Democrats Are Confident Again, and Even a Pessimist Like Me Can See a Definite (though Limited) Upside
The word "dizzying" does not even come close to describing the last twenty-six days in US politics. With a nod to George Orwell, it seems apt to call this a doubleplusdizzying month. Even before President Joe Biden withdrew his name from the 2024 election on Sunday, the previous eight days had seen the shooting at one of Donald Trump's political rallies, killing one person and injuring three others, including Trump himself. The choice of J.D. Vance as the Republican VP nominee was thus essentially relegated to an oh-by-the-way story, because everyone was understandably focused on the suddenly salient threat of political violence.
As a matter of pure political calculation, that shooting provided Trump with the world's most promising electoral opening. To begin with the obvious, there was the automatic public reaction against the shooting, which should have redounded to Trump's benefit, at least on the margins. By fortuitous coincidence ("fortuitous" from Trump's standpoint, that is), this sympathetic circumstance upended reality only two days before Republicans would be able to make their case to a ready-made mass audience at their national convention. The attendees at that convention were also already as united as Republicans have ever been. Sure, they were united in their commitment to a fascist cult of personality, but united they were, and united they remain. Meanwhile, the Democrats were enduring their third week of political purgatory. Republicans were gleefully talking about landslides.
Yet somehow, even with all of that going for them, Trump and the Republicans managed to completely blow it. It was not immediately obvious what a terrible choice Vance would be, but this is a guy who could not stand up to a few days of moderate scrutiny. No one has gone from looking like an up-and-comer to an empty suit and a loser in such a short period of time. Republicans claimed that the pick displayed Trump's "confidence," as in, "He's so confident that he's going to beat Biden that he chose a mini-me for a running mate, rather than someone who in some way strengthened the ticket." How quickly that narrative changed, starting with Vance's dishonest (even by the degraded standards of his party) acceptance speech and continuing to his first sole appearance on the campaign trail yesterday, where he weirdly riffed about how Democrats would supposedly call him a racist because he drank some Diet Mountain Dew (which he told everyone that he really likes). Grievance politics meets smug vacuousness.
To top it all off, however, Trump's acceptance speech five days ago was widely panned as proof that he is incapable of change, even when he promises to take the experience of fearing for his life as a reason to change his tone and unify the country. In real life, he quickly reverted to his familiar self -- petty and mocking, lying and unhinged -- covering all of his dementia-adjacent favorite topics in a self-indulgent speech that left even his fiercest supporters exhausted and looking for early exits.
Last week, I wrote two Verdict columns about political violence (here and here), because even as the Republican convention was going off the rails, with speaker after speaker working from the same old game plan, it seemed important to focus on what should have continued to be the biggest story after the shooting on July 13th. Now, the threat of political violence is as pressing as ever, but we are unexpectedly back in the old narrative, unaltered by Trump's personal experience with gun violence. A state senator in Ohio, for example, took a moment during his introduction of Vance yesterday to predict that there would have to be a civil war in the US if Trump and Vance lose. The senator later tried to retract the statement, but he perfectly captured how little had changed.
It has been only twenty-two days since the Supreme Court released its shocking immunity decision at the end of the 2024 term. People have become somewhat numb to the idea that such terrible news could become all but forgotten in such a short time. There is a reason, after all, that commentators have been relying so much on the "fire hose" metaphor. But even within that context, it never seemed possible that an assassination attempt of a presidential candidate would have a shelf life shorter than a ripe avocado. Yes, that story will still be with us, and there is no way of predicting whether or how it could become relevant again. For now, however, it is fair but horrifying to say that the shooting is at most background noise.
Where does all of that leave the country and the world? Oh wait! There is also that little matter of Biden dropping out. Until he did so (only two days ago!), the prospect going forward was that nothing had changed in the larger scheme of things from the way they were at the end of June: Trump was leading, Biden had missed an opportunity (and then some) to turn the tide, but Trump had then squandered two political gifts (the shooting, the convention). Net result: unchanged. Republicans were still confident, and Democrats were still despondent.
Now, however, Biden is out. That decision had begun to seem very unlikely, but it did happen. Even less likely was that the question about who would lead the ticket would be resolved without a mess, yet the transition appears to have been as silky smooth as possible. Most amazing of all, it only took thirty-six hours for Vice President Kamala Harris to emerge from the shadows to become the confident leader of her energized party. Apparently stunned by all of this, the Republicans are reacting in amusingly desperate ways, which I will discuss in a Verdict column later this week.
For now, I will simply point out that we are in fact back to a status quo ante, but it is a slightly earlier one than the situation we faced in late June. Until the non-debate overturned everything, I had been predicting that Biden would in fact close the gap and win again at the polls this November but that none of that would matter. Faced with losing again, Republicans would then almost surely succeed in overturning the legitimate results -- if, that is, they had not already stopped enough people from voting through voter suppression efforts and threats of vigilante violence at the polls and in vote-counting venues.
I have always admired people who are willing to contest this election as if its results will not be tossed out by some combination of the McConnell Supreme Court, Republicans in Congress and state governments, and paramilitary activity as needed. What they are doing matters. I simply believe that their opponents will succeed, because Trumpists are ruthless and have found the soft spots in our electoral system.
Even so, I have often pointed out that my dire prediction could be wrong. More to the immediate point, I argued in a two-part Verdict column earlier this month that it matters how the Republicans' process of reinstalling Trump in the White House happens. In the first part of that column, I wrote this:
[T]here will be a post-constitutional America in which people of good faith will try to undo the damage that they were not able to prevent later this year. An effort at American Restoration would begin immediately. The more it looks like “the Democrats lost because they blew it,” the less legitimate all opposition during Trump’s autocratic rule will appear.
In the second part of that column, I put this further gloss on the same point:
The more it looks like Democrats blew the election on their own, the less possible it will be to argue that Republicans have engaged in the coup that they are more than willing to try again. A future anti-dictatorial opposition needs legitimacy, so Democrats have very good reason to make sure that they perform as well as possible in November.
This means that being back where we were in the early summer is in fact good news. Even if none of this will ultimately stop Trump's minions from doing what they are oh-so-very eager to do to put him back in power, a strong campaign by Harris and her running mate will force Republicans to use every last illicit and unconstitutional arrow in their quiver. It might even end with the Democrats having control of one or both houses in the next Congress. It does sadly mean that the resort to violence by the Republicans is much more likely, but what they are planning to do if they seize complete power is much worse.
I do not know what is more disorienting than a doubleplusdizzying month, but the next six months will test our ability even to describe what is happening.