Back from the brink? / Dan Drezner

Back from the brink?
By
DANIEL W. DREZNER
washingtonpost.com
5 min
View Original
June 8, 2020 at 7:00 AM EDT

Seven days ago, in the middle of a pandemic and the worst economic contraction in a century, the Trump administration used force to evict peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square. The administration then decided to enlarge the perimeter surrounding the White House and mobilized unmarked elements of federal law enforcement and the National Guard to protect its borders. This led to some extremely disquieting images of Washington, D.C.:

Little wonder, then, that both ordinary Americans and elite commentators are fretting about the state of the union. NBC News’s Mark Murray reported out the highlights of the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll and found that “8 out of 10 voters believe that things are out of control in the United States, with majorities still concerned about the spread of the coronavirus, pessimistic about the economy returning to normal before next year and down on President Donald Trump’s ability to unite the nation.”

Similarly, there is no shortage of pundits expressing concern about Trump’s authoritarian impulses. Reports emerging that last week Trump wanted 10,000 active-duty troops patrolling the streets of D.C. will have that effect.

I get the concern, but something has happened over the past week. The hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts shares Ta-Nehisi Coates’s optimism about where we are going as a country. Consider some tentative and not-so-tentative trends that have become apparent over the past week or so:

1) Covid-19 might be harder to contract than everyone expected. Remember that video of everyone partying in that Ozarks resort over Memorial Day weekend? I was convinced that would lead to a spike in infections, particularly after one of the attendees tested positive soon afterward.

It has been a week since then, however, and Missouri health officials report no new cases emanating from that weekend. This may be dumb luck, or it may be that it’s much harder to contract the novel coronavirus outdoors.

Given the mass protests that are ongoing outside, this should be welcome news across the political spectrum, because it suggests a wider array of possible warm-weather activities without risk of triggering a massive second wave of infections (that said, Vegas still scares me).

2) The economy may be bouncing back more quickly than expected. Friday’s positive jobs report took economists by surprise. My Washington Post colleague Catherine Rampell has an excellent explainer for why so many economists got this wrong. For one thing, the Paycheck Protection Program had a positive effect. It also appears that forecasters focused too narrowly on those applying for unemployment: “What economists missed is that some of those workers who had filed unemployment claims were starting to go back to work. There wasn’t good data on that.”

Rampell also notes that “it’s encouraging that 2.5 million got their jobs back in May, but 21 million are still unemployed.” And the New York Times’s Neil Irwin cautions that the damage from the pandemic will be with us for a while. Paradoxically, the good news now may cause public officials to lose their sense of urgency and not take continued action. Still, as tentative as it may be, positive job creation qualifies as good news.

3) The protests have gotten less violent and more widespread. Last week, there was a lot of irresponsible rhetoric, some of it from the junior senator from Arkansas, alleging anarchy in the streets as demonstrations protesting the death of George Floyd persisted.

The aggregate evidence contradicts those claims in two ways. The first is that reports of violence have been paltry, given the size of the demonstrations. The director of Fox News’s Decision Desk observed that “64 People were killed in the LA Riots in 1992. Less than 20 have been killed nationally in the current protests across the nation. The level of violence is clearly lower than it’s been in other historical unrest.”

The videos going viral over the weekend were either police overreacting to demonstrators, dancing National Guard troops or protesters refusing to be provoked by people who want to provoke them.

    Make this go viral happen in whitefish, MT this dude is big mad for no reason pic.twitter.com/3x8i1xZMdC
    — Gerardo (@therealpapaG17) June 4, 2020

Instead the media coverage has been about the diverse, decentralized and peaceful nature of the protests.

Oh, and they are everywhere. Writing at the Monkey Cage, Lara Putnam, Erica Chenoweth and Jeremy Pressman have gathered data about the demonstrations and conclude that there has been far greater social mobilization now than even during the women’s marches immediately after Trump’s inauguration: “The United States rarely has protests in this combination of size, intensity and frequency; it usually has big protests or sustained protests, but not both.” They also concur that the protests have been “overwhelmingly nonviolent.”

This is reflected in public opinion as well, and shows why a “law and order” campaign is likely to fail this fall. According to Murray:

    Fifty-nine percent of all voters — including 54 percent of whites, 65 percent of Latinos and 78 percent of African Americans — say they’re more troubled by Floyd’s death and the actions of police.
    That’s compared with 27 percent who say they’re more concerned about the protests over Floyd’s death, some of which have turned violent.

4) Trump will be hard-pressed to rely on the military and law enforcement to intimidate the opposition. The blowback from the Lafayette Square incident has been fast and furious. When even Attorney General William Barr is trying to distance himself from responsibility, it’s a sign that the administration knows that it crossed a line.

The actions at Lafayette Square triggered an interesting phenomenon of Pentagon civilians, military, intelligence officials and retired national security officials reemphasizing the need for a nonpolitical military. The very fact that Trump’s unrealized desire for 10,000 active-duty troops patrolling D.C. was leaked out suggests the degree to which the uniformed services in particular want no part of the president’s attempt to escalate the situation.

Last week, Georgetown University professor Elizabeth Saunders explained why Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s statement — against invoking the Insurrection Act and using active-duty military forces — in particular was such a big deal: Among other things, it makes it that much harder for Trump to get buy-in from his own Cabinet if he revisits bringing in troops.

Sure, in theory Trump could fire Esper and Milley and bring in even bigger toadies. That’s unlikely, however. Congressional GOP support for Esper is robust. And as my Post colleagues Anne Gearan and Josh Dawsey reported on Sunday, Trump cannot afford to have any more ex-Cabinet officials going after him during a campaign:

    Trump’s tendency to fire, or part ways with people, unceremoniously leads to them leveling potentially politically damaging criticism. There has been an effort in recent months to keep officials Trump has been angered with, including Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, “inside the tent.”

Some of the trends listed above could be reversed. Others seem more enduring. All of them, however, suggest that fears of the country spinning out of control are unfounded.

A week ago, I was concerned that Trump would try to use the military to crack down on lawful peaceful protests — and that the military would go along with it. Now, I wonder if last Monday was the brink that will never be revisited again in my lifetime.
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