What's Tony Thinking

Who Saw This Coming?

Post-publication note: This was written prior to President Biden’s withdrawal. But the main point — the ball is in the Democrats court — is now even more true.

Whatever else you and I may make of the current moment in American politics, it seems fair to say that few foresaw or predicted where we find ourselves now in the summer of 2024.

If we had imagined that one of the political parties would be in crisis, we would have had our sights fixed on the G.O.P. Would Trump again prevail, despite multiple indictments and one conviction? What of the seemingly anointed, at least in 2022, DeSantis? How would the Republicans overcome the backlash to the Dobbs decision?

But it turns out the party that faces its real moment of truth is not the Republicans. It is the Democrats.

Their premise, and President Biden’s premise, was that the threat posed by Trump was so great that all they had to do was point, repeatedly, constantly and without ceasing, to that danger. They are not entirely wrong about the Trump threat.

But they were wrong to think that playing defense would be sufficient. And Biden was wrong in thinking that Trump so deficient that people wouldn’t notice his own deficiencies.

For now, at least, the Republican Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Inc. and MAGA. There is no room there for the unexpected, for drama, for complexity, nor certainly for dissent.

But the Democrats are a different story. They are — who saw this coming? — the locus of the drama of election year 2024. Their’s is the realm of possibility. It is now their moment of truth. Will they rise to the occasion?

Aaron Sorkin, the writer of the popular show, “West Wing,” has proposed that the Democrats do something really extraordinary. Nominate the retiring Republican senator, Mitt Romney, as their 2024 candidate. That would, to be sure, be extraordinary. But it would also be, I fear, a ratings flop. I admire Romney’s integrity greatly. But I doubt his capacity to inspire.

I do, however, think Sorkin is barking up the right tree in this respect: break the mold.

For that, I still like journalist Tom Friedman’s concept of a “National Unity” ticket that includes a Democrat and a Republic, and the promise of a cabinet that also includes a mix of the both. Back in 2022 Friedman imagined a Joe Biden/ Liz Cheney ticket. The time for that one has past.

But what about a Gretchen Whitmer/ Charlie Baker ticket? Whitmer has run well in the purple state of Michigan. Baker is the popular Republican Governor of blue Massachusetts. Another Republican who could be on a ticket with a Democrat is former Maryland Governor, Larry Hogan.

Biden and the Democratic establishment are right in thinking Trump a threat to America. But they aren’t signaling their seriousness about that threat by giving us a summer of re-runs. Nor are they reassuring anyone by telling an anxious electorate that things are really great. The brilliant Masha Gessen notes:

“The Biden campaign’s approach to these anxieties is to insist that Americans are wrong — that experts’ objective economic data disproves ordinary people’s subjective sense of precarity. Rather than listen to their lived experience, which tells them that they are insecure despite all the job creation and economic growth, or accept what they see and hear, which tells them that the president is too old for the job, Americans should fear only Donald Trump, the Democrats insist — and put their trust in Biden, the only leader who can save us from the autocratic abyss.”

The Democrats are right: Trump is a threat to our nation. But they must come up with up with a stronger and more compelling alternative.

Who saw this coming? That the party that was so certain of its position that it didn’t even bother with primaries would now be facing its own, and our, moment of truth?

It is easy to cave to the cynical view that everything is predetermined by big money interests, or that all politicians are the same, i.e. corrupt, or the fix is in and that there are no surprises, no contingencies, nothing unexpected in the offing.

Say this for the election of 2024: the unexpected is with us, there are still wild cards in the deck.