A Stark Warning: Elections Matter!

This warning is directed at Millennials and members of Generations X and Z who of late have been anguishing over the plight of the Palestinians living in Gaza and the “West Bank.” While concerns for the well-being of the Palestinians are justified, there is a threat here in the United States that is likely to have a much greater impact on your lives as the dangers posed by that threat may persist for another generation or two. The threat is the possibility of a second Trump presidency.

Both the Republican and Democratic Parties are currently on course to nominate a candidate who has serious short-comings leaving many Americans unhappy with the choices they will face in the Fall when voting for our next president. President Biden, who is already 81, has been showing signs of mental and physical decline; and former President Trump, who is only three years younger, has not only displayed memory lapses and has become increasingly more incoherent in his public statements but has also announced his intention to take a number of highly detrimental actions which will have a lasting impact on our nation and your lives.

For the past 18 months former President Trump has been consistently leading President Biden in the polls, particularly in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona and North Carolina. This is a remarkable achievement when you consider that during this period he has been indicted in four separate criminal cases, one of which has already resulted in a guilty verdict for 34 violations of falsifying business records. In addition, he has been found liable in three civil trials, one for defrauding creditors which resulted in a $355 million verdict and two others for defamation in which he has been ordered to pay an aggregate of over $88 million. Surprisingly, these judicial setbacks have actually resulted in an increase in his popular support and allowed him to reap over $140 million in pollical donations in the month of May alone.

Although President Biden has amassed a remarkable list of achievements during his first 40 months in office, he has also been the target of persistent attacks about his declining physical and mental health. Moreover, he has been relentlessly criticized by right-wing media and social networking outlets for the spike in inflation which occurred in 2022 and was caused primarily by supply chain disruptions which appeared in the wake of the Covid pandemic and which affected the economies of all developed counties.

More recently, the rate of inflation has declined sharply while our nation’s economy has continued to flourish. The number of employed Americans has increased by 15 million since Biden took office; unemployment remained at under 4% for 26 consecutive months; and the S&P 500 stock index has increase in value by 45% (an annual rate of 12.5%). Although many Americans remain concerned about the increase in prices (17% since Biden took office), the wages of working class Americans have grown at roughly an equal pace and are currently growing at a significantly (40%) faster rate than inflation.

On Thursday, June 27th, the two presumed presidential nominees participated in a televised debate which greatly altered the public’s perceptions of them. President Biden had a dismal performance, appearing both physically weak and confused. Even though his performance improved during the second half of the debate, the impression left was dramatic as it tended to confirm pre-debate speculation that he is too old and too infirmed to serve another term as president. Although, by comparison, Trump appeared much more in command, he too did not distinguish himself. He rattled off a stream falsehoods so fast that neither Biden nor the debate’s moderators could address them. The next morning CNN, which had sponsored the debate, published a  list of 30 false statementsmade by Trump during the course of the debate. This announcement, however, did not affect the public’s perception of the two candidates which had decidedly moved in Trump’s favor.

This has left the Democratic Party in turmoil as to whether it should continue with Biden as its nominee for president. Biden, who has already garnered enough convention delegates to assure him the nomination, has been steadfast in his intention to go forward with his campaign and has tried to minimize the importance his poor debate performance. Still numerous pundits have opined that he should step aside and allow his Party to select another candidate. The problem, of course, is how to select a substitute candidate and whether that process will leave the Party so divided that its chances of prevailing in the November election may be even further diminished.

At this point, it’s by no means clear how this crisis within the Democratic Party will be resolved. One thing that’s clear is that the ultimate decision lies with Biden. He not only holds a majority of his Party’s convention delegates, he has amassed a substantial campaign organization and a war chest to fund his forthcoming presidential campaign, something every other potential replacement (with the possible exception of Kamala Harris) does not have and would have to assemble in order to mount an effective campaign. It is also clear that if there is to be a new Democratic presidential nominee, that must be resolved immediately so as to give the Party and the selected individual time to get organized for the Fall campaign.

Irrespective of how this crisis is resolved, the Democrats still have a very good chance of having their presidential nominee elected. That’s because Donald Trump is a highly flawed candidate with his appeal being largely limited to MAGA zealots (roughly 30% of likely voters) and wealthy individuals who are drawn by Trump’s tax and anti-regulation policies (roughly 10% of likely voters). This is reflected in the fact that polling data shows that whatever Democrat that Trump is matched against, he never exceeds 45% of the polled voters. That means that the Democrats have a good chance of winning the votes of those Americans who don’t like Trump and are concerned about Biden’s physical and mental capabilities. Thus, to prevail, Democratic politicians must not only motivate their likely voters but also educate “low-information” voters who in the final analysis might be influenced by Trump’s well-crafted “strongman” personae.

In 2016 Trump was able to defeat Hillary Clinton largely because working class Americans rightly felt that the federal government had not been working in their behalf and that a businessman with a perceived reputation for being able to get things done could alter the federal government to work for them. Trump even promised that he would win so many victories for working class Americans that they “would get tired of winning.” Of course, things did not exactly work out that way. Trump bestowed upon the nation’s wealthy an enormous tax cut that greatly increased the nation’s indebtedness; he tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act on which roughly 27 million working class Americans depended; and he mishandled the Covid pandemic causing the nation’s economy to falter leaving almost 10 million working-class Americans unemployed. Thus, by the time of the 2020 election Trump had become so toxic that he lost to President Biden by over 7 million votes.

Unlike most former U.S. presidents, Trump did not quietly retire back to his former life. Instead, he contested the results of the election and mounted a multifaceted campaign to remain in office. He also immediately began criticizing his successor and making plans to run for president in the 2024 election. While out of office, his past began to catch up to him. He lost two defamation claims brought against him by E. Jean Carroll and a civil fraud claim brought against him by the New York Attorney General. He also was indicted in four separate criminal proceedings, one of which has already resulted in his conviction for 34 counts of falsifying business records. Even his wholly-own business, the Trump Organization, was convicted of tax evasion.

Trump has sought to mitigate the impact of these adverse court proceedings by claiming that he is the victim of a malicious Biden administration which has weaponized the Department of Justice to derail his re-election campaign. He has even sought to portray himself as a messianic figure being persecuted for his efforts to save his followers. He also claimed to be his supporters’ “retribution” which is more than a little ironic since he and his party (and not the Democrats) have been the principal source of their economic plight. Surprisingly, these audacious claims worked quite well as both his support among voters and donations to his campaign have actually increased with each new criminal indictment against him.

It's not just that Trump is an habitual liar (with over 30,000 false statements recorded during his presidency) and a con man who has had a string of business failure, six of which resulted in bankruptcy proceedings causing his minority shareholders and creditors to lose in excess of $1.5 billion. Nor is it that he was a one of (if not) the worst president this country has ever had. Just to name a few of his blunders, in a single four year term: he undermined our alliances with foreign countries; he mishandled the Covid pandemic causing an estimated 400,000 unnecessary deaths, he increased the nation’s deficit accumulated over the preceding 230+ years by over 30%; he left office with 2 million fewer Americans working than when he had become president; and he sewed division throughout the nation. Most telling is that at least 24 members of his own administration have publicly denounced him and have stated that he should never again be allowed in the oval office. The nation’s immediate problem , however, is that Trump has chartered a course which, if re-elected, could bring our nation’s almost 240-year experiment as a democracy to an end.

To appreciate how this will happen it’s important to understand that when Trump won the 2016 election, he had no experience in running a government. Accordingly, he recruited Reince Priebus, a former chairman of the Republican Party, to become his chief of staff. It was Priebus who selected most of the members of Trump’s administration. It didn’t take long, however, for Trump to discover that many of these Party stalwarts were opposed, or even unwilling, to carry out his orders. In the first six months of his presidency roughly 30 senior administrative official either resigned or were termination including the Priebus, the Attorney General, and the Secretaries of State and Defense.

To assure that no complaints about his administration would be brought to the public’s attention, Trump replaced with loyalists at least ten departmental Inspector Generals in a public and embarrassing manner so that remaining members of his administration would understand that divulging any information unfavorably depicting the administration was a terminable offense. Similarly, he arranged for any Republican member of Congress who did not support him to face a well-funded candidate in the next primary election. Thus, by the end of his four-year term there were less than a handful of Republican members of Congress who would even speak out, much less vote, against him. Finally, following his loss in the 2020 election he replaced the Secretary of Defense and two of his top lieutenants (see, “A Deep State Conspiracy”). Perhaps most frustrating to Trump was his failure to completely purge his administration of political appointees whose loyalty to our nation surpassed their loyalty to him. That oversight was what thwarted his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Rest assured, Trump will not repeat that mistake if elected to serve another term as our president.

It's not just the loyalty of political appointees that concern Trump. He also plans to reclassify over  two million federal government employees so they would no longer enjoy civil service protection and could be fired without cause. On top of that the recent Supreme Court decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States essentially removes all possibilities that actions taken by Trump while serving as president would be subject to criminal liability (see, “Our Unbridled Supreme Court”). These changes mean that there will be essentially no guardrails limiting what Trump will do in a second term as president. Thus, as destructive as Trump’s first term was, his second term will likely be far worse.

Trump has already been hard at work outlining his agenda for his second term. He has previewed much of what he has in mind at his campaign rallies. He has proudly proclaimed that starting on his very first day back in office he intends act in a dictatorial fashion. He will “weaponize” the Department of Justice to prosecute his perceived enemies and will have members of the U.S. armed forces round up and deport all illegal aliens. He also plans to seek an extension of his disastrous 2017 tax cuts which are due to expire in 2025 and to cut federal programs promoting renewable sources of energy and to rescind federal regulation that hamper the production of fossil fuels.

Some of Trump’s campaign promises were evaluated by  Robert Rubin and Kenneth Chenault in an Op-Ed article published in The New York Times. These two titans of business and finance believe that Trump’s proposal to deport 20 million illegal aliens would not only disrupt the lives of those individuals and their families but would also exacerbate our current problem of 8 million vacancies in our workforce which are prompting many U.S. companies to move their operations abroad. They also assert that Trump’s proposal to extend his 2017 tax cuts which are heavily weighted in favor of America’s wealthiest families would add another $3.9 trillion to our nation’s deficit. This, in turn would likely lead to higher interest rates and greater inflation. Moreover, further increases in our nation’s indebtedness would undermine business confidence and could reduce our government’s ability to take remedial action in the face of future national-security or economic crises.

Rubin and Chenault also condemned Trump’s proposal to impose 10% tariffs on a wide range of imported goods which would add to the costs of those items (much like a national sales tax) and would operate to increase inflationary pressures. Equally detrimental to the American economy would be Trump’s approach to business regulations. Rather than evaluate regulations on U.S. businesses through cost/benefit analyses, Trump would simply judge them on the basis of their costs to the affected industries, transferring to the American public the costs of protecting themselves from the dangers the targeted regulations were designed to prevent. Lastly, Rubin and Chenault criticized Trump’s proposals to politicize the Federal Reserve Bank by placing it under his control.

In addition to what Trump, himself, has vowed to do, a dozen of his most trusted advisers have been working with the Heritage Foundation in drafting Project 2025, an almost 1,000-page document detailing how Trump in a second term as president would go about changing our democratic republic into a “Christian Nationalist” autocracy. Among other things, it calls for Trump to impound funds appropriated by Congress (which is currently prohibited) and to eliminate whole departments within the federal government. This plan is so politically toxic that Trump has denied even knowing of its very existence. This is reminiscent of his denial that he had never met E. Jean Carroll even though a jury concluded that he not only had met her, but he had sexually assaulted her. He obviously wants Americans to conclude that it is just a coincidence that his name appears 312 times in Project 2025 and was advertised on the website of his super-PAC.

Most Americans exert little effort to become informed about the positions of individuals running for public office. This is largely because they are preoccupied with the problems they must confront on a daily basis including concentrating on their work and tending to the health and well-being of themselves and the members of their family. Their lack of interest in politics is also attributable to their lack of trust in what they hear directly from the candidates themselves and the views of pundits as reported on network and cable TV stations and on social media sites. As a result, they tend to cast their votes on the basis of their perceptions of the candidates’ personae rather than their campaign pledges.

Lewis Carroll, in his famous children’s book entitled “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” warned “Beware the Jabberwocky” with “the claws that catch” and “the jaws that bite!” In the wonderland we call the United States we have a Jabberwocky hiding in our system for electing presidents in the form of the Electoral College which allows nefarious candidates to seize victory out of the mouth of defeat. It did that in 2016 allowing Donald Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton even though he lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes. That Jabberwocky will again be lurking in this fall’s election, ready to assist Trump in his quest to take revenge on HIS perceived enemies and to turn our democracy into a Putin-style autocracy. Therefore, to defeat Trump in the forthcoming election the Democratic candidate will need to garner at least 5 million more votes than Trump.

This means that it is absolutely crucial for Millennials and members of Generations X and Z to become informed about the positions of the individuals running in the forthcoming elections and to vote. I am an octogenarian with a very limited further life expectancy. Therefore, if Trump and his acolytes in the Congress are elected, the changes they effect will have only a momentary impact on my life. By contrast, you and your children will have many decades to suffer the consequences of the changes that could be instututed during a second Trump presidency. Therefore, I urge you to exercise you rights of citizenship and VOTE.