In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well underway. An unusual aspect of the campaign is the number of high-profile Republicans supporting Biden.
“I think a lot of us are extremely alarmed, frankly, at the threat of autocracy,” Donald B. Ayer, former deputy attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration, said in an interview with POLITICO. “He’s going to be unleashed if he gets a second term. I don’t know what’s going to stop him.”Others include:
- Alan Charles Raul, who served as vice chair of the White House Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board under George W. Bush and served in roles with George H.W. Bush as well as associate counsel to the president in the Reagan administration.
- Charles Fried, former U.S. solicitor general under the Reagan administration and an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
- Stuart Gerson, who worked as assistant attorney general under George H. W. Bush.
- Peter Keisler, former U.S. acting attorney general under George W. Bush.
- Paul Rosenweig, who served in the department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush.
- Robert Shanks, former U.S. deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration
- J.W. Verret, who served on Trump’s presidential transition staff.
The soft spot, the least tyrant-proof part of the government, is the U.S. Department of Justice and the larger law enforcement and regulatory apparatus of the United States government. The first reason you should fear a Donald Trump presidency is what he would do to the ordinary enforcement functions of the federal government, not the most extraordinary ones.
