ON TRUMP AND THE MIDTERMS, JAMELLE BOUIE STILL DOESN'T GET IT

The New York Times has published another roundtable discussion about the potential for President Trump and his allies to prevent a free and fair election in November. The participants, once again, are Jamelle Bouie, Michelle Cottle, and David French.

Bouie still believes that Trump is very limited in his ability to manipulate the midterms; it's the contrarian hot take he wants to be known for these days. But he knows he's getting pushback, so he tries to clarify what he thinks:

Setting aside the fact that the executive — or the president, specifically — really has no legal authority here, I want to be very clear about what I’m saying here. I’m not doing the thing where I say, “Well, we can’t do that. It’s illegal.”

I’m saying that for example, if you are the head of a board of elections or you lead your precinct in Georgia and Donald Trump calls you and says, “I want you to throw out ballots,” you can say to Donald Trump, “OK” — and then ignore him. There’s no authority he has over you.

Sure, local election officials can say no to Trump if he askes them to toss ballots. But will they? And will it be an ask this time, the way it was in Georgia in 2020? Or will Trump's troops simply seize the ballots?

Bouie makes a valid point when says this:

... I actually think it’s really important to listen to how Trump talks about this. He doesn’t actually talk about it in terms of the midterms.

His mental model for the election is the presidential election. He is preoccupied with his loss in 2020 and losing the popular vote in 2016. Sending the F.B.I. to Georgia, to take materials from the 2020 elections, to me, suggests that all of this is less about subverting the elections that are actually going to happen and more about finding material for Trump to be able to say, “No, I actually won.”

And maybe the fact that Trump is more fixated on 2020 than he is on the midterms will actually save the midterms. But as Cottle points out, he also has reason to fear big midterm losses that would give power to Democrats. Bouie concedes that, but insists that Trump can't really act unless he has the public on his side:

... we can imagine a world where Trump is a popular president, where his approval rating is 55-45, and he’s riding high.

... in that world, I could see this maybe working.

... if we get to November and Trump’s approval rating has dipped from where it is now, if that’s where Trump is politically, then all of the screaming about fraud and illegals in the world isn’t going to change the fact that people can see with their plain eyes that the man is unpopular and that people are going to respond accordingly.

Trump can't act with impunity unless he's popular? Really? He's unpopular now, and he's acting with impunity anyway. People are trying to stop him -- Democratic groups are trying to do it in the courts, and citizens are trying to do it in the streets, and they're having some successes -- but he just keeps coming.

David French seems the most clear-eyed about this. He thinks the people we really need to worry about are Trump's underlings:

... if you look at the Stephen Miller side of things, in many ways, what we’re seeing and what reporting is demonstrating is that he’s more ruthless often than Trump’s own instincts. This is a big part of MAGA — they’re more vicious, more cruel even than Donald Trump....

When you see a situation where Trump is raiding Fulton County; Bannon is saying, “Get ICE all around polling precincts”; Trump is waiting for that phone call from Tulsi Gabbard; Tommy Tuberville is saying, “Get rid of voting machines” — you’ve got this environment where MAGA is very focused on the midterms because they’ve been governing like they’re never going to lose power.

... the Steve Bannons, the Stephen Millers, they have a generational project and I don’t think that they want to see their generational project go up in flames after two years, after 2024.

These people believe that they and their allies should run the country forever because they believe they're the only genuine Americans. They don't believe in democracy because they don't believe Democrats deserve to vote.

And French is right about lower-level election officials:

I just don’t think people realize how much a median county committee-level Republican in a lot of red areas is radicalized on this issue and willing to go to the barricades on this issue. So, that’s the X factor here....

You have a whole superstructure beyond that of people who have been extraordinarily radicalized on this issue from year after year after year of misinformation, disinformation: Illegals are voting, great replacement theory, etc., etc.

So, he has a lot of willing partners down to the precinct level who firmly believe that if Republicans lose, it’s because the fix was in.

They don't think Democrats should vote either.

As he has in the past, Bouie talks about agency, pointing out that Trump and his subordinates aren't the only people who have it:

... there are other people with agency besides them. I’ve been emphatic about this recently and I think it boils down to that I’m just tired of the assumption that Trump and those around him are the only people with agency.

But who has more agency? We don't know. Bouie suggests that good people can stop Trump just by paying attention:

This is a place where I just think public vigilance is actually going to be the most potent thing. If Americans are intensely apathetic about the election, then there’s going to be more opportunities for shenanigans.

But if Americans are very attentive or care very much, if they’re very motivated to go vote — and at this stage, it looks like there’s going to be at least a large number of Americans who can be very motivated to go vote — then the extent to which you can do much is actually radically reduced.

People are going to notice if you are trying to stop the vote count and they’re going to complain and they’re going to act and they’re going to react.

But people are noticing-- and reacting to -- the terrible things the administration is doing now, and they're still being done. ICE is still terrorizing people in Minnesota and elsewhere. We got five-year-old Liam Ramos out of the horrific Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, but there are more than 200 children still detained. Maybe a combination of legal challenges and mass outrage will forestall the worst, but we don't know.

Bouie seems to believe that a civic-minded populace ought to make it impossible for the administration to steal any election. I hope we have that much power, and that much determination to save democracy. It remains to be seen whether we do.