He lost. We’ll have to stop obsessing about him.
A friend was all worked up about the possibility of Trump 2024. “I can’t go through this again!” she cried. But what I heard was that she couldn’t stop going through this. Her contempt for Donald Trump is too finely honed at this point, too essential a part of her psyche. Who would she be — conversationally, politically — without it? Another friend sent me an email in which he’d worked out the economics of a web-only Trump news channel of the kind that Trump may — or may not — start. With minimal investment, Trump could rake in millions and millions! We were supposed to be breathing a huge sigh of relief about Joe Biden’s victory. But instead he was finding a fresh source of outrage about Trump. And here I am writing about Trump — again. It’s a tic, not one I’m proud of. But I’m surrendering to it now to acknowledge that I can’t continue doing so. None of us can. I’m not talking just about journalists. An obsession with Trump as the brute of all evil extends far beyond us. It has been an animating, organizing principle for the Democratic Party, a bond among civic-minded people of otherwise divergent persuasions and a pillar of many Americans’ political identity. It turned his rise and reign into an all-consuming international soap opera with ratings not just through the roof but also through the stratosphere. No public figure in my lifetime has made such a monopolizing claim on our attention, even our souls. On Jan.20 — praise be! — his presidency will be over. But his hold on us may not end as quickly and cleanly. And his departure from the White House will be more disorienting than some of us realize, posing its own challenges: for Democrats, for news organizations, for anyone who has grown accustomed over these past four years to an apocalyptic churn of events and emotions. “Donald Trump is still coursing through your veins, isn’t he?” asked John Harris in a column in Politico published on Tuesday, likening him to an addiction from which there must be a meticulously plotted recovery. Actually, Democratic lawmakers seem to be moving on from him — and revealing, in the process, what a potent glue he was. He united the party’s left and center by giving them the same top priority: Dump Trump.
