The Atlantic - Politics / by Conor Friedersdorf / Nov 8, 2024 at 10:19 PM
After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, Barack Obama dutifully carried out the peaceful transfer of power. But a large faction of Americans declined to treat Trump as a president with democratic legitimacy. In their telling, he lost the popular vote, urged foreign actors to interfere in the election, broke laws, and transgressed against the unwritten rules of liberal societies. So they fancied themselves members of the “resistance,” or waged lawfare, or urged the invocation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. Immediately after Trump’s inauguration, liberal groups started to push for his impeachment and removal from office.
Now Trump is returning to the White House. But history isn’t quite repeating itself. This time, Trump’s case for democratic legitimacy is far stronger. He won the Electoral College decisively, and he appears likely to win the popular vote. No one believes that a foreign nation was responsible for his victory. Although he still has legal problems stemming from his past actions, no one alleges illegality in this campaign. For all of those reasons and more, a 2016-style resistance to Trump is now untenable. He will begin his term as a normal president.
A small faction of Trump detractors may continue to say that he is illegitimate, because they believe that he should have been convicted during his impeachment, or because they see his attempts to overturn his election loss in 2020 as disqualifying, or because they believe he is a fascist.
[Read: What can women do now?]
But that approach will be less popular than ever, even among Trump opponents, because an opposition that purports to defend democracy cannot deny legitimacy to such a clear democratic winner; because the original resistance oversold enough of its allegations to diminish its ability to make new ones without proof; because some in the resistance are exhausted from years of obsessive, at times hysterical, focus on Trump; and because unaligned Americans who don’t even like Trump are tired of being browbeaten for not hating him enough.
Maybe voters made a terrible mistake in 2024. But that’s a risk of democracy, so we must live with it. I have strong doubts about Trump’s character, his respect for the Constitution, and his judgment. I worry that his administration will engage in reckless spending and cruelty toward immigrants. Having opposed government overreach and civil-liberties abuses during every presidency I’ve covered, I anticipate having a lot of libertarian objections to Trump in coming years.
Yet a part of me is glad that, if Trump had to win, the results are clear enough to make Resistance 2.0 untenable, because that approach failed to stop Trump the first time around. It deranged many Americans who credulously believed all of the resistance’s claims, and it foreclosed a posture toward Trump that strikes me as more likely to yield good civic results: normal political opposition.
The American system makes effecting radical or reckless change hard.
As a Never Trump voter who thought January 6 was disqualifying but who respects the results of this election, I urge this from fellow Trump skeptics: Stop indulging the fantasy that outrage, social stigma, language policing, a special counsel, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or impeachment will disappear him. And stop talking as if normal political opposition is capitulation.
Everyone should normalize Trump. If he does something good, praise him. Trump is remarkably susceptible to flattery. Don’t hesitate to criticize him when he does something bad, but avoid overstatements. They are self-discrediting. And know that new House elections are just two years away. Focus on offering a better alternative to voters, not ousting the person they chose.
Meanwhile, oppose Trump’s bad ideas by drawing on the normal tools Americans use to constrain all presidents. Our constitutional and civic checks on executive power are formidable, frustrating every administration. So be the John Boehner to his Obama. Even if ill intent exists in Trump’s inscrutable mind, his coalition does not wish to end democracy. Some will turn on the president when he merely has trouble fulfilling basic promises.
And in America, power remains dispersed––the left never succeeded in shortsighted efforts to end the filibuster, or to destroy federalism and states’ rights, or to strip the private sector of independence from the state, or to allow the executive branch to define and police alleged misinformation.
Until 2028, normal checks can constrain Trump. Then he will term out. Yes, he will almost certainly do some troubling things in the meantime: impose tariffs that will harm Americans with rising prices or carry out excessive deportations that needlessly harm families and communities. But he has a mandate for some lawful parts of his agenda, including parts that I personally hate.
[Thomas Chatterton Williams: What the left keeps getting wrong]
Amid the give-and-take of democratic politics, I hope that Trump will normalize himself too. Through what he says and does, he could reassure voters who regard him as a fascist with dictatorial aspirations, rather than deploying rhetoric—let alone taking actions—that elicit reasonable concern or fear. He may even try reassurance, if only because it would be in his own self-interest.
A Trump who reassures the nation that he will adhere to the law, the Constitution, and basic human decency—and then does so—will inspire a lot less opposition than a Trump who indulges the excesses of his first term and reminds Americans why they rejected his bid in 2020.
“We’re going to help our country heal,” Trump promised on Election Night. He has all the power he needs to make good on that promise, which will require restraining his worst impulses. If he succeeds, he will earn a historical legacy far better than the one he has today. I doubt that he has it in him. Typically, his word is not his bond. But I hope that he proves me wrong.
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