Whether Trump Remain Politically Viable May Rest With How We Understand His Voters…

For the last five years, one word has dom­i­nat­ed the nation­al psy­che, “TRUMP,” the guy’s actions lit­er­al­ly dom­i­nate every news cycle, and finds their way into almost every conversation.
Now he is gone from office, but is he real­ly gone? On Thursday, February 25^th, CNN report­ed that the Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance has in his pos­ses­sion the tax returns of the 45^th pres­i­dent of the United States, some­thing he fought tooth-and-nail to keep out of the hands of Vance and every­one else, until the Supreme Court was forced to rule on them just days ago.
This is a mat­ter that the court would have ruled on ear­li­er, (speak­ing on whether they should’ve hand­ed over the returns to Vance); the rul­ing delay by the high court caused raised eye­brows, and prompt­ed ques­tions from astute Journalists like Rachael Maddow, she both­ered to ask the tough ques­tions,” like what exact­ly is behind the long delay in hand­ing down a rul­ing on this matter”?
It almost appeared that the high court was wait­ing to see whether Donald Trump would some­how find a way to remain in office, before hand­ing down a rul­ing, but that is a con­ver­sa­tion for anoth­er day.

Despite the Biden win, America is indeed at a cross­roads polit­i­cal­ly, racial­ly, and prob­a­bly existentially.
At issue is the raw pow­er that Donald Trump com­mands as the per­son who best speaks to America’s white pop­u­la­tion that views the rise of pre­vi­ous­ly con­strained minor­i­ty groups as a threat to it’s sur­vival. Juxtapose that fear with their old fear that Blacks, in par­tic­u­lar, will rec­i­p­ro­cate what they met­ed out to them for hun­dreds of years, and the pal­pa­bil­i­ty of those irra­tional fears is man­i­fest­ed cumu­la­tive­ly in what occurred on January 6^th, 2021.
In fair­ness, it does not mean that all of the peo­ple who fol­low Trump are despi­ca­ble racists; at the very least, we must under­stand the fears many peo­ple har­bor through their reli­gious beliefs that tak­ing the COVID vac­cine, wear­ing masks and oth­er Government direc­tives leads inex­orably to fur­ther gov­ern­ment con­trol of their lives, some­thing they will not stand for.
Those fears have not always been unfound­ed; the Government has main­ly oper­at­ed on the notion that no tragedy should go unexploited.

Americans saw their rights and free­doms seri­ous­ly abridged after the Terror Attacks of September 11^th, 2001, by the Bush Administration’s Patriot Act. Bush and his cronies knew exact­ly what they were doing when they named the law the “PATRIOT” Act; they mar­ket­ed the law along the lines, ” either you are with us, or you are against us.” Democratic Senators who received the tran­scripts in the dead of night, mere hours before they were forced to vote on it, had no time to read what was in it.
Without read­ing what was in it, and death­ly afraid of being labeled, ‘unpa­tri­ot­ic,’ they vot­ed for a bill they did not read.
Some of these very cit­i­zens fear the gov­ern­ment will imme­di­ate­ly insist on a lit­mus test; if you have not tak­en the vac­cine, you will not be able to enter a restau­rant, not be able to board a flight, not be able to enter pub­lic buildings.
People equate that with Biblical prophe­cy; it would be arro­gant to insist that they are fool­ish when they hold these beliefs. The gov­ern­ment has a his­to­ry of engag­ing in such activities.

There is a legit­i­mate con­ver­sa­tion to be had on whether the trust they place in Donald Trump is mis­placed. Those of us who stand in the mid­dle look­ing at both sides, may be able to see that Trump ignored the virus as part of his own cal­cu­la­tion on how it would impact his polit­i­cal fortunes.
However, the say­ing ’ a drown­ing man grasps at straws’ may be appro­pri­ate in describ­ing some of these vot­ers; by refus­ing to do any­thing, as COVID raged, Trump was not forc­ing them into any gov­ern­ment man­date; as a con­se­quence, they see him as an ally to their cause.
Understanding that not every cri­sis should result in a slew of gov­ern­ment man­dates, may well help Joe Biden to nav­i­gate the dif­fi­cult polit­i­cal waters that lay ahead.
Understanding these nuances may well impact whether Trump remains viable as a can­di­date for 2024, or becomes a foot­note on his­to­ry’s dust heap.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.