A new American Revolution formally introduced itself to the country on the night of Nov. 4, 2008, with the election of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama to the presidency. That night, at Grant Park in Chicago, Obama spoke in lofty terms about hope and opportunity and the possibility of positive change in our country. The enormous and jubilant crowd he addressed was very much a reflection of the country’s racial variety.
Also that night, some 1,500 miles away in Phoenix, Obama’s defeated Republican rival in the election, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, delivered a concession speech that seems impossibly gracious by the standards of President Donald Trump’s America in 2025.
McCain’s address to his supporters included these words:
“Sen. Obama and I have had and argued our differences, and he has prevailed. No doubt many of those differences remain. These are difficult times for our country, and I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face. … I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president. And I call on all Americans, as I have often in this campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties but to believe always in the promise and greatness of America.”
But I noted something about McCain’s crowd that night: It was overwhelmingly white, and it was angry, although parts of his chivalrous rhetoric did draw applause. Mostly, though, that very white crowd listened to him in bitter silence. I took that as a warning.
That night was born the reactionary fightback, the effort to swing the country back toward a state of absolute white control at the federal level. That effort gave us the radical right-wing tea party movement and its campaign to foil and bring down Obama, who nonetheless won a second term in office. His second victory, in 2012, was proof to the right that extreme measures might be needed, even an upending of the country’s democratic order, since American democracy no longer was a guarantor of white electoral dominance.
American democracy was unassailable gospel while it served to elevate the correct sort of people to public office. But when, by demographic change, our electoral processes began opening doors for all sorts of nonwhite, non-right people, American democracy started to lose its status as unimpeachable gospel in the conservative establishment. After all, it was now enabling the wrong people to share power, and God alone knew where that would all end.
The new power gospel is white supremacy, which has a traveling companion in Christian nationalism. This collaboration reminds me of the Saudi system, in which the absolute monarchy of the House of Saud is validated and buttressed by the Islamic establishment, largely embodied in one family, the descendants of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab.
The fightback that began with Obama’s election needed a leader, an unreconstructed and committed racist who would not be ashamed to say awful things (“He tells it like it is” is what Trump supporters have often said they like about him) and to do unpleasant things. Come the hour, come the man. In Donald Trump they found their brute, a combination of cave troll and messiah.
Trump has proved himself more than equal to the task of executing the mandate. He is profoundly dishonest. He is an unapologetic hypocrite. He is a bully. His ego is enormous. He is greedy. He is venal. And he lies. God, how he lies!
Trump’s takeover of policing in Washington, D.C., is, I believe, a rehearsal for something larger. Yes, he is using it to disguise his stepped-up hunt for undocumented immigrants in the city, but there is a bigger prize. And D.C. is the ideal testing ground. Many people outside this city do not know, I am sure, that Congress, which makes its home here, has ultimate authority over D.C.
Congress can impose any law on D.C. tha pleases a majority on Capitol Hill. It can take over the city government. Although we have what is called home rule, with an elected mayor and city council and all the other trappings of modern American city administration, Congress is our lord and master. It has ultimate authority.
Washington, District of Columbia, is a federal district whose status is specified in the U.S. Constitution, which says in Article I, Section 8:
The Congress shall have the power To … exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;
The Constitution says “Congress shall have the power To,” but because the Republican-controlled Congress, the legislative branch, is missing in action, Trump, who leads the executive branch, feels free to take control of our city police, put uniformed officers of all kinds of other law enforcement agencies on the streets of the capital and even augment their numbers with National Guard troops sent from states around the country by those states’ complicit Republican governors.
How does Trump justify this? He says his actions are necessary because crime in D.C. is out of control. Here is where being a barefaced liar is useful to an aspiring autocrat. He rejects the city’s official crime figures as bogus (remember his response to losing the 2020 election?), declares that he knows that crime is out of control in D.C., and says he is surging security personnel into the city to bring the problem under control. And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (that means Trump, since Hegseth is a mere cipher) has just authorized National Guard troops deployed in the city to be armed while out on the streets of the nation’s capital.
Let us be in no doubt about what is happening. Donald Trump is rehearsing a coup against the United States. He is pushing the limits further and further, and quickly, because I think he needs to have some assurance of an alternative if the midterm elections of November 2026 go badly against him. Democrats would take over in the House and that institution would rise from its slumber and begin to try to contain this runaway president. I think he is testing and testing to see how many of the states can be counted on to provide National Guard troops for an antidemocratic project, should he deem one necessary.
And he is pushing and testing to accustom the American populace to his excesses so that when he needs to pull the trigger on a spectacular assault on our democratic norms, the people will have been primed.
He said publicly in the presidential campaign last year that once the 2024 election was out of the way, people would not have to concern themselves with future elections. He would fix everything, he said. He said that with a smile, but do you think he was joking?
Is there any good news? Yes. A resistance to Trump’s excesses is emerging. It is visible all over the country in the demonstrations, some unfortunately violent, against the cruel and heavy-handed tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It is visible here in D.C. in the barracking that D.C. residents deliver to any senior Trump administration official who shows a face in public. It is visible in the caustic and proliferating stickers, posters and graffiti around town that insult Trump in seriously profane ways. It is visible, and audible, in the pot-banging demonstrations that are emerging around the city every day at 8 p.m.
As is so often the case, however, the country’s citizenry broadly could be too slow off the mark to head off Trump’s coup and will then find itself struggling to undo a virtual fait accompli. How fragile our democratic systems are proving to be under Trump’s assault. It turns out that these systems rely for their effectiveness on the presence of honorable people in positions of trust.
Trump is not honorable, and he is profaning the nation’s ultimate position of trust. What Trump is doing could lead to widespread citizen-on-citizen violence around the country, because his supporters and his opponents are deeply entrenched in their positions.
Where is all this taking us? No one can know, not even those who think their plans are ironclad and foolproof. I think we should hope for the best but be prepared for the very worst.
Democracy Warrior 