As I wrote Monday, the chainsaw RFK Jr. has taken to America’s medical and health systems was completely predictable before his confirmation. That’s also true of everything else the Toddler Administration has done.
“Sensible centrists” have pushed back against that idea. The Toddler wouldn’t be so bad. The system’s guardrails would constrain him. His cabinet would be the “adults in the room” — let’s just ignore the question of whether the president needing adults in the room is a bad thing. There were constant first-term stories about how this or that decision or statement showed him becoming presidential, at last. And there was always the image of the imaginary Republicans buoying him up: as a Republican, the Toddler will naturally balance the budget, support the troops, be a good steward, etc.
As Paul Campos says, “Donald Trump was impeached twice during his first term. He was at the end of those four years responsible for exactly half of the presidential impeachments in the nation’s history. The second impeachment featured the first senatorial votes ever from a president’s own party to remove him by conviction. Correction: Mij455 points out that Mitt Romney voted to convict on one of the two counts in the 2019 (first) impeachment. (2) Trump spent two months after the 2020 election trying to overthrow the government. This was done largely in public at the time, with many more details emerging over the next three years. (3) In between the 2020 and 2024 elections, Trump was convicted of 36 felonies, unrelated to his sedition.” Plus a jury confirmed that he sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll.
Yet America still voted for him over the far more qualified, competent, sane Kamala Harris. It didn’t hurt that the media made Biden’s age an issue while ignoring the Toddler’s incompetence, stupidity and unfitness (at the link, a quote from someone at the NYT says if Biden dropped out then they’d focus on the Toddler’s unfitness. But they didn’t). And that the Toddler’s greatest edge is that people kept projecting on him what they wanted to hear. He talks of mass deportations, they hear “not honest, hard-working immigrants like me.” He denies any connection to Project 2025, lots of people believe him. He appointed enough anti-abortion judges to kill Roe yet he’s not going to be virulently anti-abortion.
Nothing in the Toddler’s second term is a surprise. Massive red ink. Possibly unsafe construction in his precious ballroom. The appointment of unqualified toadies like Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel and Todd Blanche. That the self-confessed “grab them by the pussy” guy was close friends with Jeffrey Epstein and his attorneys general are covering up the files. That the whiny cry-baby in the Oval Office is lashing out and seeking revenge on anyone who ever hurt his snowflake fee-fees — my god, some people actually thought the Toddler should suffer consequences! He never has to suffer consequences! SecDef Pete Hegseth’s incompetence was obvious a year ago (the linked article was optimistic he was going down). We saw Nazis flock to the Toddler in his first term; it’s no surprise they’re a bigger problem now (more here). And the conservative POC and gays who thought they were One Of The Good Ones learns how conditional MAGA approval is. Hell, Texas Republicans are perfectly happy with Bo French, a political candidate who openly says we should be Rhodesia.
And yet a year ago, the NYT was lecturing Toddler opponents to remember he won the election, that much of what he was doing was legal (they hand-wave that much of it was not) and that Americans widely supported less immigration. Isn’t it possible concerns about the Toddler will turn out overwrought? That he’ll do more good than harm? That his policies will be effective?
Which sounds like a lecture they could have given civil rights marchers or early feminists: lots of American support Jim Crow and patriarchy, don’t sound so confrontational! Things aren’t that bad! The sensible centrist position Martin Luther King excoriated. Just as it was obvious nothing but direct action would change segregation, it was obvious a year ago what a nightmare the Toddler was creating. And as his popularity spirals down, he may create worse.
As Campos puts it (quoting a commenter), “I can’t think of a single prominent political position which has been more thoroughly refuted by ensuing events than the notion that liberals were overreacting about Donald Trump. Occasionally people wonder why advocates of the Iraq War are not held in lower esteem for being wrong about its disastrous consequences. By my count this is worse.”
If we make it through the Toddler area and back to normalcy (and the Republicans definitely do not want a return to normal democracy), the “no problem” people will insist they were right. Which is like arguing our victory in WW II proved Hitler wasn’t a threat. The people hand-waving the Republican threat are utterly wrong and deserve low esteem. We shouldn’t let them off the hook.
