Rick Perlstein: A Republic, If We Can Keep It

[Nevilledog]

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-05-01-a-republic-if-we-can-keep-it/


Former President Donald Trump attends his hush money trial in New York.

I got drinks a little while back with the estimable and outstanding editor of this publication at the world’s greatest jazz bar, where, with a respectfulness anyone would want in a boss, he gingerly inquired when I might start writing about the subject he hired me to write about: the 2024 presidential campaign.

I would like to, Dave, I really, really would. I simply do not know how.

In any other presidential year, the routines of parties nominating candidates, those candidates standing at podia rousing crowds with stories of what they intend to do with the opportunity, and the rest of us figuring out which blocs of citizens will vote for whom and why and how the parties plan to persuade them, is the most important thing to understand in the political world—by far.

But this year, hearing the political reporters on NPR every morning yammering on about stuff like that, it sounds like the drone of the adults in a Peanuts cartoon. It’s so far down the scale of factors determining how the world might go in 2025 that I cringe, tune out, and wait for the next story to start.

Muh-mwah, muh-mwah, muh-mwah: Anyone else hear it that way, too?

I’ve been going on for a while now, including in the inaugural edition of this column, about one problem with the old routines: that the question of how many electoral votes each candidate gets on November 5 might pale next to how many people are willing to take up arms should Trump lose. Regarding that, I can’t stop thinking of the rant a podcaster named Brenden Dilley made in the summer of 2020, claiming that he and other “2A-loving Americans” were getting ready for “that one emergency text message from the fucking president of the United States that gives us the green light to finish this entire thing in under an hour …”

*snip*