The 2024 presidential race has been stagnant for at least three months now. It’s still a revived Trump v. an unchallenged, uninspiring Biden. That’s a very long time for a song to remain the same in American politics. But a series of political twinges has propelled me into a private tea-leaf investigation at Sanity Central; I’ve come away with an itchy zeitgeist finger.
I mean, this can’t last. People as old as Trump and Biden don’t evolve; they devolve. Does anyone think that either man will be more on his game a year from now? Will either one come up with a brash new formulation—even a turn of phrase—that enables us see the world anew? At the very least, their very same-old-sameness will occasion rampant public ennui. The usual American political game is the opposite: the ginning up of enthusiasm or anger (more the former than the latter lately), a constant attempt to stimulate interest, to eradicate boredom. The zeitgeist is impatient, and it may be especially so in a senescent bog. So I wonder: Is the conventional wisdom is about to be recast, maybe not in a big way, but in a manner that might presage larger changes to come? There are signs.
First, Biden: He thinks he’s stable, but he appears to be sinking. He announces his candidacy and is immediately clobbered by a dreadful ABC-Washington Post poll. How dreadful? 36% approval dreadful; losing 45-38 to Trump dreadful. This seems unwarranted on the merits. I still think Biden has been doing a solid job as President (insert my usual caveats here) and as Chris Smith reports in Vanity Fair, his political team is excellent and engaged, and reports of his actual senility have been greatly exaggerated. Excellent appointees like CIA Director Bill Burns fly under the radar—-which is how things should work when things are normal. But the public doesn’t seem to be buying it; maybe the public never did. Maybe Biden was simply seen as a fallback position against Crazy in 2020. Okay, this is only one poll, and even the Post admitted it might be an outlier. (You want an. outlier? This week, the Republican Rasmussen numbers crunchers had Biden at around 51% approval.) As former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told the Times’ Peter Baker:
“Polls in May 2024 will be of dubious value…Polls in May 2023 are worth as much as Theranos stock.”
Yes, but Biden is entering a touchy period now. Things are starting to happen in his world. There is the debt ceiling battle, where the Presisdent’s principled position against Republican shenanigans—a winning stance for Democrats in the past—may be misconstrued as catatonia. There are the immigration restrictions about to be lifted on the southern border. There is the hair-trigger uneasiness of a country where mass shootings seem to occur every other day. There is Hunter, who has already been convicted of being a sleaze in the court of public opinion and may soon be facing actual charges in real courts. There is Kamala Harris, a study in unsteady vacuity—she appears to be slipping about on roller skates in her public appearances—who is likely to become more of an issue as the election approaches. Matt Bai thinks Biden’s strategy should be to cleave to Harris. Peter Beinart thinks Biden might benefit from a challenger who is more liberal on foreign policy—softer on China, tougher on Israel, more welcoming to Cuba. Good luck with that. If I were a working pundit, toiling in the legacy vineyards, I could write a convincing column advocating the exact opposite views of those above...and I think both Bai and Beinart are excellent.
If you are Biden, you want a low-key camapaign; but if you’re of Biden’s age and aspect, a snooze can be mistaken for a coma. And if your best case scenario is that nothing much happens between now and next year, you’re living in the wrong country. Something will happen; and even if it’s not something big, the press will make it seem so. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vanity candidacy might become a headache. There is room for an argument to break out in the Democratic Party. And that argument may catch fire if it appears, as I’ll argue next, that Donald Trump is losing steam. Biden may be able to beat Trump, but he’d have a tough time against a more reasonable Republican. His reality is stasis, with a slow leak. His only upside is the downside of his weakest opponent.
Trump: He’s had a great few months, some of it attributable to skill; much of it attributable to the litigiousness of the Democrats. The skill part has been Trump’s move to the center on abortion and Disney and entitlements. (Actually, he hasn’t really moved; it just looks that way because Ron DeSantis seems intent on taking the most ridiculous right-wing position on every culture issue.) The question is: Has Trump flourished because of Relentless Ron’s extremism or because Republicans want to express their anger at the Democrats who keep indicting him? I think it’s more the latter. Defiance is not only a defining characteristic of the hard-boiled Trumpers, but also a default position for many Republicans who see a horde of liberal litigators batting zero-for-Trump. It is easy to argue that Alvin Bragg’s Stormy Daniels case is weak; it is possible to argue that E. Jean Carroll’s rape charge is “she said, he denied, Democratic jury decided.” There is more lawyering to come: the Georgia election tampering case and Special Counsel Jack Smith’s January 6 and Mar-A-Lago classified documents investigation. Smith’s seems more credible because it’s more professional and the Mueller effect has taken hold—the press is expecting substance because of the absence of leaks.
But all these law-kerfuffles may have a sapping effect: If Trump’s robust polls are merely an enough already protest by Republicans, the sheer volume of the cases against him and their ultimate results—do Republicans really want a convicted sexual assaulter as their nominee?—could make for a different sort of enough already reaction in the coming months, especially if Trump mistakes his supporters’ defiance for their acceptance of his every personal indulgence.
Here is a difference between Biden and Trump: Democratic donors may be quietly terrified by a Biden candidacy, Republican donors—think of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page—are actively looking for an alternative. It may not be DeSantis, but my itchy zeitgeist sense is that someone else is going to surge. I mean, even Vivek Ramaswamy, who seems fresh and smart and different, may have his moment. (You may remember that Ben Carson had his moment in 2016, and Herman Cain before him. These sorts of candidacies are possible in the new, populist Republican Party.) This would be something new for Trump: he’s never had a primary challenger who could take some wind out of his sails. He may panic, overscreech, get sweaty.
Another difference: there are actual, warm-blooded candidates on the Republican side who might do him harm. Nikki Haley and Tim Scott have been showing some low-country moxie. Mike Pence is nothing if not solid. There are estimable governors like Sununu and Youngkin and Asa Hutchinson out there. Even DeSantis has plenty of time for some political plastic surgery—an earnestness nip, a righteousness tuck, some collagen for his sense of humor. If he doesn’t, if he continues to be a wrong-trick pony, that will open a super-highway for someone less old and crazy than Trump, and yet interesting, to emerge.
But mark my words, the story is about to change.
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Agree...and we'll see how he deals with it on CNN tonight.
Probably one of the worst and inaccurate pieces you've ever written! What a waste of my time enduring the lengthy read! I'm subscribing immediately!