Racing To The Apocaplypse

There are a number of really disturbing trends converging on America in the fourth year of Trumpistan.

First, we have the Trump Administration and Republican governors downplaying the evidence and trying to jump start the economy. They have decided that they are going to get people back to work even if....there is no work to get back to. 

This is motivated by the increasingly grim economic news. The economy is cratering, even if the virus disappeared tomorrow, it's unlikely the economy would come roaring back.  We've treated wage labor like shit for forty years, and 40% of Americans are now living at the margins of solvency. Simply lifting curfews won't solve that.

This goes back to Trump knowing the one thing he does know: sales.  Selling things isn't necessarily about the thing being "good," but about whether you can convince the buyer that it's good.  This is why Trump throws gold on all his shitty real estate. Sales is about "optics" and Trump is obsessed with optics (which is why he won't wear a mask). The reality TV president can only appear to be president, because appearances is all Trump is good at.

The virus and the economy don't give a shit about his optics.

Which leads us to the third trend that really worries the shit out of me. Trump cannot win a free and fair election this fall. His support has never been broad (despite it being deep). The margins of his support are bleeding away. The 2018 midterms demonstrated the erosion in support for the GOP in suburbs. If the economy is in the toilet come November, there is precious little reason to believe he won't face a landslide defeat.

The recent decision by the Department of Justice to drop the (airtight) case against Michael Flynn is the canary in the coal mine. Trump finally managed to get "his Roy Cohn" into the AG chair, and now Bob Barr is consistently and determinedly undermining the impartiality of the Department and the rule of law. As more and more Trumpian figures embrace the rampant corruption of this Administration, the more they will rely on Bob Barr's corrupted Justice Department to protect them. The more that happens, the greater the impetus to subvert a free and fair election.

Think of it this way: Trumpist corruption is everywhere. We are almost certainly seeing it in the awarding of contracts during the Covid-19 crisis, but it's everywhere. Everyone of those actors is currently protected from legal repercussions by the currently politicized DOJ. That's the message the Flynn case sends.  As the potential for a Trump loss in November becomes reality, the greater the incentive to cheat on the election to maintain that shield.

In a mature democracy, losing an election should not be catastrophic. When John Adams gave way to Thomas Jefferson, Americans discovered that - for all the heated campaign rhetoric - Jefferson wasn't going to destroy the systems that Washington and Adams had put into place.  In political science terms, it was a change in government, not a change in regime.  But Trump and the GOP are trying to change the regime from a democracy to a kleptocracy. The November election is the last chance to stop them. They know this. There is no accountability for the corruption if they win, and right now they will have to cheat to win.

And with the DOJ in their pocket, there's no one to stop them.