Trump’s victory, despite his indictments, convictions and statements, suggest that character and the Constitution don’t count for much
By Chris Honoré
Most presidential campaigns are the equivalent of a century trail run, the preparation and conditioning extensive, to include an intra-party primary. In contrast, Vice President Kamala Harris’ run was a 109-day flat-out sprint. To use another metaphor, she and her hastily assembled team had to build the campaign plane in flight.
And so summer ended and September brought October. The nominating conventions were finished. The question was: Could the Harris campaign craft a must-win message of hope, promise and policy that would resonate with the American people.
I took comfort and counsel from the fact that former President Donald Trump was the most improbable of candidates with an unforgiving résumé: a 34-count conviction involving a payoff to an adult film star; found liable for sexual abuse. A trial loomed for his seditious and conspiratorial effort to overturn the 2020 election, made manifest in his “so what” incitement of the Jan. 6 mob that violently broke into the nation’s Capitol while threatening to hang the Vice President Mike Pence. And not to forget his elaborate fake elector scheme framed by his refusal to cede that President Joe Biden won election in 2020 (the Big Steal). And there was the New York court judgment and fine for fraudulently embellishing his real estate valuations.
As the presidential campaign began, I hoped that his advisers and strategists would “let Trump be Trump.” They did. Day after day, at red-hatted rallies, interviews, responses to questions posed at press gaggles, his drifting, free-associative rhetoric became increasingly misogynistic, bigoted and dissembling while repeatedly scapegoating undocumented immigrants. I listened in disbelief, wondering how close he would get to an unrecoverable precipice.
Consider just the promise that on Day 1 he would set in motion a massive, family-shattering deportation of those undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., no matter the price tag. How often would he repeat the words ”the enemy within” or “fake news,” or repeat the promise that “I will be your retribution”? Did he really insist that women wanted the repeal of Roe v. Wade, while giving each state the power to create it’s own abortion policy?
What seemed extraordinary was that he made no effort to disguise who he was. His disregard for truth or norms was breathtaking. His seeming addiction to coarse rhetoric was self-evident.
The paragraphs above are, to use a familiar cliché, just the tip of the iceberg. Trump’s backstory stretches back to the birther movement, which proffered that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, thus disqualifying him as a presidential candidate. It was an unabashed lie. As candidate and president Trump declared global warming a hoax. NATO was a rip-off. Russian President Vladimir Putin was his BFF. He exchanged “love letters” with the dictator of North Korea. Ukraine was … what? Its resistance to Russia’s invasion not worth supporting? There’s his conviction that our government is peopled by “the deep state” and these civil servants should be purged. In support, his Republican allies crafted a 900-page mission statement titled Project 2025.
It is all but impossible to summarize what I judge to be “American Carnage” redux, meaning the damage Trump has done and will do to our democracy. I would suggest revisiting his campaign-closing rally at Madison Square Garden. In tone and content, it offered all that we have heard and witnessed since the golden escalator announcement of his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election. From then to now, it has all been prologue.
And therefore I was convinced that America would unambiguously reject this man who would be king.
But, to my chagrin, I was wrong, decisively so. I believed the 2024 election was founded on character, on values, on decency, on our belief in the common good, on our fundamental adherence to the rule of law and to our Constitution. To her core, Kamala Harris believed in those principles, and therefore I was convinced she would win. The contrast to Trump was stark. Her gender and race would not be decisive. The stakes were too high.
But she didn’t win. The Republican cresting wave of red was, even now, profoundly unexpected. Jarring. Heartbreaking. And the Democratic Party will now spend long months conducting a forensic analysis of the outcome. Was it the economy/inflation, a lagging prosperity for the working class, no matter that our nation’s recovery, after the trauma of the pandemic, has been unequaled worldwide? Has Trump become the avatar of all who wear blue collars and shower at the end of the day? Ditto the Republican Party? How to understand that 70% of Americans believe our country is on the wrong track, despite wages rising and inflation returning to earlier levels?
Can Trump fix it? Voters believe he can. But at what cost to our institutions, to our Constitutions, to our Democracy? We’ll soon see.
Email Ashland resident Chris Honoré at [email protected].
