This worked fine for a while, but starting in the 90s it became an increasingly weighty albatross and Republicans became increasingly desperate to increase both white turnout and their share of the white vote. For years it’s been obvious that Republicans are the party of whites and Democrats are the party of nonwhites. Trump very plainly tapped into something very real in the Republican rank-and-file psyche. And he did it despite the almost unanimous opposition of party regulars. He serially demolished a field that would normally have been considered pretty strong. Trump led the primary race from the start. On a nationwide level, I consider the election of Donald Trump to be a fluke: he was running against a party that had been in power for eight years he got a last-minute tailwind out of the blue from James Comey and then his 2 million+ loss in the popular vote turned into a quirky, razor-thin Electoral College win.īut at the level of the Republican Party, there was nothing flukish about it. This is one of the paradoxes at the heart of my relative calm about the future of America. It means they realize their party is in existential trouble. By the time he’s through, they’re understandably afraid there might not be much left standing.Īt the risk of being too Pollyannaish, it’s almost good news that Republicans are acting this way. Republicans are in panic mode over the possibility that Robert Mueller is about to start plowing relentlessly through the White House like a bulldozer leveling an old shack. Still, there’s no question that things are getting worse. ….On the real collusion front, the integrity of the FBI’s investigation in Trump and his associates is being hampered by Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes’ blatant attempts to acquire sensitive documents held close by the FBI, and to subpoena FBI officials whose public testimony would harm the investigation itself.Īs I mentioned the other day, I’m in non-panic mode right now. Two Republican Senators, Charles Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham, have now made a criminal referral to the FBI against Steele, the longtime intelligence officer who provided information designed to expose Russia’s crimes and accomplices….Meanwhile, reports surfaced the FBI wilted some months ago after ongoing public pressure from Donald Trump to prosecute his political opponents for nonexistent crimes by reopening investigations into the Clinton Foundation and the Uranium One nothingburger. But all of that started to change this week….Republican Senators who began last year by pretending to want investigations into Russia’s interference in the election are now actively scuttling those investigations.
For a long time things seemed to be largely OK: the institutions of state were mostly able to resist Trump’s incursions into their necessary roles and perform their duties more or less as intended. In the year since Donald Trump moved into the White House, one of the key questions was how long the institutions of American democracy would hold up if he tried to create an authoritarian state centered around himself.
#Trump in panic mode free#
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.Īre we on the slippery slope toward autocracy? David Atkins says things changed this week:
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