OPINION
By: Musa Bassadi Jawara
United States’ government shut down on Sunday, after Saturday, September 30, the deadline for funding expiration. The Republicans who are in the majority of the House of Representatives, albeit a paltry dominance, are hijacked by the ultraconservative and MAGA wing of the party led by former President Trump. For a budgetary breakthrough to occur in 72 hours, huge spending cuts must take place that’ll obliterate the achievements and programs of Bidenomics. The Democrats in Congress and the White House will not acquiesce to GOP budgetary cuts, which makes this weekend’s government shutdown, very likely.
Never before in recent memory has American democracy appeared to be so shaky. The Trump phenomenon has captured a large size of the American psyche and presented a myriad of challenges to the cohesion and stability of ambient society since the end of the Civil War. Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement is a coated racist term, Make America White Again according to Minister Louis Farrakhan of Nation of Islam.
Trump is commanding over 50% of the American population; in a land that fought the Civil War in 1861 and saw the emergence of Dixiecrats in the 1948 Democratic National Convention in Alabama. Given this backdrop in the history of the United States, the Trump phenomenon is alive and poses a significant danger to American Democracy and threatens its stability.
Every poll shows a dead heat in a likely rematch between President Biden and Donald Trump in next year’s presidential elections. Trump is a twice-impeached president and faces four indictments in State and Federal Courts with possible jail time. His business empire was linked to fraudulent and dubious practices that spanned over a decade. He assembled a mob that attacked the US Congress on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential elections which he lost by a large margin. This was the United States Congress the Global Citadel of democracy. This is the same Donald Trump who promised to suspend the US Constitution and shut down the US Justice Department and the FBI if he returns to the Oval Office for the second term. He promised to do even crazier things to the US government institutions. What happens beyond US borders is palpable and scary when he regains power again in the most powerful nation on earth.
Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination as the 2024 presidential candidate is all but assured. Let this be clear, despite all his peccadilloes outlined above, the former president stands a very good chance of defeating the octogenarian President Biden in November 2024.
Biden’s age is a problem and America is not ready for a female president of color. Trump is a demagogue and a master of nasty racial politics. He knows what sells with his base and the MAGA support group. Trump’s narrative in every stump speech will focus not on policy but on Biden’s age and the distinct possibility of Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the 47th president of the United States when Biden’s incapacitated or dies in office. This will be an election never before seen in American electoral history.
The weirdest of all in this unfolding political drama: Trump is convicted in one or all of these indictments and sent to prisons. As a convicted felon serving jail time, how he continues his campaign from a jail cell in a Federal Penitentiary, will be a remarkable aberration. I pray to live to witness it!
