24 Thoughts On Trump Accountability
24 Thoughts On Trump Accountability
If Kamala Harris wins, turning the page on Trumpism will have to include consequences for it's enablers. Here's what that might look like.
After Monday’s piece on Kamala Harris’s insurgent-incumbent campaign to bring the Trump era to an end, a few readers asked me to flesh out how Trump accountability advances the goal of turning the page on Trumpism, and what accountability might look like.
The answer to the first question is easy. Trump loyalists have demonstrated over many years that they equate absence of consequences with permission. The politics of “looking forward not backward” have failed us repeatedly. Losing elections alone doesn’t chasten them, it encourages them to intensify their subversion efforts.
But that leaves open the questions of what Trump accountability means and how Democrats can impose consequences on Republicans for decisions they make about how they organize their own party. So I wrote up a menu of ideas.
Everything below stems from the not-at-all-safe assumption that Harris wins the election. The throughline is that turning the page on Trump can not include allowing the right-wing elites who enabled him to sweep their multi-year assault on democracy under the rug. Those Republicans, and all political elites going forward, should understand that the government will respond vigorously to any actor who’d plot against America in service of advancing self-serving policy goals.
Much will depend on how Donald Trump and state and national GOP leaders respond to defeat.
In the extremely unlikely event that Trump concedes like a normal losing candidate, or even just says nothing, there will be a widespread sense relief among both Democrats and many Republicans, and it’s going to tempt Harris and Democrats to make bad decisions. Bygones, right?
Under almost any circumstance, but particularly one where Trump is at least somewhat chastened, mainstream media will treat it as a watershed moment, and Harris will come under pressure from the most vapid parts of the political establishment to pardon Trump of his federal crimes.
She should not do that (and I don’t believe she will).
But of course, Trump is very likely to attempt another coup. Indeed, I think it’s fair to say that a coup attempt is already in motion and we’re just waiting to see how far Republicans take it.
With respect to this sliver of Trump accountability, I’d like to see Democrats begin preparing right now. I laid out a few ideas here but generally speaking, Senate Democrats should be working much harder to expose the coup before it puts its post-election plans into action; they should warn of consequences for any partisan election officials who endeavor to take election results hostage. Harris herself could simply assert that she and Democrats understand MAGA shenanigans and any effort to overturn valid election results won’t be tolerated. The strong though belated Democratic response to a MAGA election-theft plot unfolding in Georgia is a good sign.
From there things get murky: