Sunday Issues-November 10, 2024
Trump will hit the ground running in January. Watch out.
Yesterday, we learned that Trump won the swing state of Arizona, giving him a sweep of all seven swing states. The president-elect interprets his margin of victory as a mandate. If Republicans win the House of Representatives, which now appears likely, Trump will have two years to pursue his agenda. Remember the Trump signs reading, “Promises Made, Promises Kept?” Well, Trump means it.
News reports this week are disheartening. Democrats are in freefall, hardly ready to effectively oppose Trump’s day one agenda, which will include rescinding dozens of Biden administration executive orders, freezing actions at federal agencies, and confirming that when Trump promised mass deportations, he meant it.
The Democratic party, if you can believe some of its leaders, is in shambles. Bernie Sanders condemned it for losing touch with working-class voters. Maureen Dowd, whose New York Times column this morning is titled “A Wake for Woke,” quotes various Democratic strategists and officials arguing that the party lost its ability to talk about normal Americans. (What is a normal American, by the way?)
The Democratic party will now retreat to rebrand itself. That will be a difficult process given progressives’ belief that to win, the party needs to become an American Labor Party that supplements the votes of union members with a fight for “identity groups” that represent the decline of White power.
Democratic soul-searching is necessary, but if the party jumps too deeply into the abyss, it will enable Trump to leave a permanent mark on America, cementing his legacy as a president who corrected the “excesses” of the Biden administration. That is why the party needs to multi-task. Yes, start figuring out what went wrong in 2024, but don’t throw out your principles. Yes, “evolve” your policies and start sounding like a party that is a “big tent,” but don’t assume that Biden’s climate change policies were wrong-headed, that LGBQT+ people’s quest for full civil rights was wrong-headed, or that if border security does not respect basic human dignity, it is racist.
Trump’s honeymoon.
Trump enters the presidency with something of a mandate, but it is not comparable to Ronald Reagan's. Trump’s favorability ratings, consistently abysmal, will rise due to his win but will be inconsistent with a president in his first year in office. This means that to enact major parts of his Protect 2025 agenda, Trump needs to act fast. In two years, Trump should assume that Democrats will regain control of the House and possibly the Senate. Trump himself will also be eighty, facing calls for him to step down due to further mental deterioration, and if Trump repeats the chaos of his first term, dozens of his initial political appointees will have left or been fired.
So, what priorities will we see? Here are a few:
Trump will start deportations while he builds the infrastructure for mass deportations. It is rumored that Trump will seek to use military personnel in the deportation scheme. That will burn a lot of political capital.
Trump will reverse Biden policies seen as promoting “transgenderism.” Actions will be taken to withhold Department of Education funds from states and school districts that don’t ban transgender women from participating in women’s sports or that otherwise are seen as promoting students from exploring their gender identity. This is curious because Trump will likely seek legislation abolishing the Department of Education in his first budget package. Without a Department of Education, the process could be more difficult.
Trump will start his assault on the federal civil service. This will include attempting to prevent Biden's political appointees from transitioning to civil service status. (These transitions would have been started while Biden was still president and traditionally have been difficult to reverse.)
RFK, Jr., most likely appointed as a special advisor to the president, will get to work on the Food and Drug Administration, NIH, and vaccines.
Trump will seek to fast-track judicial appointments, so expect many in late January and early February.
Of course, Trump will fire Jack Smith if he has not resigned, have his Department of Justice file motions to dismiss pending indictments, and otherwise seek a “clean legal slate.”
Trump will also pardon most of his “January 6 Patriots.”
Of course, dozens of other executive actions and “fast-track” legislation will cover topics like tariffs, fracking, and financial services regulation.
Will Trump pursue his agenda civilly? Or will he continue the campaign rhetoric that has disgusted many of us for the last two years? The latter is likely.
I’ll be watching, and I hope the Democratic party will as well. This is not the time to shut down to rebuild.
Thank you.
Thank you for reading Dean’s Sunday Issues. I will have more later this week and return Friday with Friday Issues.
Exactly right, John. I have been appalled by the quick shift by pundits and some politicians from fighting for Kamala Harris to playing the blame game. "She should have done this. She should not have said that. It's all Biden's fault." One conservative economist even wrote an article in the NY Times offering Trump "advice." You know what the advice was? With the exception of border control, it was to do everything Biden and Harris have been doing! And of course, he failed to mention that Trump killed the strong border bill Republicans wanted and Biden and Harris both said they would sign because Trump wanted to keep the issue to campaign on. As a corrective to this negative analysis of the election loss, I recommend Joyce White Vance's analysis. A law professor and frequent speaker on legal issues, she argues that disinformation from foreign bad actors as well as unending lies from Trump and other Republicans, was what cost Harris the election. She was telling the truth and offering working class people policies that would help them. She was drowned out by Trump's lies. Democratic leaders should not and must not assume that the policies Harris ran on were wrong. Dean is right. Trump will have at least two years to implement his horrible, destructive policies. To the extent that he succeeds, people will see how horrible they are. Those Hispanic voters who supported him will be unpleasantly surprised when Trump's goons show up to deport their family members and friends. "I didn't think he meant us"! People who thought the only issue was the price of eggs will be shocked to learn how much prices rise due to Trump's tariffs. Democrats and all of us Harris supporters must be right there the whole time, telling the truth and offering people a more positive vision for our country. We must stay the course, not change direction because our direction is the right way to go.