The Big Drops

I've noted here some items in the daily onslaught of the antipresident's reign that violate the norms of presidential behavior and human decency, as well as the law.  For example, the recent posts Going Too Far and Going Too Far Continued.  While some of the instances those posts cited continued to be scandalous for awhile longer, none have so far led to serious consequences.  So, so far, not too far.

And the onslaught continues.  Jonathan Chait notes one that has gone unnoticed: the relatively technical violation committed by Hillary Clinton that Republicans blew up into the phones scandal is being committed routinely by the antipresident to exactly nobody's notice.  And his use of insecure phones is much more dangerous, given his office.

But Chait also notes the general response to the now routine outrages:

"There is no chance that Trump’s parallel sloppiness could play remotely as large a role in shaping public perception. There would be no reason for it. Trump has done so many consequential things, both in terms of his policy agenda and in his degradation of governing norms, that a myopic focus on his unsecured phone would serve no public interest. It does not rank as one of the 100 worst things Trump has done so far.

That is to say, nobody wants to live in a world where Donald Trump is held to the same standard as Hillary Clinton. Nor can anybody imagine what such a world would look like. It already feels like we are numb from the sensory overload of endless sirens directing us to the latest unprecedented outrage. No human could generate the mental space to process Trump’s firehose stream of offenses calibrated at Clinton levels. The political system couldn’t function at such a standard. He would have been impeached his first week in office."

Others have noted the unendurable drip drip drip of demeaning disaster.  But while we look away to save ourselves, we may not be noticing the big drops. Right now, there are at least two ongoing (if we put aside the actual policy disasters that normally would be of immense importance.)

First, there is the relentless effort by the antipresident supported by congressional and R party minions to place the antipresident above the law.  Right now it's a race between the law's workings (mostly but not exclusively through the Mueller investigation) and the antipresident's efforts to make himself dictator in chief.  The law is long.  But the antipresident's fuse is short.  We're always a minute away from constitutional chaos.

Second, there is the threat to the integrity of our election system posed by a growing number of suspects, with the Russian government as one known perpetrator.  And because of the antipresident's hostility to the idea, not enough is being done to safeguard future elections.

The antipresident doesn't want to hear about the Russians because, for one thing, it might call into question the legitimacy of his own election.  With the release of his book on Tuesday, and his appearance on the Rachel Maddow show, former Director of National Intelligence and career intelligence officer James Clapper has uttered the words of the antipresident's nightmares: his assessment that the Russian interference campaign  " swung the election to a Trump win." 

I've maintained that the 2016 election results were due to a perfect storm of evil and negligence: Democratic voter apathy leading to lower turnout, the refusal of some voters (mostly male but some female) to vote for a woman for President, the FBI director's announcements on Hillary just before the election, strategic and tactical mistakes by the Clinton campaign, the saturation media coverage and inflation of illegally obtained emails, and a racial backlash from whites after 8 years of an African American President, among other factors.  Prominent on the list is the Russian interference on social media, the dimensions of which are still being learned, as is the nature and extent of its coordination and collusion with the antipresident's campaign.

But Clapper is likely right about this: the number of votes that changed the results was so small, and so coincidentally clustered in the same few states that happened to have been targeted by the Russians, that this interference by a foreign power alone was enough to change the results.  For Hillary Clinton got several million more votes than her opponent, who won the electoral votes of those key states by a total of about 80,000 votes.

Again, we have a long game going here to protect this essence of democracy: the vote.  Courts in PA have reversed Republican gerrymandering, and a ballot initiative in Ohio ordered their courts to do the same.  Meanwhile, other courts have upheld racially biased voter ID laws in other states.  So it's a battle.

We have elections in November.  The special elections and primaries held so far this year suggest that a Blue Wave is entirely possible.  But will it come?  That's largely up to voters who didn't vote last election.  They will need to vote in numbers that can withstand the effects of continuing Russian disinformation and disruption...  And if the Blue Wave comes, will it come in time? That alas is up to fate.