Much of my career involved negotiation. There was one negotiating principle that I found by far the most valuable in representing our organization (please excuse the male gender reference):
Assume that the other guy is brighter than you are, and knows at least as much as you do. He knows his weaknesses that you intend to take advantage of. How will he try to counter and overcome them?
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe of August 25, amid coverage focusing on former President Donald Trump’s August 24th booking in the Fulton County Jail (complete with mug shot) for the charges that he conspired in violation of Georgia state law to unlawfully overturn his Georgia 2020 presidential election loss, former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele cogently (and chillingly) articulated my deepest fear for our republic since it became clear, despite Mr. Trump’s obvious incitement of the January 6th insurrection and President Joe Biden’s inauguration, that Mr. Trump wasn’t going to fade away and that the spell he has cast over a large segment of our electorate wasn’t going to dissipate:
“[With the Georgia booking now completed] [w]e are where we knew we’d be. … I think we need to contextualize all of this. … We already know what the politics is. We’re seeing it play out. [U.S. OH Rep.] Jim Jordan and his ilk are all on defense, to block and tackle for Donald Trump to slow this process because in their warped mind, Donald Trump wins next year, come hell or high water. The fix is in in Election Boards and in processes around the country. They’re already setting it up, so let’s not act surprised and act like, ‘Oh my God – we didn’t see this coming!’ They’ve been telegraphing and preparing for it for over two years now. So we know what they’re doing on the ground in a lot of states, particularly key states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania – shall I go on? We’ve heard these places before, right? So let us stop being surprised by stuff, and get in the game. And understand exactly what Jim Jordan and all the others are doing to set up 2024. And when that happens, we’ll know how to deal with it because we will have dealt with it before that moment. … So let’s understand the moment beyond the shock and awe of [Mr. Trump’s indictments and the mug shot] and recognize that the politics is in play, the legal system is doing what it should do, and the American people now need to decide whether they want to put [Donald Trump] back in the White House.”
Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough actually seemed a bit nonplussed by Mr. Steele’s comments, and immediately pivoted to the safer (and for the show’s panel) happier reveling in Mr. Trump’s legal misfortunes. Mr. Scarborough didn’t want to go into the dark; he preferred to stay with the theme that the law was going to do its job with the attendant implication that Mr. Trump would consequently be disqualified from regaining the presidency.
I mentally stuck with Mr. Steele. His comments have prompted me to pester you with this note.
MAGAs around the country are – to use Mr. Steele’s word – warped, but it is an extremely dangerous misconception – and perhaps fatal for our democracy – to underestimate them, to think they are stupid. Assume that they have decided what many, including me, calculate: Mr. Trump has too much baggage to defeat Mr. Biden in an above-board, fairly determined election; that he is too distasteful to too large a segment of our electorate and that even on substantive policy, the Republican position on the emotive issue of abortion – a challenge for any Republican — will be an additional millstone around his neck. If Mr. Trump is the Republican presidential nominee, their only real hope to win by the rules is if a third party candidate draws support from Mr. Biden, or if the President suffers a serious health incident between now and Election Day, 2024, leaving voters with a choice between Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris (I haven’t heard even one of our progressive friends in very progressive Madison, WI, suggest that Ms. Harris could beat Mr. Trump in Wisconsin.)
So if you’re MAGA, what do you do? As Mr. Steele pointed out, you do your best to rig state election boards and election processes. You continue to sow distrust in the willingly gullible about the integrity of our election processes. You fund allegedly “centrist” third party candidacies. Perhaps you realize that President Biden’s ability to use the U.S. Armed Forces to quell localized armed rebellions against his declared re-election will be hampered if the authority of the military’s chain of command is subject to question. (At this time, responsibilities of three members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are being performed by acting commanders, and hundreds of military promotions and reassignments are on hold, due to a Senatorial stop by U.S. AL Sen. Tommy Tuberville; the disruption Mr. Tuberville has caused will reportedly take months to unravel).
In the entire saga around Mr. Trump’s various indictments, the only time I’ve felt the “shock and awe” to which Mr. Steele referred was not with regard to the Georgia mug shot, or with regard to the various revelations regarding Mr. Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents; it was reading the indictment brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith describing the conception, the planning, the audacity, and the malign disregard for liberal democracy that was involved in the execution of the Fake Electors scheme. I assume most of us – certainly including me – thought that the 2020 election was effectively over in December, 2020, when the states certified their respective slates of electors.
We didn’t think big enough. We had too much trust and too little imagination.
2024 will be a two-front struggle. First, Mr. Trump or any other Republican candidate exhibiting MAGA tendencies needs to be actually fairly outvoted in enough states to give Mr. Biden a valid Electoral College victory. There is a second front, every bit as important: safeguarding the victory through legal processes, keeping in mind that MAGAs – to be sharply and completely differentiated from moderate conservatives, rank and file traditional Republicans, and those prominent GOP members such as former Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. UT Sen. Mitt Romney, and former U.S. WY Rep. Liz Cheney, all of whom respect our democratic processes – won’t stop if they lose on the merits, and that there is nothing they won’t dare. They seek an American Apartheid.
But for Mr. Pence, our lack of imagination might have been fatal to our republic in 2020. We can’t risk another such lapse. If we don’t think in these terms, we will deserve the autocracy that will descend upon us.
These pages will almost certainly spout a lot of Noise in the coming months about the innards of our electoral contests, assessments of the political strength of different candidates and the sentiments of various segments of our electorate. These aspects of our electoral process remain, of course, vital; if Mr. Biden doesn’t win fairly and justly in 2024, there will be no need for MAGA machinations. That said, we need to think like MAGAs, and then figure how to counter the illiberal measures they have proven themselves willing to undertake if Mr. Biden wins.
Too Armageddon, too apocalyptic for you? I hope you’re right; but after what we’ve seen over the last six years, are you sure?
In Mr. Steele’s words: We need to get in the game.
McCoy's Noise 