So How Does It End?

This is sort of a sequel to my earlier post about anarchy in America that I wrote in January.

Having seen Trump impose tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico (the latter two have been delayed by a month) and having seen him gut - or attempt to gut - the administrative state, I don't think this course he has set for the nation is sustainable or bearable.  Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people will be hurt, and many will lose their livelihoods and possibly their lives.  There is just no way Trump can keep himself in power when there is that much discord in the country.  There will be economic dislocation and a breakdown of popular norms that will make Americans desperate enough to take action against their collective situation.

I continue to believe that Trump will not finish his term.  I expect him to be deposed from the Presidency, and he will face justice for his crimes one way or another.  I don't know how it will happen or when it will happen, but it will happen.  I do know how it will not happen; he will not be impeached if the Democrats take back the House in 2026, because even a big swing to the Democratic Party that helps them take back the Senate will not give them enough votes to convict in the upper chamber.  I still believe it will happen through, umm, extraconstitutional means.  The MAGA movement will fall, but the process of MAGA's downfall will not be pretty.   

Let me be blunt: There will be violence.  I said that in January, and I still believe it now.  I'm not prepared to say that Trump himself will survive the violent reaction to his administration.  Though, if he does survive, he'll likely wish he hadn't.  I think violence will be inevitable, and it may be - may be - the only way out of our current predicament.  Change by the bullet rather than by the ballot remains the likelier scenario because this past November was our last chance to prevent Trump Mark Two.  Change by the ballot cannot reverse Trump Mark Two, and even if we have free and fair elections in the midterms that helps Trump's adversaries, those elections are still two years off and too much damage has already been done in two short weeks.    

And once he's deposed, the line of succession won't hold.  The purge of Trump will be a purge of all Trumpism, because the economy and the quality of life in These States will have deteriorated that much.  Vance won't be President, and neither will Mike Johnson.  What replaces the regime is unknown, just as the answer to how Trump will be removed from office is unknowable.  Will violence lead people in the government to take Trump out of power?  Or will violence itself lead to Trump's removal?

And what will be done with him?  A Nuremberg-like trial?  Incarceration without trial?  Exile? Internal exile?  Being dragged through the streets to meet the same fate as Mussolini?

As I said in my January post, Trump will not flee Washington, and he won't take his own life in the White House.  But there's going to be a big mess the second he's out, like a fire-gutted building that rubble is still falling from,  or a boat run aground with a hole in its hull that needs to be repaired before it can take to sea again.  People are going to have to figure out how to put America back together.  As for leadership . . . well, there's going to be new leadership somehow.  Maybe the military will take over and rewrite the Constitution to eliminate the ambiguities that make the undermining of civil rights possible.  Maybe a bicameral council of House members and senators will take over and call for new elections to be held after a recovery period.  It's likely not going to be brought about by peaceful, familiar means.  

Maybe, as I've said before, the union of the states will not persist.  Rather, it will go the way of the U.S.S.R. or Yugoslavia . . . and thus new American leadership won't be brought about at all.

The Rise of Andrew Cuomo

The chief executive of the place with one of the largest concentrations of COVID-19 cases recorded to date is providing steady leadership and competent management with the sort of empathy and compassion you wouldn't expect from someone who grew up in Queens. 

I'm not talking about Trump, of course. I'm talking about New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo's daily press briefings from Albany and from New York City have been nationally televised in light of the fact that New York's homonymously named city is the largest city in the country (though New York State is now fourth in population) and because New York State has the most COVID-19 cases of any U.S. state by a wide margin, with a large number of those cases in the city and neighboring Westchester County.  He has leveled with the people of his state and the rest of the nation in explaining how many cases and how many deaths can be expected and giving a complete rundown of all of the personal protective equipment he needs and how much he actually has.  He's dealt with the frustrations New Yorkers and Americans have over having to be socially distant and being unable to see family members, citing his own Italian background and how much family means to him and his own relatives (including CNN's Chris Cuomo, his younger brother, who now has coronavirus, and their mother Matilda).  He has used unvarnished facts with a dose of caring, calmness, and resoluteness in dealing with COVID-19.  In other words, he's shown real leadership.

People who are sick and tired of Trump's self-congratulatory press briefings about coronavirus are demanding a Democratic rebuttal to Trump's latest reality show, but there already is one - Cuomo's.  Cuomo is now the face of the so-called Democratic "resistance" to Trump, and every time I see him, a pang of rue always cuts right through me when I remember that he wanted to run for President in 2016 and could have won had he been nominated. Instead, he was discouraged with the promise of punishment by Democratic bigwigs who had already anointed Hillary Clinton as the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee back in 2009 (just another example of how Hillary's ego ruined everything).  Ironically, Cuomo is a front runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination despite not having run; Democrats unsure of Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders are speculating if Cuomo would accept a draft nomination.  It's like a repeat of the 1988 presidential campaign, when Democrats unsure of Biden (this was before the plagiarism charges) or Gary Hart (and before Bimini) speculated if Cuomo's father Mario, then governor of New York, would accept a draft presidential nomination after he announced that he wouldn't run (in March 1987).

Don't bet on this Cuomo accepting a presidential draft either.  Not only has the Democratic Party not drafted a presidential nominee since 1952 (Adlai Stevenson, who lost), but Cuomo, like Biden and Sanders, has his own faults.  Not only is known to be ruthless and calculating, he can be brutal as well as brutally honest; he's actually proposed cutting Medicaid in the middle of the pandemic.  But he remains a powerful voice for action at a time when Trump is following more than leading.  Biden can't provide the same sort of constant communication with the country due to his current status as a private citizen, so Cuomo's daily press briefings are required viewing for people who want to see how a Democrat would handle the crisis nationally.  For better or for worse (more better than worse, thankfully), Andrew Cuomo is the leader of the opposition to Trump.     

Donald Payne: 1934-2012

I hear a lot of people talk about justice and peace, but New Jersey's first black congressman, Donald Payne, who died from colon cancer at 77 yesterday, lived justice and peace. He spent his 23 years in Congress working for economic justice at home, with an emphasis on education and on greater opportunities for the poor.  He also worked on bringing peace and stability to troubled areas abroad, which included trying to help bring a stop to the killing in the Darfur region of Sudan, securing money for AIDS drugs for sub-Saharan Africa, and supporting the peace process in Northern Ireland between the Catholics and the Protestants. As the first black president of the National Council of YMCAs and as both a city councilman in his hometown of Newark and an Essex County, New Jersey freeholder, Payne devoted a great deal of time to public and philanthropic service, always trying to achieve progress on issues that he believed would move America and the world forward.

For all of his accomplishments, though, Payne was remarkably low-key and soft-spoken, not wanting to brag too much about his record. He just pushed ahead in an effort to get the job done. He was able to cross racial barriers and relate to the white ethnic groups in Newark politics (back before so many white Newarkers decamped to the suburbs), and none of the virulent racism that has existed in Essex County was ever directed at him. In fact, Payne was a rather affable gentleman who was well-liked by everyone . . . and as one Essex County political figure, councilwoman Renée Baskerville of suburban Montclair, noted, he was also a very good dancer. In short, Payne was a model of civility and kindness, the sort of politician you don't find too often in Washington nowadays.

And now there's one fewer. Donald Payne will be missed. :-(