There Will Be No Reckoning—Unless We Force One
Face it. Our current institutions are not up to the task of holding Trump and the GOP accountable.
The revelation on Sunday night that President Trump attempted to extort Georgia’s secretary of state into overturning the results of the 2020 election set off a familiar reaction to Trump’s brazen authoritarianism: a brief spout of horror, followed by a collective exhale upon the recognition that the reckoning is, in fact, coming.
As David Frum put it in The Atlantic:
Trump is abusing the power of the presidency until his last hour in office. And his nonstop abuse seems likely to force a reckoning even by those most eager to move on.
MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace went further, declaring The Call a historic inflection point that will live in infamy as the moment liberal democracy sprung back into full force:
The energy, it seems, flows from a belief that we have finally caught Trump and his enablers red-handed, on tape, in what is sure to amount to some sort of a crime. Within hours of the news of Trump’s call, the New York Times had a front-page piece detailing what laws, if any, Trump had violated. The Bush-era ethics lawyer Richard Painter declared on Twitter that Trump had committed a felony. George Conway, a founder of the Lincoln Project, took to MSNBC to opine that Trump had clearly violated the law, “making his legal situation worse.”
In other words, sit back: The reckoning is coming.
By now, you’re familiar with this exercise. Trump commits an unconscionable abuse of power, and prominent pundits take to Twitter and TV to gleefully declare that this new, shiny piece of evidence is being filed away in some secret vault in Cyrus Vance’s office, ready to be waved in front of the jury’s face in an pivotal moment for the rule of law. Yes, you should be alarmed, we are told, but fear not: our mighty institutions will surely account for this singularly horrible and abusive man.
The appeal is understandable—what could be more comforting than trusting our institutions to handle this mess on their own?—but the whole performance is disingenuous at best and outright fraudulent at worst. The grand promises are generally made by establishment figures—former prosecutors, Bush-era officials, etc.—who themselves support the moderate politicians who insist that moving on and avoiding direct confrontation with the GOP is the best path forward. The Lincoln Project is perhaps the best example of the extent of the grift, raking in tons of money for its Republican founders while doing virtually nothing to achieve progressive goals (beyond lots of retweets, of course).
Unsurprisingly, the promises that our institutions have this under control have never come to fruition, and there’s no reason to believe that will change any time soon. Over the past four years, Trump’s and the GOP’s relentless corruption has only emboldened the far-right and encouraged Republican politicians to push further. Indeed, far from ensuring Trump’s inevitable downfall, it is far more likely that the tape of his call with Georgia’s secretary of state will proliferate on right-wing media for years and serve as evidence of Trump’s strength and righteousness.
Thus far, there have been plenty of opportunities for our institutions to prove their prowess. Chief among those was Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, a years-long effort devoted entirely to prosecuting the crimes of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. However, despite Mueller’s virtual admission that Trump committed obstruction of justice, Trump was charged with no crime, and Trump’s lame-duck pardons have all but eliminated the relatively small slice of accountability that the investigation was able to achieve.
We could go on for days about the crimes committed by Trump, his family, and his enablers in Congress and his administration. But what do we have to show for it? Congress impeached Trump for the Ukraine scandal, an abuse of power that seems miniscule compared to the level of criminality and corruption we are now witnessing. The House of Representatives balked at the opportunity to enforce subpoenas of members of the Trump administration, and there has been barely a peep regarding the vast majority of Trump’s transgressions. Yes, a handful of prosecutors across the country have ongoing investigations, but they are largely focused on financial crimes and are still facing enormous interference from Trump’s vast legal team. The fact is, there is at this moment no concerted effort underway devoted to holding Trump and his enablers responsible for the endless harm they have done to liberal democracy and the rule of law.
Of course, there could be, even at this late hour. President Biden could commit to establishing a commission to account for the Trump administration’s abuses, or he could appoint a special counsel. Speaker Pelosi could create a congressional committee devoted to investigating the Trump administration, or issue new subpoenas as part of a broad investigation into his efforts to interfere with the 2020 election, or (the most obvious option) immediately introduce new articles of impeachment.
But the leadership of the Democratic Party appears devoted to doing the exact opposite. Rather than reorienting our institutions towards confronting right-wing corruption, Biden has announced that he will instead create a position within his administration to “reach out” to the GOP. And any hope that Congress will fill the void was flatly rejected by the Democratic leadership, which has already ruled out impeaching Trump for his latest abuses of power.
We’re not looking backwards. That stunning declaration, from a member of the opposition party, is contrary to the very definition of justice. Every criminal conviction, every investigation, every reckoning is, by definition, backward-looking. But to the Democratic leadership, we must plow forward, with our eyes covered, just hoping that next time will be different.
And there will be a next time. Despite the hopes that Trump had learned his lesson following the Mueller investigation, or impeachment, or his massive loss in 2020, the corruption only soared to new heights, with Trump and his collaborators as emboldened as ever. Indeed, it wouldn’t be surprising if the Democrats’ latest refusal to confront Trump’s behavior is only strengthening his intention to seek the presidency again in 2024. And if not, one of the many Republicans themselves trying to obliterate democracy will be happy to finish the job. When that next crisis arrives, it will be hard for Democrats to complain when they expressly decided—we’re not looking backwards—to do nothing when they had the chance.
Where do we go from here? If Americans want a true reckoning for the crimes and abuses of the Trump-administration, and a concerted effort to confront the brutal authoritarianism of the GOP, we are long past the point of searching for a solution. We will need to mobilize, protest, and continue elevating progressive primary challengers. We will need to tirelessly pressure the Biden administration, organize to oust the current Democratic leadership, and groom new leaders. We will need to support major institutional reforms when given the chance—such as court packing and elimination of the filibuster—and reject the futile attempts to compromise with Mitch McConnell.
It will be messy and uncomfortable, and it may never be enough. But it beats waiting for lightening to strike.
That is, unless it interferes with your vacation.