The Dance Card Gets Filled
The notion of a dance card started in the Eighteenth Century, but it really came into vogue in Nineteenth Century Vienna. I always thought of it in regard to Gone With The Wind with the young Scarlett O’Hara with a small booklet looped to her wrist where the evening ballroom dances were listed and next to which she could write the names of the many beaus and potential suitors that wanted to charm her on the dance floor. Google has also shown me a dance card in the form of a fancy woman’s fan that had the same information in the various “feathers” of the fan. That seems a very practical double-duty version of a dance card. I’m sure in the realm of debutante balls, it was important to the perception of desirability that a young woman’s dance card got well-filled with high quality young gentlemen. In today’s society, with debutante balls and, indeed, organized dances being few and far between, I bet there aren’t very many dance cards in any form being produced. But it is such a vivid visual that the dance card has taken on new meaning and is widely used to give a sense of how busy and/or receptive one is to certain types of attention. Squeezing someone into your dance card is another way of saying that despite being busy, you will make time for another person in an otherwise crowded schedule.
The most recent use of the term dance card is revolving around the upcoming fourteen month schedule between now and November 7th, 2024, specifically of Donald J. Trump. Campaign schedules are notoriously jam-packed with events that barely give a candidate the time to breath. That is undoubtedly the case for a reboot candidate like Donald Trump who, despite being way ahead in the Republican Primary polls, has a history from 2016, 2020 and 2022 to overcome. The shifting sands of the Republican Party psyche due to the extreme MAGA nature of the base and the rhetoric of hyperbole and controversy that that generates, probably just adds to all that scheduling difficulty. The idiosyncrasies of all but the youngest of presidential candidates also makes scheduling difficult. With two octogenarians (I consider Bien and Trump of comparable age) in the campaign, I’m sure their respective staffs monitor and manage their energy levels very carefully. You don’t want a candidate to ever look bedraggled, but rather you want him looking spry and ready to conquer the world. We all understand that whether it was FDR, Eisenhower, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Trump or Biden, they all had their human frailties that had to be accounted for in how their campaign dance cards got filled and managed.
But of course, this year we have particularly worrisome campaign schedule, certainly for Trump and maybe even for Biden. Let me dispense with Biden in this regard right off the bat since I consider his issues to be a quantum less complicated in that regard. There is no doubt that given his closeness to his son Hunter, those legal proceedings will be at least a small distraction for him, but since he has not been directly linked to the issues, it seems unlikely to be much of a problem to his schedule. That would be considerably different if what Trump and McCarthy are scheming about in terms of pushing for impeachment proceedings against Biden comes to pass. As of today, McCarthy is suggesting an investigation while Trump is saying quite vociferously that McCarthy should skip the investigation step and move directly to an impeachment hearing. Luckily, there are still enough serious-minded Republicans in the House and McCarthy’s margins are slim enough that it is not altogether a slam dunk that they will achieve an impeachment. A number of House Republicans simply do not think any of Biden’s actions rise to the level of concern that an impeachment is warranted, and even more of them can see a politically motivated maneuver from Trump a mile away. Anything to neutralize Trump’s problems by playing “snooker” with Biden’s image and schedule.
As for Trump’s dance card, it is a far more complicated situation as we are coming to understand. We now have several trial dates set that will impact his dance card directly since he will need to be in different courtrooms for some (Criminal cases requiring defendant attendance even though some civil cases do not). The biggest latest news is that the big Jack Smith DOJ 2020 election interference trial is now set for early March, 2024. Assuming an 8 week trial, that pretty much takes up March and April and will make campaigning pretty much impossible for him then. That will be after the Iowa caucuses and the primaries in Hew Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, jut just before Super Tuesday. Note that the E. Jean Carroll civil defamation trial starts the same day as the Iowa causcuses, but like I said, Trump’s attendance is optional. That bumps Fani Willis’ proposed trial start date from that same day to a likely later start in perhaps late April or early May. The problem is that the Classified Documents case from Jack Smith and the DOJ is scheduled to start May 21, but with a Trump-friendly judge in Florida, who knows how that might shift. Another wild card is the Alvin Bragg Stormy Daniels hush money case, which has fallen down on the priority list for almost everyone even though it was the first indictment announced.
The Georgia RICO trial is also a very significant dance card filler and wild card all at once due to the multiple co-defendants, some of which are seeking a speedy trial and others who are seeking partition to Federal court to improve their jury pool odds. We know that Mr. Chesebro has demanded and gotten an October trial, which, if it holds, will give the American public a very fulsome expose of the evidence that will almost all involve Trump in some way. Mark Meadows and other defendants are starting to have hearings about moving the trial to Federal court. Meadows actually took the stand, somewhat unexpectedly, today and made his case. Generally, those efforts are a long shot since they require a ruling that his or any of the other defendants’ actions were done in connection with their official duties. Since the federal government has no jurisdiction over state electoral process, it is a hard argument to make that Meadows, Clarke, Giuliani or any of the other co-defendants were doing anything other than outright electioneering, which is specifically prohibited and inappropriate and clearly not “colorable” by their legitimate federal duties. This seems like a long shot legal action by Meadows at best since it strains credulity to suggest that his actions were just routine Chief of Staff type duties.
By now we all know that Trump wants to delay as much as possible. We also know that his co-defendants, whether indicted or as yet unindicted, all want to bifurcate and distance themselves from a potentially toxic Trump. In addition to that, there are any number of legal tactics being considered ranging from fast play to slow play and all manner of defenses. And remember, the cost of all this dance card juggling in terms of legal costs is tremendous. All of this gets weighed on any given day by the ever-present opportunity to turn state’s witness and for co-defendants or potential indictees to flip to save themselves.
As strong as the popularity polls are for Trump at this point, and make no mistake, they are considerable, the sheer magnitude and existing evidentiary basis and the potential added evidence of the four indictments Trump already is facing are daunting. The next twelve months will likely be the most interesting, troubling, turbulent and impactful year of our lives, our children’s lives and even our grandchildren’s lives. There is a famous comment made in banking circles by Chuck Prince of Citibank to describe what led up to the great financial fiasco of 2008. He said that when the music is playing, you have to get up and dance. Well, I hear the band tuning up and sense that Donald Trump’s dance card is already overfilled and not all by pleasant waltzes, but rather by the kind of dancing one does when the guns start blazing at your boots. Good luck tap dancing your way out of this one, Donald.