House criminal referral doesn't mean we're out of the Trumpist woods yet

What does the criminal referral against former President Donald Trump mean for his, and America’s, political future?

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack has decided that there is enough evidence to charge Trump with “assisting, aiding or comforting those involved in an insurrection,” as well as obstructing justice and conspiring to make a false statement. While it’s up to the Justice Department whether to go ahead with those charges, the recommendation itself, supported by extensive evidence, is damning. At the committee’s final public meeting on Monday, one of its two Republican members, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, said that Trump is “unfit to hold any office” in the United States—let alone the office of President, which he recently announced he will seek in 2024.

Unfortunately, in our polarized political environment, this is mostly preaching to the converted. The people impressed by Cheney’s statement overwhelmingly already see Trump as unfit. Those who see Trump as their champion, or at least the enemy of their enemy, already regard the Jan. 6 committee as a witch-hunt concocted by Democrats and faux Republicans. Only two Republicans, Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, supported the probe, and both are on their way out: Cheney lost in the GOP primaries while Kinzinger did not seek reelection. If anything, seeing Trump as a martyr may only make his supporters more passionate.

But Trump zealots are not enough for him to win if independents and Republicans who are not part of his hardcore base refuse to vote for him, and at least some of them will likely be swayed by a prosecution. It’s worth noting that support for Trump among Republicans is already wavering. His recent antics include a statement that the 2020 election results should be thrown out, even if it requires “terminating” certain articles of the Constitution. Even more recently, he made himself look clownishly pathetic by promising a big announcement only to unveil Trump trading cards. You couldn’t make it up.

A USA Today/Suffolk University poll released last week shows that nearly two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents now want someone other than Trump to be the nominee. The poll also shows that President Joe Biden would handily beat Trump (47% to 40%) in a new matchup.

Of course, there have been plenty of other times when pundits said that this time Trump was definitely done, and he still managed to make a comeback. In these chaotic times, making predictions is riskier than ever. The next Congress, especially the House, will have a larger Trumpist caucus and fewer anti-Trump Republicans, which may shift the GOP’s political momentum back in Trump’s direction. And a move away from Trump may not always be for the better: The new favorite, Florida’s populist Gov. Ron DeSantis, is now openly pandering to the right’s anti-vaccine fringe by appointing a panel full of cranks to look into the supposed ill effects of the COVID-19 vaccine.

In other words, we’re not out of the Trumpist woods yet. But that makes it all the more important for the Justice Department to move ahead with the prosecution. Even if a conviction does not legally preclude Trump from seeking office again, it marks him as the president who tried to subvert democracy.

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a cultural studies fellow at the Cato Institute, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.