The President clearly has a problem with premature elation, as shown by his inability to control his unwarranted triumphal twittering. It started on the first day after his inauguration when he tweeted that his crowd size was bigger than Obama’s. As if.
It became more serious when we went overnight from “the slowest economic recovery in history” to the “greatest economy in the history of the world” despite the fact that the actual changes in job growth and GDP were small, and drooping. The elation was premature because after Trump decided to show us how tough he was by starting a trade war with China, the farming and manufacturing sectors of the economy weakened.
The prime example of Trump’s premature elation is, of course, the coronavirus. From the outset, Trump has claimed victory over the virus, in a series of lies – it will go away in warm weather, it will just disappear, it is cured by hydroxychloroquine, it can be cured by injecting disinfectant or light, if you want a test you can get a test, it is cured by Remdesivir, young people are virtually immune, people who get it recover and then are immune, cases aren’t really increasing – we are just testing more, people aren’t really dying of it – greedy doctors are falsifying the numbers, etc., etc. etc.
Trump can’t stop himself from denying that there is a real problem, or from claiming that some miracle will save us. For him, vaccine is not a tool in fighting the virus; it is just the latest miracle that lets him feel like a winner as soon as a vaccine is released. He has no conception of how complicated it will be to manufacture and deliver hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine, much less to convince tens of millions of people to even take the vaccine. If they won’t even wear a mask, do you really think they will let themselves be injected with a Warped Speed vaccine? But stopping COVID is not the issue for him. The real point of the denials and the hope in miracles is that they let Trump maintain his elation at being in control, for however long that lasts.
We have yet to see what is potentially the most destructive result of Trump’s premature elation. That could happen on election night and afterwards, when Trump claims victory based on a preliminary vote count. When he sues to interfere with the count in contested states he expects to lose. When he asks Republican legislatures to instruct their electors to vote for him, regardless of the actual vote count. When he signals to the Proud Boys and other white supremacist militias that the time for standing by is over. When he asks the Supreme Court to stop the count, as in Bush v. Gore, to save the country from the chaos that he created.
Now I don’t know that any of this will occur — other than Trump claiming victory prematurely. That one is a lock. But the threat to our democratic institutions and potential long-term damage to our democracy is serious enough that we should try to avoid it at all costs. The solution, I suggest, would be to prevent Trump from getting excited in the first place. To that end:
- Vote.
- Vote for someone other than Donald Trump. If you can’t vote for Biden, write in Tucker Carlson, or John McCain, or your cat. Anyone but Trump.
- If you see efforts to interfere with voting, call 866-OUR-VOTE, and report it to election officials or the police.
- Remain calm when Trump claims an overwhelming victory on election night.
- If any of my fever dream scenarios start to actually happen, immediately call your senators and representatives, governors and mayors, especially the Republicans, to demand that it stop. Insist that all votes in your state be counted, and electors chosen accordingly. Insist that we start treating the Proud Boys like the domestic terrorists that they are. Tell your elected officials that even if they think having a Democrat in charge is bad, it will be worse to leave power in the hands of a narcissistic authoritarian who gleefully trashes our democracy. Follow progress by Googling “count every vote.”
- If necessary, get out in the street to safely (masked and distanced) and peacefully show Trump that, once again, his elation was premature. Check protecttheresults.com for a protest near you.
- If Trump wins fair and square, accept it and move on. A lot of work has to be done to heal our country, and we can’t wait four more years to start.
