An obsession with Trump as the brute of all evil extends far beyond us. It has been an animating, organizing principle for the Democratic Party, a bond among civic-minded people of otherwise divergent persuasions and a pillar of many Americans’ political identity. It turned his rise and reign into an all-consuming international soap opera with ratings not just through the roof but also through the stratosphere. No public figure in my lifetime has made such a monopolizing claim on our attention, even our souls.
On Jan. 20 — praise be! — his presidency will be over. But his hold on us may not end as quickly and cleanly. And his departure from the White House will be more disorienting than some of us realize, posing its own challenges: for Democrats, for news organizations, for anyone who has grown accustomed over these past four years to an apocalyptic churn of events and emotions.
Democratic lawmakers seem to be moving on from him — and revealing, in the process, what a potent glue he was. He united the party’s left and center by giving them the same top priority: Dump Trump. No sooner was he dumped than the glue dissolved.
Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York progressive, and Conor Lamb, a Pennsylvania moderate, began trading recriminations about where Democrats went right, where they went wrong and where they should go from here. So did Representatives Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia moderate, and Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan progressive.
In a column published in The Times on Monday evening, my colleague Michelle Goldberg implored Democrats to tone it down and keep it together. In a column published on Wednesday morning, my colleague Thomas Edsall asked whether they could. This one-two punch wasn’t overkill. It was a 20-20 glimpse of life beyond 2020.
Policy differences between progressives and moderates may be solved by Mitch McConnell: If Republicans win at least one of the two runoffs in Georgia on Jan. 5 and hold on to their Senate majority, McConnell, as the majority leader, will be the grim reaper of any transformative legislation.
But that still leaves room for arguments about the issues that Democrats should emphasize and the tone that they should strike for the 2022 midterms. Especially with Trump out of office, those disputes could be heated.
And there will be plenty of political friction to go around. Up until Nov. 3, Never Trump Republicans were heroes to many Democrats — ultimate proof that the ruler was rotten. But that love affair can’t survive Trump’s defeat, a reality evident in a few progressives’ fierce attacks on the Lincoln Project — an anti-Trump super PAC founded by Republicans — since Election Day.
The test for the mainstream media is our ability to turn away from Trump even if he remains a potent audience draw. It’s not certain that he will be . . . . But there’s no doubt that chronicling and commenting on how bad Trump is for democracy has been good for business. It also made virtuous sense: His station and power justified coverage of every tweet and bleat. His attempt to steal the election demands exactly the scrutiny it’s getting, as does the assent of his base and most of his fellow Republicans.
The situation, however, will soon grow complicated. Unlike his more dignified predecessors, he won’t maintain a relatively low post-presidency profile; he’ll keep whipping up passions on the right. And there will surely be a laudable journalistic excavation of Trump administration misdeeds that he and his aides successfully buried. Suffice it to say that Trump won’t exit the news.
But he also won’t be nearly as relevant as he is now, and that compels news organizations to ratchet down his presence in a huge way, potentially turning our backs on easy stories that would have been raptly consumed by readers and viewers still consumed by their disgust with him. I worry about our resolve.
I also worry that in the wake of Trump’s presidency, which both reflected and intensified the furious pitch of American politics, melodrama may be the new normal.
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