Donald Trump is long gone, and despite his suggestions at CPAC last week that he might run again in 2024, even the Donald knows his days as a presidential candidate are over and done with, especially since there’s a very real chance he’ll be serving an extended prison term by the time the next election rolls around.
Trumpism, however — that metastasizing cancer that has spawned endless right-wing networks and given rise to extremist groups such as QAnon — remains alive and kicking, which could well pose a threat to the United States in the years ahead.
So it’s worth noting that something President Joe Biden is preparing to do could be an antidote to the Cult of Trump.
Greg Sargent notes in the Washington Post that Biden is expected to announce an historic infrastructure plan that would take all the steam out of both Trump and the GOP:
“Some Democrats are already thinking about how to move a far-reaching infrastructure repair agenda, if they can get the economic relief bill through the Senate and into law.
“This coming debate may be uniquely positioned to expose Trumpism’s bankruptcy as it sinks into QAnon-ification, cultishness and mythologizing about the Lost Cause of the stolen election.”
For four years, Trump promised he was going to be the infrastructure president, but he never delivered on the hype, which now leaves the GOP with two main functions: Worshiping Trump and trying to obstruct Biden. Not exactly a winning message when Americans are begging for a return to normalcy, an end to coronavirus, and good-paying jobs.
Sargent explains how Biden’s plan would work and how it could be fatal to the Trump movement:
“If Biden and Democrats can pass economic relief, followed by a big infrastructure package — both offering ambitious, broadly popular solutions to major national problems — it could further marginalize the hysterical anti-leftism that increasingly defines Trumpism.
“If Biden and Democrats can recast public expenditures on climate as a form of job-creating infrastructure repair — a broadly popular concept — it could give working people a stake in battling the climate threat.”
The Biden “synthesis,” Sargent concludes, would make the GOP all but irrelevant:
“Hopefully, (Biden) will combine an ambitious progressive economic agenda (born of the major crises we face and the societal shift in favor of deficit spending) with a willingness to act more boldly on issues Democrats traditionally fear due to right-wing populist demagoguery, such as climate and even immigration and civil rights.
“If things go well, success on the economic front could clear political space to act on all those other ones. And infrastructure repair could play a major role in that. Where would that leave Trumpism?”
Where would that leave Trumpism? Where it belongs: Dead and buried.
