Can Taylor Swift Save the Republic?

How the “Decisive Dozen” Might Trip Up Trump

We’re a month past Christmas, but I’ve got Meredith Wilson’s holiday song (with a twist) that is playing cheerfully in my head:

“It’s beginning to look a lot like justice!”

OK, maybe not “a lot.” And let’s not forget the “beginning” part. We are still a long way from holding the Orange Monster to account. But even if it will take a while for E. Jean Carroll to collect her $83 million, let’s be grateful to that New York jury for getting the man to shut the hell up for a change. At a minimum, the jury dealt a blow to Trump’s ability to partially self-finance his campaign and put the word “loser” out there, both significant boosts to the Biden campaign.

This raises the question of who else might help tip the election and save the republic. While the outcome will mostly rest on the liver-spotted shoulders of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, they aren’t the only ones who will have the power to shape this most pivotal presidential election since 1864. (If George McClellan had beaten Abraham Lincoln that year, McClellan would have signed a peace treaty that let the South leave the Union).

If you believe, as I do, that a conviction in the Trump Coup Trial (the only criminal trial with a realistic chance of taking place before the election) would be extremely helpful in keeping him from the White House, then the jurists capable of moving the case along have great power. So do several other highly influential people.

I’m curious about your choices. Here are mine:

Sri Srinivasan: The chief judge of the D.C. Circuit is by all accounts a brilliant jurist, but he is also sometimes excessively cautious. Once the three-judge panel on his court rules, as expected, against Trump’s claims that he is immune from prosecution for anything he did as president, and the entire 11-member court rules against time-consuming en banc consideration by the full court, the two Trump-appointed judges are expected to file dissents. Under normal circumstances, the chief judge would — in the interest of good relations — let the dissenters take as much time as they need to do so, which could be many weeks or months. But Srinivasan can indicate “dissents forthcoming” and let the case move quickly to the Supreme Court.

John Roberts: The chief justice has great latitude in how quickly the immunity claim reaches the Supreme Court for oral arguments and how quickly it issues what will likely be a landmark opinion. Roberts, who has accelerated important decisions in the past, would also have influence over how the high court decides the case, which is basically about whether the president is above the law. A decision to let the trial proceed would help Biden.

Tanya Chutkan: If the Supreme Court rejects Trump’s immunity claim, the no-nonsense judge in the Trump Coup Trial would probably start jury selection in May. (The trial was originally scheduled for March). If Trump is convicted, which is likely though not assured, expect Chutkan to sentence him to jail time, as she has all 38 of the January 6 insurrectionists tried in her courtroom. While Trump’s appeals of his conviction won’t be exhausted until well after the election, much of the conversation in the general election will revolve around whether a convicted felon could function as president.

James Lankford: The Oklahoma Republican senator has worked tirelessly across the aisle to fashion a tough immigration bill that also extends military aid to Ukraine. He is angry at Trump and House Republicans for trying to kill the bill so they can use the border crisis as a campaign issue. If Lankford can convince just a few House Republicans to put principle, border security, European security, and the clear interests of the United States over crass politics, it would help Biden govern and take a big campaign issue off the table.

William McRaven: The retired admiral and leader of the 2011 mission that killed Osama bin Laden said in 2019 that Trump "embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.” If McRaven mobilizes a big group of anti-Trump retired brass to take part in ads that air in battleground states, that could move the needle, especially if the veterans live in the states where the ads appear.

Jerome Powell: The chair of the Federal Reserve has done a good job engineering a “soft landing” into a “Goldilocks economy” to mix metaphors. With three interest rate cuts expected this year, we could have a low inflation, low unemployment, and low interest rate bullish economy by fall, which would be bad news for Trump, who has been publicly rooting for an economic collapse.

Taylor Swift: The Netflix documentary about the superstar captures the moment she decided to get political and endorse two Tennessee Democrats in the 2022 midterms. (Swift also spearheaded the registration of 35,000 new voters statewide.) If she does the same for Biden this fall, it could make a huge difference, especially with younger voters. With Travis Kelce now also under attack from right-wingers, he might step forward, too, which would help Biden cut Trump’s large lead with white men. The two of them campaigning for Biden could do more than anything else to put him over the top.

Jen O’Malley Dillon: Biden’s deputy chief of staff recently left the White House for Wilmington, Delaware, where she will run his 2024 campaign. Dillon, a highly-regarded political operative, skillfully managed Biden’s 2020 campaign, and she is expected to get this year’s sluggish effort back on track. The quality of a campaign is usually worth a point or two, which could make a difference in a close race.

Rupert Murdoch: The former chairman of NewsCorp was quoted in the Dominion Voting Systems case saying that Trump is “crazy.” While Fox News never likes to get too far away from its viewers, the intensity of its partisanship this fall remains a question mark. Even from retirement, Murdoch can affect the coverage at the margins.

Benny Ganz: After October 7, the retired army general and defense minister joined Benjamin Netanyahu’s wartime Cabinet. A longtime critic of Netanyahu, Ganz is widely expected to be Israel’s next prime minister. If that happens this year and the war in Gaza winds down, the pressure on Biden in the United States will ease. That could mean disillusioned young progressives and angry Arab-American voters in Michigan end up reluctantly voting for him after all.

Josh Shapiro: The popular Democratic governor of Pennsylvania will have a lot of influence over Biden’s fate in the Keystone State, which he must carry to win. Shapiro is helping Biden with messaging (He’s a big believer in uniting Democratic policies under the banner of “freedom”), and if his organization grows stronger, Biden could stabilize in Pennsylvania.

Mark Burnett: The producer of The Apprentice has long been rumored to have dirt on Trump. Now, the podcaster Sam Harris says he has it from two people independently that Burnett is sitting on “the equivalent of the Fuhrman tapes” — Trump “using the N-word with abandon.” If Burnett changes his mind and goes public, it would — at a minimum — nip Trump’s recent gains with black voters and possibly derail him altogether.

Please let me know in the Comment section below who else should be on this list.