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Over the weekend I had an exchange with TPM Reader AB that I’d like to share with you. AB is a dedicated listener to our podcast (and you should be too!) as well as a reader and he flagged an exchange in which my cohost Kate Riga discussed Donald Trump’s recent “vermin” comments, which mapped quite closely to a lot of Nazi rhetoric from the 1920s and 1930s. The comments would have gotten more attention, she said, had they happened in the heat of the campaign instead of 9 months or a year prior. AB insisted that we need to be vigilant. We need to be sounding Red Alerts. We can’t be complacent thinking the actual election is a year off and everything will change for be better.
To be clear, this was an aside from Kate in part of a longer discussion. And AB himself seemed to recognize this. So I raise this not to disagree with anyone or call anyone out. I note it because it illustrates an impulse and dynamic I think countless Democrats (and others who simply oppose Donald Trump) are finding themselves caught up in. I won’t belabor the foundational point. Trump 1.0 was really bad. Trump 2.0 promises to be much worse. A year out, polls suggest Trump and Biden are tied or with Trump slightly ahead in the popular vote. That makes something really unthinkable seem like a very real possibility.
That’s bad. Really bad. So get to sounding the Red Alerts. Break the glass and pull the alarm. Pick your metaphor. These are all very understandable and logical responses, not so much — in my mind at least — because of the percentage chances of one candidate winning over the other but because of the consequences of a bad outcome.
But the reality is that the red alarms have been sounded. The glass has been broken. There are tons of people operating in every corner of the political world putting together campaigns for next year. Pretty much everyone who is currently paying attention knows the stakes. They’re seeing the same polls. Indeed, the idea that Democrats are either overconfident or complacent stands in stark contrast to the equally prevalent conventional wisdom that Democrats are running around in collective terror and panic about next year’s election.
We are in a moment in which Democrats all seem to be running around demanding each other not be complacent and do something. Hopefully something dramatic. Boil these points of evidence down and you see a strong and very human desire to pull some lever, sound some alarm, do some thing to make the danger go away, make a necessary victory a sure thing. But the reality may be that what was very close three years ago will likely be very close again. And it could well be close in the opposite direction. There may be no other option than to bear down, grind out and put every single measure of exertion into ensuring a good outcome. That’s just not a fun or calming response. And it comes with no guarantee, and in a race few can believe is close at all.
Of course, a great deal of energy has gone into discussions of finding a different candidate. Biden is either too older or too saddled with the hardships of emerging from the pandemic to be a strong candidate. That may be the case. But Biden is clearly going to be the Democratic nominee. Indeed, many of the state primary filing deadlines have already passed.
Which raises a related issue. Are we calling alarms to calm our own anxiety? Or are we doing it to put responsibility on to someone else if everything goes wrong. Over the weekend Maureen Dowd published a Times column entitled ‘The Axe is Sharp,” essentially an encomium to Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod and an anti-encomium to the incumbent President who Axelrod has been dumping on for months.
Circle Jerks are generally assumed to be a male only affair. But here Dowd seems to have broken a new, albeit perverse, glass ceiling. The column is a richly gilded example of DC party circuit tut-tutting shorn of any operational plan. Axelrod has quite famously never been a fan of Biden’s. I don’t doubt he has real concerns about whether Biden, who turns 81 today, will be able to beat Donald Trump a second time. But his press comments over recent weeks have generally demanded the White House ‘grapple with the age’ issue or ‘take it seriously.’ He’s noted that it might be better if Democrats had a younger more dynamic candidate without explaining how the timeline or anything else makes this possible or likely — indeed, without explaining how this will happen without any credible candidate willing to challenge Biden.
Our first poll of the Democratic primary race shows Congressman Dean Phillips pulling 4% to Biden’s 77%. When Emerson polled California and added the state’s popular governor, Gavin Newsom, Biden polled 51% to Newsom’s 21%. The point of sharing these numbers is not to suggest that Democrats universally support Biden. Indeed, they show he has some work to do to unify and energize Democratic voters for the general election. What they illustrate is why no serious candidate has challenged Biden. Because that candidate would almost certainly lose. If Newsom is getting crushed in his own state where he is popular and has almost universal name recognition that tells you the story.
The Axelrod story shows us something important about political commentary and how it intertwines with advocacy and politics. It goes back to those questions I asked above. Are we proposing a more effective approach? Are we simply trying to tamp down our own anxieties? Or are we trying to call dibs on the possible bad outcomes to put the responsibility on someone else if everything goes wrong?
I’ve given this matter a great deal of thought over the years since I have a small perch in the commentary business myself. We must be coldly realistic and candid about what we see but also what we might call ‘productive.’ By ‘productive’ here I mean providing some insight into how we can ethically and productively meet the reality before us. Put more colloquially, there’s no prize to bumming people out to no purpose. History doesn’t end. There’s always a next thing to do. In practice this can be a difficult combination to balance.
At the present moment it’s the easiest thing in the world — and in many ways the most inviting — to say Biden may lose! It would be great to have a younger, hypothetical candidate! It’s a free call since it’s not going to happen. So there’s no chance you’re going to be accountable for whether or not this was a good idea. If Biden wins next year everyone will be so stoked they either won’t remember what you said or won’t care. But if he loses, for you it’s bit of a win, isn’t it? There’s bragging rights. It amounts to a kind of emotional and professional hedge against the sting of electoral defeat.
Doom-saying without some operational plan to do something better is a luxury and a cheap one, generally a way to opt out of the work and potential consequences of harrowing moments when the future is not clear and stakes are high. That’s the David Axelrods of the political world. What interests me more is something a bit different, what I think AB and many others of us are grappling with: the very human desire to pull some alarm or break some glass when the reality is that we will likely have to sit with the discomfort of a very nerve-wracking year and put every effort into winning with this team. There’s nothing cheap or buck-passing about that. It is a totally human and real feature of this political moment.
In this weekend Post article about Democratic agita, the authors included this anecdote …
At one point, during a political panel that included Ron Klain, President Biden’s former chief of staff, an audience member worried aloud that the Democratic Party had a serious problem. Biden is too old and could lose the election, this person fretted, before asking the question that has been disquieting Democratic circles for more than a year: What is the backup plan?
Klain’s rebuttal was swift, recalled one attendee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid details of the private event. The president is the party’s nominee, Klain said, and a strong nominee at that. There is no backup plan.
The audience rumbled with exasperation and disbelief, grumbling about the lack of a Plan B. But some Democrats later approached Klain to thank him for his forceful defense of Biden, a second person familiar with the moment said.
The Posties certainly seemed to sympathize and affirm the aghast response to the lack of a “backup plan.” But just in the nature of things campaign’s seldom have backup plans to their own candidates. This is obvious, right? And in any case discussing backup plans at this point is rather like discussing with your jump mate what the backup plan is for the parachutes after you’ve already left the plane — an interesting discussion but not one with a lot of practical import.
But of course a political campaign a year out is not a binary question of a chute opening or not opening with every important factor baked in a few hours earlier and out of our hands. It’s very much in our collective hands, as it is in really every political campaign.