Dare We Hope?

As trial date after trial date is set, Trump’s legal problems are becoming clearer and more serious by the day.  Dare we hope that he will be so busy being in court that he will not have time to campaign? that people will tire of his constant proclamations of victimhood and seek out an alternative?   Now, despite all his legal trouble, not only does Trump command the hearts and minds of what is being termed the “Republican base” but his influence extends to every other candidate with any hope of running against him.  It makes us ask questions, or at least it should.  How did America come to be a country potentially willing to elect someone with this much legal baggage without asking questions?  How did one man get such a commanding grip on our social institutions and come so close to destroying them?  Do we dare think about how a second term of Donald Trump could remake the nation?

The Democrats aren’t helping much.  They have put forward a candidate with weak poll numbers handicapped by age. He is not campaigning hard enough and in the right ways.  His running mate, who could be a real asset with certain very important voting blocks, is not visible enough.  And he is running on not being Donald Trump, which is in and of itself a threat to democracy.

But for all my disappointment with and criticism of Joe Biden, at least it can be said that he isn’t going to become a convicted felon anytime soon.  This actually means a lot.  It shouldn’t.  It should be a given that the nominee for a political party isn’t a gangster.  That is what Joe Biden has come to represent–a time in the life of America when there were certain things that could be taken for granted.  Biden is asking us to step back in time, not just before Trump, but really before the Republican party started to come undone a generation ago.  There is nothing wrong with that.  The Democrats need to position themselves as the party that is doing everything in its power to return the country to sanity.  There are a lot of voters out there desperate to be able to trust that the person they are voting for has some legal integrity, that the “old” rules still apply (I would just rather see Biden do this by endorsing and campaigning for someone younger rather than running himself).  

In reality, the question “How did we get here?” is more complex than it first appears to be.   Trump was a long time coming.  The roots of the problem go back to the late 80’s with people like Rush Limbaugh.  It has taken a long time for things to get this bad.  It may take a long time for things to get better.  But better won’t begin until somehow someone finds a way to make it clear that there are voters out there for whom respect for the rule of law still matters.