I was cruising around my Apple News Plus feed the other day when I came across the following article “Polls, Fake News, and Trends” by Erick Erickson. Fifteen months away from the presidential election of 2020, Erickson writes the following:
American voters are exhausted. They are tired of the drama. They are tired of the tweets. They are tired of the fighting. They are tired of the media sensationalizing everything. They want some semblance of normalcy. Americans, at this point, would love a president they do not have to think about, see or hear for weeks on end. President Donald Trump is stressing people out with his erratic nature, his constant squabbling and the press’s amplifications of his daily behavior. At this point, polls suggest Americans would be OK with a cannibal for president so long as he promised to keep his mouth full, not talk and stay off Twitter. “Eat, don’t tweet” could be his motto, and he would win.
Wow! Is that true?
I myself feel that way. I liked that bumper sticker “Any responsible adult in 2020.” I have been horrified to watch President Trump in office.
But Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren as the Democratic Party candidate against Trump? Are they “responsible adults”? More responsible than Trump, arguably, but they are far left candidates — a protest vote type. I voted happily for Barack Obama twice and for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but Sanders and Warren are campaigning much further to the left than them. I could live more easily with a more moderate Joe Biden. In fact, I re-registered from being an Independent voter to a Democrat in California just so I could vote for Joe Biden against Warrens and Sanders in our state primary.
Still, who knows what will happen? Biden has stayed up in the polls, regardless of the disdain of progressive Democrats and skeptical, sniping liberal media elites. He has been seen as too old, insufficiently “woke,” too gaffe prone, encumbered by past positions, too fond of affectionate hugging, etc. A mountain of Op-Ed pieces have been penned by progressive Democrats on why Biden should never be president. Yet Biden still leads in the polls, partly, I think, because of people like me. We don’t look too closely because Biden has been around forever, is a known quantity, and is “safe.” A return to “normalcy.” We don’t want more upheavals and strife.
Not only do we want a change in occupant in the White House, we want a change in tone and temper. Sanders and Warren offer more stridency. More bitter partisan rancor.
Many want more such political combat. There is a certain kind of progressive Democrat and Trump supporter who both look at 2020 election as a chance to double down on the partisan strife and take the culture war to the next level. You might be exhausted, they assert, but more attacking the other side might just finally win the day. “We can vanquish the other side once and for all!” they claim. Drive our political enemies into the wilderness! (Own the libs! for Trumpy Republicans. Defeat white supremacy! for progressive Democrats.) Our side can finally win! Again: politics as a zero sum struggle. Politics as a life and death combat. Incivility and polemic. The culture war. Do Americans want this? Or do they want to go-along-to-get-along?
We shall see.
The liberal media elites, such as New York Times columnists Michelle Goldberg and Jamelle Bouie or New York Magazine’s Rebecca Traister, want to keep things hot. (Did you not notice all this New York liberal group-think in a Manhattan/Brooklyn echo chamber?) These “woke” Millenial journalists have no patience for what they claim are the outdated centrist policies of older Baby Boomers like Joe Biden. This is no time for milquetoast moderates, they would argue. This is a with-us or against-us moment for America to decide what kind of country it is. (Their answer: it should become more like “progressive” New York City.)
Hogwash, I say.
This is exactly the time for moderates to make their presence felt. The hothead Trumpkins and anti-Trumpkins get lots of attention because they are so obstreperous and bursting with vitriol (especially on social media), but who has the numbers? Are far left “progressive” Democratic politicians running for “President of Twitter” instead of president of the the entire country, as Jonathan Chait described it? Who has the votes? To answer such questions are what general elections are for, after all.
But what happens if the two-party system in America becomes so polarized that figures like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders become the official candidates for president? When you find yourself in an environment of angry populism? You can either vote for that carnival barker con-man Donald Trump, or a self-avowed socialist like Sanders? That is the choice?
That puts a moderate like me in an exceedingly difficult position, and I am hardly alone. I will never vote for someone like Bernie Sanders, and I really could not envision doing the same for Donald Trump. Far right and far left candidates with little in the middle? Do moderates really have such small political sway in America today? I wonder.
If the two major political parties have such polarizing and extreme candidates, would a third party candidate emerge? Someone like Howard Schultz? Such a centrist candidate would get my vote, for sure. And I am not alone. But would such a person undercut the Democratic candidate, like Nader did with Gore in 2000?
I don’t care. I won’t vote for Bernie Sanders. Yet it would be hard for me to stomach a second term of President Trump. Could I vote for him?Four more years of this?!? What is worse, Sanders or Trump? It is like asking what is worse, a stroke or a heart attack? These are our choices?!? Having to choose between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump for president is a nightmare scenario for moderates like myself. If this happens, our country is in real trouble.
But there is a certain kind of American — the angry type that wants to burn the barn down to save it — that prefers a Sanders or a Trump to a Biden. We moderates have usually been able to marginalize such types, as the country tried to gets its business done. The American two-party system has traditionally meant that presidential candidates have to bend towards the middle of the political spectrum to attract moderates beyond their base. It this still true in the age of Donald Trump and angry populism? I hope so. For the sake of our country. The best case scenario for me in 2020 would be for a Democratic like Biden to win the White House followed by Republican gains in Congress to offset that. It would force moderation and compromise. American have often voted this way.
But if a tendency towards moderation and compromise typifies the American system, how can one explain the election of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016?
Is it just that Clinton was so thoroughly unlikeable that just enough Americans held their noses and voted for Donald Trump, the supposed lesser of two evils? That seems to have been what happened in November 2016. Hell, I did not care if Hillary was “likable.” I was voting for a politician for public office, not for a friend to have dinner with. She was an experienced public servant who ran on a moderate center-left platform. I liked her. Like I like Biden.
I am not looking at politics as a maximizing cause leading me to crusade towards some utopia/heaven. Politics is not my religion. Politics is not the reason I get out of bed in the morning. Politics is just one concern in my life, and not close to being the most important one. I want politics to be a bit boring. I want weeks and months to go by where the president recedes into the background. So I like Biden. Similar to how I usually liked earlier presidents.
But maybe a candidate nowadays has to run on social media and make his candidacy a 24/7 reality TV spectacle à la Donald Trump. Maybe politics has been swallowed up by the tawdry crassness of the entertainment industry. Maybe ratings and attention are everything, even negative attention. Maybe angry populism is the name of the game. Being a blowhard. An asshole. Stoking the anger. Fanning the flames.
I put my hopes in Joe Biden and what he stands for in 2020. He seems to have the numbers, even if so many of the liberal media elites say his time and moderate vision has passed. But many have remarked that angry “woke” political activists on Twitter are hardly representative of the electorate as a whole. “Never mistake your Twitter feed for your country,” one UK politician reminded us about the dangers of social media “echo chambers.” But this is why we have elections. Who has the numbers? I am not hugely enthusiastic about Joe Biden, but that is the point, isn’t it. One is voting for someone bland to do the bland and often boring but important job of being a responsible politician. The anti-Trump is not Bernie Sanders, it is Joe Biden. A responsible politician. A possible president one can go weeks without thinking about. A smart choice for an exhausted electorate.
So we shall have an election in November 2020. A little over a year from now.
We shall see.
I take consolation in the fact that so many Americans are tired of the divisiveness of President Trump and his enemies in the #resistance, as was so wittily put by Erik Erickson in his article I referenced at the opening of my essay. One would think this would militate against extreme presidential candidates and party platforms in 2020, as this would tend to divide further the country, rather than seek to unite and heal it.
But then I read the following poll last week:
Released Sunday, the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that 70 percent of Americans said they felt “angry because our political system seems to only be working for the insiders with money and power.” That figure, based on polling conducted Aug. 10-14, is barely different from the 69 percent who said they felt that way in an October 2015 poll.
“Four years ago, we uncovered a deep and boiling anger across the country engulfing our political system,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, which conducted the survey with the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies. “Four years later, with a very different political leader in place,” said Horwitt, “that anger remains at the same level.”
Maybe angry populism will rule in 2020 as it did in 2016. Maybe the rules of the game are fundamentally changed. Maybe Trump is not a one and done phenomenon of asshole-ry. Maybe populist Bernie Sanders will take over the Democratic Party like Trump took over the Republican Party — and turned it into a cult of personality centered around the Great Leader. Maybe we are entering into a longer-term era of political incivility and instability. An age of confrontation and open hostility? A “cold” civil war? Or a “hot” one?
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. This is what America puts forth as choices?
We shall see.
We will have primaries.
Then we will have a general election.
Be advised, United States: in a democracy you generally get the kind of leaders you deserve.
POLITICAL FUNDAMENTALISM: AMERICAN DEMAGOGUERY IN ACTION
TRUMP: “The problem with this country is the immigrants!”
TRUMP SUPPORTERS: “Yeah, the foreigners!”
SANDERS/WARREN: “The problem with this country is the rich!”
SANDERS/WARREN SUPPORTERS: “Yeah, the white people!”
Molly Ivins
A DIFFERENT OPINION:
“There’s a Reason Populists Like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders Are Gaining on Joe Biden”
by Robert Kuttner
