Branding Trump as a fascist is not about fascism. It’s about grabbing power. Even the Democrats’ most loyal allies in the press know it. Salon cynically warned, “Branding Trumpism Fascist has the political benefit of mobilizing disparate forces in the fight against him just like the antifascist coalition of World War II led to unprecedented alliances between ideologically disparate forces (the Soviet-American alliance being the primary example). In the American context, seeing Trump as a 2016 reincarnation of Mussolini can unite Democrats, Republicans, independents, Naderites, neo-cons, constitutionalists, and others, into a broad anti-Fascist coalition which would bring Trump down and save our democracy.”
Of course, Democrats aren’t so much focused on saving democracy as they are on saving their own power. They will pay any price—scratch that—they will ask you to pay any price to make that happen.
Case in point: President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to provide funding for a border wall. Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright called President Trump’s use of that authority an example of “fascist” behavior. Prior to the House vote on the resolution blocking the emergency declaration, Nancy Pelosi said, “Perhaps it’s time for our country to have a civics lesson. Our founders rejected the idea of a monarch.” That’s all well and good, except for one problem: Pelosi doesn’t believe in rejecting a powerful executive and neither do her Democrat colleagues in Congress, who uniformly cheered President Obama’s use of pen and phone to avoid traditional checks and balances by the legislative branch.
The dead giveaway can be found in the resolution blocking Trump’s national emergency. It blocks the president’s ability to reprogram authorized funds in this specific case. It does nothing to rein in future presidents—a move for which there would be strong bipartisan support.
This is about blocking this president, this time. The last thing Nancy Pelosi wants is to rein in the executive authority upon which Democrat presidents have relied to bypass legislative checks and balances.
The casualty in all of this is foundational institutions that have been key to the success of the world’s most successful economy. Many of the articles warning of Trump’s fascism warned of potential damage to our democratic institutions. But a more careful look at institutions from the Electoral College to the First Amendment and from the Supreme Court to the Department of Justice shows the real damage is coming not from President Trump’s allies but from his political enemies. Much of it begins in Congress.
Chapter 4
Creating False Narratives
Two years after her devastating defeat at the hands of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton stood before a Selma, Alabama, crowd and attempted to explain why she isn’t the president of the United States. She offered one simple reason. “I was the first person who ran for president without the protection of the Voting Rights Act and I will tell you, it makes a really big difference,” Clinton said.
We have heard Clinton offer a bevy of reasons for her loss, but this was a new one. Affecting her best southern accent, Clinton clumsily attempted to construct a narrative that would conform to the formula her party had successfully used for years. It is a formula that weaponizes public consensus—in this case the consensus against racism—and attempts to cast political opponents as coming down on the wrong side of that consensus.
She explained that people she referred to as opponents of the half-century-old law had “found a receptive Supreme Court” that “gutted the Voting Rights Act.” She then proceeded to spin a narrative that attributed her electoral defeat to voters in Wisconsin who she says were turned away from the polls “because of the color of their skin, because of their age, because of whatever excuse could be made up to stop a fellow American citizen from voting.”
There was a problem with this narrative. It just flat out was not true. The Supreme Court decision to which Clinton was referring, Shelby Co. Ala. v. Holder, applied only to nine states, mostly in the Deep South. It did not apply to Wisconsin. Even Salon, one of the premier outlets for Democratic Party propaganda, called Clinton out. Their story cited legal experts who explained that the key states in Clinton’s loss (Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania) were not even covered by the part of the Voting Rights Act the Court had struck down. Eventually the Washington Post fact-checker gave Clinton four Pinocchios for her claim.
Besides being factually inaccurate on the legal details, Clinton’s narrative was clearly hyperbolic. The effects of the Supreme Court decision were not broad enough to have the impact she described. Such a notion may resonate with progressive voters in America’s Blue cities whose exposure to conservative voters is limited to stereotypes. But for your average American voter who is not racist, the argument that Clinton lost because of racist voter suppression is an outrage. The claim is a way to quickly shut down debate and win the argument without actually having to take a position against election security.
We shouldn’t be surprised to see Clinton attach herself to this narrative. We have seen not-so-subtle foreshadowing that this narrative will play a huge role in the 2020 election cycle.
Why else would Democrats choose a failed gubernatorial candidate to offer the party’s rebuttal to the State of the Union address? Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams blames her 54,000-vote loss on voter list maintenance or—as she calls it—voter suppression. The fact that her opponent, as secretary of state, removed voters who had died, moved, become inactive (usually because they died or moved), or used names that did not match their government ID is being characterized as an act of racism and suppression. Trotting out Abrams on the national stage was one signal that Democrats will ramp up this narrative for 2020.
In the world of political narratives, these stories we tell help us decide who is right and who is wrong. The power of a good narrative is among the most potent tools in the political arsenal. In fiction, narratives help us determine which characters are the good guys and which ones are the bad guys. They help us take a side in a conflict, assign motives to the actors, and determine whether justice was done.
Narratives can be true, false, or a matter of opinion. They help us make sense of our world, but as Hillary Clinton demonstrated, they can also be used to manipulate us. In the age of Donald Trump, the spinning of increasingly implausible narratives has gone into overdrive.
Without congressional majorities, Democrats in the first two years of the Trump administration were limited in their ability to initiate the types of investigations that help build election-year narratives. But even in the minority, they demonstrated just how far they are willing to go to take down this president. Traditional norms no longer apply. The confirmation hearings of Justice Brett Kavanaugh were a window into the scorched-earth approach Democrats will take to tell the stories that protect their power.
Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein of California, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, would be the Democratic lead in the confirmation hearings. To this point, Feinstein had been very outspoken about her principles when it comes to congressional oversight, posting to her website in 2009: “So amid all the quarreling and confusion, I say this: Let’s not prejudge or jump to conclusions. And let’s resist the temptation to stage a Washington spectacle, high in entertainment value, but low in fact-finding potential.”