Looking Into the Political Telescope

By Mike Koetting July 4, 2023

Today being the Fourth of July, and less than 18 months from the next election, it’s as good a time as any other to offer my overview of where we are in the American political wilderness.

I think the short version is that for the last three years we’ve been hovering around a tipping point: one way leads, however gradually, to political sanity. The other, probably less gradually, to a radical change in American life. In either case, the specifics are murky, but I have a feeling the next 18 months will call the question.

Context

I don’t think the American political landscape can be understood without recognizing a core weakness of democracy: a meaningful chunk of the voters are not rational. We keep trying to gloss over this reality by contorting various fragments of observed truth into something coherent enough to make the confounding way voters behave seem rational. But for a certain group, it just doesn’t work. They are voting from what’s, at best, a quasi-rational, emotional cloud expressing how they feel about the world and their place in it. Their vote is no more connected to a political thought process than I am connected to a technical thought process when I pound the desk in frustration at some computer problem. I am not talking about out-and-out racists or White Nationalists. Those are a different species of irrational. I’m talking about people who don’t think much about cause and effect policies, who get along with their neighbor and who are just trying to make it through life.

For many of these voters, America right now is a very frustrating place. Given the preponderance of relatively affluent, liberal readers of this blog, I am not sure how many of us fully appreciate the gut-depth of this frustration. The dividing line between winners and losers has become so stark, compounded by the sense that the high income earners are continuing to drift further away while they are stuck, struggling to make ends meet. Inflation has made that worse. Saying that the numbers show inflation is easing doesn’t help, because they aren’t feeling relief in their own lives.

And then there is the sense that “the elite” doesn’t make its money by actually working—like they do—but by sitting in offices, drinking expensive coffee, manipulating things that add nothing to their life. Or, in the case of off-shoring, subtract from it. Add to that the sense that “others” (immigrants, Blacks, “tree huggers,” women, city dwellers, whomever) are getting advantages they are not. And if all that isn’t enough, there is the constant assault on “normal” sensibilities from people who want to change gender roles and are intent on rubbing that in their face.

Whether or not these people have a right to feel so frustrated is beside the point. They are. And their vote—if they bother to vote–is a reflection of frustration, not a meaningful plunk for any policy position.

Lest there be any misunderstanding: I’m not saying all voters are irrational, all Republican voters are irrational, or, for that matter, only Republican voters are irrational. All I am saying is that there is a non-trivial group of voters who are voting on frustration, or hope, with no particular connection to specific policy or policies. Given the otherwise divisions in our society, how (or if) this group votes could well decide the next president of the United States.

The Donald Trump Story

I don’t think Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. I have no direct line to the future, so obviously I could be wrong. Many nominally more qualified people differ with me on this. But, as Nate Cohn noted, support for Trump will not come to an end with a huge, crash. It will be a gradual erosion. His most loyal base is probably immune to any reality. But as the evidence continues to roll in, cracks will appear. The people who have previously protected him from the consequence of his own actions will one by one drop off. More and more Republican leaders will begin to wonder if he is really the horse they want to bet on. Indeed, if Trump starts to slip, even Fox might not be above quietly greasing the skids to get to someone else, presumably DeSantis.

I don’t know how exactly Trump gets out of the race. It’s hard to imagine him withdrawing. It’s even hard to imagine anyone with appropriate gravity having the temerity to suggest that he do so. But as problems pile up and supporters quietly drift off, at some point even his lizard brain will start to read the tea-leaves. Does he really want to lose again? Might he prefer to announce that due to the unfounded legal attacks on him, it simply is no longer feasible to continue his campaign? I don’t know.

Nevertheless, I remain convinced that as the power brokers realize that his coattails more likely lead to loss than victory, some set of events will cause him out of the race.

Biden’s a Lock for Nominee

I think Joe Biden has been a brilliant president, particularly given the difficulties with which he has had to contend. He has outlined a good economic approach that he was significantly able to get through Congress, has taken meaningful action on environmental issues, and steered a safe course in foreign affairs, especially with regard to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He has protected his modestly progressive values, without overtly pouring gasoline on the hyper partisanship of the country –not that you could tell that from the continuing stream of absurd Republican rhetoric about “his socialist agenda”. Afghanistan probably could have been handled better, but the ending there was always going to be a mess.

Despite this, his approval ratings are dismal. What people want is an immediate end to their frustrations. Biden hasn’t, and never can, deliver this—any more than Donald Trump did when he was president. Mitigating America’s problems is going to take a cooperative spirit and time, neither of which sells well in the frustration-relief department.

Moreover, people are crazed about his age. I get it. He is old, perhaps in some sense too old for the job. Given that he has been the best president in this century, I’d happily take a chance that he’ll still be awfully good. But that isn’t going to stop a lot of voters from obsessing about his age.

Bottom line: I’m worried.

In a Trump-Biden contest, the choice is so clear to rational voters, Biden wins. Some of these voters will not support anything Biden stands for policy wise. They will simply be registering the fact that Trump has shown himself unable to competently carry out the duties of president and has left nothing but chaos in his wake. Many, if not most, of these specific voters will return to voting Republican if there is almost any other choice.

Republicans Hold the Key to the Future

Assuming Biden is in fact the Democratic nominee, he will get whatever Democratic votes there are to get. Whether that is enough will depend on turnout, both Democratic and Republican. It is possible that Biden won’t generate much enthusiasm among soft-commitment Democrats and, also missing the anti-Trump vote, will not have enough to slip by the Republican, whoever he (or, very remotely, she) might be. Also possible he will. No one can know at this point.

While which party wins obviously makes a huge difference. in some sense how non-Trump candidates approach the election will be equally important. Donald Trump’s secret sauce was capitalizing on the frustration of a large group of voters. As that proved insufficient to hold on to power, he has amplified his message to convince a meaningful portion of the population that the institutions of our society cannot be trusted and might as well be tossed over

Up until now, his brand was strong enough that there was no perceived path to relevance within the Republican party without endorsing whatever he was selling.

If I am correct that Trump’s power is now on the wane, potential Republican candidates have the freedom to go a different way. Some will choose to continue this course and will try to grab the Trumplican mantle as crusader against all the things that frustrate people, including democracy and the rule of law. Others may attempt to steer their party back to more traditional understandings of the operating principles of our society.

Which way the Republican Party chooses will have a long term impact on the country, even if Biden wins. If Republicans endorse a non-Trump candidate as willing to alienate voters from their own society as Trump was, a significant minority of voters will persist in a state of passive disloyalty to the governing society, as happened with the White South in the decades after the Civil War. It will take many years to recover.

And if such a candidate wins, Democrats will be similarly alienated from a government that drifts toward soft fascism.

The next 18 months look really scary.

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On this cliff-hanging thought, I note that I am taking the rest of the summer off from the blog to work on a white-paper on health reform with Bob Melville, who heads Civic Way, a non-profit policy think tank that does really good work. We’re not entirely sure what we will do with it, but we have to write it first. I should be back about Labor Day.