I’m recuperating from arthroscopic knee surgery I had earlier this week. Not sure if it’s the pain or the drugs that are giving me a somewhat distanced perspective on our national shitshow of a presidential campaign, but suddenly the whole thing has the aspect of a miniature landscape viewed from a great height.
As nearly everyone has already said, the situation is unprecedented: two senior individuals who have served as President are contending for a rerun, each one’s supporters predicting the direst outcomes if the other is elected. I have an opinion, of course. Indeed, I have several, and none of them has much chance of affecting the outcome. As the Republican convention unfolds, I’m sitting with my legs propped on pillows, waiting to hear if President Biden will remain the Democratic Party’s candidate or step back in favor of Kamala Harris, or an open convention, or any of the other scenarios proffered by a raft of pundits, activists, and party operatives.
What engages me most right now is the weirdly symmetrical and largely unacknowledged character of the loud buzz occupying virtually all public space. To wit:
I can’t remember another time when so many people whose intelligence and sense I generally respect are on opposite sides of the question at hand. Roughly equal numbers of people I follow on social media are adamant that Joe Biden should end his candidacy and that he should stay the course.
People are convinced of the rightness of their own opinions with extremely passionate intensity. Not much “on the one hand” and “on the other.” Just a ringing certainty. There is name-calling. Expressions of contempt abound, and many of them are authored by people who are typically courteous and respectful in the face of disagreement.
Both sides deploy similar examples to make opposite points. For example, the Democratic National Committee and other manifestations of party apparatus are seen by some as time-tested artifacts of democracy in practice whose leaders should be heeded. Just as often, they are seen by others as corrupt and self-interested, committed only to retaining and magnifying their own power at the expense of true democracy. Some say that having won the vast majority of Democratic primary votes, Biden’s nomination must be honored; doing otherwise betrays electoral democracy. Their counterparts say that the DNC skewed primary results by preventing other viable candidates from competing, rigging the result, and ought not to be seen as representing democracy.
Both sides ridicule the other’s claim to knowledge or judgment. People who questioned the President’s mental acuity after his debate with Donald Trump are mocked for imagining themselves to be qualified neurologists. So are those on the other side who insisted Biden’s lapses were normal signs of fatigue.
Many on both sides treat people on the other as cuckoo or stupid, unable to grasp the obvious truth.
Both sides ask the other to just get over their objectionable stances, one group directing people who perceive President Biden as weak, inarticulate, and/or confused to ignore their reservations and get behind the greater good of four more years; the other group directing people committed to staying the course to accept that the breadth and volume of dissent from that position can’t be ignored.
Both sides duel over the minutiae of election rules and financing, some claiming that the challenges of retooling a campaign in August will sink any alternative candidate, who will be swamped by the difficulty of redeploying campaign funds and running the convention and whatever follows. Others point out that nations such as France and the U.K. have shown that effective electoral processes can unfold in a matter of weeks, and while scale differs greatly, we can do it too.
Both sides blame the media for the current state of affairs, one side saying that the eagerness and relish that marked coverage of Trump’s legal woes has undermined his candidacy; the other saying that a sensationalist press privileging pro-Trump memes such as the now-famous photo of the bleeding candidate with a raised fist helps to fuel his candidacy.
With few exceptions, both sides stipulate they will vote for whomever the Democratic nominee turns out to be, though certain people on both sides feel free to predict that others will not, saying that Black women will not vote for another candidate should Harris be passed over, or that white voters will not support a Black woman nominee.
Most remarkable to me is that both sides rely strongly on predictions to support their arguments. I’ve read many detailed scenarios describing precisely what will happen if Biden remains the candidate, if he resigns before the convention, if he releases his delegates, and so on. No two are the same. This seems especially silly, because many things can change a prediction. As I write this, Trump is leaning into a narrative that depicts him as untouchable: his advocates say legal charges from a weaponized Justice Department can’t stop him, debt can’t stop him, even bullets can’t stop him. The Republican convention is canonizing the candidate, declaring that divine providence is on Trump’s side. The next three months leading to the election hold the potential for other catalytic events to tip the balance in the opposite direction. Does it really need saying that the future cannot be accurately predicted? Scenarios are possibilities. Anyone who feels certain of the ability to know which one will come true needs to touch grass.
Something will happen soon to tell us who will stand for election in November. I shudder to think of the blame wars to come whatever the outcome. If Biden stands and loses, his loyal supporters will bear the brunt. If he wins, his critics will pay. If another candidate takes his place, just as many I-told-you-so’s will ring out, win or lose. Nothing here is a recipe for unity, mutuality, collaboration.
Why is this happening? It’s understandable that in the fever pitch of this insane campaign, people don’t have the time and space to consider root causes. But let me offer just a couple of sentences on the subject: our ridiculously drawn-out, money-driven, deeply undemocratic electoral process—yes, the one that allows a candidate who loses the general election by millions of votes to play the Electoral College shell game and prevail—created this mess. Unless we repair it, there is one future I can confidently predict, and that’s more and possibly larger messes pretending to be democracy.
Many times in the decades I’ve been aware of electoral politics, there’s been talk of reform. Not so much lately, though. No doubt, demoralization is a factor. Republicans are highly unlikely to vote for reforms that prevent their gaming the system, and while liberal Democrats may support changes, with half of Congress comprising millionaires, liberals and progressives are outnumbered by corporatists and capitalists. It’s discouraging to think that steps to fix the electoral system must be enacted by legislators who don’t want to surrender the advantages they see in the current setup, where even the most left-leaning officials gain political power by stockpiling and doling out campaign contributions.
Nevertheless, there are some possibilities. Just after the 2020 election, I wrote about a few changes that could have profound positive effects. Legislation mandating that the winner of the National Popular Vote also wins the presidential election needs just a few more states’ approval to go into effect. (Some things have changed in the four years since I wrote about this, and sadly, not for the better. But most of the links are still worth exploring.)
My fervent hope now is that everyone who mistakenly sees voting as a fastidious expression of their personal values and integrity wakes up and sees it accurately as a contest between two candidates with consequences that last far beyond the warm feeling some might get from casting a symbolic vote. If Trump’s program succeeds, human rights, bodily autonomy, freedom of expression and much, much more are at risk of disappearing altogether. The essential thing is to defeat him. Which side are you on?
“When Your Mind’s Made Up” by Glen Hansard.
Order my book: In The Camp of Angels of Freedom: What Does It Mean to Be Educated?