until you look at Bernie campaign events. His “followers” as every bit as nuts as Trump’s. As they did in 2016, they will refuse to support any other nominee. And if he is the nominee, Trump will not just win, but probably do so in a landslide. If Democrats were serious about ousting that pestilence there would have been much more support for someone who could have wiped the floor with him, like Steve Bullock or Jay Inslee. So Ross, no, they will not win. Bernie Sanders, the NOT even a Democrat, has pretty much assured that, again!
5
One of the main things Trump will try to use to crush the opposition is his view of the economy. In that regard:
“In the fourth quarter of last year, G.D.P.—the broadest measure of activity in the economy—expanded at an annual rate of 2.1 per cent, the new report from the Commerce Department showed. Taking 2019 as a whole, G.D.P. grew at 2.3 per cent. These growth rates are nowhere near the four-per-cent growth that Trump promised in 2016. Instead, they are in line with the average growth rate since 2000, which is 2.2 per cent. And this ho-hum outcome has only been achieved at a tremendous cost. The federal government is now running an enormous budget deficit and accumulating vast amounts of new debt, which will burden taxpayers for decades to come. After three years of Trump’s Presidency, in fact, the United States is starting to look like one of his highly indebted business ventures.”
— John Cassidy
You have to beat him.....or he, and the GOP, are coming after your Social Security and Medicare.
8
@Scratch silly argument about GDP there, in point of fact we have the strongest performing economy in the world under Trump, record highs in the stock market, record low unemployment numbers, low crime rates, and we’re not really engaged in significant armed conflict with anyone. That is not an argument to throw Trump out with
Trump and the Republicans will never be beaten until the Democrats recognize that voters on both the left and the right are completely fed up with a government that serves only the elites and not ordinary people. If the Democrats continue to refuse to offer those voters anything of substance, they will continue to gravitate to the xenophobic and racist siren songs of the authoritarian right. Forget about who GOP moderates will "accept" as a Democratic candidate -- they aren't the base. Get over the notion that our first order of business must be to get rid of Trump -- he is NOT the problem. He is only a particularly nasty symptom of a far more serious, far more ingrained problem -- the highjacking of both major political parties, of our government and of our democracy by a small oligarchy of Wall Street and the one per cent, the people whom George Carlin correctly identified as "the owners of this country."
Republicans are waging an unabashed ideological class war to dismantle civil rights and the New Deal and to enshrine money as the highest form of "speech." There can be no compromise, no "reaching across the aisle" with that. Centrist candidates preaching "civility" and incrementalism are actually signaling surrender. The old status quo is not merely unacceptable, it is positively deadly. Insisting that we vote for "any" Democrat is an incredibly blinkered, partisan, keyhole view of the very dire situation we are in.
4
@Boris Jones
The Democrats are offering:
healthcare
job training
tax increases on the wealthy
education
fighting global warming
protecting our water from corporate pollution
unions
minimum wage
The list goes on.
And Democrats have been talking about these things for years.
They are way better for those working class Trump voters.
4
@Boris Jones
PS -
Deficits went up under Reagan and W Bush.
Deficits went down under Clinton and Obama.
(Note this is the deficit versus the debt which is the first step in controlling spending.)
And now the 2017 Ryan / McConnell / Trump tax cut is doing it again.
The deficit is going from $600 Billion to $1 Trillion.
To be paid for by us, our children, and grandchildren.
This is after 8 years of Republicans relentlessly railing about the debt during Obama.
Every Republican senator voted for it. Not one Democratic senator voted for it.
JOBS:
2011 - 2.09 Million
2012 - 2.14 Million
2013 - 2.30 Million
2014 - 3.00 Million
2015 - 2.71 Million
2016 - 2.24 Million
2017 - 2.06 Million
2018 - 2.40 Million
1
@Independent
In actuality, the Democratic establishment is not in favor of any of that. That has been true ever since the Reagan landslides when the Democrats decided to ditch the New Deal for neoliberalism and accomodation rather than confrontation with Republican corporatism. For forty years, they only mouthed progressive rhetoric while enacting the agendas of their corporate donors. In 2016, those chickens finally came home to roost. They made a President Donald Trump possible and have only enabled him since he took office. Trump is indeed a liar and a con man, but the Rust Belt isn't going to flip back to blue if he is opposed by yet another neoliberal centrist who sold those voters out in the first place.
1
Mr. Douthat, Yes, we can probably beat him, provided he and his supporters don’t “cheat”. (See the problem here?)
5
Removing Trump is incredibly easy: nominate a moderate to run against him. End of story.
4
Trump’s real strength comes from the voters’ weaknesses. In “Julius Caesar” Shakespeare’s Mark Antony presaged Trump in his speech to the mob. After Brutus won the minds with his logical presentation, Antony inflamed the mob’s hearts turning them against the facts. He talked of Caesar’s love of the common man and raised the mob’s hatred of the “elite” killers of Caesar. True, we don’t have a Caesar, but we do have an Antony who, though reckless and unprincipled, knows how to enflame the aggrieved. Trump, like Antony, is dangerous as he has no qualms against turning his mob loose of society and using their power for his advantage.
5
50 years ago the Republican Party created the Southern Strategy, the conscious effort to appeal to the segregationist Strom Thurmond and George Wallace Democratic voters.
In the 1980’s the Republican Party gave us the culture wars and Reagan and the dog whistle politics of welfare queens and States Rights and created the Reagan Democrats.
In the 1990’s we got the Newt Gingrich House of Representatives take no prisoners confrontation, Whitewater, the Clinton impeachment, and Vince Foster murder conspiracy.
With Obama, they created the Tea Party and gave us the birthers, death panels, and support of the Confederate flag.
They coopted Christians with abortion instead working to get women birth control.
And all these years, the Republican politicians have been using the Reaganomics talking points of small government and tax cuts for the job creators coming from the right-wing think tanks.
For thirty five years, the rising tide of Trickle Down Reaganomics has mostly helped the wealthy at the expense of the rest.
And the Republican establishment is sick, just sick I tell you, to think of Trump representing the Republican Party.
They can’t understand how the Republican voters, who have been losing their manufacturing jobs all these years as Mitt Romney and his Wall St. colleagues sent those jobs to China, these same voters who have been listening to talk radio and Fox all these years, how they can blindly follow Trump and not listen to reason.
3
Beating Trump in 2020 is a fantasy. The Democrats are weak. The Republicans go for the juggler. The Democrats insist they can defeat Trump and his party and still play by the rules. They can’t! After Wednesday Trump will control all the levers of power. The only question he needs to address now is the percentage of the votes he wants to get and how big he wants his Electoral College victory to be. We have given away our Democracy
1
Yes, there are Republicans who adore Trump, but there are more who are simply conservatives. I don't think I could ever push the button for Trump but I will push the button for conservative policy (I'm center right, but pro-choice, currently a Yang supporter because of his ideas). Hand wringing hatred of Trump is so pointless. If he wins it will be because a lot of Americans don't want far left Democratic policy. We make too much of the messenger (enough with identity politics, please god) and not enough of the message.
4
A passionate and very well-written column, Ross. Solid advice for us Democrats, and a thorough indictment of Republicans in office. And most gratifying, I find none of the usual put-downs of Liberalism as a dangerous ideology. Yes, liberal values and policies are in trouble around the world, but not in retreat. And Trump and his enablers are vulnerable. I'm looking for more signs that Republican voters can be won over.
4
Excellent column, I agree with you 100%. He is inept, and can’t read, focus or certainly negotiate. He has been played by all foreign leaders, including our allies. Look at what people who worked for him say about him. Scaramucci said the other day that the best person to beat trump is trump. And of course what secy tillerson said about his intellect. He did pull down the whole Gop in this charade. How about the Democrats nominating a more centrist candidate since the election will be won in the swing states?
5
Ross, why would anyone want to vote for the Democrats over Trump? I realize you don’t like him and repeat the usual list of character flaws, Trump is corrupt, cruel, etc. He may not be the greatest guy in the universe, but many of these statements about Trump’s character are hysterical hyperbole, not based in his actual actions. His support for our troops, police is refreshing. He is not evil monster you portray him as. You also ignore the clear success that he has had, ECMA, border security, China Trade deal, revitalized military, appointing great judges and the best economy we have had in decades. He has also championed and signed criminal justice reform, attacked human trafficking. According to poles, there is a double digit increase to the positive in folks perception of race relations. He may not be responsible for all of that improvement but it just may be that the lowest unemployment for all races and real increases in middle class wages has something to do with it. Oh and there is Bagdadi and Suleiman and the New Mideast Peace Initiative. An what does the Democratic Party offer us? Socialism, unrealistic environmental policies, free everything, draconian control of the economy, higher taxes. We would be back considering the TPPA and other trade deals that destroyed our middle class and manufacturing sector. We are now the largest producer of oil and gas in the world, thanks to fracking and your candidates want to ban it. And Identity politics. No thanks
2
Does Ross EVER direct any of his lectures about defeating Trump to his own beloved Republicans Party?
Or should readers interpret this column as Ross Douthat admitting that his own Republicans party would support Trump no matter how many Democratic voters he shot on Fifth Avenue. And Ross is saying that he would be perfectly fine with that, but YOU -- as he calls Americans who believe Presidents are not Kings -- probably aren't, so here's what YOU can do while I and my fellow Republicans keep excusing Trump's corruption.
"All you have to do is beat him." Yes, but that says nothing about the millions of people who think Trump is the greatest thing on the planet. Long after Trump is dead, you will still have people who refuse to use logic or knowledge or reason in their quest for power. How do you deal with them?
2
It’s a nice thought, but it’s almost impossible to believe that honesty, decency, morality, or patriotism for that matter, will prevail after ‘you beat him.’ Trump has normalized corruption in the executive branch paving the way for bad actors from across the political spectrum to do the same. I fear they will, and the rest of us (who still believe in right and wrong) will hear the refrain ‘your have to beat him’ (or her) from now until...
1
Before and if trump is "beaten," people need to volunteer to help local, state and national campaigns! You couldn't get people to call Congressmen to back up Pelosi or to demand witnesses much less get any to march on DC!
IT IS UP TO US! But only "IF" we are willing to work for it!
Totally, 100% agree. I'm a moderate progressive, life long Democrat. The past 3 years have been shocking to me and my old moderate Republican friends. I thought it might take a century for G W Bush to be replaced as Worst President Ever. Only 8 years. Like most Americans, I've kept asking Why? and How?; is this democracy so fragile? Again and again I come back to the same truth: it's designed this way. American voters get exactly what they deserve. Trump and his Congressional abettors are merely a reflection of the voters who put them there. If the Electoral College system is unfair, it's certainly not something we didn't know. If American voters are ingnorant dupes, susceptible to internal political propaganda, external hacking, and social media echo chambers, then that's what we get. Nothing is hidden here. This is the blessed truth: . They are two old powerless irrelevant men until some Americans make them powerful. Trump nor McConnell will take us down. We will do it ourselves. To eject him, we must beat Trump and in the Electoral College, not with a simple majority. If not, then we get the plague most American voters want.
2
Ross - YOU have to beat him. The pundits, editors and the pouty centrists need to beat him. The resistance knew this immediately and brought you a wave/impeachment - a group hardly acknowledged by your cohort, who prefer to fetishize Trumpers. And me - I organize, I ran for office (and won) and I spent most of my weekend GOTV. I don't need to do more. But you and your folks have a lot to do with your new found reality in order to save the republic.
2
Sir, everyone may hate him, but it’s time to accept (although deep down you know) that we have realized that we don’t really need our President to lead by example. Bill Clinton showed us that, and Obama was a great guy all around and loaded with charisma, however he was a terrible President because he downplayed US exceptionalism. Trump is horrible, his expression of his policies is coarse and offensive, but his actions, if you packaged them differently, are in fact pretty modest, middle of the road stuff. And people are working, their better off, and the world can see it. Liberalism globally is in trouble not because of Trump, but in response to the US resilience brought on the our success.
2
The deficit is exploding. Pollution and corruption are increasing exponentially. Just because there are a few more low paying jobs out there for the short term does not mean everything is going to be ok.
2
But the election will be rigged by Trump and Putin. There will be no getting rid of him. Even if he loses Trump will claim the election was rigged and refuse to step down. Wake up; we don’t live in a “democracy “ anymore.
Mr. Douthat: With all respect, you repeatedly say "you" must defeat Trump, but in truth, we (including GOP stalwarts such as yourself) must defeat Trump. Until you include yourself in the solution, you remain an important part of the problem.
1
Expediency and cravenness make the Republican Party back Trump. Expedience and cravenness make Democrats back Biden. Party politicians and many members will not get their principles back if Trump is removed, since really having those principles includes recognition and remorse that one was the sort of person who violated them.
So the only way to remove Trump is to marginalize the Republican Party, since it cannot be trusted to honestly reason and negotiate. Morally, it was largely rotten before Trump took it over, which is why he was able to take it over. Now that he has completed its utter debasement, and forced it away from reality into a very ugly alternate universe of admired strong men, its members are no longer capable of participating in democratic government.
Our country has changed for the worse. I just read an article about a woman dying of cancer, who stole a $100 worth of groceries, was sentenced to 10 months in prison. What inhuman judge would do that?
Of course this is just one example, but, trump as leader, has given the nod to cruelty. Immigration.
1
"All you have to do is beat him." Tell that to the dozens of women who have been sexually assaulted by him. Tell that to every creditor who loaned money to him. Tell that to every contractor who was jipped by him. Tell that to every tough guy general who failed to stand up to him. Tell that to "Anonymous" who has thus far failed to come out against him. Tell that to all of his cabinet officials, present and former, who have been witnesses to numerous crimes, but have failed to reveal them to the public. Tell it to the people on Insulin who are dying of treatable diabetes because they cannot afford the thousands fold increase in its price. Tell that to all the children still residing in cages and still separated from their parents. Tell that to Puerto Rico, patriotic Americans who have been abandoned to the vagaries of nature and carbon induced climate catastrophe.
1
The issue is not "beating Trump", it is defeating a cult, a very powerful cult that wants to destroy democracy and rule the nation.
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If Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio met behind closed doors four years ago and flipped a coin with the loser promised a Vice-president slot on the 2016 GOP ticket, Trump would have been stopped.
Alas, we are now left to endure a Frankenstein monster devouring all who dare to challenge it.
"All you have to do is beat him."
With unlimited funds, the power of incumbency, record low unemployment, record high stock market, and consumer confidence at 20 year highs?
Oh, I forgot to mention the Democrats and their circular firing squad of candidate: too old; too left; too elitist.
Four more years...
You are correct of course. But, we are also correct to mourn the total failure of our Republican elected members of the Senate to live up to their oath of office.
One of the few good things to come out of the trial is that it has underlined the fact that the Republican Senators are a pack of self-serving careerists without a shred of patriotism. They are all mini-Trumps now, from Graham to Murkowski. I hope that's good enough to get them fired in November.
Also, it has made Democrats very, very, angry, and despite the abundance of candidates, more united than ever in our determination to dump Trump. There won't be many Dems who take their marbles and go home when their candidate doesn't get the nomination. Not this time. Running against the Devil has its advantages.
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One critical concern is that it is not only Trump who is being vindicated by Republican senators, but all those among his base who have rallied to his cause in ugly ways worthy of their leader. Yes, he has secured a mandate to put his pedal to the metal, and so have all the thugs who, beady eyed, will relish the opportunity to threaten, intimidate, and physically abuse anyone seen to criticize their leader in politics, the press, or in whatever discourse. Their actions, to be seen, may indeed affect the process of democracy in forthcoming elections. These senators, who should have known better, have embarked our nation on a very slippery slope well documented in political cartography.
Yes, vote. Everyone. And take a friend to the polls and knock on doors. If everyone voted, he would be out on his ear. I am optimistic, because in 2016, there were a lot of middle aged disgruntled anti-government folks who voted for the first time. He'll get their vote again, but I don't know how many more of these there are- not many, I think. But there are a lot of Millenials who didn't vote and a whole new crop of Gen Z. And they hate him.
My biggest fear is that the people who could help beat him are now likely saying "See, I told you, it doesn't matter what we do. There is no point in voting. It doesn't do any good". This failed attempt at impeachment will just be the glue that keeps people in their seats. They don't have to go to rallies or march in the streets in protest. They don't have to give lots of money to any candidate or cause. All they have to do is register and go vote on election day. They don't even have to vote for any of the other races on the ballot. All they have to do is vote. One day. Out of 365. Inconvenience yourself. Save $0.25 a day from now to November. Then take an Uber to the polls and stop for a nice dinner to celebrate on the way home. You will have earned it. And it will make all the difference in the world. And remember this : there are lots more of you than there are them. And: the #1 thing Republicans want you to do is stay home on election day. So....make a Republican angry that day. Go ahead. It will feel great when you wake up the next morning.
The dems must coalesce around the concept of beating trump. That’s the goal.
thanx, Ross, for finally writing something I agree with. Hillary lost the electoral vote while beating Trump by 3 million popular votes. I think we all recognize that her team blew it. She should have had a wakeup call when Sanders won the Michigan primary but her team would not listen to one of the most brilliant politicians in modern history, her own husband. Bill warned her to pay attention to the rust belt but he was frozen out of the whole process , pushed off to the side. Bill, like many other successful politicians fought for every vote, she just didn't have that kind of hunger in her belly and we all got stuck with this fool.
What if Trump loses the election, declares it rigged, refuses to concede and refuses to step down? Does that sound far-fetched? Think again.
Mr. Douthat remains naive. The “structural problem” remains that the U.S. is not a democracy. It dies not matter that 3 MILLION more people voted for Clinton than Trump. With the slavery-protection mechanism of the Electoral College still in place, a minority of rural, largely uneducated, predominantly racist, white men can still nullify the popular will of the majority of the population. That’s what has to change.
How do you beat a president who is allowed to do anything to get re-elected as long as he is convinced that his re-election is good for the country? The argument made by Alan Dershowitz and tacitly accepted by Senate Republicans would allow Trump to have the Democratic nominee rubbed out, if it helped his campaign. You can’t win an election, if you are dead.
This column is the first in a long time to give me hope that our entire country -- our ideals, our constitution, our pride of identity -- will not be swallowed whole by a corrupt man who so far has destroyed everyone and everything he touches.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Not even close; the Republican Party of Reagan evolved as assuredly into its white-supremacist cult as the velociraptors overtook the slow-moving grazers of the early Jurassic.
The dog whistles of the Mississippi-born Reagan campaign 40 years ago are no longer inaudible to the eager eyes and ears of Fox viewers and listeners. There are new and more and more tempting targets for their enmity. Trump's major export, resentment, is well supplied to a constituency as eager for score settling as the white citizens councils of the 60s.
The Trump party's end will come only with the demographic die off when the whitest of our voters are too few and too old to matter even in voter-suppressed, gerrymandered America.
Sadly, Mr. Douthat and too many others assumes there will ACTUALLY BE an election. I submit there will not be an election or if one occurs and Trump loses badly, it will be challenged in the courts for a long time. In the interim, his reign of self serving malfeasance will continue.
The last three years have witnessed ever more egregious stunts by Trump as he stomped on the envelope of decency and legality. Each and every time he got away with it leading up to the most significant attack on his presidency which he ALSO walked away from last week.
Apart from an Act of God, Trump will never cede power. This is the best scam he ever concocted and he plans to milk it for every $$ he can get out of it.
There is one way out of this mess and that's thru massive demonstrations across the planet demanding his removal. Apart from that, welcome to America's first Oligarch.
Ross, Why couldn't you say 'All we have to do is beat him' instead of 'All you have to do is beat him'. Sounds just like a Republican who wants Democrats to save the county from what Republicans have done. Something Democrats have done many times. Why not help us.
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Oh look! A Republican is giving Democrats advice on how to deal with Trump. Hey destroyed the Republicans. They should be feeding on humble pie, not giving advice.
And the new challenge will not simply be "beating Trump." In this new phase of our decaying Republic, the challenge is to see if we can even vote. The Republicans are purging voter rolls, sanctioning foreign interference, and giving themselves the freedom to act illegally without consequences.
Douthat is always, deliberately, obtusely, two steps behind the story on what the party of Trump is doing to our country. Our democracy itself is now under assault.
Simply beating Trump at the polls is going to be nearly impossible when the Republicans are drawing the districts, counting the votes, and judging the crooked outcomes.
His coalition is united by more than partisanship and fear of liberals. It is also united by racism. Not all Trump supporters are racist, of course, but it is naive to suggest that racism is not a major driver for a significant percentage of his supporters.
There are two groups of voters that will sway the 2020 elections top the dem candidate. The millions of blacks who voted for Obama and didn't vote in 2016 and those dems that voted for Sanders in the primary and trump for POTUS. Almost none will this time. There are likely millions of votes there the dems need to get out for whoever the dem nominee is, and they will win.
I must say at the risk of angering fellow democrats that our party is now repeating the errors that the Republicans then the Democrats made in 2016. We live in a contentious society and our parties are no less so allowing in our squabbling an opportunist ego maniac to slip into power. If we as democrats for the good of the nation do not put aside some of our differences very soon, we will repeat history and Trump will remain like a spider sitting in our White House. And the planet, our nation and people around the world will weep.
This is what I have been saying all along. The upcoming election has always been the best shot to remove President Trump. Everything else has been a waste of time, money, and effort.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this column at this time. Run it again-- soon. Let this be the new chant: All you have to do is beat him.
All we have to do is beat him?
As nearly the only non-supporter who predicted (in February 2016) his win in November 2016, I look at the current state of the Democratic Party, and I will decline to lay money on beating him this coming November.
There is no reason to think that people who hate Trump really get what needs to be done, and what they themselves must do. I am not sensing the necessary "vote him out at all costs" resolve that would accomplish this. Far, far from that!
For the people are enchanted.
A big part of the reason for that? People, by nature, love to complain and gossip. Outrage and aggressive, unmannered behaviors, raunch, are persistently newsworthy because they are highly entertaining, albeit in a low way. Almost everyone, from well paid professionals to supermarket cashiers has something to say about him. Positive or negative, love'em
or hate'em, you are focused on him. And, no matter what happens, you will continue to be fixated.
It's safe! It's fun! It's a release from boredom and personal drama. And, since it is his deliberate strategy, he doesn't mind. Being the Master, he knows by instinct how to keep refreshing the page...to keep it going.
He does it by emitting an ink cloud of global showmanship that is, for most existing adults, the most charismatic improvisational force they have ever experienced. For better, or (way) worse, we are in thrall. Beat him? Ha!
There is no one today who has the necessary level of magic to supersede THAT.
It's not so simple at this point. Who would have thought possible just a couple years ago, but what if he lost - and refused to relinquish the presidency? Who would stop him? We now see that he is allowed to use the US presidency to serve his own interests, he has absolute authority of the entire Executive Branch (i.e. federal prosecutors, FBI, etc), can probably get away with pardoning himself...the list goes on. His lawyers say he can't be indicted while in office...Shockingly, forget Ukraine, he could probably kill Joe Biden now (if not outside DC, then certainly in DC under federal law). Once fear has taken over that he has the power of life and death with impunity, what's left? An autocracy. He must be beaten and we must then hope that the chance hasn't been lost, it's not too late, to enact legislation and Constitutional amendments as necessary to close loopholes in excessive executive power. Trump is the single most important president in the history of the US for showing us all how flawed our democracy is. He must be voted out, and we have to establish real checks on executive power, before it's too late - and that's if he leaves peacefully. This is not a joke, it already may not be enough to just "beat him."
And how do we beat Trump? We pull out of our collective national weariness, get up, and vote for DEMOCRATS!
We have only ourselves to blame if we don't make this happen.
I am absolutely stunned that my choices this fall may well come down to Fascism or Socialism. Both are based on the lie that you can get something for nothing, both are rooted in fear and tribalism.
The solution to Trump and his terrorized voters is not the mirror image of him and them. Being good and decent is much, much harder than giving in to fear, but the Bernie bros will tell you you have to fight fire with fire.
Fighting fire with fire burns the house down.
I think you have missed the point. Trump and the GOP will not accept losing. Your elections are a rugged sham. I wonder what themes Trump will hit on in his fourth and fifth inaugural speeches...
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Yes, patriotic Americans who love their country only have to defeat Donald Trump at the polls. However, now that his political party has relinquished all oversight and checks on his presidency and willingness to corrupt elections the possibility of a political defeat becomes less likely. Sadly, I fear that if Trump is reelected there will be an attempt to assassinate him and our nation will descend in to ever greater political and social horrors.
In the past Republicans like you blamed Obama for every problem, real or imagined. Now you try to blame Democrats for Trump. Reality is he is your guy, the choice of your party as it’s lead. Whatever Trump does you own it. Democrats are not going to fix this for you all by themselves - if they could Trump would not be President.
All that's needed to beat Trump is his tax returns, but the Democrats are too busy beating themselves, as usual.
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The flaw in this argument is one cannot beat a corrupt president if he rigs the election which is the point of his impeachment.
Ross you nailed it. And Sanders and Warren acolytes will bold their heads high as their respective campaigns go down in McGovernesque defeat.
Biden and Klobishar would not only beat Trump , but thrash he and St. Pence.
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The larger, strategic problem is to beat the GOP in the Senate. Trump is nothing without McConnell. "Trumpism" is nothing without McConnell. Beat Trump, yes. But the bigger piece of the puzzle is to beat McConnell and his cronies.
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It's going to take more than beating him in the election. Do you think for one second that he will concede and just leave?
The point about Democrats playing fair and Republicans playing to win is an excellent argument for backing Mike B. He can and will fight dirty... something Dems have trouble with.
Trump, the GOP Senate and mega donors like Sheldon Adelson have turned the US into Mogadishu. And Dershowitz shameful steam of consciousness Trump defense have the game away. It’s not about the American people, but self and special interest gains
Can anyone really believe that we have “the best economy in 20 years” ? That concept is pure Dershowitzian. The recently released GDP numbers show that the latest numbers compared with previous presidents at the same time are much lower than even former President Carter. There’s an 11% decline in college applications, meaning that the future work force won’t be ready to meet the demands of the economy. Bottom line, as noted in this essay, corrupt Trump must be defeated!
Douthat was instrumental in creating Frankenstein Trump. Now he's giving us good advice on how to take him down? I doubt that.
I agree with Ross here. On the other hand, maybe a mean tweet will cause him to have a stroke and we can all party like it is 1999.
Mr. Douthat, I do not know if you are an optimist or simply naive! The Electoral College, gerrymandering, and Mark Zuckerberg will hand Trump an ironclad victory in November. Democracy’s death knell is sounding.
And if we do? This walking hot mess will call everything rigged and refuse to vacate. His fake brand is about winning. And even when he falsely does, he is a sore winner. You think he would rationally concede in loss?
I find Douthat's refrain naive -- or, if not naive, anemic. With cries of "rigged" and a free hand to enlist as much foreign interference as possible, all we have to do is not just beat Trump. We must beat him by a incontrovertible margin. Large enough that the Electoral College cannot be gamed; large enough that absurd accusations of voter fraud have no purchase; large enough that the minuscule effect of social media propaganda is moot.
I say it again, Dem's need to find the candidate who can win. The bigger the win, the smaller the policy differences become between someone like Klobuchar and Sanders. A big win creates a big space in which to govern.
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@JB: Trump's fans seem to think he's on the verge of global conquest.
I wish Mr. Douthat would have addressed the Russian misinformation campaign in the very states trump needed to win the Electoral College vote. It wasn't trump's "...team's long-shot strategy to flip the Midwest." Nor was it Hillary's campaign's fault. It was that trump had laundered money for Russian oligarchs, and Putin knew trump to be the best asset in his bid for world dominance.
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Great article.
If you take a look at the betting market and expert models, it's pretty apparent now that Trump is going to coast to victory in the November 2020 election.
The only chance the democrats have is if they excite both aspects of their base, the moderates and the progressives. Moreover, they need high african american turnout. Their best chance would be a Bloomberg-Winfrey ticket.
Bloomberg is respected by moderate republicans and democrats and known as a pragmatist. Winfrey would excite the base and get people out to vote, specifically in the inner cities.
Moreover, they have the funding to take on Trump, who now has a war chest. The remaining dems cannot take him being so far behind in cash on hand.
Bloomberg has the money to turn the tables on Trump by buying commercials on Foxnews virtually every night claiming how he failed to achieve 3% growth, doubled the deficit to over 1T, billions in handouts to corporate farmers, etc.
On broadcast tv, they need to start replay the 2018 handbook of Trump taking away coverage for preexisting conditions if he wins and the consequences.
Finally, just as it seems Trump has unlimited internet trolls, Bloomberg could funds hundreds of people to place comments on boards on websites.
The door seems to be closing on the democrats as they veer left but they still have a good chance with a Bloomberg-Winfrey ticket. Realistically, it won't play out this way and we need to prepare for 4 more years of Trump.
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@Satishk same betting markets and experts had Hillary coasting to a win.
As much as I despise him , the only way to remove Trump is to let his second term expire.
@Jorge Romero
You give up easily, don't you? Or is it that you really are a supporter, even if you do "despise" him.
We The People beat him last time by 3 million votes! Given that Repub. Senator's will not follow The USC Art I sec 3 which states explicitly that a President can be removed for three character flaws in Office: dishonor, untrustworthiness & or private profiteering. They obviously have no compunction for those values either.
Would they also not feel obliged to help Trump cheat in the next Electoral Election along with help from Russia & China? If honor, trust & profiteering or upholding Justice above Law arguments is the majority character of The Senate then massive voter against Trump & Republicans will be a legal argument again. Who will determine Justice: SCOTUS ???
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Beat him?? Yeah, sure. Remember Michael Cohen's prediction. Even if he loses, he won't leave quietly and will try by any means to remain in office.
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