Last year, Biden said he did not think it was “good for democracy” to sue a former president. He said he would leave the choice of pursuing federal cases to the Department of Justice. And in appointing Merrick B. Garland, a moderate judge of the appeals court, to be Attorney General, Biden signaled a reversal of the Justice Department’s Trump distortion to attack his political enemies.
But many Democratic voters said that leaving Trump unpunished, including his potential violation of the constitutional ban on profiting from a foreign government while in office, would only encourage future autocratic behavior in the White House.
“The next guy who wants to be a dictator or whoever he is will be a lot smarter than Trump,” said Robert Landry, a retired truck driver in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. “If you don’t hold these people accountable and say, ‘No, this is too far’, someone will reach out and push even further. I believe that some of these people are already in Congress. “
An independent politician, Landry, 69, is hardly a moderate defending courtesy across the hall. On the contrary, he regretted that former President Barack Obama had “tried to do kumbaya” after taking office, rejecting extensive investigations into the George W. Bush administration about domestic espionage and the use of torture by the CIA
That was a mistake, Landry said, complaining that Democrats don’t play as hard as Republicans. “If they let people get away with things, they will lose my vote,” he said. “I will not vote for Republicans again, but I will not vote for Democrats.”
Democratic voters rejected the view that a Trump Senate trial would only inflame national divisions, arguing that deep divisions in the country could hardly be worse, and that the expectation of bipartisanship was mainly an illusion.
“Democrats have tried, unsuccessfully, to be moderate in order to get compromise and cooperation again and again, but it didn’t work and it won’t work,” said Dave Bone, 54, an energy efficiency consultant based in Philadelphia.