Rejoice

Finally. Finally. Finally. For more than three weeks, many of us have been vacillating between the deepest, deepest despair, as Joe Biden insisted he would stay in a presidential race that he was virtually certain to lose and lose overwhelmingly, and a thin ray of hope that he would concede his impending defeat and let a new candidate and a restart give us at least a fighting chance to defeat the gravest threat to America and the world since Hitler. Now Biden has nobly, honorably, selflessly left the race. We have the candidate – and what a candidate, to my surprise, she is turning out to be – and we have the restart, and we have something more than a fighting chance. There might as well have been fireworks and dancing in the streets as there were in France when the proto-fascist forces of Marine Le Pen were beaten back. I haven’t felt this much euphoria, jubilation, and pure elation around the country since the night of Barack Obama’s victory in 2008. The gloom has lifted. Suddenly, everything feels different. Everything feels better, brighter. The nation seems salvageable. Hope has been restored. Depending on the outcome of the election this November, July 21 may be one of the most consequential dates in American political history.

All credit due Joe Biden. It took him a while – those agonizing three weeks – but in the end, he yielded to reality, and did something literally extraordinary. Politicians who still have a chance to retain power ordinarily do not relinquish it. One of them even staged a deadly coup so as not to have to give it up. Biden made the sacrifice. Biden put country above self. May he serve as an example to others.

And having done so, Joe Biden’s legacy is also secure. As you have no doubt heard ad nauseum these past few days in the eulogies to the Biden administration, Joe Biden has been an outstanding president. He deserves those accolades. His achievements are legendary, considering he had a one-vote majority in the Senate, and a thin majority in the House for his first two years, and a tenacious, half-crazed (to be half charitable) Republican right-wing opposition in his last two. You could say that he was the president we needed after the catastrophe of Trump – a calming presence in a windstorm. That should have been enough to have re-elected him, even if he weren’t running against a self-avowed mortal danger to any and everything good and decent.

But as baffling as it is, the public never warmed to Biden. He was a blue-collar guy, the kid from Scranton, a Catholic, which is to say an outsider, a centrist in a politically polarized environment, a good, kind, and empathetic man who was all-too-well acquainted with tragedy, and a man who, until his disastrous debate performance that revealed heretofore hidden issues, always seemed to have the nation’s best interests at heart rather than his own.

In his brilliant profile of Biden woven throughout what to my mind is the greatest book about politics and political aspiration even written, What It Takes, Richard Ben Cramer described how a young, ambitious Joe Biden felt invigorated, even anointed, by what Biden called “the connect” – his connection to the political apparatchiks he needed to advance his career. In Cramer’s rendering, “Joe would get to talking fast, with conviction – something near joy in his voice – and he’d haul them along, until they could feel his belief like a hand on their backs, until they could see it as he could, until the thing was shining in the air. . .and they only hoped they were good enough to be with him, there, at the end.”

Many were still there at the end, on Sunday, but Joe Biden had lost his gift, had lost his connect. The people who knew him loved him, believed in him. The majority of the American people did not. His approval rating never budged above 38%, which was Jimmy Carter territory, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush territory, all three of whom were nowhere near as good a president as Biden. One can only imagine how this devastated him – this man who so believed in the people and in their belief in him.

Some blamed inflation, and voters themselves spoke of the Biden economy as if they were living in the Great Depression, while Biden himself, reasonably, proudly, spoke of Bidenomics that had pulled the nation from its Covid mire and tamed inflation and reduced unemployment, even Black unemployment, simultaneously – the neatest of economic tricks – and that had made America’s economy the strongest in the post-Covid world. He did that. And wages were up, especially for the poorest Americans, inequality was down for the first time since Ronald Reagan widened the inequality gulf, the stock market reached record highs, while the deficit was cut.

And yet. . .I always suspected – and I wrote about it here at length in an early post – that the economic poor-mouthing had a whole lot less to do with the economy itself – in fact, economists were sent scurrying for reasons why so many Americans didn’t buy into the good news, concocting ridiculous theories – than it had to do with Americans’ dislike of Biden. Believe me, if Trump had been the steward of an economy like Biden’s, he would have been touting it from the rooftops, and Americans would have responded as if he had created “the greatest economy in the history of the world,” which is his constant and absurd boast. Indeed, they tell pollsters that they are nostalgic for Trump’s economy – an economy that, by almost any metric, was substantially worse than Biden’s. Take this, for example. Unemployment is at a near-fifty-year low. But a recent Economist/YouGov poll showed Americans giving Biden low marks on employment: 51% to 39% unfavorable. That is just nuts.

The trouble seemed to be Biden himself. People seemed to be looking not for a reason to dislike him, but for an excuse to dislike him. They found it in the economy. But if it wasn’t the economy, it would have been something else, and often it was: the bungled Afghanistan withdrawal, or the bewildering continued support of Israel’s war against Gaza as civilian casualties mounted, or the alleged “surge” of immigrants at the border, even though Biden has stanched the surge, and even though a bipartisan plan to help solve the problem was torpedoed by Trump, lest Biden get credit for another triumph.

This hunt for excuses wasn’t, I think, because Biden, who was among the most likable of men and the most agreeable of politicians, had suddenly become unlikable and disagreeable. I think it was because of something outside Biden’s control – something not in him but in us. It was because the political culture had changed dramatically in the course of Biden’s career, and he was now an anachronism. One of those changes is that aesthetics had become much more prominent in our political life as, concomitantly, interest in policies declined. Politics increasingly had become a form of entertainment, a show – “show business for ugly people,” Jay Leno had called it - and Biden, who had been an able performer earlier in his career, had aged out of a leading role, like Robert Redford or Harrison Ford or Al Pacino. As anyone who is aged can tell you, there are few more grievous offenses than aging; the greenest Tik Tok influencer is worth far more in society’s eyes than the wisest political solon.

 Indeed, beyond the substantive issues of Biden’s cognitive decline, Biden’s aesthetics had become execrable. During his debate debacle he looked and acted like Boris Karloff in The Mummy. He no longer looked like the kind of man whom Americans wanted to represent them. Seeming enfeebled, he cast a vision of an enfeebled nation, which was certainly part of his undoing. Donald Trump was no more cogent than Biden, and a lot less if you bothered to listen to his nutty blather and mendacity, but he looked plump and robust alongside frail Biden. (One digression: seeing Trump’s bald pate as the Secret Service hustled him away after the assassination attempt, I couldn’t help but wonder how his support might plummet if his MAGAites knew he was carefully, strategically, coiffing a few strands of hair over his desert of a skull, creating an aesthetic trifecta of old, fat, and bald.)

*

But if Joe Biden suffered from the aesthetics of aging, he suffered even more from another, less-than-salutary transformation of our politics. Elections, it is often said are referenda on the past, or, referenda on the future, depending on the pundit. But they are really referenda on neither, or Joe Biden would be on his way to victory. Rather, elections have become referenda on personal grievance, which may have almost nothing to do with policy or performance, though the media try to torture it into such by making all sorts of apologies for why Americans are so disaffected. We know this: Americans, especially white Americans, are deeply discontented. In point of fact, they have been discontented for decades now, telling those pollsters that the country is headed in the wrong direction no matter who occupies the White House. This may be the inevitable fallout of a society predicated on an American Dream – that if you don’t reach the dream, and even if you do, you feel an emptiness, a lack of fulfillment, even hostility. Right-wing politicians figured out that one way to deal with it is to feed it, nurse it, encourage it, make the discontent seem warranted, which is a lot easier than enacting policies to make life better.

Donald Trump didn’t invent the politics of grievance; in America, you could say that Richard Nixon did. But Trump, better than Nixon, better than Reagan, better than George W., all of whom played the grievance card, seemed to understand it best and has been most skillful at the game. If white Americans felt the world slipping away from them, if they felt that they were at a demographic disadvantage as minorities threatened to overtake them, tell those whites that they are right to feel umbrage, and that you will turn back the clock: deport, disarm, denigrate, disempower, do whatever it takes to return to the normalcy of white male supremacy. What he really promises is ante-bellum America.

That is what Trumpism is all about. It is the politics of grievance, but also of recrimination, resentment, and retribution. America is the greatest country in the world, Biden kept declaring, beating an old drum. But there were naysayers. No, America is the most disappointing country in the world, declared Trump, without making explicit that it is the most self-pitying country – a country of whiners and complainers. (Oddly enough, Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, sort of made this argument in his atrocious book, Hillbilly Elegy, that cried crocodile tears over aggrieved whites while, at the same time, blaming their own irresponsibility for their fate.) Trump has boldly said, in one of the most terrifying pronouncements in American history, “I will be your retribution,” when in fact his supporters will be his retribution. That is what is so dangerous. Nearly half of Americans truly hate America; nearly half believe it has let them down. So they foist Trump upon us as punishment.

That was Joe Biden’s problem. He never knew how to address this seething anger, but even if he did, he wouldn’t have because it would have gone against his nature. Biden is an optimist. His plan was politics as usual – at least Democratic politics as usual. Make things better. Provide more opportunities. Enlarge the pie, so that everyone can have a piece. Don’t set one group of Americans against another in a zero-sum game – which is how much-beloved conservative and Reagan Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork once described America – but bring Americans together. Let’s talk about all the things we’ve accomplished, Biden kept telling voters, and what we hope to accomplish, when he didn’t seem to realize that they didn’t really give a damn about the past or the future. What they wanted to hear was how he would channel their anger against scapegoats now – one of whom was Biden himself. Yes, things have changed.

I couldn’t bring myself to watch the Republican convention last week – I had seen Leni Riefenstahl’s original – but I read the accounts, and if you are judged by the company you keep, what company Trump keeps!: Putin publicist, Tucker Carlson; wrestler Hulk Hogan, a fake macho man for another fake macho man; Dana White, the UFC impresario who makes his money out of people beating one another senseless; ex-convict and onetime Trump advisor, Pete Navarro, fresh  out of prison and complaining about the indignities he suffered there; the president of the historically most corrupt union in America, the Teamsters (because, of course, Republicans love labor); a bunch of country and western singers in that most diverse genre of music; and a whole battalion of Republican sycophants. It wasn’t exactly a festival of hope; it was a festival of venom, vituperation, hatred, fear, retaliation that didn’t belong on a convention stage but in Dante’s Inferno. Joe Biden couldn’t contend with that. This was a whole different politics, a whole different America. He wouldn’t have beaten them. Again, it wasn’t only that he was too old. It was that his politics were too old.

*

But now Democrats have someone who can contend and will. Al Sharpton warned Kamala Harris this past weekend, “You cannot get ready for a prize fight. This is a street fight.” Harris replied, “I’m prepared.”  She, and we, have to brace ourselves for the worst because it is going to be bad – very bad. Men are not too fond of women; just note the disparity in the male vote that Hillary Clinton received in 2016 and Biden received in 2020. So there will be a lot of the most vicious misogyny. And whites are not too fond of Blacks, especially the kinds of whites that support Trump, which is the vast majority of whites. So there will be a lot of racism – a lot of the most vicious racism. And white men especially are not too keen on gay people, and one of the new rumors that I learned is making the rounds in Republican circles is that Harris is gay – so brace yourself for the most vicious homophobia. (By the way, as I wrote in an earlier post, the same rumor made the rounds about Obama.) There will be attempts by the Republicans to subvert her candidacy, to prevent her from inheriting Biden’s funds, to keep her off the ballot. By any normal standard, the attempts would be ridiculous and quickly batted away, but these are not normal times. We have a Supreme Court that put Donald Trump beyond the reach of any law. So be prepared, as Harris is her for street fight. If she is winning, they are going to try to find a way for her to lose. And, yes, that is a whole different America, too.

But Republicans, America’s very own neo-Nazi party, are terrified now. Biden was, unfortunately, easy pickings, they thought. Harris is another matter. She has acquitted herself brilliantly while she was on the stump during Biden’s indecision, and she was magnificent in her brief address at Biden/Harris headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, yesterday. I was a Harris doubter. She has quickly won me over.  She is crisp, intelligent, disciplined, personable but tough, has good political instincts (going to Wilmington to win over Biden’s staff was a master stroke), and she knows how to deliver a punch. “I know Donald Trump’s type,” was a knockout the other day, speaking as a former prosecutor and citing Trump’s many transgressions. Meanwhile, Trump sputters – calls her names, “laffer,” “dumb as a rock,” “crazy,” “nuts,” “stupid”– all punches in the air that miss their mark by a mile. This is a woman to be reckoned with. This is a woman who will make Trump desperate. This is a woman to raise our spirits.

Perhaps most of all, she is framing the election in what I think is the proper way. Yesterday at Wilmington, she described two versions of America, two visions – one that “wants to take the country backwards,” and the other that looks to a “brighter future for all Americans.” And she has asked, “What kind of country do we want to live in,” one of compassion or one of hate? I happen to think that is a compelling contrast, especially for women, who are likely to determine the outcome of this election, and I happen to think it is the most important issue of all – basically, Who are we? Who do we want ourselves to be?

I am tired of reading pundits who think the Democrats have to feed the same grievances that Trump feeds if they are going to win this election. (We just had one of those from Bret Stephens this week.) I am tired of hearing how the anger of uneducated white males takes precedence over everything else. I am tired of the punditry pleas to understand uneducated white male Americans’ racism and misogyny and homophobia and nativism and their absolutely unhinged hatred of liberals, for whom they seem to reserve their greatest animosity. I am just tired of it. Jimmy Carter, in his attempt to flatter the voters, said that he wanted to be a president “as good as the American people.” In fact, with a few exceptions, our presidents are usually better than the American people. Roughly 46% of them, the floor of Trump support, are truly deplorable, since to vote for Donald Trump, knowing what we all know about Trump, is reprehensible. But I refuse to believe that the majority of Americans are deplorable. If they are, Trump wins. If they aren’t, Harris wins.

So here we are – determining not just our president, but the future of the world and whether it will support democracy or descend into dictatorship, whether it will be moral or amoral. America is in a perilous place – perhaps the most perilous in our history. But, thanks to Joe Biden, there is hope again, and we must carry it. At this point, you can disregard the polls. They are less than meaningless. Nobody really knows Kamala Harris yet, though I suspect they might like her once they do. And, after all, people do know Trump, and most don’t like him. And I suspect this: that there are more people who understand what America can be than there are people who disparage America for what it isn’t.

This is a winnable race. Now we, each of us, have to go out and do everything we possibly can to make sure that Kamala wins it.

 And rejoice!

Notes

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/18/trump-biden-economy-charts-compare/

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_sPu9WiO.pdf

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/23/trump-kamala-harris-attacks-00170601

https://x.com/ShaneGoldmacher/status/1815738941347131531

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