A Bridge Too Far

The trump administration has backed off from its ham-handed attempt to steal the 2020 Presidential election by hobbling the United States Postal Service. Publicly, at least. (Arguments that the damage has already been done, notwithstanding.)

Much has already been written about this orgy of disastrous optics. And I’m not here to beat dead horses. I’ll just note that the trump team’s postal power grab was, for a plurality of American voters, a bridge too far on the road toward authoritarianism. Or a bridge too obvious, anyway. 

Briefly, let’s look at two of the factors at play in this anti-democratic circus:

1.) trump explicitly, and publicly, declared his intent to engage in rank, unrefined corruption.

2.) The corrupt plan involved — deliberately, obviously, cartoonishly—kneecapping the USPS.

The first factor doesn’t make this incident any more outrageous than the other monstrous ideas that have oozed out of the trump administration over the last three-plus years. trump has openly admitted to a laundry list of misconduct that would have sunk any politician less protected by the cocoon of America’s active and passive white supremacist movement. 

It’s not the comment or the intent that fucked trump over here. It’s the target.

The USPS is an all-American icon

The USPS is etched into the American psyche like apple pie and fireworks. And assault rifles.

Yes, the State Department and the Department of Education are both American as hell. And yes, trump appointees are actively destroying those agencies from the inside with the determination of Greek warriors at Troy.

But those institutions don’t have agents who personally deliver mail to individual voters at their homes. Those agencies’ personnel don’t have personal relationships with voters which include swapping gifts during the holidays. Average Joe probably doesn’t have a family member who works for the state department. But he definitely knows a person who works at the post office.

Fundamental to the trump team’s misstep is that, in following it’s instinct to destroy and obfuscate, it transformed its very real assault on American institutions from an abstract idea in voters’ minds into something concrete and personal. This botched attempt to cripple the USPS will affect real voters’ everyday lives in direct and obvious ways.

But wait! There’s a garnish on this shit sandwich

The trump team’s postal attack was unlike conservatives’ other assaults on democracy (e.g., voter ID laws and “Muslim bans” and “transgender bans”) which target people whose rights conservative voters are happy to ignore.

The administration's efforts to disrupt, deliberately, vote-by-mail efforts affects all voters’ suffrage more-or-less equally. It’s a bit like COVID-19 in that way, and voters have expressed similarly broad dissatisfaction with the trump team’s response to the pandemic.

Even voters who are indifferent to voter suppression, or who quietly support it, don’t want their vote for president to be compromised.

In the end, this was a bridge too far even for the in-plain-sight corruption the trump train has turned out to be.