The Twilight of America’s Excuses
Over the last decade we’ve created a stream of rationalizations for why so many voters want Trumpism. That stream is about to dry up.
Sarah, Tim, and I taped a gigantic, super-sized TNL last night in preparation for The Bulwark’s swing-state tour—which starts tomorrow in Philly. The show is here. Not gonna lie: It’s very good this week.
Also: Our live shows are sold out! But tomorrow’s show in Philly will be livestreamed here, if you want to watch.
1. Open at the Close
We are at the beginning of closing arguments. But we’re also at the beginning of something else: The next era of American political life.
I say that because we are witnessing the collapse of the rationalizations we’ve made for why Americans were open to Trump. And when this collapse is complete, we’ll be faced with two things: The truth about ourselves and the task of figuring out how to sustain liberalism without the comfort of illusions.
Let’s start at the beginning of the end.
Kamala Harris opened her closing argument on The Breakfast Club, speaking to a largely black (and young) audience. Tonight she takes her argument to Fox News. I love these choices. In the span of 24 hours, Harris will have run straight at her base using new media and at Trump’s base using his legacy propaganda channel.
She’s confident enough to take on bad-faith actors, hungry enough to hunt for any angle, and humble enough to understand that she needs to earn every vote.
What will her closing message be? I believe she’s going to try to disqualify Trump. She’ll do it on the grounds that he is erratic, dangerous, and weak. She’ll let his age speak for itself. She’ll note that Trump appointed the justices who gave us Dobbs and that, if he’s president again, he’ll probably appoint (at least) three more justices to the Supreme Court.
The reason to focus her closing argument on disqualifying Trump is threefold.
Fire up her base voters.
Persuade some undecideds to vote for her.
Keep a handful of soft-Trump voters on the sidelines.
We’ll see if it’s enough. But unless something goes sideways in the next three weeks, we can say that Harris did basically everything she could.
In baseball, they often say that a losing pitcher played “good enough to win.” The idea here is that the pitcher can’t win games by himself, because he doesn’t score runs. All he can do is put his team in a position to win by holding the other team’s offense in check.
So a pitcher who gives up 1 run in 9 innings and loses 1–0? That’s not on him. He pitched good enough to win. It was the team that let him down by not providing run support.
That’s basically how I feel about the Harris campaign as we start closing arguments. She put America in a position to win by running a smart, vigorous campaign and giving the country a clear choice between a physically decrepit, mentally unfit gangster and a young, viable, centrist vice president.
If she loses, I don’t think any reasonable observer will be able to say it was her fault.
Also, if she loses, then we’re going to need some tough conversations about our country, our system, and ourselves.
But mostly: If she loses, a whole lot of excuses we’ve been making for America are going to dry up, right quick.
2. The Fault Is in Our Stars
Over the last 10 years we have all, at one point or another, manufactured excuses for why Donald Trump happened.
Why were we in the excuse-making business?
Because there was no alternative.
If Donald Trump happened because a significant percentage of our fellow citizens wanted him, and all his works, and all his empty promises, then there was nothing to be done. If 47 percent of the country wants fascism, then eventually it will get fascism. You can’t simply dissolve the people and elect another.
So we looked for rationalizations to explain why so many Americans were voting for Trump in the hopes that, if we addressed these excuses, they would stop choosing him.
Let’s take a tour through our history of rationalization.
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