Former Senator Barbara Boxer has given Democrats their marching orders. It happened during a discussion, on MSNBC’s “All In”, of Trump’s failings. At one point, out of frustration with Trump’s foreshortened news cycle, the Senator said, “We have to keep reminding people of these things ….” That simple, encompassing directive struck me: “keep reminding people.”
Between now and the election, Trump will create as many crises as he does lies. It is up to Democrats to keep the record of Trump’s heinousness from being trampled in the media’s rush to plunge into whatever rabbit hole Trump’s mental pathologies excavate next. It won’t be easy, but, if we keep at it, the media will have to show what we keep saying.
We still can have and must have our policy debates and normal political discourse, and it is impossible to praise too much or too often the legislative heavy lifting that has been done by the House. But Senator Boxer’s cry that “We have to keep reminding people” rings true.
Consider Donald Trump’s deeply held racism. It briefly rose above the noise but only because Democrats suddenly found their voice and called him a racist. Now, the press is moving on. We cannot let that happen. Racism is like cancer. Cancer must be cut out. If you do not, it will kill you. You cannot reason with cancer. You cannot persuade cancer. If you try, it will kill you. You cannot ignore it or pretend it away or bend it to your will. It will kill you.
Racism must be cut out of the body politic. If you do not, it will rot your society and turn it feral. You cannot reason with racism. You cannot persuade racism. You cannot ignore or tolerate racism, and you certainly cannot encourage it in pursuit of other ends. Any time you do not stridently oppose racism, you feed it. Yet Republicans have embraced racism as an electoral strategy, and Trump revels in the support of neo-Nazis and white supremacists and incites and celebrates right-wing violence. It is our duty to keep reminding people of this.
Trump also tore children – infants – from the arms of parents. He did so with no plan to and no interest in returning them. He packed those children into cages, withheld adequate food and sanitation, then argued, in court, that he was not obliged to provide such necessities to the children he had caged. Is this barbarism not an equal threat to the American soul? Trump is a long-term sexual predator, a child abuser on an industrial scale, and a one-man, human rights disaster. Are we not obliged to keep reminding people of this?
Trump owes his presidency to collusion with a foreign adversary. Russian state actors helped him overcome losing the popular vote – a.k.a. the vote – leaving him in Putin’s debt (though he may have been there already). Is this any less dangerous to our nation than his racism or his child abuse? How about if we factor in that Trump, McConnell, and the Republicans have virtually invited Putin to do an encore in 2020? And Putin being Putin, does anyone doubt that he’ll escalate the attack on us? This must not be lost in the chaos. We have to keep reminding people of this.
Trump owes his presidency also to an illegal, hush-money scheme, just part of his disregard for the rule of law, a bedrock precept of our country, as documented in the Mueller report and visible daily in his continuing, arrogant obstruction of justice. He and his family treat the presidency as a money-making machine, often at the expense of our national interest. We have to keep reminding people of this.
Mexico has not paid for Trump’s illusory wall, his failure to follow through on his infrastructure cost us potentially the biggest jobs act in decades, and he tried, along with his Republican co-conspirators, to take away our health care. We have to keep reminding people. He has not won his trade war with China or with anyone else. He jettisons allies and licks the boots of tyrants. His massive taxpayer-funded gift to the wealthy and to corporations did not pay for itself or spur investment but did explode the debt. We have to keep reminding people of these things.
Impeachment hearings will help, but the press will focus on Trump’s psychotic reaction to each new revelation and search for examples of how “both sides do it”. It still will be up to us to keep reminding people.
We have to keep reminding people that Trump is the worst businessman in the world but always manages to leave his workers holding the bag. Rather than standing up for the forgotten working man, he has filled his cabinet with anti-worker henchmen and promulgated policies that hurt working-class people.
We have to keep reminding people that he lies like other people breath, that he is infinitely corrupt, and that his stupidity – coupled with a laziness that precludes learning – embarrasses and endangers our country daily.
There is so much to remind people of and more is coming. But we can do this if we stick with it. Candidates, functionaries, organizations, the rank-and-file constantly need to remind people of what Donald Trump is, of what the Republican Party has become, and of the need to excise both in defense of decency and of liberty.
