Now Is the Winter of Our Discontent
We are in the middle of an American tragedy. On the edge of our seats, we’re tense, unwilling spectators to a slowly unfolding and compelling drama, a further, possibly final episode in the longer story of the decline and fall of the USA, with its history of unresolved battles between traditionalists (conservatives, literalists, Republicans), and progressives (activists, innovators, Democrats); its dual inheritances of slavery and racism and the divisive confederacy; all overlain by the continuing and exploitative actions of self-serving patriarchal authoritarians out to retain power and control over the rest of the country. A Shakespearean tragedy, half-way through.
As we go out for the interval, it seems we’re witnessing an unstoppable descent into disaster. Drinks in hand, it’s time to ask how we got here and what’s next, based what we’ve seen so far.
Prologue: This tragedy began in 2007. Like any drama, a surprise sets the scene. A hero is announced, a young, intelligent, empathetic African-American, Barack Obama, seeking the US Presidency. Act 1 is to follow two years later, as Obama wins the election, brushing aside John McCain, [i] or maybe at his 2009 inauguration as the first African-American President.
Act 1: As might be expected, Shakespeare has the best lines to introduce a tragedy. Richard III opens with Richard musing over his brother Edward taking the English crown:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. …
[and he goes on later to say] … since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
That could have been the Republican leadership confronting the upstart and charismatic couple in the White House. Obama was their worst imagined fear, feted as if he was the sun casting light to obliterate the dark Bush years. From the day of his election, they were determined to be villains, and rid the country of this Democrat administration. Plans already in place years earlier were refined to retake the Presidency, the Senate, the House, and control the Supreme Court.
At the beginning of this first Act, the omens for the new President could not have seemed more favourable. The Democrats had easily won both houses of Congress, a stunning repudiation of the previous Republican administration. [ii] For two years, Obama faced few obstacles in introducing change and new policies. In a whirlwind of action, hebegan the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq. He signed the reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program’s coverage for four million uninsured children. He appointed two women to serve on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor in 2009, and Elena Kagan in 2010. He took action on environmental issues, introducing new safety standards for offshore oil drilling, following a major offshore oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Finally, in March 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed, offering low cost health insurance for low income earners
But disaster had been waiting in the wings. Just months before Obama was elected, excessive risk-taking by banks, and the bursting of a housing ‘bubble’ led real-estate based securities to plummet, damaging international financial institutions and creating a global banking crisis. All too quickly, banking collapses and the ensuing Global Financial Crisis became demanding. By February 2009, Obama had signed a $787bn economic stimulus package, provided conditional loans to major car manufacturers, and enhanced broader federal loan provisions and spending. Inevitably and despite this, unemployment rose, up to 10% before the end of the year.
The path towards tragedy was now established as Obama’s successes bred anger and accelerated plotting. The Republicans worked hard to ensure they’d regain control, and turn back his various initiatives. When the mid-term elections were held in 2010, they were ready, swept seats in Congress, took back the House and almost restored control of the Senate. [iii] The second half of Act I was to follow a different path. Now Obama had to negotiate, forced to seek compromises with the Congressional Republican leadership over funding, tax rates and his other plans. Once in control of the agenda, now the Democrats were constrained. By the end of his first term Obama’s vision was restricted, and the future outlook looked challenging.
Act II: The second part of this tragedy began in November 2012, with the next Presidential election. As the incumbent, Obama was the Democratic nominee, facing Mitt Romney, who had survived a tough path to nomination. The campaigns focused heavily on domestic issues, and debates centered around responses to Global Financial Crisis (and the ensuing recession), federal budget concerns, foreign policy, and the Affordable Care Act. The Republicans were well-prepared, they’d learnt from the Democrats 2008 electoral strategies. They had greatly increased funding, too, provided by independent political action committees, especially the Super PACs.
Establishing Super PACs in 2010 had been a major win for the Republicans, the outcome of the Citizens United case against the Federal Elections Commission in the Supreme Court. This overturned parts of the 2002 Campaign Reform Act, and determined it was unconstitutional to prohibit corporations and unions spending from their general treasuries to finance independent promotions related to campaign topics, (but left in place the prohibition on direct corporate or union contributions to federal campaigns) . Unlike traditional PACs, Super PACs could raise funds from corporations, unions, individuals and other groups without legal limits on donation size. With the advent of Super PACs, the big Republican donors were unconstrained and ready.
Despite this, Act II opened with a second win for Obama,[iv]. He was the first incumbent since Franklin D Roosevelt to win reelection with fewer electoral votes and a smaller popular vote margin than previously. However, he was the first two-term president since Reagan to win both his presidential bids with a majority of the nationwide popular vote. Once again, the Democrats won a majority in Senate (55 to 45). Perhaps we were mistaken: this wasn’t a tragedy. We were wrong. Focus and gerrymandering saw the Republicans hold on to the House, 234 to 201.
The result was predictable. Despite his victory, Obama faced Republicans resistant to any new major proposals on the scale of his earlier legislation. He won some battles, including federal recognition of same sex marriages, and signing the US to the 2015 Paris Agreement, part of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. He introduced measures to reduce pollution, and increase wilderness and watershed protection. He established rules to ensure net neutrality, and signed an order to protect LGBTQ Americans from employment discrimination. It was like throwing fuel on the fire. Each new area of legislation was a key target for the Republicans, whose plans focussed on reclaiming government and overturning every one of Obama’s actions.
In the 2014 midterms they struck back, winning the Senate (54 to 46), and increasing their House numbers (247, dominating the Democrats 188), a crushing blow. Now six years into this drama, events were following a familiar path: let the audience believe the forces for good will win, then replace successes by failures. As Obama’s time came up, the scene was set for Act III.
Act III: In preparing for the next election, the Republicans faced a challenge. In Congress they had the ideal Senate leader. Mitch McConnell was unprincipled, power hungry, and determined. At the very least, they needed a compliant presidential candidate while McConnell and his team did the essential work. Ideally, they wanted a charismatic and equally ideologically committed nominee. No-one stood out among several far from ideal alternatives. Possibly to their own astonishment, the primaries delivered an amoral, nasty and self-centred character, but one who was a perfect foil to upset the Democrat nominees. Advocating a populist campaign to ‘Make America Great Again’, the Republicans found themselves with Donald Trump their candidate.
While Trump lacked political sophistication, as his party’s front-runner he launched attacks on political correctness, immigration, foreign business competition and even Washington itself, all larded with inflammatory remarks. The resulting general election campaign was divisive and negative, as Trump ignited controversies over race, immigrants, his own sexual misconduct and incited violence. His theme to Make America Great Again caught on. Despite his rally chants to ‘lock her up’, and her lack of an equally compelling slogan, Hilary Clinton led in the pre-election polls, once again tricking us into thinking this wasn’t going to be a tragedy. It was. In one of the greatest upsets in modern US history, and with less of the popular vote, Trump won, receiving 304 electoral votes against Clinton’s 227, and, as we later learnt, doing so with some support channeled through Russian interference. Politicians on both side of the house were stunned.
Act III was extraordinary. Like a one-man demolition machine, aided by a determined Congress, Trump set about to obliterate everything Obama had done. It became his personal manifesto. He rolled back environmental protections. He repealed part of the legislation designed to monitor banks and prevent another financial crisis. He withdrew from trade deals and partnerships, and started a trade war with China. He withdrew the US from the agreement with Iran to prevent their developing nuclear weapons. He commenced building a wall between the US and Mexico. He withdrew from the WHO, and from the Paris Agreement on climate change. He replaced Secretaries and heads of agencies when they failed to carry out his often thoughtless instructions. He added three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, and in doing so changed the likely balance of the court for many years. And, non-stop, he tweeted and tweeted, and lied and lied.
Not everything the Republicans had sought was achieved. Their single biggest failure was with the Affordable Care Act. Despite successful attacks at its the edges, it remained in place, though precariously so. The Republican program had also been set back by interruptions. In the 2018 mid-terms Democrats retook the House and launched an impeachment enquiry. Trump was impeached, but acquitted in the ensuing Senate trial. Even more consequential was the Covid-19 pandemic. Trump sought to dispel worries (‘it will just disappear’), but as infections grew, the economy moved into recession. Finally, harsh police actions led to more deaths of African Americans, and the Black Lives Matter movement too off. The Republicans were stalled.
The interval bell is ringing. Our brief review is over, and it’s time for the next act.
Act IV: The Republican Party must have planned for the possibility Trump wouldn’t be re-elected: their long term strategies reach out to 2024 and beyond. Despite concerns 2020 might be a disaster, their on-the-ground network ensured the only real change was to the presidency. [v] Trump appeared ousted, but the Republicans kept control of the Senate and reduced the Democrat majority in the House. As this American tragedy’s Act IV commences, it looks worrying. In the opening scene, the election is not yet over. Trump refuses to go, and, enabled by his craven supporters, every attempt will be made to steal the election. Failure to regain the Senate (thanks, inappropriately unzipped Cal) it’s seems unlikely the next four years will see more than small advances. Biden may be able to reestablish commitments to the WHO, NATO, the WTO, and act on climate change, but, as in Obama’s second term, it will demand continual negotiation. The Republicans can’t lose. Get Trump back in, a win. Or stymie Biden while Trump runs the ‘real Presidency’ at Trump Tower, inflaming supporters, a win. Meanwhile the Democrats still can’t find a uniting slogan, nor are they reaching out to voters they must win.
Act V: Four years hence, we’ll be sitting in our seats, anxious, fearful, and most likely torn between unrealistic hope and a sense of doom. Perhaps a second winter of discontent will be replaced with a spring of sunshine and fresh green shoots of change. Perhaps, but if the forces of conservatism remain strong, this dreadful tragedy will continue, leaving Americans stuck in an oppressive, polluted world. We will have to sit through another four years of tension and drama before we reach the final moments of this story. When Act V opens, in the dying days of 2024, we will discover if it heralds yet further disasters, or if, improbably but hopefully, it transforms this story from a tragedy into optimism, an era of progress and recovery.
Perhaps the long term outcome won’t be tragic. Perhaps the American people will return to decency, a sense of common purpose, a desire for democracy. Perhaps the fateful inheritance of slavery, racism and the Civil War will be set aside. Perhaps. Another of Shakespeare’s great lines was “Beware the Ides of March”. Today, the omens appear equally discouraging.
[i] With 53% of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes, compared to McCain’s 46% and 173 electoral votes.
[ii] 57 to 43 in the Senate, and 257 to 178 in the House of Representatives
[iii] Gaining more than 60 in the House of Representatives, a strong majority of 242 to the Democrats 193, while in the Senate Democrats kept a thin majority of 51, with the support of two independents, against 47 for the Republicans
[iv] With 332 electoral votes and 51.1% of the popular vote (compared to Romney’s 206 electoral votes and 47.2%)
[v] One key to Obama’s success had been a massive ‘on the ground’ network to bring in votes. They copied the idea.
