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This is a piece I’ve been thinking about since the debate — and that has been evolving and coming together in that time. I hope you appreciate this look at what has certainly been the biggest story aside from the Supreme Court in recent days.
All three branches of government have failed us. We have to do this.
There are no easy answers right now.
Globally, nationally, in the federal courts, within the Democratic Party, and when it comes to tonight’s dinner selection — it all can feel a bit overwhelming.
There are countless places and countless people who will tell you how bad things are, with a whiff of pessimism if not nihilism coursing throughout their comments. At times, my posts can read like I am one of them. But — and I do hope that you see this — that’s not what I think.
I try to keep my eyes open to reality, but I am, ultimately, still hopeful about where we can go from here. It’s who I am. It’s who I’ve always been, and it’s been reinforced not only by of the good moments in my life but because of the difficulties and challenges I have faced.
I came out in a time when the idea of being out was still for many an impossibility or at least a serious impediment to living a successful and happy life. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 20. I got sober 14 years ago. None of those moments were easy, but finding my way through them improved my life immeasurably and made me who I am today. It’s those and a hundred other experiences — including years as a practicing lawyer, years in politics, and more than a decade in journalism — that I bring to this moment.
I don’t have the answers. I don’t know the solution to dealing with Donald Trump and his continued commitment to lawlessness, addressing the difficulty of Joe Biden’s candidacy and whether he is up to a second term, confronting the U.S. Supreme Court’s unwillingness to stand up to Trump and to stand up for vulnerable people in this moment (not the first institution to fail us on those fronts), or any of the countless other challenges facing us in this moment.
What I do have are my experiences. Those experiences taught me much. They taught me facts and history. They taught me theories and logic. They taught me humanity and humility. The taught me about roles and responsibilities.
I’ve written previously about how I think the legislative branch — and the Senate, in particular — failed us in 2021 by not convicting Trump in his second impeachment. The force behind that argument is exponentially stronger today. The legislative branch had a responsibility to cut off Trump’s political future after January 6, 2021, and their failure to do so will haunt us until our politics is rid of Trump and the anti-democratic poison that he has unleashed.
In the wake of that failure, the executive branch responded too slowly — with Attorney General Merrick Garland failing to indict Trump early on and only appointing Special Counsel Jack Smith in November 2022.
Then, in December 2023, the Supreme Court began its slow-roll failure — first in how it addressed (or rather, didn’t, initially) Trump’s immunity claim and eventually, after taking up the case, with the July 1 ruling that still did not actually resolve many of the questions — and almost certainly pushed any federal trial, if there is one, beyond Election Day.
Days before that July 1 ruling, Trump doubled down on his commitment to destroying our democracy — announcing at the first presidential debate that he will not accept the results of a loss should he think there was fraud, which he clearly would do given that, in the same debate, he still insisted the 2020 election was marred by fraud that did not exist.
But, that was not the main takeaway that America got from the debate. Instead of focusing on the statements of the man who has been convicted of felonies in New York state and faces felony changes in two federal courts and in Georgia but nonetheless was selected as the Republican Party’s candidate for president, the immediate aftermath of the debate was almost 100% focused on Biden’s poor performance.
Biden was bad in the debate. Let’s get that out of the way. He was tired and confused, spoke haltingly, and sometimes appeared to loose track of what he was saying. It is concerning, and remains so, that he is unable to make the strong case against Trump’s would-be authoritarianism that his campaign’s near-constant text messages insist that “Joe” is making.
Media coverage since the debate has been an almost completely one-sided investigation into whether Biden is physically and mentally fit for office, with next to no similar coverage of whether Trump is physically, mentally, legally, or morally fit for office.
Why the lack of attention to Trump? Some journalists and pundits justify this because, they say, everyone knows about Trump and his lies and so it’s not news. I call this the “it’s baked in” response. Other journalists and pundits take a slightly different, but ultimately similar, approach by suggesting that the Democrats actually care about this, so it is worth the investigation, whereas the Republicans don’t, so why bother. This is the “it won’t matter” response.
I think both of these response are wrong because they miscomprehend both the audience and the purpose of such coverage.
The audience is the entirety of the nation — not the Republican base. The purpose of the coverage is central to everything I’ve described above. Its importance is part of us finding the answers to these difficult questions — but its essential nature is to pick up where the three branches of government have failed us here. In short, the First Amendment gives us yet another chance to push back against Trump’s desire to destroy our democracy.
The last backstop, though, is as it was in the first instance. It’s us. We, the people, must stop Trump.
That, however, brings us back to the other questions. Can Biden do it? Should he?
Honestly, I don’t know. Do I want him to be the candidate? In an ideal world? No. Do I think he should have stuck to one term and not even been in the running this time around? Yes.
What do I think the right answer is today, on July 6, 2024? I don’t know.
I do think that President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris could beat Trump in November. (I think the same of several others, but I think only Biden or Harris are realistic candidates for reasons debated out by others in the time since the debate.) I reach that conclusion because of my belief that we, the people, will see that the most important job in our nation has been placed in our hands — again — given the failures of all three branches of our federal government to block Trump, a man who is uniquely unfit for office, from seeking the presidency again. I believe we can and will do what is necessary in that moment.
Am I right? I don’t know.
Is there much more to this? Yes. This is a failure of the Republican Party to stop Trump, and that raises the additional questions about the many ways in which Trump is not an exception to the Republican Party’s choices and leaders but rather the result of those leaders and their choices. The questions will not be wholly answered in this election, though, and will continue past Election Day and well into the future.
There are Democratic Party failings that also must be addressed. Perhaps, in part, we are facing those failings now — at the debate itself and in the news stories and debates that have followed. Who should be leading the party at a time when many of us are repeatedly questioning the stability of our courts, the law, and our democracy? Was not more forthrightly addressing that before now another check that we will need to mark down as an institutional failure that led to Donald Trump’s recapture of the presidency?
I maintain hope that it will not — and that everyone who needs to do so will come together to ensure that Donald Trump cannot even make the argument that he has a stake on the presidency following Election Day 2024. I will try my best — here and elsewhere in my life — to do what I can do.
This moment does require tough questions being asked of Biden and other Democrats — and perhaps those questions will result in Biden stepping aside.
This moment, however, also requires tough questions being asked of Trump and other Republicans and stories being written that reflect the reality of Trump’s lack of fitness for office — on every level in which he lacks that fitness for office.
That work is necessary, not to prompt a debate within the Republican Party, but for the nation and for democracy.
All three branches of government have failed us. We have to do this.
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