2024 Is Democracy's Moonshot
Like it or not, a crisis is coming. But we are facing it on good ground.
1. The Good News
After yesterdayās darkness, letās channel Gene Kranz again.
Early in Apollo 13, as the mission is going to hell, the various systems managers are giving Kranz a list of everything thatās failing. Kranz pauses. He takes a drag on his cigarette. And then he asks, āWhat have we got on the spacecraft thatās good?ā
And you know what? America will face a crisis next year. It could manifest in a few different forms, but we all see it coming.
But weāre not moving into this crisis in disarray. Just objectively speaking, the forces of stability are actually in a strong position.
The pandemic is over. I donāt think we appreciate this enough. COVID was so traumatic that weāve memory-holed how unstable and deadly a place America was in four years ago.
The economy is strong. Forget the attitude surveys. If you were handed reams of economic data you would come to two rock-solid conclusions:
(1) The American economy is in a good place: Low unemployment, bottom-led wage growth, increasing household wealth, solid GDP growth.
(2) Relative to the rest of the world, the American economy has performed marvelously. Every advanced economy would trade places with us in a heartbeat.
We are not involved in any wars. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are over and our troops are no longer in harmās way. This gives America extra freedom of maneuver in dealing with our adversaries because we no longer have active conflicts leaching away our political will on a daily basis.
The Democratic party is a healthy political institution. Iām not saying that the Democratic party is perfect at politics or correct on every matter of policy. And Iām not saying that every Democratic voter or activist or officeholder is good.
But the institution of the Democratic partyātaken as a wholeāis healthy. It is committed to liberal democracy and the rule of law. It is in favor of legal processes and opposed to extra-legal processes, especially political violence.
The institutional Democratic party is even opposed to extra-legal acts and political violence when these modes are taken up by supposed members of its coalition: See the reaction of the Biden administration to the riots of 2020 and the anti-Semitism of 2023.
You can argue with any and all of the Democratic partyās policy preferences: Maybe their tax policy is suboptimal, or their immigration policy would lead to bad outcomes. But on the most bedrock questions of liberalismāthe rule of law and the democratic processāthe party is solid.
See the partyās reaction to Bob Menendezās (alleged) crimes and the administrationās handling of the investigations of Hunter Biden.
No serious person can look at the Democratic party and worry that if Joe Biden is reelected there might not be a free and fair election in 2028.
Joe Biden has been a good president with good political instincts. From the moment he took office, Biden has pursued a consistent strategy of trying to return American politics to a place of normalcy.
Some people wanted Biden to govern as if the political system was in crisis: Making DC a state; adding seats to the Supreme Court; passing transformative voting reforms, even if it meant doing away with the filibuster. In short: Working to Trump-proof our system of government, even if it meant short-term political disadvantage for Democrats.1
Bidenās strategy was the opposite: Avoid radical change. Pass lots of bipartisan legislationāsome of it incremental (like gun reform) and some of it ambitious but also hugely popular (like the infrastructure bill). Work with Republicans. Negotiate. Marginalize the more radical elements of the Democratic coalition so as to deny oxygen to the more radical elements of the Republican coalition.
And on the issue of Trump, Biden has done everything possible to avoid pushing Republican voters into Trumpās arms. Biden rarely speaks of Trump. He has behaved properly regarding all of the investigations and criminal charges against Trump. At nearly every turn, Biden has declined to participate in elevating Trump or adding to Trumpās grievances.
Iād go so far as to say that you could view Bidenās shadow agenda as giving the Republican party room to rehabilitate itself. If it had been so inclined.
Non-Republican voters have behaved responsibly. While Republican voters have nominated cranks, bigots, and insurrectionists as their standard-bearers, the main body of American voters have continually rejected them.
In 2016 the majority of American voters rejected Trump. In 2018, they chose Democrats. In 2020 they gave Joe Biden more votes than any candidate in American history. In 2022, they turned out to reject Republican extremists.
Am I leaving bad stuff out of this picture? Yeah. The world is big and complicated and bad stuff is always part of the story.
But you could see an alternate timeline in which we met the crisis of 2024 on dangerous terrain. Maybe unemployment was at 7 percent. Maybe we were mired in recession. Maybe Afghanistan was still a bleeding wound and Putin had overrun Kyiv. Maybe the most radical elements of the Democratic party were running around starting fires over defunding the police. Maybe Biden was a bumbling incompetent who couldnāt close deals and didnāt get any business done. Maybe Biden himself was corrupt and mired in scandal.
Take any one of those and 2024 becomes much darker. Take two or three of them and weāre on a rocket-sled to facism.
But instead, we will meet the challenge of 2024 on the best possible terrain. The most defensible ground. With a winning coalition of voters, a responsible version of the Democratic party, and a restrained and successful incumbent president.
I donāt like that weāre in this position at all. I wish we werenāt. I wish that 2024 would pit Biden against Nikki Haley or Brian Kemp or whoever and we could all go back to arguing about marginal tax rates.
But we are where we are. And as Joshua Chamberlain said at Little Round Top, this is good ground to fight on.
So letās meet the challenge of 2024 confidently. And together.
Merry Christmas, my friends. Iāll see you in the new year and weāll get to work.
2. Santa. Quantum Entanglement. Bedtime.
Two outstanding pieces of video on Santa, reaffirming the truism that any technology which is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.
And this, from the DoD:
3. The Finals
It has come to this: The King vs. The Boss.
I would have preferred āChristmas Wrappingā facing off against āChristmas in Hollisā in the finals, but really, can you argue with Elvis and Bruce Springsteen? Forget those diaper dandies, baby, here come the blue chippers!
And the clash of styles on these tunes couldnāt be bigger. āBlue Christmasā is melancholy and minor and the arrangement isnāt spare, exactly, but it is restrained. You could see it being performed on The Lawrence Welk Show.
āSanta Claus Is Cominā to Townā isnāt just up-tempoāitās rowdy. The arrangement feels like thereās so much going on that the wheels might come off at any minute. This is a song that was meant to be performed live, in front of the biggest possible audience, with everyone jumping and shouting along.
Before you vote, one Easter Egg: On tomorrowās weekend edition of The Next Level, Tim and I interviewed Springsteenās consigliere, Steven Van Zandt. Itās a fantastic conversation. Be on the lookout for it.
Merry Christmas, friend. And a happy New Year, too.
Iāll talk to you in 2024.
I was very much open to this radical agenda.
I'm going to give you the reason that I'm more optimistic than everyone else on Biden getting reelected. It's really not a complex reasoning either.
Reality is, we're in the before period, the time of dreamers and idealism. It's a time when people think that DeSantis could still make it. That someone like Haley has a shot. The average voter is not even aware that there's an election coming. To them, elections are in the far future of next year. Most voters don't even take a look at candidates until the last few weeks of the election.
And what that means is that the Sununu's and Hewitt's of the world can pretend that the GOP is totally normal and not trying to elect Trump, and the average citizen can complain about Joe Biden because they haven't internalized that Trump is going to run again. We've seen this before, because it's exactly what happened with the Democrats in 2020. They had a ton of candidates, all of them were mostly busts, insane billionaire candidates tried to claim that they were the voice of the people, and then Joe Biden revealed himself, and everyone was like 'ah, stability.'
Because Joe Biden's superpower is that he's not popular, because he's not meant to be popular. Joe Biden is the 'eat your vegetables' candidate. He's not fun. He's not interesting. He's boring. And he's meant to be, because that's why he got elected. Voters elected Joe Biden because they were exhausted after four years of Trump sucking up all the oxygen in the room. Biden's pitch to the voters was 'elect me and you'll forget I'm president.'
And so right now, voters aren't thinking 'man I can't believe Trump is running again.' They're thinking 'man, Biden kinda sucks. He's all old and boring. I hope we get someone new to run against him!' And then Trump is going to be the nominee, and the debate shifts completely. The debate is not Biden versus some imaginary possibility. The debate is Joe Biden versus Donald Trump.
Now, I fully accept that Biden is not exactly a strong candidate in the modern sense. He doesn't have hardcore fans like Obama or Trump. But very few people genuinely hate Biden. Most people are ambivalent about him. You know who voters REALLY hate? Trump. Liberals hate that guy, but so do moderates and independents. They really, really don't like him. That's something that has been shown in every election since 2016. In 2016 lots of them gave him the benefit of the doubt. But by 2018, he was a pariah, and voters are negatively polarized against him.
Which means that it's much easier for voters to pull the lever for Biden not out of love for Biden but out of hatred of Trump. Biden's entire pitch can and should be this: remember the last guy? Remember how exhausted you were? Remember covid? Remember the economy exploding? That guy wants to be in charge again. Vote for me, I'm boring."
Trump is incapable of reassuring anyone, and the GOP can't pretend that he's a normal guy because he's running as the distinctly abnormal guy. He's not going to listen to anyone, and everyone knows it. The Sununu's of the world have been desperately trying to keep a lid on the idea that the GOP is anything but normal, but that will be impossible once Trump is the nominee and his face is on everything.
The question being asked now is 'Trump or Biden?' We asked this question before, and the answer was Biden. Nothing has happened that seems to change the calculus that even voters that hate Biden would vote for him over Trump, because Trump is hated in ways that very few people come close to getting hated. He's got Justin Bieber hate. He's got Nickelback hate. For those of you who love wrestling, he's got X-Pac heat, in that he's got 'go away' heat because no one wants to see or think about Trump ever again.
Having him on the ballot, having him at debates with Biden, having him doing media tours? Voters are going to get both barrels of Trump right in the face, and they will remember why they didn't vote for him the last time. One of the reasons that Trump was so strong going into 2020 was that voters very rarely regret their previous vote, which is why incumbents are so strong. Once you pull the lever once, it's easier to do it twice. Trump managed to break that by being horrifically unpopular among most of the electorate, and it's unlikely he's going to avoid reminding people why that was.
Biden is like a house salad. You didn't order it, it's not why you came there, but it's harmless if boring. Trump is getting a raw steak when you ordered medium well. You're sending that back because it's actively offensive to your senses. And I suspect voters are going to respond that way.
"Bidenās strategy was the opposite: Avoid radical change. Pass lots of bipartisan legislationāsome of it incremental (like gun reform) and some of it ambitious but also hugely popular (like the infrastructure bill). Work with Republicans. Negotiate. Marginalize the more radical elements of the Democratic coalition so as to deny oxygen to the more radical elements of the Republican coalition."
In other words, Joe Biden is the best conservative (small c) POTUS of the 21st century.