Two Views of the Next Coup
It will be clownish, inept and doomed to fail. It should still scare us
How worried should we be that Donald Trump, still licking his wounds from the failed coup of 2020-2021, will try to overturn the presidential election of 2024? I’ve been thinking over the issue, arguing myself in my own mind. Two recent and very well-argued essays advance alternative perspectives.
In a long think piece in the Washington Post, the neo-conservative foreign policy wonk Robert Kagan makes the case for panic:
First, Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for president in 2024. The hope and expectation that he would fade in visibility and influence have been delusional. He enjoys mammoth leads in the polls; he is building a massive campaign war chest; and at this moment the Democratic ticket looks vulnerable. Barring health problems, he is running.
Second, Trump and his Republican allies are actively preparing to ensure his victory by whatever means necessary. Trump’s charges of fraud in the 2020 election are now primarily aimed at establishing the predicate to challenge future election results that do not go his way. Some Republican candidates have already begun preparing to declare fraud in 2022, just as Larry Elder tried meekly to do in the California recall contest.
Meanwhile, the amateurish “stop the steal” efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized nationwide campaign to ensure that Trump and his supporters will have the control over state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020. Those recalcitrant Republican state officials who effectively saved the country from calamity by refusing to falsely declare fraud or to “find” more votes for Trump are being systematically removed or hounded from office. Republican legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the election certification process.
Responding to Kagan in Politico, the brisk libertarian pundit Jack Shafer agrees that Trump will try another coup but, he argues, any worries that it will succeed are “overblown” because Trump leads a desperate minoritarian movement that is more likely to provoke a counter-attack than win power:
The only person or party that attempts a coup d’etat is the one that cannot win by other means. Gearing up for a coup—which we can concede that Kagan gets right about Trump—is not a sign of political strength but one of political weakness. By signaling an attempt to regain power by any means necessary, Trump essentially confesses that Trumpism is not and is not likely to become a majoritarian movement.
Readers of this newsletter will know that I, like Kagan, frequently worry about the threat authoritarianism poses to the United States, although I see it more as a threat that comes from the broader right-wing movement seeking to shore up white supremacy rather than simply a product of Trump’s ambition. Trump is the avatar of this movement and a crucial fertilizer of its growth but he’s not the prime mover.
But I’ve also shared Shafer’s view that it’s important to have a sense of the actual danger posed by Trumpism and not to give in to threat inflation. On January 4, 2021, two days before the armed insurrection the outgoing president incited, I described Trump as leading “a clown coup” that merited serious punishment because it could do damage. The subsequent riot illustrated both the clownishness and the potential for harm.
My stronger disagreement with the Shafer view is the idea that a minoritarian movement will necessarily be thwarted by the majority. The American political system is set up with multiple points that allow for minority rule: the electoral college, gerrymandering on both a state and congressional level, the Senate, the courts. As the Eastman memo, discussed in a previous Time of Monsters podcast, shows, there are even fresh loopholes to be exploited such as having state governments override the popular vote in presidential election.
The authoritarian movement Trump leads is well aware of these anti-democratic structures and has worked diligently to strengthen its ability to govern as a minority faction. Being weak in terms of electoral strength is no argument against governing in an authoritarian fashion: it is in fact the very motive for becoming authoritarian.
There’s some awareness on the part of the Democrats that these systematic problems need address to forestall future coup attempts. But currently, efforts to bolster voting rights are stalled. Kagan’s mistake is not realizing that the problem is far bigger than Trump. Shafer’s mistake is in not realizing that Trump’s ineptness is little cause for comfort.
(Edited by Emily M. Keeler)
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These attempts to overthrow elections are experiments that are challenging democratic norms through every conceivable avenue. From getting the VP or congress to delay certification to judicial means to state level attempts haven't worked. "People power" on Jan 6 hadn't worked.
The only remaining avenues left are use of force and wholesale corruption of the elections process by infiltration of partisans into positions of government election oversight power, and disenfranchisement of Democrats.
Agree the problem is much bigger than Trump. Stop the Steal, the continued loud assertion of the Big Lie, and the spread of “fraudits” have naturalized and normalized a “Truth” embraced by over half of voters who identify as Republicans - any victory by a Democrat is by definition illegitimate. And in swing states with GOP legislatures, they’re taking steps now to ensure promoters of the Big Lie will be in charge of administering elections. Some states are inventing additional authority in the legislature to overturn election results.
These initiatives may have been originally motivated by a hope Trump will run again, so they can make sure he “won’t be cheated” next time. But I assure you DeSantis, Hawley or Abbott, or even purported “sane” candidates like Rubio or Haley, will happily use the new machinery. Furthermore, though the focus of the GOP has been taking over machinery for Presidential elections, having rabid partisans running elections will create crises up and down the ballot.