Objectively Pro-Trump!
Can't a pundit fantasize about an alternative to the two major parties?
The latest Ross Douthat column, “Should Joe Manchin Run for President?” notes shockingly high support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a recent poll and used that as a jumping-off point for a fantasy No Labels run.
[I]f we assume that Kennedy’s 24 percent is mostly about people seeking a third option rather than explicitly supporting his worldview, the immediate question is whether someone else should try to fill that space.
Someone like, say, Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator who spiced up his announcement bowing out of a re-election bid with some talk about “traveling the country” for a movement to “mobilize the middle.”
There is already a potential vehicle for a Manchin candidacy in the No Labels movement, along with an effort to draft Manchin and Mitt Romney to run together, with Romney at the top of the ticket.
But the ideal ticket would probably lead with Manchin. For an independent run, his branding as a moderate with strong ideological differences with the left seems stronger than Romney’s branding as a conservative with strong moral differences with Trump.
[…]
In a polarized landscape, that kind of mutual G.O.P. and Democratic collapse seems unlikely. But if you were drawing up a scenario for it to happen, it might resemble the one we’re facing — in which one candidate seems manifestly too old for the job and the other might be tried and convicted before the general election. Such a landscape seems as if it should summon forth a responsible alternative. Confronting the American people with a Trump-Biden-Kennedy choice would be a remarkable dereliction by our political elites.
There’s more but that’s the nut. I frankly wouldn’t bother blogging about it because it’s just part of the usual masturbatory punditry that we get at this point in election cycles. But the hard-working folks at LGM managed to get two posts out of it.
In American presidential politics right now, the only thing that matters is whether you are doing what you can to advance Joe Biden’s candidacy or Donald Trump’s. There are no other choices. Anything that undercuts Biden’s chances of getting re-elected is objectively pro-Trump. Thumb suckers about (76-year-old!) Joe Manchin as a middle way alternative are, at the margin, bad for Biden and good for Trump. Ross Douthat is therefore doing what he can to try to get Trump re-elected.
This same calculus needs to be applied to everything that every person who is affecting the 2024 presidential race, no matter how marginally, does between now and next November. Are you aiding or resisting the fascists? There is no other relevant question now.
- Barring force majeure, the winner of the 2024 presidential election will be Biden or Trump. Their ages are similar, and Biden is plainly more able to handle the basic duties of president. In this context, claiming that that Biden’s age is a decisive issue is just someone who wants Trump to win but wants to retain some plausible deniability.
- Because age is immaterial to this particular race, the only reason to prefer Trump is because you prefer reactionary authoritarianism to liberalism. That’s it.
- Supporting the No Labels pro-Trump ratfucking campaign featuring one or two very old retiring senators and claiming that you have no choice because Biden is just too old is a particularly pathetic way to acquiesce to an authoritarian presidency. Just own it at least!
The hostility here amuses me.
First, while I adamantly agree that Biden is clearly more competent than Trump, the fact of the matter is that poll after poll after poll shows that the American public overwhelmingly think Biden is too old. There’s a liberal fantasy that this is somehow a function of the media constantly calling attention to Biden’s age. But the fact of the matter is that Biden looks and acts old in a way that Trump doesn’t.* And, while I’ve seen less of them than I have Biden or Trump, both Manchin and Romney appear quite fit and lucid. That they’re all around the same age is an objective fact; it doesn’t mean that people perceive them that way.
Second, it’s surely possible to pine for Manchin as an alternative to the current choices without being a secret supporter of Trump. While I agree with Campos and Lemieux that, realistically, we have a choice between re-electing Biden or a much worse Trump sequel, Douthat is hardly the first pundit to fantasize about an alternative.
While Douthat and I are both #NeverTrumpers and erstwhile Republicans, it’s been far easier for me than for him to go the extra mile and vote for the Democratic nominee. While we’re both temperamentally and philosophically conservative, his brand is anchored in a deep religiosity that I don’t share. That makes it much harder for him to back a party that’s friendly to abortion, same-sex marriage, and the like.
Third, it’s rather weird to expect everyone to be single-mindedly obsessed with avoiding Trump’s return, especially this far out. Douthat isn’t a Democrat, so it’s hardly shocking that he’s not thrilled with the prospect of four more years of Biden and fantasizes about a more palatable option. Like many of us, he’s not really represented by either of the major parties. And there’s the fact that he’s got three columns a week to write and has to fill them with something.
_________________
*It has seemed obvious to me for years that something is wrong with Trump mentally. But he doesn’t give off the old man vibe that Biden does. And, as bizarre as the hairdo and orange spray tan are, there’s a consistency there that makes him seem younger than the gaunt, mummy-like Biden.
Have you been paying attention?
This isn’t just “Biden good, Trump bad,” but about whether you want to have a choice in 2028 and beyond.
James, all of these years, and you still think like it’s 2010.
Here is Trump, last night:
Tell me again, about Biden’s age.
And here, by the way, is Trump yesterday:
Blowing off steam again, or something more sinister?
I’m beginning to suspect that Dr. Joyner’s increasingly frequent “I just want to make clear that I totally don’t care at all about this topic I’ve decided to write hundreds or thousands of words about” asides are some sort of tell.
Strong antiracism vibes in those quotes, especially the Campos one.
(An observation, not a judgment… which I hope is still permissible.)
@Stormy Dragon: The post isn’t about Douthat’s column but rather about what I perceive as weird outrage over it from respectable commentators.
@EddieInCA: Obama should respond to this. “The last time I spoke with Mr. Orban, he told me I was doing great and wished me well.”
Biden is not gaunt. My husband and I both noted his trim physique and good posture. Trump is saggy and baggy and wears lots of makeup and dyes his combover . It’s like comparing a natural beauty like Natalie Portman to a Kardasian. One has class, the other doesn’t.
@James Joyner:
I’m sure my LGM colleagues can speak for themselves. And there are several comments along this line already.
James, you really need to ask yourself some questions. And try to find answers outside the New York Times both-sides framing.
Look at Trump’s statement from last night. He wants to put in camps and kill people who disagree with him. I love that the NYT seems to think this is a little spicy but still avoids facing that this has been said before by people in power just before they started putting people in camps and killing them.
This is not politics as usual, and I support Paul and Scott in their calls for people to stop fucking around (masturbatorily, to use your word) with fantasies. I know it’s hard to think about one of the major candidates being in favor of camps and killing people, but he is saying it in his own words.
So I urge you to leave your own fantasies of politics as usual.
Allow me to further quote the Paul Campos piece,
Part of this is just Campos’ and Lemieux’s blogging style.
But I have to admit, that I agree with their basic sentiments. I might not put it the way thety do, but they aren’t wrong, either.
And while I agree with James that a lot of the “Biden is old” stuff is the direct result of Biden being, well, old (and I agree with him that Biden comes as old in ways that Trump doesn’t, at least in the same way). I disagree that the press isn’t part of the reason there is so much focus. I know that FNC has been pushing the age narrative for years and the MSM seems to talk about it daily.
@drj:
He used the word “vermin.” What must one do with vermin?
Exterminate them.
And he used that word to refer to AMERICANS.
Also, as a veteran, I am disgusted to the point of vomiting that he prefaced his call to exterminate Americans with “in honor of our great Veterans.”
The obvious truth is that Douthat will not be unhappy if Trump wins. He won’t be unhappy if Trump wins and invokes the Insurrection Act. He won’t be unhappy if Trump wins and starts deporting people here legally and opening up mass detainment camps. He won’t be unhappy if Trump wins and starts targeting enemies ranging from Bill Barr to a teen who painted an anarchist symbol on a wall.
Anyone who bullshits you and plays around and acts vague in 2023 after 7 years of this is pro-Trump. They just are unable to write with candor about anything. It’s in the DNA of the movement.
@James Joyner: “The post isn’t about Douthat’s column but rather about what I perceive as weird outrage over it from respectable commentators.”
Douthat is only respectable in the sense that he’s part the ‘in’ club.
In today’s New York Times, Carlos Lozada makes the same point that Paul and Scott do, although in weaker language. (I agree with Steven that part of it is Paul and Scott’s styles.)
Democracy or authoritatianism? Trump is making it perfectly clear.
There are a lot of people in this country who had better hope that Dante was wrong. In his Inferno, he placed people who had lived in a time of great moral crisis and refused to take a stand against evil in one of the lowest and hottest rings of Hell. This is one of those times and anyone who says it’s not is a fool or an enemy.
If the only reason he is writing drivel like that is that he can’t think of anything better then perhaps he should cede that prime real estate to someone who can do a better job.
Or, if he is not willing to do the right and honorable thing, perhaps the publishers of the NYT should do it for him. Or, at the very least, exercise some editorial control over what appears under their name. After all, just telling Bari Weiss that they wouldn’t publish nonsense was enough to get her to move on.
Big celebration Monday week. The 81st birthday of Joe Biden. Biden is showing the decline of my recently passed aunt, but her’s started at 90.
All in all, the key element in this election will be the VP candidate. Though less for Trump for few would say he couldn’t make it as far as Biden has. But Biden has to make it to 86. Decline often happens slowly, then suddenly. As we’ve seen since 2020 and they thought it better to hid the slow decline in a basement campaign.
Harris has not demonstrated competence in recent years. Not even in speaking coherent sentences. Unless she’s going for the 9th grade book report demographic
@Cheryl Rofer: I was moments away from posting a link to Lozado’s piece, but you beat me to it.
Something that stood out to me is what immediately prefaces the sentence you highlighted (emphasis mine):
Many Americans are still not prepared to acknowledge what a second Trump term would mean to America. They still believe “it can’t happen here.” Well, it can, just like it did in the book of that name. So they comfort themselves with fantasies of replacing Biden with a younger Democrat, or running some mythical “independent” candidate who they believe would beat Trump rather than sucking votes away from Biden and thereby ensuring Trump’s victory.
As seen somewhere on the internet: looking at Biden and Trump and being undecided is like being offered the choice between a chicken dinner and a bowl of moldy dogshit sprinkled with rusty nails, and pausing to ask how the chicken is prepared.
This is a false choice. Let’s cut to the chase: “Joe Manchin” is not the name of a beloved former U.S. president’s beloved brother. Most Americans don’t have the faintest idea who he even is.
Regardless, one thing that seems to have been consistently true up to now is that third-party candidates always see their support drop between their initial polling and what they receive on Election Day. Perot got 19% of the vote, but he entered the race in the 30s, ahead of both Clinton and Bush according to some polls. George Wallace polled as high as 21% at some points, but got only 13.5% in the end. Henry Wallace (in 1948) went from 7% in the polls to 2% on Election Day. Ralph Nader, 6% to 2%. Gary Johnson, 9% to 3%. I could go on.
But maybe Joe frickin Manchin will be the one to finally at long last break this precedent due to the silent majority’s yearning for finger-wagging Beltway centrism, as the pundits have been assuring us for decades.
You know the funny thing? Douthat knows all this. He says it directly in the column:
In other words, Douthat knows better, he wants people to know he knows better in order to cover his ass, yet he treats the scenario he knows is absurd as one worth taking seriously anyway.
There is perhaps no better illustration that people think of the parties as little more than sports teams and “I am a loyal fan” is first and foremost in why they pull the lever for one candidate or another. And yes, of course you can come up with policy reasons why Douthat doesn’t like Biden, but my point is that isn’t what James led with. The “not my team” framing was first in his head.
@Modulo Myself:
Douthat is one of those ‘respectable’ conservatives who is playing a very dangerous game.
Many in the conservstive commentariat, like Douthat, don’t like Trump personally at all – there is nothing to like, he’s an brutal and appalling person in every way. However they’re willing to accept the carnage, the damage he’s done, damage he’s doing now, and damage he plans to do if elected in 2024, because they want the power to finally take this country backward.
They may not like the brownshirt style, but they like the results – control of the Supreme Court, overturning Roe, etc. Sometimes the brownshirt style bothers them, makes them a bit uncomfortable, but not enough to walk away from the political party that countenances this carnage, the damage to American society and our governing institutions.
Dr. T and others have been educating us on the silliness of third parties in our first past the post duopoly.
Joe Manchin has been aggressively showing us who he is for the last couple years and won’t admit he’s doing this because he has no hope of re-election.
Ross Douthat has been a running joke going back to “Chunky Reese Witherspoon”.
I think, James, you fail to appreciate what a perfect nexus of stupid this Douthat column is.
As others have mentioned, the Campos and Lemieux framing issues as entirely black-and-white is part of their schtick. You either agree with them, or you’re a fascist, either wittingly or unwittingly. They are obviously entitled to their opinions, but they are just that – opinions.
As I recall, both were very, very harsh on RBG for the crime of believing that Hillary would win in 2016 (like almost everyone else) and not strategically retiring. I think it was Lemieux who essentially said that everything she did was canceled out by her “failure” to retire when he wanted her to. It’s a similar story with Feinstein, and they were also on the vanguard of advocacy for trying to compel/bully Breyer to retire.
And the irony is now it’s the opposite with Biden. Mention anything that might be construed as being critical of Biden, like his age, and you’re basically a fascist.
I find them both very entertaining and occasionally, when they are less bombastic, they can make some really solid and cogent arguments.
As for Douthat, he’s also filling a familiar role and making familiar arguments, all of which we’ve heard before. And generating clicks and discussion.
While I can see why Campos and Lemieux don’t like that and just want everyone to live in their Manichean world, the reality is that this is a big and diverse country where no one – certainly not two bloggers or Douthat – can control the narrative.
But fundamentally, a column like Douthat’s (and many more like it to come) is inevitable because the two current front-runners are so weak and unpopular, which generates a market for this kind of content.
@JKB:
So saith he who does not seem to be watching DJTrump all that closely.
Am I the only one that remembers that EVERY election brings talk of third party candidates and how voters are yearning for them. Every single one in my lifetime, starting with John Anderson.
@Andy:
I don’t know what Campos and Lemieux were saying at the time, but if RBG had retired in 2016, it probably would have been too late, as Republicans controlled the Senate. They held up Scalia’s replacement, they could just as easily have done so for RBG. The pressure may not have been as high given that it wouldn’t have changed the balance of the Court, but they still had that power.
She should have retired some time before the Republican takeover of the Senate in 2014.
@MarkedMan:
Yep, there is always some of it.
And also complaining about the media. Complaining about “horse race” coverage but then also complaining about stuff like this, which isn’t horse race coverage.
@MarkedMan: You are correct and I was was going to address @Andy‘s comment “But fundamentally, a column like Douthat’s (and many more like it to come) is inevitable because the two current front-runners are so weak and unpopular, which generates a market for this kind of content.”
I don’t think that the market that generates this kind of content is Biden and Trump’s unpopularity. I think it is the normal discourse from guys who need to churn out columns. Douthat is behaving normally.
But, and this is where I am on the LGM guy’s side, even if I would approach it differently: we should not be treating this electoral cycle as a normal one and the MSM, in particular, needs to wake up.
@Andy:
To me it kind of is. It is based in polling and is really about Biden v. Trump
@Kylopod:
I went and found the post I was thinking of – I misremembered, it was actually Erik Loomis.
So I retract any claim that Campos and Lemieux had similar views on RBG, as I don’t know what they actually were and have little interest in doing the research to find out.
@Steven L. Taylor:
What do you mean by “wake up”?
There is always some of it, yes. I don’t have any data to prove this, but my sense is that there is a lot more of it when the two front-runners are unpopular, and most Americans wish there were different choices. The media is, after all, a business first.
So what isn’t considered horse-race coverage?
@Andy:
See my vermin post.
And this would especially apply to columnists.
I don’t have data at my fingertips either, but I think that there is polling to indicate that a desire for other choices is not uncommon. And am I willing to bet that every major newspaper has at least one column per cycle about third-party options like this Douthat piece. Probably more like half a dozen at least.
Indeed. Not sure how that fits to explain Douthat’s column. I think that it is far more he needs to write something.
Coverage that isn’t based in Biden-Trump polling.
@JKB: “Big celebration Monday week. The 81st birthday of Joe Biden. Biden is showing the decline of my recently passed aunt, but her’s started at 90. ”
I would ask for something to back this up, but I frankly have smelled manure before, and will take a pass.
Meanwhile, interested people who’d like to read demented writing should just head on over to wherever Trump is spewing today.
@Barry: Around the time Rush Limbaugh claimed that Michael J. Fox was faking his Parkinson’s (it was a rare example where Limbaugh ended up apologizing for one of his remarks, probably because he was afraid of being sued), one of my great-aunts who was very right-wing began parroting this claim, and as evidence, she cited the fact that her brother (my grandfather), who had Parkinson’s, didn’t shake. Fox did shake, which proved he was faking it.
You may not believe me, but my great-aunt was usually a fairly intelligent, sensible person.
People who are being fed manure from propaganda outlets they trust have a way of rationalizing it by reaching for proof from their own experiences. It’s a way of reassuring themselves they’ve arrived at the conclusions on their own, and aren’t simply being brainwashed. Claims from righties (and, in fairness, some lefties) that they know Biden is demented through appeals to their personal experiences with aging family members is a prime example of this tendency.
@Andy:
Discussion of actual issues. Policy discussion. Reporting what they do as opposed to what they say. Reporting on events without gratuitous commentary on the political effect. I’d broaden it to anything that recognizes that unlike horse races or baseball games, who wins or loses actually matters.
Douthat didn’t offer any reason a No labels/Manchin run would affect policy or be good for the country in any way. Only that when polled many people pine for a third party and Manchin would be a third party. I fail to see how you think Douthat’s column isn’t horse race coverage.
James, here’s a good link 🙂
https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/trump-calls-political-rivals-vermin-and-seeks-to-root-out-the-threat-from-within/#comment-2840143
@Cheryl Rofer: In my lifetime, I can’t recall a time when either “the left” or “the right” was opposed to authoritarianism as long as the authority came from “our” side.
@Kylopod: I think a lot of the drop off comes from a rejection of a purely symbolic vote–knowingly voting for someone who
‘s not likely tocan’t win. You’ve got to believe that an empty gesture means something–if only metaphysically/metaphorically–to make one.@MarkedMan: Indeed. My second election was the one in which I voted for Anderson and began a 20 or so year practice of not voting for a Democrat or a Republican. Eventually, I realized that if I wasn’t going “D” or “R,” what was the point and stopped altogether.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Absolutely. It’s also why these types of candidates usually do better in states that aren’t viewed as battlegrounds. (Of course that’s a matter of perception–I’m sure in 2016 there were voters in Michigan or Wisconsin who voted third-party under the belief that those states were solidly for Hillary.) It’s easier to be aspirational when you’re talking to a pollster, and once you get in the voting booth, the fact that you’re effectively throwing away your vote becomes harder to ignore.
And as I said a few days ago, I have a sense that the people who do end up casting such votes are typically voters with some privilege, who don’t have as much skin in the game. It’s one reason why I’ve been skeptical of those reports that Muslims pissed at Biden might vote third-party. We’ll see.
@James Joyner:
Your perception of their outrage as “weird” is the most inexplicable thing here. The house is burning, and you think it’s weird that someone is angry with the people who are standing in the kitchen wondering whether a different wallpaper might be an improvement…
@drj:
Not to worry.
Surely we can expect that if he is re-elected and returned to the White House in 2025, that he will ‘grow into the job’ and ‘act more presidential.’
@JKB: “Harris has not demonstrated competence in recent years. Not even in speaking coherent sentences. Unless she’s going for the 9th grade book report demographic”
Again, I *would* ask for some evidence, but why?
@al Ameda:.. Surely we can expect that if he is re-elected and returned to the White House in 2025, that he will ‘grow into the job’ and ‘act more presidential
And after 2000 years Jesus will return…when enough people have died to sate God’s blood lust.
@Kylopod:
…and yet again we see how the media and pundits are simply unable to adapt to the reality of Trump. Trump’s level of derangement is so far beyond RFK Jr.’s (admittedly enormous) whackedness that you need a log scale to plot them on the same axes. And yet the allegedly liberal-biased media cannot bring themselves to point this out. Trump’s mouth is like the fictional camouflage that works by overloading your eyeballs so badly that you can’t see anything in that spot.
This IS Nazi rhetoric.
This could be a direct quote from a speech by Mussolini or Hitler.
That is what is at stake now.
The Republican Party is being dragged towards an objectively fascistic stance due to the malevolence of Trump, the dedication to Trump of a plurality of its base vote, and the cowardice and/or opportunism of it’s elected and institutional politicians.
I hate this sort of thing, as a meliorist centralist traditionalist, who’s always argued in the past that a centre-right/right-of-centre party is a necessity for a democratic polity, but this is becoming existential.
IMO the Democrats are now the bulwark of liberal democracy in the West.
God help us all if they fail.
@JKB:
I have barely noticed our Vice President, and honestly wonder how someone could form such a strong opinion of her without it being the result of a carefully crafted propaganda campaign.
Buttigieg pops up more often than her.
I don’t think they are hiding her, and I assume she’s doing something, but VP is not a very flashy job.
@DrDaveT:
Wouldn’t the statistical play be to fill that zone full of fire on the basis that you’re more likely to hit something? (Not a warfare guy, it just seems like a “too good to be true” situation.)
@Gustopher:
For some reason she has a sizable segment of passionate very-online detractors and I am not sure why. Absent any serious argument as to why she is so bad (and none have been made that I can see) I am going to be a Bayesian and go with my “black woman” priors.
I think she would make a decent president and I would have seriously considered her in the primary if she had lasted to my state, but she does have one serious flaw. Namely, she was a good AG, a decent senator, appears to be a good VP, and would probably be a good president, but she is a *terrible* retail politician. That doesn’t speak to whether she would actually be good at the job of president, but it is the reason she will never be elected president.
It’s no particular indictment of her. Some people have it and some don’t. She doesn’t. She is no Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, or Joe Biden. Being good at actual politics is often ignored when people ask why some are elected and some aren’t.