The inherent danger in allowing Donald Trump to lose
In our current exasperated, convoluted world of political lunacy, it just might turn out that for Donald Trump to lose the presidential election of 2020 may be the greatest disaster we have ever had to face.
You read that right. In the chilling warning in his closing statement before Congress, Michael Cohen said, “Given my experience working for Mr Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 there will never be a peaceful transition of power.” That may very well be a political reality that we never want to test.
Of course, I am not advocating voting for Trump, obviously, far from it. I think we should contest the 2020 election as though our very lives depended on it. I am, however, advocating for getting the bastard out of office before he has a chance to appear on the ballot again. The most dangerous reality facing America today may be a lame duck Trump presidency. That metaphor of the wounded animal has never before been more potent, nor more hazardous.
I do not know what Trump will do if he survives in office for an additional year and a half as a candidate and loses – and neither do you. But the options open to him are awful to contemplate. The prospect of a thin-skinned, vindictive, solipsistic, narcissist with delusions and a grudge at the helm of the greatest nuclear arsenal in the history of the world does not fill me with warm fuzzies. The fact that he’s Commander-in-Chief of the mightiest army ever assembled doesn’t help either.
We’ll have nothing to fear from Trump’s slack-jawed, knuckle-dragging, monotooth base and their pop guns, of course. That bunch couldn’t organize a bowling tournament. But Trump, as he admitted in a rally shortly after the election of 2016, in a rare moment of candor, doesn’t really need them any more. He has the Bully Pulpit and all that entails.
One bit of good news is Trump’s incompetence. If we’ve learned anything in the last three years it’s that even the trope of his alleged business “genius” is a complete fraud. Mr “Art of the Deal” has consistently failed at everything he has tried to do. Even so and given the stakes I wouldn’t want to bet the future of the world on Donald Trump’s incompetence under any circumstances, no matter how incompetent he’s shown himself to be. We need him out. The sooner the better.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.