Trump’s rebirth is still a threat to democratic system

Illustration: Geordie Gray

Donald Trump has command of the momentum. The transformation is astonishing – the renegade outsider has become the anointed frontrunner. Trump’s defiance of the assassination attempt creates a messianic glow around his persona. The danger for America is greater than ever.

The Republican National Convention has become a celebration of unity, Trump’s complete hijack of the party and its re-invention with a “Make America Great Again” identity. Patriotism, Christianity and conservatism seem fused in looming cultural victory over the progressive establish­ment.

Its symbol, Joe Biden, is a broken figure. In denial of his cognitive decline, inept in his communications and devoid of authority since too many of his own side want him gone, Biden, short of an unforeseen event, is slated to take the Democratic Party to a humiliating defeat. He should be replaced but that’s probably too hard now.

The ultimate issue of campaign 2024 is rarely put: will this election – one of the most critical in US history – lead to a more united or fractured country? Will the polarisation only get worse? Forget the nonsense about a civil war: the issue is whether the domestic schism turns America into a malfunctioning giant.

US Republican candidate Donald Trump is seen with blood on his face surrounded by secret service agents as he is taken off the stage at a campaign event at Butler Farm Show Inc.

Trump now has a choice. The lucky survivor of the assassination attempt, he has offered two competing responses: his “fight, fight, fight” fist-pumping declaration was a rallying cry of aggressive resistance while his response 24 hours later was to rewrite his convention speech, the purpose being “to bring the country together”, to project as an agent of calm and unity.

Which way will Trump go? The choice is to manipulate the violence for political purposes against the Democrats or to channel another, unseen side to Trump as a prospective president now thinking of how he will speak to the nation as its leader.

Might Trump Mark II be capable of emotional restraint? Probably not – but the question must be posed. Has the near-death experience shifted Trump’s psychology? Most human beings, having come so close to their mortality, would undergo a spiritual reappraisal.

For eight years America has been moving closer to the abyss. It is a nation divided by two cultures but somehow, someway, the descent needs to be checked, even if it cannot be reversed.

Trump’s selection of senator JD Vance as his vice-presidential candidate is an alarming omen. It reveals Trump’s hyper-confidence. With Vance, he is doubling down on the isolationist, protectionist MAGA identity. Vance is a more articulate poor man’s Trump, more ideologically attached to the MAGA cult than even Trump, someone who will never buck the chief, not like Mike Pence who eventually defied Trump.

By selecting Vance, Trump gets an appealing yet polarising activist, not a centrist figure or someone with more geographical pull to help the ticket. After the event Vance tried to blame the Biden camp, saying its rhetoric “led directly” to the assassination attempt. He will reinforce Trump, which means the likely betrayal of Ukraine under the rationale of standing up to China. Vance’s selection has nothing to do with sound governance. Vance at 39 is inexperienced, has never run anything, and constitutes a gamble for the US and the world given Trump’s age and the prospect Vance may need to step into the presidential chair. He is ill-equipped to do that.

Vance, however, is a symbol of Trump’s corrupting magnetism – an army of Republicans, many of whom disliked or distrusted Trump in earlier years, have joined the conga line of Trump loyalists.

Trump loves nothing more than seeing his past critics, the so-called Never Trumps, recant and submit to his electoral pull.

J. D. Vance

The Democrats are at a point of extreme risk. If Trump displays even a limited capacity for restraint he will sway more middle ground votes. The Democrats need to confront their nightmare scenario – that Trump takes control of the US system of government, the White House, the vice-presidency, the House of Representatives, the Senate and can make even more Supreme Court appointments.

Don’t think the current eight-year crisis may not end with a decisive result. Any Trump victory, however, will be the outcome of the democratic process. The Democrats can choke on that truth; it would be the most galling thing for them – having preached that Trump threatens US democracy, to see US democracy put Trump back in the White House.

The attempted assassination comes as a double curse for the Democrats – in the very short term it helps to keep Biden intact, weakening the impulse for change, yet it derails the ability of the Democrats to assail Trump as an agent of vengeance, reckless on policy and a threat to the system. Such personal attacks on Trump will backfire in the post-assassination bid atmospherics. Biden has lost his final and most effective pitch against Trump.

But that setback cannot obscure the political and moral issues at this election. Trump is manifestly a threat to American democracy. It is extraordinary how many people, faced with Biden’s decline and Trump’s momentum, have become craven apologists for Trump, now playing down or excusing his openly declared attack on the constitution and his brazen assault on the democratic process.

For the record, Trump refused to accept his legitimate defeat at the 2020 election, thereby rejecting the central premise of a functioning democracy. Indeed, he refuses to say he will accept any defeat at the 2024 election, raising the prospect of serious disturbance if he is defeated.

He encouraged the mob to protest at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, saying “we won this election and we won it by a landslide” and “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more”. This was incitement to act, but not specific incitement to violence. Trump called them “patriots”, displaying his ability to exploit violence.

But Trump’s deepest skill lies in his media orchestration and, one way or another, he will turn the images from his near martyrdom into a powerful story through to voting day.

The Democrats, their media supporters and left activists, however, bear a significant responsibility for fanning the hatred and violence during the Trump phenomenon – ranging from depicting Trump as a “fascist” to excusing the street violence during the 2020 mass protests against racism. As political scientist Yascha Mounk says, once Trump was cast as a Hitler-type threat – a tactic of the left – then since violence was justified against Hitler the question becomes “why shouldn’t it be legitimate to resist Trump by violent means?”.

It is a fine yet critical dividing line – between legitimate criticism of Trump as a threat to democracy and encouraging violence against him contingent upon that threat.

The worse blunder of the Biden administration has been its political arrogance and ineptitude in reopening the door to Trump. In a literal sense Biden has created Trump Mark II. Having pledged to reunite America, Biden violated that pledge – he governed from the left, deliber­ately relaxed controls at the southern border, promoted identity politics, sought to create an electoral alliance of minorities, pitched his climate policies to a progressive constituency and for most of his presidency assumed that Trump was beyond any political recovery.

Biden misjudged Trump, misjudged America and has fatally exaggerated his own abilities. The Biden-Kamala Harris team has run its course. If the Democratic Party had the means and the ruthlessness it would liquidate them both and install a new, fresh team for the election. That’s probably impossible, yet the Democrats are on a doom march.

This is not normal politics; it is crisis politics. That means extreme solutions are needed. In the Australian context Biden and Harris would have been removed by now. The Democrats need the circuit-breaker of an entirely new team to disrupt Trump’s momentum. The risk now is that Trump wins with the country even more deeply divided.