In November of 2020, after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump, I wrote an essay entitled “America is Ungovernable.” At the time I reached several conclusions and made several dire predictions about the future state of American democracy. This past November, Trump defeated Kamala Harris, but this time he won the majority of the popular vote, the electoral college vote, and he got over 3 million more votes than he did in 2020.
That was after he tried to undermine the results of the 2020 election; fomented an insurrection and got impeached twice; was indicted for several state and federal crimes; and was convicted of paying hush money to a prostitute.
Trump is the most actively racist president since Woodrow Wilson. And like Wilson did over 100 years ago, Trump is aggressively using the resources of the federal government to undermine the civil rights progress that America has made over the last 75 years. In a series of executive orders he has:
- Ordered the Air Force to delete the story of the Tuskegee Airmen from its training videos.
- Rescinded Executive Order 11246 that Lyndon Johnson issued in 1965 that prohibited discrimination by federal contractors and urged them to use “affirmative action” to include minorities and women in their employment and contracting opportunities.
- Ordered the elimination of all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs from every federal agency.
- Ordered the Justice Department to investigate and sue any private corporation that has a DEI program.
Trump has neutered the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and ordered the department to reopen consent decrees aimed at curtailing misconduct and the unlawful use of force by police departments. Although he ordered the release of the FBI’s files on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, along with those of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that purportedly contain evidence of King’s marital infidelities, the obvious goal is to discredit King and eliminate the national holiday that we celebrate in his name. I fully expect that he will reverse the decisions to change the names of Confederate soldiers on military bases and restore Confederate monuments that have been removed.
Sadly, my predictions and conclusions proved to be accurate, although far too limited. However, what I could not predict was that our 248-year-old democracy would fail so easily in four short years and effectively be replaced by an oligarchy.
Trump is the most actively racist president since Woodrow Wilson. And like Wilson did over 100 years ago, Trump is aggressively using the resources of the federal government to undermine the civil rights progress that America has made over the last 75 years.
Almost no one could have predicted that our widely shared assumptions and settled expectations about the nature of our democracy were far from shared or settled. Even more distressing, to those of us in the legal profession, is the realization that the rule of law is not sacrosanct, but situational; that our constitutional system of checks and balances doesn’t work when it matters; and that the uncodified civility traditions and presumed “guardrails” of political behavior would not save us.
At the time I wrote:
Three weeks ago, over 82 million people voted to elect Joe Biden as president, the highest number of votes for a presidential candidate in history — that is the good news. The bad news is that over 74 million people voted to re-elect the most overtly racist, vile, autocratic, divisive, ignorant, and incompetent president in history. That is also the second-highest number of votes for a presidential candidate in history. America seems to have dodged a bullet — at least for now. Trump is gone, but the stench of what he unleashed permeates American society to the core and portends “a bad moon arising.”
When Benjamin Franklin was asked after the Constitutional Convention in 1787, what was accomplished, he said “a republic, if you can keep it.” The founders’ vision of universal equality, however hypocritical in fact, is on life support and the prognosis is dire.
What should we conclude from this harsh reality? My conclusion is that America is ungovernable, and no one knows what is going to happen over the next four years and beyond.
We now know what happened over the last four years and it is very difficult to be optimistic about the fate of our country. During the darkest moments of the civil rights struggle, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. often counseled optimism tempered by patience when he said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I used to find solace in those words, but I don’t any longer.
II.
My dire predictions and conclusions in 2020:
- The “American Dream” of equal justice and universal equality is not shared by almost half of American voters.
- The rest of the world no longer believes in “American Exceptionalism.”
- The so-called traditional and legal “guardrails” intended to protect our political institutions are illusory and one election away from being discarded altogether.
- A president can desecrate the office, violate the Constitution and federal law, disregard norms of decency, lie and, cheat on his wife and his taxes — all with impunity.
- Trump’s voters came from every state, region, demographic and socio-economic class in America.
- Millions of Americans are willing to believe all kinds of insane, crazy shit.
- Contemporary polling science is unreliable and almost useless in predicting political behavior.
- Millions of Americans question the reliability and honesty of our election systems.
- The current Republican Party is comprised of cowardly, sniveling, unprincipled racist sycophants.
- The Republican Party will continue to try to disenfranchise millions of voters.
- White Evangelical Christians are racist hypocrites who should go to Hell if it exists.
- For many Americans, objective truth doesn’t exist, and science is unreliable.
- Competence and expertise are routinely dismissed and denigrated.
- “Latino” and “Asian” voters are not monolithic and should be disaggregated.
- Very few of these voters know of America’s history of slavery or identify with the plight of Black people or other people of color.
- There is not much that Biden can do to “bring us back together.”
- Kamala Harris has very little chance of being elected president.
- Hate crimes will continue to increase.
As pessimistic as I was in 2020, I did not predict several other developments that fueled the failure of American democracy so quickly:
- That Trump would refuse to concede defeat and foment a violent riot to prevent the peaceful transition of power by promoting the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
- The total collapse of the system of checks and balances in which the legislative and judicial branches of government would curtail abuses by the executive branch.
- Many in the Republican party would actively conspire with Trump to promote his lies and undermine any efforts to hold him accountable.
- A majority of the Supreme Court would conclude that Trump is immune from prosecution for his criminal conduct while he was in office and thereafter.
- The refusal of Attorney Merrick Garland to move expeditiously to prosecute Trump for his wide-ranging criminal conduct.
- The failure of traditional media outlets such as newspapers and television networks to accurately and regularly report the efforts of Trump and his allies to undermine our democracy. And, their willingness to report abnormal behavior as if it was normal.
- The disproportionate impact of right-wing media outlets and social media in the dissemination of misinformation to shape public opinion and influence the outcome of elections.
- The successful culmination of the years-long efforts of conservative think tanks, religious organizations and anti-abortion groups to impose their views and policies on American society.
- The successful campaign by conservatives do discredit and undermine diversity, equity and inclusions in the public and private sectors as well as in universities.
- The unregulated infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars in elections at all political levels.
- The active embrace and promotion of Trump and his ideas by several billionaires.
Black people in particular should remember that — unlike most Americans, especially those who have migrated to America over the last 75 years and are the beneficiaries of our civil rights struggles — we have been here many times before since 1610, but we persevered.
III.
One of my favorite allegories is the optimistic farmer. A farmer was considering buying a new farm that included a barn. When he and his wife inspected the property, they observed a huge pile of horse manure in the corner. The wife then said, “We can’t buy this property because it will take us forever to clean out that pile.” The farmer replied, “Not so fast — there could be a pony in there someplace.”
Over the past several months, I, along with several of my relatives, friends and colleagues, have been struggling to figure out what to say to current and future generations of Black people about what these political developments mean for us. I still don’t have an answer. But I do know that we have to be realistic and understand that the next several years are going to be very difficult for all Americans. Black people in particular should also remember that — unlike most Americans, especially those who have migrated to America over the last 75 years and are the beneficiaries of our civil rights struggles — we have been here many times before since 1610, but we persevered: “and still we rise.”
Dr. Franklin: We could not keep our republic, our experiment in democracy has failed. And, there is no pony.
Carl Singley is of counsel at the Tucker Law Group and the former Dean of Temple Law School.
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