We are now a year away from the 2024 presidential election, so it’s probably time to get serious after all the foreplay…and this is the week to do it because there are at least three tectonic events underway:
—The New York Times poll that showed Trump leading Biden in five of six potential toss-up states.
—Trump’s thuggish testimony in the New York fraud trial.
—The next Republican debate, which should tell us something about Nikki Haley’s viability.
There also will be not quite tectonic elections this week, most notably in Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio (a referendum there on abortion). I am particularly concerned about the fate of Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, a true Sanity Democrat. (If Joe Biden steps aside, this is probably the guy he should endorse.)
And, just over the horizon—I mean, next week—a possible government shutdown and Mike Johnson’s first date with Armageddon, a fantasy battle that he may well take literally.
The Times Poll
Uh-oh. Trump leads Biden in five of six toss-up states. It’s panic time, time for the bedwetters to get out their rubber sheets. It probably shouldn’t be. The fine print in the Times poll isn’t as bad as the headline:
In a hypothetical race without Mr. Biden, an unnamed generic Democrat leads Mr. Trump by eight points, 48 to 40 — a wider lead than the three-point edge held by an unnamed Democrat at this time in 2019…
Even Kamala Harris — no political juggernaut so far — fares a bit better than Mr. Biden, trailing Mr. Trump by three points in a hypothetical matchup, compared with Mr. Biden’s five-point deficit (Mr. Trump appears to lead by four points in the top-line 48-44 result because of rounding).
While Mr. Biden doesn’t fare all that much worse than his running mate, the top-line similarity obscures major differences in their support: A full 11 percent of Ms. Harris’s would-be supporters do not back Mr. Biden, and two-thirds of them are either nonwhite or younger than 30.
This tells me (A) the public really doesn’t want Trump and (B) in a non-hypothetical race against a ranting, raving, convicted felon of a sociopath, people might well hold their noses and vote for Old Joe if (C) they come out to vote at all but (D) don’t trust anyone under the age of 30. Jonathan V Last, over at the Bulwark makes the best of all possible cases for the American people coming to their senses. I hope he’s right, but I have three major reservations:
Aside from abortion and a razor-thin margin on “democracy”—I mean, really, Trump’s flunkies tried to overthrow the government—the electorate doesn’t like the Democrats’ positions on…anything. The economy (read: inflation), immigration, crime, foreign policy. Anything. I can argue, with Brother Last, that this is foolish. But it exists. People think Democrats are weak. And they have a point:
In their frantic effort to make amends with the black and Latino voters, the Democrats will do what they usually do: listen to the loudest, angriest, most radical lefty voices in those communities. In a rather cloudy piece about the Democrats’ ethnic panic, The Times is admirably fair and balanced, finding a Jamaican immigrant businesswoman who “believes Mr. Biden has not followed through on his campaign promises on immigration, worries that Democrats have gone too far in their embrace of L.G.B.T.Q. issues and faults them for books used in public education that she believes are too sexually explicit.” (I would rather they had found the black Ralph Kramden, a bus driver pissed off about crime and inflation, but being the voice of conviction moderates is not how reporters roll these days.) The reporter also quotes a black community organizer—ugh, ever the activists—who opines: “If your basic needs aren’t being met, it’s difficult to pay attention to politics and it’s difficult to have faith in that system when you voted before but you’re still struggling day to day.” Guess which point of view the Democrats will hear more clearly? The voice of the black middle class, concerned about cultural issues…or the voice of the aggrieved? The party’s DNA, stuck somewhere in the 1970s, suggests the latter.
People just think Biden is too old (71%) or no longer sharp enough (62%). Difficult to change that narrative. Jonathan Last points out the unfairness of these perceptions (click above), but there’s no getting around them: I wince every time I see Biden staggering across the South Lawn, heading toward Marine One; in his second term, I fear he’ll need a walker. Trump, by contrast, has the vigor of rage and insanity. This morning, I found myself thinking the very same thoughts as Bret Stephens:
Basically, this poll is to Biden’s second-term ambitions what sunlight is to morning fog. Isn’t it time for him to bow out gracefully and focus his remaining energies on the crises of the moment, particularly Ukraine and the Middle East, instead of gearing up for a punishing campaign while setting the country up for Trump’s catastrophic comeback?
I could write the speech. Though probably not as well as David Axelrod, James Carville or Steve Schmidt, all of whom think it’s time for Biden to step aside. But then, the Democratic Party would find itself in the midst of a blood-bath of a nomination fight, which the left—which presents its turgid self in primary contests—might well win. I mean, I vote in a nice, moderate integrated suburb—New Rochelle, NY—where the Democratic mayoral candidate just attended a pro-Hamas rally and the Congressman is the fantastically dreadful leftist phony-alarm-puller, Jamaal Bowman, who refused to support Israel in the latest Congressional vote. I’d like to think I’d vote for anyone over Trump, but the self-righteous, historically witless Democratic Socialists…if the candidate came from their wing…well, I can’t even finish the sentence.
Again, we are a year out. This poll means—well, I was about to say “nothing,” but that’s not true: the public doesn’t like what the Dems have been selling. That is not insignificant. On the other hand, people—except for his cult—really don’t like Trump. I wish the Biden staffers didn’t seem so smug.
Sanity on the Other Side
As a professional journalist, if that isn’t an oxymoron, I view former politicos who become pundits with a certain amount of skepticism. But they do have their uses, especially if they can write, as William Safire did and as Barton Swaim of the Wall Street Journal does. Swaim wrote a delightful memoir of his time working for South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford—and so he knows an awful lot about Nikki Haley, whom he considers both opportunistic and lucky, which isn’t a political oxymoron, but a much desired state of grace.
Haley will have a high-noon moment in this week’s Republican debate. She’s moving up in Iowa and New Hampshire, so she’ll be a target. In the last two debates, she showed herself far more skillful than her opponents (except for Chris Christie, who doesn’t really count). If she handles herself well on Wednesday night, she may come to be perceived as the only plausible challenge to the Trumpster. If she doesn’t, the field may be clear for the incipient felon to win the nomination. You go, girl.
And Speaking of Sanity…
I find David French’s columns in the Times refreshing and different and smart. As an evangelical partisan—and a veteran!—he has worked with a lot of people most other pundits haven’t…like Mike Johnson, who was his law partner. French is appalled by Johnson’s defense of the Big Lie:
Johnson is a very nice person, and — unlike Trump — he makes his points with a quite reasonable tone of voice. But pleasant-sounding lies are still lies. I know Johnson to be a smart man and a good lawyer, which is why I was gobsmacked to see him promote the same theories as some of the most corrupt and incompetent lawyers in American legal life. Former Representative Liz Cheney said that Johnson “was acting in ways that he knew to be wrong.
Johnson has two weeks to resolve the impending government shutdown. If he does, the GOP nutball caucus votes him out. If he doesn’t, we are the laughing stock of the world. Putin, Xi, Hamas and endless other miscreants exult.
There is no guarantee that we are destined to remain the greatest country in the world.
It seems to me that the Republican race is over. Trump will get the nomination. He is laser focused on winning the election above all else, to keep himself out of prison. He will pick Nikki for VP for that reason, and there is no other choice, nada, zip. No other Republican comes close to helping him regain the White House. Trump/Haley 2024 is as sure a bet as could ever be made on an out-of-power ticket one year out from the election. And Nikki knows this. Watching the Trump-Haley dance the next six months will be fun.
If Steve Schmidt can come up with a plausible answer to the immigration problem -that will calm the fears of the working class and be reasonably humane- I’ll vote for Phillips. And, hate to say this, if Joe Biden refuses to debate Phillips, I’ll vote for Phillips. My big problem is that most of the people who have a problem with Biden’s age would, if left to themselves, nominate someone completely out of touch with key constituencies. The Phillips challenge just might be precisely what Biden needs.