It's Evening in America: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

Part 7 of 8

Can I tell you something more?

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris granted America a four-year respite from Trump and his politics of division and chaos, delivering on a promised return to normalcy or at least some recognizable semblance of it. President Biden achieved some remarkable bipartisan legislative wins working with a deeply divided Congress – the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan which infused cash into the economy to help people cope with the pandemic’s downturn, the curiously named and likely counterproductive $2.2 trillion Inflation Reduction Act which was actually the largest climate bill in history, and the $2.1 trillion infrastructure bill investing in roads, bridges, and broadband.

But the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan left an ugly stain on Biden’s presidency, and the winds of war, ever present around the world, were blowing hard on the northern and eastern borders of Ukraine.

At home, the House Select Committee on January 6th was laying bare the extent to which Donald Trump and his mendacious minions had tried to overturn the results of a free and fair election by any and all means, including a military-style putsch. By this time, however, Trump had already thrown his red hat back in the ring for 2024 and any Republican resistance, save for a truly patriotic few who would lose their seats and careers because of it, had evaporated.

The MAGA movement effectively highjacked the American flag as a symbol of patriotism – ideally a huge one on a huge pickup truck – and also redefined a patriot as someone who blindly follows Trump and parrots the talking points, disinformation, outright lies, and conspiracy theories spouted by right wing politicians and their media cabal. In their upside-down world, people who attempt to overthrow the government and brutally beat police officers are patriots, and people who honor the Constitution and rule of law are traitors.

Mark Twain once said, “Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time and your government when it deserves it.” Sadly, the Republican Party writ large now believed that patriotism meant supporting Donald Trump. Period.

Not long after the Select Committee wrapped up its gripping presentation of the voluminous evidence damning to Trump, Attorney General Merrick Garland, after spending two years indicting participants in the Capitol riot, finally smelled the coffee and appointed a special counsel to investigate Trump himself for possible criminal conduct. You would think that Garland – a man who should be sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court as I write this but was denied even a vote on his nomination for nearly ten months by Mitch McConnell – would’ve been more eager to prosecute those responsible for the insurrection instead of focusing solely on those who participated.

It should be noted that when Trump was impeached for a second time following the Capitol insurrection McConnell was largely responsible for letting him off the hook. Despite saying out loud on the floor of the Senate that Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the events of January 6th, Deputy Dawg torpedoed the vote to convict which would have once and for all ended Donald Trump’s political career and banished him forever to his gilded cage at Mar-a-Lago.

Two of McConnell’s associates reported that he said, “the Democrats are going to take care of that son of a bitch for us.” But it was the Republicans who had that opportunity, and responsibility, and failed. Thanks to their collective cowardice, Trump lived to run another day.

Still, largely because the January 6th Committee forced Garland’s hand, Special Counsel Jack Smith was finally given the resources and green light to investigate not just the insurrection but another crime Trump apparently had committed – one that was actually still in progress – of stealing and purposely withholding top secret government documents he’d removed from the White House to safely store in a public ballroom and bathroom. On top of that, state prosecutors in New York were investigating hush money paid to a porn star in 2016 as election interference, and in Georgia for pressuring officials to change the result of their 2024 election.

New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg won the betting pool in March of 2023 by filing the first ever criminal indictment of a former president for falsifying business records to influence an election. Jack Smith followed shortly thereafter in June and August with federal indictments for mishandling national security documents and the blockbuster charge of subverting democracy by attempting to overturn the 2020 U.S. election. Also in August, Georgia D.A. Fani Willis batted cleanup and filed racketeering charges for the same crime.

Thus, in the span of just six months we were treated to the bizarre spectacle of an ex-president flying into various U.S. cities to have his orange mug shot, trudging into courtrooms, and pleading not guilty to crimes he clearly was guilty of.

But as we know, the wheels of justice grind slowly, and for good reason to hopefully avoid a rush to judgment and miscarriage. So even though Bragg’s team won a conviction on the hush money case in May of 2024, it seemed likely the other cases would not see the inside of a courtroom before the election.

When in July, after dragging their feet for weeks on Jack Smith’s request to get immediate clarification, the Supreme Court ruled that presidents should be granted broad immunity from criminal prosecution for any acts deemed within a very wide range of presidential duty, it was obvious that the remaining prosecutions were dead in the water and the American people were going to have to decide Donald Trump’s guilt or innocence, hence fate, at the ballot box.

Trump swept to an easy nomination despite nearly having his head blown off by an assassin, and Joe also claimed an easy if very lackluster win against little serious competition except for the alarming number of ‘uncommitted’ voters committed to expressing their anger about the war in Gaza and the Biden administration’s support for Israel. Which set the stage for one of the most consequential presidential debates in American history.

Had Joe Biden stuck to his promise of being a ‘bridge’ to a new generation and announced he would not run again well before the Democratic primary season began, the ending to this essay might be different. If I wrote it at all.

There had been murmurings in Washington – murmuring is much more common there than in other cities – and video evidence had recently surfaced to support the murmurs, that Biden was in serious physical and cognitive decline and wasn’t up to campaigning, let alone serving four more years as president.

But after his spectacularly disastrous performance in the first debate, Joe’s age and infirmity were all anyone could talk about, especially Democrats who were now terrified that Trump would win in a romp and the sum of all fears would return to power. And when a defiant Biden flatly refused to consider stepping aside, it seemed a certainty.

But on July 21st, less than a month after the debate, Biden shocked the country, and caught his own party completely unawares by withdrawing his candidacy and throwing his unconditional support behind Vice-President Kamala Harris, who might have been the most surprised of all. Initial relief among Dems quickly gave way to confusion and even panic with the realization his decision had thrown the race into disarray and it was an open question who could or should replace him as the candidate. It was also unclear how exactly his winning haul of delegates should be allotted, or whether a wide-open convention fight was in their best interest. And all of this was happening with barely over 100 days until the election.

With stunning speed, however, Harris moved to clear the mare’s nest and consolidate support, garnering the blessings of party giants like the Clintons and Obamas. But even more importantly several of her assumed top rivals like governors Gavin Newsom of California, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, fell in line and voiced their full-throated backing.

In a breathtaking three weeks Harris had enough committed delegates to secure the nomination at the imminent Democratic National Convention, named a running mate in Minnesota governor Tim Walz, and closed the polling gap with Trump in virtually all of the swing states. When the balloons dropped in Chicago, Democratic prospects seemed bright and confidence was high.

But reality quickly set in. Already saddled with low favorables and a reputation for flip-flopping on issues, Kamala now faced a gale-force headwind of voter dissatisfaction with high prices and open borders. Never mind that the high prices were due to factors outside his control, and that a bipartisan border security bill was scuttled at Trump’s bidding, Republicans had been successfully hammering Biden on inflation and immigration and now were wrapping the issues around Kamala’s neck.

There can never be a full accounting of how many people voted for Trump claiming it was because of those two issues but actually did so at least in part due to latent racism and sexism, so there’s no point in speculating.

But to argue that racism and sexism are still endemic in our society is not speculation so I’m going to speculate it was at least half of the 77 million who voted for him. To be sure there were plenty of MAGA supporters who, despite having no intellect, had the intellectual honesty to admit their base reasons. But for whatever reasons, Donald Trump won a plurality of the popular vote and swept the swing states to be elected the 47th president of the United States.

But that’s not all I wanted to tell you either.

To be continued next week…