To: Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice mailing list
January 11, 2021

Demand that Trump and his accomplices
are held accountable!

by Joseph Green, Detroit Workers' Voice

There is growing motion to impeach Trump, and a mass desire to see him go. The bully-and-liar-in-chief tried to stage a coup on January 6 to change the outcome of the 2020 election. It failed, but if nothing is done to punish this crime, it will legitimize right-wing gangsterism. The Democrats are pushing for impeachment in the House, but are thinking of putting off trial in the Senate for months. Postponing the trial would mean it is unlikely to ever take place. One must strike when the iron is hot. At this time, even Trump is unsteady, many of his supporters are uncertain, and some Republican leaders are wavering--it may have shaken them to see right-wing thugs call for hanging Republicans like Mike Pence, and not just targeting liberals for death. If the moment is allowed to pass, then there will be no serious accounting.

Make no mistake. Trump and his accomplices have blood on their hands. It's seen in their indifference to the huge number of unnecessary COVID deaths. It's seen in how migrants and refugees are treated at the border with Mexico. It's seen in their hatred for the Black Lives Matter movement, and their support for police murders of black people. It's seen in their calling the economy wonderful, because the stock market is at new highs, while there is an ever-increasing mass of people without food security, without job security, and without medical care.

It's time that Trump and his accomplices should be held to account for something. If it is done now by Congress, it will help open the eyes of some of the millions of people who have voted for Trump and who have closed their eyes to Trump's crimes as "fake news". If it is done now, it may give impetus to a movement against the massive voter suppression which has been escalating across the country, and voter suppression is the same as the January 6 coup, only done gradually, drip by drip, rather than in one rush at the Capitol doors.

Holding Trump and his accomplices accountable for trying to overthrow the presidential election is only one step in breaking up the racist, pro-business, and anti-people movement that has seized hold of much of the country, and whose diehards control the Republican Party. We need to build up a movement that fights for the rights and livelihood of the people against the millionaires and big business interests that dominate both the Democrats and Republicans, and that gave hundreds of millions of dollars to both parties during the last election. We need to build on the mass struggles that have swept the country, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, the environmental movement, and the stirring of the strike movement. This is not something that the Congressional Democrats or Biden is going to do for us. The politicians may pay lip-service to these causes, but they have to be pressured to pass even the slightest reform. Yet if the official institutions hold Trump and his accomplices accountable for the coup, this will encourage even conservatives to ask questions; it will help isolate the neo-fascist gangs; and it will be favorable to the growth of movements for the people's real needs.

Cracks among the Trumpists

The storming of the Capitol on January 6 was a major fiasco for Trump's MAGA movement. The ugliness of the white supremacist and neo-fascist bands was displayed in a way that the politicians couldn't deny. Even some of the diehard Trump backers, pushing the fraud that Trump really won the election, were embarrassed. This moment won't last forever. It's important to use it now to split off millions of ordinary people from the Trumpists, or at least start them on the road of doubting the Trumpist lies.

Polls show that many Republicans and Trump voters are upset at the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Newsweek is shocked that a poll showed that 45% of Republican voters supported storming the Capitol. But 43% said they "strongly or somewhat" opposed it. (1) It's not surprising that people don't immediately condemn the side they had been supporting, so what's really notable is that so many Trump voters are upset. According to another poll, two-thirds of Republicans think those who attacked the Capital were "criminals" or "fools", and 24% of Republicans support removing Trump from office. (2) All opinion polls should be taken with a grain of salt, but it seems likely that a substantial number of Trump voters were shocked by the attack on the Capitol. Some Republicans may deny that Trump has any responsibility for it, but others have no doubt about it. This is the moment to act, and take advantage of disarray of the conservatives and their neo-fascist allies.

Does it make sense to impeach Trump even if the Senate trial won't be until after he leaves office? Yes, because if the Senate convicts him, it will be an official condemnation  with the aid of a number of Republicans, and this will have impact among his supporters. If the Senate fails to convict him, there still will be a record of who did and who didn't condemn his thuggish acts. This will intensify the cracks and recriminations among the conservative senators, and this is why they are so anxious to avoid a trial. Moreover, if Trump is convicted, the Senate might go on and vote that he can't be appointed to, or stand for election for, any public position.

The issue of impeachment may grow hotter in the next 10 days. The MAGA-fanatics have announced two more actions in Washington, D.C., one for January 17 and one for Biden's inauguration on January 20. This will underline that they are still seeking to overthrow the results of the 2020 elections. But if the Democrats wait months to send the impeachment proceedings to the Senate for trial, the public anger may dissipate.

Yet impeachment or not, the white supremacists and neo-fascist gangs aren't going to go away. Some may celebrate January 6 and flaunt pictures of it. Diehard Trump backers are going to continue bitterly denouncing those Republicans who recognize that Biden legitimately won the presidential election. But the Trumpist movement is in danger of losing some of its mass support, and the Republican Party is in danger of suffering serious fractures. The more Trump is held accountable, the more likely some of his accomplices will be, and the more serious the splits among the Republicans will be. It is important that the conservatives can't simply shrug off their support for Trump, but that they bear the infamy of what they have done for years.

Did the failure of Trump's threats and lawsuits show the strength of democratic institutions?

Until the January 6 attack on Congress, many liberal commentators talked about how the defeat of Trump's attempt to cancel the results of the 2020 presidential election showed the strength of democratic institutions. But a closer look at how Trump's efforts were frustrated shows something else.

The certification of the election results depended on the decision of judges and officials, even on Trump-appointed judges in the federal courts and the Supreme Court. Many of these people are the same ones who support voter suppression, gerrymandering, and the unlimited power of money in elections. There are Republican officials and legislators who opposed pressure and threats from Trump, but who have supported more subtle means of falsifying elections. Or, to put it another way, they were unwilling to commit felonies for Trump and to back obvious and insane frauds,  but they are past masters of other means to disenfranchise the working masses.

Take Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was elected with Trump's backing. He famously has stood firm against Trump's demand that he fraudulently manufacture 11,780 votes so that Biden would lose Georgia. But he has long backed other means of frustrating the will of the majority.

Raffensperger has backed Republican Governor Kemp in schemes to purge people from the voting rolls. (3) And since the 2020 presidential election, Raffensperger has continued on the same path.  "Since Nov. 3, Raffensperger has called for the end of no-excuse absentee balloting and for stricter voter ID requirements for absentee balloting, saying the steps would respectively help with vote processing and ballot security, but voting rights advocates say they could block eligible voters from the ballot box. And after November saw record voter turnout across Georgia, Raffensperger opened an investigation into a number of prominent voter mobilization groups." (4)

The November election was fair in that the votes were accurately counted. But the elections took place against a background of voter suppression, and the pressure from Raffensperger and others for more suppression is going to intensify. Moreover, the election campaigns cost millions upon millions of dollars. Both Biden and Trump raised close to $2 billion each (5), and the total for both presidential and congressional candidates was about $14 billion. (6) These are elections in which money counts as much as people do; they are only fair up to a point. They are elections which privilege the rich and powerful, and put a thousand obstacles to the working majority. Trump lies when he says the votes were miscounted, but the elections were indeed stacked against the working majority. If they weren't, Trump wouldn't even have been elected in 2016.

All out against bigotry, ignorance, and iron fist of the rich

The Trump administration represents all that is worst in the American ruling class. It brings out the worst white supremacist bigotry from the dusty corners of American history. It plays on the utter ignorance of its followers. It puts the stock market ahead of the lives of the almost 400,000 people who will die from COVID during the Trump administration, when a serious pubic health program would have prevented a large part of those deaths. It has encouraged violent and neo-fascist gangs.

Now it has finally met widespread condemnation, even from much of the bourgeoisie. It is important that Trump face real punishment for what he has done. This is not a matter of revenge, but a matter of freeing the country from the blanket of tyranny and death threats which Trump and his gangster allies have unleashed upon it, thus building up and intensifying the conservative pressure of the past. The Trumpists and their gangster allies must be held accountable for what they have  done.

This is the way to help open the eyes of the millions of people who were blindfolded and deluded by Trump. This would encourage the development of mass struggles. The Democratic Party talks about impeachment, but wants national unity with the conservatives. All people who seek a real fight against racism, against impoverishment, and against environmental devastation need to stand for real accountability for Trump and his accomplices. This is a crucial moment, where the infamy of the attack on the Capitol has discredited Trump even among some Republicans. At this time, we must not forget that it is of far more value to the workers than to the Democrats to have Trump face accountability. The Democratic leadership is already talking about the trial of Trump in the Senate as an obstacle to accomplishing Biden's plans for the first 100 days in office. But the failure to punish Trump would poison the political situation throughout country for years.

Notes

[1] James Walker, "45 Percent of Republican Voters Support Storming of Capitol Building: Poll", January 7, 2021, Newsweek.

[2] Brett Wilkins, "Survey Finds Majority of Americans Want Trump Removed From Office", January 8, 2021, Common Dreams. The article states that "Fully 79% of all respondents, including two-thirds of Republicans and Trump voters, described the president's supporters who attacked the Capitol on Wednesday as 'criminals' or 'fools.'" And "Fully fifty-seven percent of people who responded to the national opinion survey ... said they favored the removal of thepresent... with 88% of Democrats but just 24% of Republicans favoring Trump's removal. Just over half of self-described independents favored Trump's ouster."

[3] Carol Anderson, "Georgia doesn't need another voter suppressor running its election", Dec. 3, 2018, The  Guardian .

[4] Carlisa N. Johnson and Isaiah Murtaugh, "Georgia's Brad Raffensperger: strong against Trump, weak on voting rights", January 4, 2021, The GroundTruth Project.

[5] Sean McMinn and Alyson Hurt, "Money Tracker: How much Trump and Biden Have Raised in the 2020 Election", December 4, 2020, National Public.

[6] Chris Cillizza, "The absolutely stunning price tag of the 2020 election," October 29, 2020, CNN Politics. <>

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