Yesterday Axios reported that a “senior House Democrat” said, “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went on Twitter to say that if this is someone’s attitude then the first thing they should do is resign from Congress. My sentiments exactly. The first thing to say about this is that we see many blind quotes in publications like this and they often trigger rounds of recriminations among Democrats when it’s unclear what if anything was actually said. I’m not saying they are fabricated. I’m sure they are real in the narrow sense. But you don’t know the context of these remarks or the identity of the speaker. So it’s a really bad idea to jump to some general diagnosis of the situation based on them. These asides are meant to spark drama and attention.
With that said, though, it’s also very clear that Democrats are caught in a wild moment of demoralization and pessimism and that it is to a real degree characterological. And a lot of that is among Democratic electeds in Washington, DC, the kind who talk a lot to the newsletters. We’ve seen a lot of it on-the-record during the Biden drama.
We should remind ourselves that during the 2016 and 2020 election Donald Trump spent most of the year between 5 and 10 points behind Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. He ended up winning the first election and nearly winning the second. (Some people may draw from this that Trump’s lucky and he always wins. But that’s a loser’s inference.) It’s been literally 20 years since the Democrats have run a presidential election in which they weren’t consistently ahead pretty much the whole time. Running behind is hard and absolutely no fun. If you’re running three points behind where you need to be in July and you’re ready to tap out, you’re just not cut out for this. It’s as simple as that.
In many discussions over recent days, I’ve seen people assume that members of Congress have access to a deeper class of data or information or have greater insight into election outcomes. I’m not saying Biden’s going to win the election. I’m telling you that if you’re serious about any of this it’s way too soon to think you know the outcome of the race. I can tell you with a real sense of certainty that elected officials have no better insight into election outcomes than the average person who closely follows political news. In fact, they’re more often than that worse at it. Why that is I’m not entirely sure. I think some of it is driven by spending a lot of time talking to donors, reporters in Washington, DC, consultants and other elected officials. That’s a pretty rarefied and insulated world. But regardless, that’s the case. I don’t base this on a theory. I base it on talking to them — not so much these days, but over many, many years.
A final point: I’m seeing a lot of people acting like the shooting over the weekend basically ends the election. That is silly. We simply do not know what if any effect this will have on the November vote. My own sense is that there’s a decent chance that the Trump campaign’s and GOP’s response to the attempt will backfire and eventually hurt him. After about 24 hours of leaks predicting some totally improbable “new Trump” national unity convention, the first signs this morning are more like Trump Unbound, with new demands that every case against him be dropped and Jean Carroll recant her jury-confirmed rape allegation. The truth is we have no idea and we shouldn’t make assumptions based on our fears.
