A TEST OF THE STRENGTH OF DEMOCRACY

Will President Trump retaliate against his political opponents?
Yes, he could. After observing him from afar for eight years, it is a real possibility. But it shouldn’t happen. Politicians do know about the English War of the Roses, The Italian Medici Rivalries, The French Capetian Family Feuds, and especially the American Hatfields and McCoys feud. The Democrats and the Republicans are well aware of the danger of the obsession with retaliation and the havoc it can cause and hopefully in their wisdom, won’t allow it to happen.
The Republicans controlled by the president-elect are huddling to implement Project 2025, which no doubt has little respect for Democratic Institutions and Democracy. That battle is where the Democrats find themselves: fighting to preserve Democracy with little political power. But since politics is the most convoluted “science”, they may find new allies among the so-called establishment Republicans.
Since the Republican Party is at its peak in terms of political power, many of its members won’t feel obligated to defend their party and attack the other party, in many cases, blindly. Reason and good faith (in the good teaching of Christianity) may come back, and dirty tricks may take a hike for the good of the nation.
The anxiety lies in the fact that the Democrats are awful in predicting the mood of the voting population and therefore pursue wrong strategy to gain or maintain power. It looks as if they haven’t played the game well to balance the power in the political two-party system.
In 2016, Mr. Trump got almost 63 million votes. After witnessing his administration of the country for four years – the general objective assessment was not really positive – he got more than 74 million votes in 2020, 11 million more voting for him; his base did not shrink but expanded. It was a phenomenon worth deep and extensive research to determine what was going on. Obviously, it was not because of Mr. Trump played the role of a statesman skillfully, but because of his down to earth positions on issues dear to the voters despite his clumsy administration.
In 2024, the Democrats seemed to have sensed the problem and tried to be sensitive on immigration policy. They tried to get some Republicans to sign on their legislation which tried to modify the asylum process, increase the detention facilities, and so on. They tried to be humane and reasonable. The Republicans objected to the legislation forcefully that, in hindsight, played well with the voters who were determined to see a hardball attitude when immigration is concerned. And Mr. Trump garnered over 77 million votes, 3 million more than 2020 regardless of his otherwise crippling legal problems.
The Democratic voters? More than 81 million in 2020 and just under 75 million in 2024? Where did the 6 million go? It is reasonable to assume that many of them went to Mr. Trump. President Biden still thought that the Democrats would win. Throughout 2024 he repeatedly stated, even on November 7, that he would not pardon Hunter, his son; the obvious implication was that a President Harris would be a more proper pardoner.
All fathers understand why he wants to give his son every opportunity to fare better in life and deeply sympathize with his dilemma when his son was in trouble, and he wanted to help. But the Hunter affair makes many feel uneasy. Not just the way it was handled by the President and the Democrats. Together with their defeat in November, one must ask the question whether the Democrats were neglect and unprepared. They believed before Nov. 5th that they had a strong progressive base. It turned out the base was probably ideologically strong but not as large as they had thought. The ones who crossed the line to vote for Mr. Trump did not like a “reasonable and sensitive” immigration measures. They wanted swift and forceful actions now to correct the excesses of the current policies.
For years, the Republican Party looked as if it was in a disarray. One was concerned that Democracy would start to crumble when one party, Republican then, was weak. One suggested, half in jest, that Elon Musk should join the Party to rescue it. It is time for someone of Mr. Musk’s caliber to join the Democratic Party to help pull it up, a gigantic enterprise given the American current political reality: the Republican Party controls the White House with a president who is the leader of the MAGA segment of the party which would do anything to belittle the Democrats; the House with its Republican members who love to gerrymander to form congressional districts in favor of the Republicans; and a super majority in the Supreme Court, with only two of their members, Thomas and Alito, being over 70 but showing no sign of bad health or a desire to retire. On the other hand, of the three leaning Democratic, Sotomayor is 70 and suffered severe diabetes. During his coming term, President-elect has a very good chance of nominating another hardline Republican to the bench making a Republican supra majority of 7-9. Whether 5-9, 6-9 or 7-9, the Republicans will control the Supreme Court for a foreseeable future, and soon it will find many established precedents egregiously wrong including previous decisions on Democratic principles, a clear sign of the unhealthy state of the nation’s court of last resort.
There is little doubt that the incoming administration will, actually is already trying to concentrate power into just one center, the executive suite headed by the president-elect. One can reasonably assume that it is just the first step to subvert Democracy. The Democrats whose name derives from Democracy seem to be its only defenders.
Let’s pray.
JOHN P. LE PHONG