Prior to the 2016 election, critics raised a genuine question that fueled much of the Right’s concern about Donald Trump: With zero political experience and a capricious nature, would Trump’s whims and most unhampered flaws threaten the civic norms that make our republic function?
Between his goading that he would pay the legal fees of his supporters if they “knock the crap” out of political dissidents and his flagrant hatred of the political press, Trump gave legitimate cause for concern that he would abuse his executive power to the worst possible excesses. But for the most part, he didn’t.
Trump has said other terrible things in his presidency, most egregiously his remarks after the fatal violence in Charlottesville, Va., and at the Helsinki podium with Russian President Vladamir Putin. He certainly hasn’t become more reserved in his visceral castigation of the press, and his Twitter feed has remained a political minefield for Republicans.
But Trump hasn’t destroyed the republic. His Department of Justice hasn’t surveilled or threatened any journalists as Obama Attorney General Eric Holder did to Fox News correspondent James Rosen. Even though he’s mused about more inflammatory policies, such as barring transgender Americans from the military or ending birthright citizenship, on Twitter or in interviews, the so-called “adults in the room,” notably his national security apparatus, have done a pretty fantastic job. We were supposed to suffer horrible defeats in the Middle East or enter nuclear war with China. Instead we’re defeating Islamic State, killing bad Russians, and maintaining a significant, albeit fragile, peace with North Korea.
Democrats, meanwhile, decided to become the image they painted of Trump. They responded to a rude and brash president with calls to mob political adversaries in restaurants. Just weeks ago, Holder, widely considered a potential Democratic presidential nominee, declared, “When they go low, we kick ’em.” Pre-emptively covering for a weaker blue wave than expected by publicly contemplating bringing back court-packing, abolishing the Electoral College, delegitimizing the Supreme Court, or even ignoring court rulings completely doesn’t help their case that Trump is a uniquely undemocratic president.
Just today, Vox.com founder Ezra Klein attempted to redefine significant aspects of our voting system, writing on Twitter, “I don’t think people are ready for the crisis that will follow if the Democrats win the House popular vote but not the majority.” The House popular vote is not a thing. You have to win your local district, not the nation’s largest, left-wing cities.
I happen to recall article after article fearmongering that Trump would refuse to accept the results of the election, but it was ultimately Hillary Clinton who refused to publicly concede the night he won and Democratic celebrities calling for faithless electors to vote for Clinton. Even as Trump embellishes the problem of voter fraud, it’s the Democrats who are pre-emptively looking for concrete reasons to delegitimize the results of the midterm elections if they don’t go their way.
Trump routinely says things beneath the office of the presidency, and I have major gripes with significant portions of his agenda. But the people threatening the civility and function of our basic democratic and social processes aren’t in the White House; they’re in the “Resistance.”
