'Emotional rollercoaster': How the resistance to Trump is missing the mark — badly

10 June

Donald Trump gestures at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., December 22, 2024. REUTERS/Cheney Orr/File Photo

When Donald Trump narrowly defeated Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, the then-vice president didn't hesitate to give a concession speech. And then-President Joe Biden wasted no time meeting with Trump in the White House. It was quite a contrast to 2020, when Trump lost to Biden and falsely claimed that the election was stolen from him.

In an article published on June 10, Salon's Chauncey Vega argues that since Harris' loss, Democrats have appeared weak — which, he warns, is problematic in light of the "authoritarian" threat that Trump poses.

"As I have been chronicling and trying to make better sense of Donald Trump’s disastrous return to power," DeVega explains, "there is one image that keeps haunting me. I will never forget watching then-President Biden welcoming Donald Trump back to the White House a week after Election Day. None of this was normal. Donald Trump is America's first elected autocrat and an aspiring dictator."

DeVega continues, "On January 6, as part of the larger plot to nullify the 2020 election, Trump and his MAGA followers broke the country's centuries-long tradition of a peaceful transition of power. As I have explained here at Salon and elsewhere, there is an America Before Trump and an America After Trump; Trump has cleaved American history into two parts."

The Democratic Party, DeVega stresses, should be offering a much more aggressive "resistance" to Trump but is failing to rise to the occasion.

"Ultimately, the thought of Biden and Trump together in the Oval Office makes me sad and angry at the same time," DeVega laments. "The image of those two men in that moment is heavy with symbolic weight about a Democratic Party and its ongoing failures to protect American democracy and the American people…. The Democratic Party's national leadership has responded to Donald Trump's unprecedented assaults on democracy, the institutions, the rule of law, the Constitution, as part of his plans for permanent MAGA rule by doing such things as sending President Trump angry letters and singing, holding up signs during his speech to Congress, going on book tours, and sitting on the steps of federal buildings and offices in protest against his agenda — while also communicating how they will cooperate when possible with the Republicans and the Trump Administration 'to advance the interests of working people.'"

Trump is now four and one-half months into his second presidency, and DeVega notes that it feels like an eternity since Biden was in the White House.

"There are 1320 days to go in Trump's presidency — which assumes he will leave office and not find a way to 'win' a third term," DeVega warns. "Pro-democracy Americans and others who believe in fundamental human decency need to steel themselves for the emotional rollercoaster that lies ahead and the pull of mass disinhibition that is growing every day. Collective emotional health is both a prerequisite for and result of a healthy democratic culture. Unfortunately, the Age of Trump has revealed how poor the emotional health of the American people really was while making it all much worse in service to an autocrat and demagoguery."

Chauncey DeVega's full article for Salon is available at this link.

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