[I write more about politics and less about what I consider traditional substantive policy issues than I ever imagined when I began entering these posts. The obviously illiberal aims of former President Donald Trump and MAGAism have made our politics the battleground upon which the life of American democracy – which I would submit surpasses even climate change, artificial intelligence, and Chinese and Russian aggression as the most vital substantive policy challenge of our time – will be won or lost.]
I concluded my 2022 entries in these pages by declaring that I considered President Joe Biden, at the midpoint of his term, the most consequential American president we have had since Franklin Roosevelt. At the same time, I noted the significant unease about his age, even among our friends who were certain to vote for the President if he ran again, and queried how Mr. Biden would electorally fare if he was running against a younger Republican opponent not so overtly autocratically toxic as former President Donald Trump.
I concluded by submitting that the best way for Mr. Biden to secure what he had achieved was by stepping aside for another Democrat better positioned to defend his advances.
Over a year ago, I declared in a different post that the Democrats’ primary challenge to retaining the White House in 2024 was Vice President Kamala Harris; that particularly because of the President’s advanced years, the widespread doubts – even among some progressives – about Ms. Harris’ readiness for the presidency made her “a political liability that could sink Mr. Biden even against Mr. Trump, and an albatross that he cannot afford against any other Republican presidential nominee.”
I concluded that entry by submitting that if the President was serious about running for re-election, I hoped that his closest aide would then soon be advising Ms. Harris that for personal reasons and with great regret, she would be advising Mr. Biden to name someone else to run with him in 2024.
Although I am confident that the President and his team are loyal followers of these pages 😉 , they somehow missed those posts. At present, progressive pundits are wringing their hands about voters’ evident concerns about Mr. Biden’s age, and some clips I’ve seen make it seem as though former SC Gov. Nikki Haley spends more time talking about Ms. Harris than she does Mr. Biden. A recent Wall Street Journal poll has Messrs. Biden and Trump tied at 46%, with 8% remaining undecided.
One can bemoan the fact that 46% of our citizens are open to voting for a man who, although he remains entitled to the presumption of innocence with regard to the 91 felony counts he now faces, has manifested undoubted authoritarian tendencies. One can perhaps rue the fact that Mr. Biden did not choose to step aside when he could have. (Last week a close friend sent me a recent article in which a pundit was still calling for Mr. Biden to step aside. My reaction: while U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren might be able to rapidly pull together enough of their 2020 campaign organizations to make 2024 runs, from a practical standpoint, they’re already far behind where they’d need to be, and the bad feelings that would inevitably erupt during the ensuing internecine free-for-all would probably hand Mr. Trump the White House; it’s too late.) We are where we are. We have no choice but to continue to win presidential elections against the autocratic forces we face until hopefully, at some point, the anarchic spell gripping so many of our citizens breaks.
I would submit that Messrs. Biden’s and Trump’s respective campaign strategies for victory are fairly clear. Mr. Trump is executing upon his; hopefully, Mr. Biden, despite what I consider some early missteps, will do the same. Here we go.
Mr. Trump. In some respects, the former president has the easier go of it. He has to draw to an inside straight as he did in 2016. Putting aside the illiberal machinations that MAGA forces will undoubtedly attempt to execute on his behalf in 2024, to actually legally win he needs but three strategies:
First, Mr. Trump’s trials are his campaign. Immediately below, you find a link to an August 28, 2023, article by New Republic Editor Michael Tomasky, entitled, “Trump’s Trials Don’t Interrupt His Campaign – They Are His Campaign” – one of the hundreds of pieces I’ve read over the years that have made me wish I was bright enough to have written. In it, Mr. Tomasky writes in part:
“Conventional wisdom, again, has held that once Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and others in his crime family have to abandon the theater of the media for the sober confines of the courtroom, they will have to stop spouting these lies, and the facts will swallow them. Again, this is true to some extent … [b]ut it also fails to understand how the fascist bond between leader and people works. … [Mr. Trump’s] campaign will be largely about himself and his martyrdom for his people. … [I]t will be what he and his followers want. Biden and his supporters want an election about empirical facts. Trump and his loyalists want an election about fascist truth.” Mr. Trump has been – there is no other word for it – a genius at making his supporters viscerally feel that an attack on him is an attack on them.
https://newrepublic.com/article/175212/trumps-trials-campaign-2024-maga
Second, Mr. Trump needs to continue to look vital. No matter how much antipathy his opponents may have for him, his animal charisma is undeniable. At 77, he is probably completely drained after a rally, but while he’s on stage, he’s generally energized, and moves much younger and lighter than he is. We all know his hair is sparser than it appears and that the blond hair color and orange skin tone come out of bottles, but the fact remains that these are what we see – not an old man’s thinning white hair and drawn skin. His impeccable tailoring hides the 50+ pounds he has in excess of the 215 reported at his Fulton County booking. He appears robust – and thus, draws a sharp visual contrast to Mr. Biden.
Finally, Mr. Trump still probably loses to Mr. Biden unless he draws the right card to win over the majority of the Wall Street Journal’s poll’s 8% undecided, who are otherwise presumably more likely to break for Mr. Biden. I can think of several: a third party candidacy that draws from Mr. Biden voters who are leery about the President but cannot countenance voting for Mr. Trump; an obvious physical reversal for Mr. Biden – such as a “freeze” like those unfortunately now afflicting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell; actual evidence that Mr. Biden used his Vice Presidential position to benefit his son, Hunter; or Mr. Trump’s acquittal(s) in whatever criminal trials he faces before Election Day – which Mr. Trump will proclaim as exoneration and proof of Democratic political persecutions.
The strategies that I would suggest that Mr. Biden needs to employ to retain the White House are varied and greater in number; rather than further test your perseverance, these are best left to Part II.
McCoy's Noise 