‘Not Trump’ Is Not Enough

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Thursday, November 30, 2023

 

As a conservative Brit-turned-American, I have grown accustomed to being on the receiving end of political grenades that have been lobbed all the way across the Atlantic Ocean.

 

“I like America,” my friends will say, “but that First Amendment. Doesn’t it seem a bit . . . extreme to you?”

 

The Second Amendment gets exactly the same treatment (“crazy!”), as do the federal system (“ungovernable!”), the lack of a nationalized health-care outfit (“immoral!”), the relatively high religiosity of the citizenry (“irrational!”), the peculiarity of our sports (“baffling!”), and the public’s obsession with the automobile (“the climate!”). As a proud Rah-Rah America sort of fellow, my answer to these barbs is invariably, “No!” “No, you’re wrong.” “No, I actually like that.” “No, despite what you’ve heard on the radio, that’s not at all how it works.”

 

Recently, though, I have had the discombobulating experience of being bombarded with a critique with whose premise I enthusiastically agree. “Surely, Charles,” the grenadiers will insist, “the United States cannot have another election between those two absolute dopes — Donald Trump and Joe Biden? The prospect is just unthinkable.”

 

Which, well . . . yes. Yes, it is.

 

Astute observers will presumably have noticed the “and” in that sentence. Please do not write me rude letters about it. It’s not my “and”; it’s our “and.” The evidence is in, and it shows that the public’s disdain is refreshingly ecumenical. The American public profoundly dislikes Donald Trump and it profoundly dislikes Joe Biden. By relaying this in print, I am not indulging some dastardly right-wing “whataboutism,” or engaging in craven “anti-anti-Trumpism,” or equivocating when what is truly needed is #resistance. I am merely broadcasting a truth about the country — and the world — in which I live. Donald Trump is unpopular. So, too, is Joe Biden. And, at the moment, Joe Biden is more so.

 

How unpopular? I’m glad you asked. At the time of writing, Joe Biden’s approval rating is 38 percent, while Donald Trump’s is 42 percent — which means that, for now at least, Joe Biden is less favored in the United States than the guy who tried to stage a coup. Like that, dislike that — it doesn’t matter one whit. There’s no “but” coming to save the day. Voters want neither man to run, and they are unlikely to change their minds on that score. Donald Trump is regarded as crazy, dishonest, unpleasant, and felonious. Joe Biden is regarded as corrupt, incompetent, anemic, and skeletal. In its preferred role as the national arbiter of taste, the press likes to explain to us what the electorate “should” think about the two men — and, in particular, which one of them it “should” prefer. But, come Election Day, “should” is not going to matter. Then, as ever, the key will be “does.” It’s plausible that, were the election held today, Donald Trump would sneak a win.

 

Don’t believe me? That’s fine. I understand. I’m a mean right-winger who writes for a conservative journal of opinion. But perhaps you’ll believe Dean Phillips, the Democratic congressman who’s challenging Joe Biden for his party’s nomination? Unlike me, Phillips is a big fan of Biden’s. “I supported and promoted the Biden agenda,” he tweeted recently. “I campaigned for him, voted for him, and respect him.” Nevertheless, Phillips is able to read, and, having read a Politico piece titled “The polls keep getting worse for Biden,” he had the courage to follow up his endorsements of Biden’s policies with a question: “How can anyone read this and conclude he’s positioned to defeat Donald Trump? It’s delusional.”

 

Given the scale of Trump’s problems, I’m not sure that “delusional” is quite the mot juste. But, certainly, it’s incredibly risky — and far, far more so than the media and the Democratic Party seem willing to acknowledge out loud. Moreover, as Phillips comprehends, it’s a choice. Running Joe Biden is a choice. Endorsing the status quo that Biden has engendered is a choice. Keeping the ludicrous Kamala Harris as Biden’s backup is a choice. Over and over and over again, the Democrats have been told that the country dislikes their candidate, disdains his presidency, and loathes his understudy — and, in response, the party has decided to keep everything exactly the same. It does not have to do that; it has chosen to do that.

 

To most people, this observation is self-evident — even banal. To a particular type of Democratic-aligned commentator, however, the very idea is anathema. From the first moment that Trump began to rise in the polls, there has existed a species of left-leaning observer who steadfastly denies that the Democratic Party has any obligation whatsoever to think carefully about how it runs against the man, and who has thus responded to the suggestion that the party’s candidates ought perhaps to be politically appealing with the insistence that Donald Trump is the Republican Party’s fault and so it — and it alone — must be responsible for defeating him.

 

Which, of course, is silly. I will happily stipulate that the continued presence of Donald Trump within our national politics is the Republican Party’s fault. It was the Republican Party and its voters who made Trump their nominee in 2016. It was the Republican Party and its voters who renominated the man in 2020. And if, as seems likely, Trump is given a third bite at the apple next year, it will be because the Republican Party and its voters wanted it that way. If they so wished, the Republican Party and its voters could get rid of Donald Trump in an instant. That they have not done so is on them. Under no circumstances are the Democrats able to alter that decision.

 

They can, however, alter their own decisions. Like the Republicans, the Democrats have full control over whom they run for president, and over their party’s platform, and over the decisions that they have made on the back of the power they have been granted. I daresay it would be nice for the Democratic Party if the American public were so vexed by the prospect of Donald Trump’s return to office that it was willing to pull the lever for Joe Biden irrespective of any other factors, but, whether it should be or not, that’s almost certainly not the case, is it? And, given that it’s almost certainly not the case, it remains incumbent upon the Democrats to adjust.

 

This is not merely theoretical. In 2016, the Democrats were so convinced that the Republicans deserved to be punished for their decision to elevate Donald Trump to the head of their ranks that they offered nothing of political use to the many disaffected members of the party, and, in return, those disaffected members voted against Hillary Clinton — who lost. In 2020, the Democrats made the sole concession of declining to nominate Bernie Sanders and then proceeded as if they had no need to win over independents and persuadable Republicans, so that what could have been a blowout victory for Joe Biden was won by just 44,000 votes. Since he became president, Biden has made all manner of choices that suggest he has not yet learned this lesson. A large part of the public’s antipathy toward Biden is driven by his age, but as much, if not more, is the product of his having made a series of catastrophic policy decisions that have turbocharged the worst inflation in four decades, pushed interest rates into the double digits, worsened the nation’s debt problem, yielded an unprecedented illegal-immigration crisis, made the world less safe, advanced all manner of preposterous and execrable social theories, and inflicted profound damage on the very Constitution that, as a candidate, Biden promised he would protect. Clearly, Biden still believes that he will be able to win a second term simply by pointing to his opponent and asking, “Really?” This strikes me as an extremely insecure bet.

 

Or, to put it less delicately: What the hell are the Democrats thinking? Having become frivolous, vainglorious, and suicidal, the Republican Party is on the verge of super-gluing itself to its risible liability of a perma-candidate for the eighth year in a row. As a countermeasure, the Democrats have embarked on an experiment in political masochism that would have made George McGovern blush. The president has grown so transparently senile that one half-expects to see a set of jumper cables protruding from his back; the Democrats’ best rejoinder to this charge is “No, he’s not.” The economy is widely disesteemed; the Democrats have christened it “Bidenomics.” The vice president remains unable to speak in intelligible human sentences; the Democrats have concluded that she’s just one more TV appearance away from being designated as a National Treasure. When, in the BBC’s Blackadder Goes Forth, General Melchett explained that “if nothing else works, a total pigheaded unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through,” the line was intended as satire, not advice. In 2023, it might as well be the Democratic Party’s election slogan: “Vote for Us — We Have No Other Plan.”