Charlie and Kevin have had (are having?) a good back–and–forth about whether to reject the GOP because of Trump, with — if they’ll forgive my reductiveness — Charlie saying no and Kevin saying yes. (That summary is reductive because one should ask “Reject qua what?” Qua congressional majorities? Qua all elections, national and state and local? Qua personal affiliation or identity? Etc.)
My view is that to reject either party as a whole is too simple, but that it’s right to reject any candidate who can be “contact-traced” to Trump’s auto-coup attempt.
I’m borrowing that figure of speech from Charlie’s most recent article in National Review magazine, in which he uses it to describe those who reject any politician who had anything to do with the Trump presidency in any way. I would not do that. I see Trump’s presidency as mixed — up until he lost the 2020 election. Before then, there were things I liked and others I disliked, but we were within the realm of what I’d call “normal politics.*” And there are plenty of people who served in his administration or supported his legislative goals for whom I still feel a lot of respect.
But I could never vote for a candidate who tried to help Trump steal the election, who defended Trump’s attempt to steal the election, who is now campaigning for anyone who did either of the first two things, and so on.
My reasons are three.
First, I don’t have much confidence in my predictive power in the specific. That is, I don’t know precisely what will happen over two or four years if Democrats or Republicans win majorities in the House or the Senate, or if they win the presidency, or if any combination of the above comes to pass.
But, second, I think we should have some confidence in our predictive power in the general. That is, nothing is more basic to our political order than that government is by the consent of the governed and that, by implication, elections and other voting processes must be free and fair. That is more foundational even than the Constitution, since in the grand scheme it determines the Constitution. Normalize election-stealing efforts and very bad things will happen sooner or later.
And, so, third, I see Trump’s attempt to steal the election as sui generis awful. I’d contact-trace Democrats who deny election results, too, but they weren’t the president and they didn’t get the Capitol stormed.
What’s sad to me is that, unbelievable though it be, I like Trump as a person to the extent one can judge from afar. I read The Art of the Deal as a kid and my parents wrote him and asked him for an autograph to give me for Christmas and the autographed photo hung in my room for years. (If I recall, “To Jason — Best wishes — [Signature].” I am unsure of the punctuation but reasonably confident in the first dash.) He’s funny. He’s smart, whatever his detractors may say. His way of speaking is memorable and articulate but also natural. He has a lot of courage. He has an unbelievable charisma. I kind of tried to whip myself up into a hatred of him after January 6 and almost succeeded, but I always end up reverting to sympathy.
But.
I don’t vote for people who try to steal elections, let alone presidents who do, and I don’t vote for anyone who enables or defends them or their enablers or defenders.
*Update (9/5): “Normal politics” as to policy, anyway. Not always as to rhetoric. Nor as to the first impeachment, for which, as I have written, Trump should have been removed from office, even though removal was for more urgent the second time. (I have also written that the Framers may have expected impeachments to be part of our normal politics in some sense; perhaps one could say that there are ordinary and extraordinary impeachments.) One sees the way in which personal sympathy, when felt, can lead, absent due reflection, to a constricted view that blurs significant distinctions.