Down but not out: How America can rebuild after Trump

There’s good news and bad news as we approach the midterm elections.

The good news is that Democrats have a realistic opportunity to win control of at least one house of Congress. The bad news is that it won’t make much difference in President Trump’s behavior. We are likely to have a rough election followed by another contentious two years of his presidency. Even with control of Congress, Democrats will not be able to leash Trump.

First, we need to get through the midterms, despite Trump’s efforts to undermine confidence in the outcome. If Democrats win back the House, they can impeach Trump on any number of transgressions. But it would be merely performative unless two-thirds of the Senate agrees to convict and remove him from office. Two previous impeachments have not changed Trump’s behavior — there is no reason to think a third would, either.

If Democrats win control of both houses of Congress, they will be able to pass legislation to proscribe Trump’s abuses of power, but he would veto the bills. Democrats are unlikely to acquire the supermajorities necessary to override his vetoes. And although Congress has the leverage of the federal budget, Trump has shown he largely disregards it .

Short of Trump resigning out of boredom, poor health or crimes that even MAGA can’t tolerate, we can expect more of the domestic and international abuses we have seen in the last two years.

Yet as painful as this is, Trump is unintentionally teaching us important lessons about the American experiment and what happens when we elect leaders who embody our worst impulses rather than our highest principles. Even the divinely endowed rights in the Constitution are not immune when we give corrupt people political power. Elections matter a lot.

Many on the right believe that Trump’s presidency has been ordained . They may be correct. We Americans apparently needed to learn these lessons, and Trump is uniquely qualified to teach them. “The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me,” Trump’s former chief of staff Gen. John Kelly observed . “He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.”

The challenge for the rest of us, citizen and elected official alike, is to turn the negatives of the Trump era into something positive. At the grassroots, this means giving some grace to those who voted for Trump. Who among us has never been fooled or misled? We need to come back together for the work ahead.

In Congress, Democrats promise to hold Trump accountable if they win one or both houses. This means endless investigations and hearings that keep picking at the scabs of democracy’s wounds. Investigations and hearings should focus not on political theater, but on exposing the reforms to better protect democracy and the rule of law. The objective would be to fix what Trump has revealed about weaknesses in the Constitution, our laws, the system of checks and balances, and the guardrails against corruption.

Over the next two years, Congress should build an agenda not only to repair the weaknesses and damages, but also to build government back better, including constraints on presidential power for Republicans and Democrats alike. The ideal would be a bipartisan legislative agenda for the president and Congress we elect in 2028.

This agenda — a Project 2028 for the everyman — could fix the holes in the Voting Rights Act, address the “major questions” issue to strengthen EPA’s authority for nationwide environmental protection, and reinstitute the most important of the hundreds of environmental rules Trump’s people have rescinded. Congress should make the endangerment finding on greenhouse gas emissions a matter of law instead of EPA’s discretion. It should clarify questions about domestic military deployments and the constitutional rights of immigrants .

Congress should create an enforceable ethics code and term limits for Supreme Court justices, protect the Department of Justice from improper political influence, develop presidential ethics rules, and prohibit private profiteering from public office. It should craft a carefully defined package of constitutional amendments to reform campaign finance, prevent abuses of presidential pardon power, and overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling that presidents cannot be prosecuted for violating the law while performing official duties.

The Trump presidency has been an exhausting crisis-a-day affair, profoundly damaging to the American spirit and its mission in the world. The crises will continue. But some good will come from them if we buckle up for the rough road ahead, recommit to that spirit, and unite to fix the damage democracy has endured.

William S. Becker is co-editor of and a contributor to “ Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People,” and a contributor to “ Democracy in a Hotter Time .” He previously served as a senior official in the Wisconsin Department of Justice. He is currently executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.