{"id":31540,"date":"2024-02-07T11:54:42","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T19:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=31540"},"modified":"2024-02-07T11:54:43","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T19:54:43","slug":"the-weirdest-presidential-election-in-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/02\/07\/the-weirdest-presidential-election-in-history\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weirdest Presidential Election in History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tom Nichols\/The Atlantic<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The“An unserious nation faces dire choices.” (image: Elena Lacey\/WP)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

06 february 24<\/strong> (RSN.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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An unserious nation faces dire choices.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We are heading into a rematch that promises to be weirder than any presidential election we\u2019ve ever experienced. Let\u2019s review where things stand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than two years ago, I wrote<\/a> my first newsletter for The Atlantic<\/em>, titled \u201cAn Unserious Country.\u201d I was worried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We\u2019re facing a slew of challenges, from reinvigorated foreign enemies to a dedicated authoritarian movement at home. And yet, as a people, we and our elected officials seem unable to focus even for a nanosecond with enough seriousness and deliberation to muster the cooperative, can-do perseverance that once characterized the American spirit.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I wrote this 10 months after the January 6 insurrection, around the same time we learned that thousands of people had died due to their refusal to accept the lifesaving vaccines against COVID. And Donald Trump had been making news<\/a> a few weeks before by insisting (in response to questions no one was asking him) that he was not into a certain kind of sexual activity that I will not repeat here. It was an unsettling time, but at least we could hope that with Trump defeated, politics would return to something like normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So much for that. We\u2019ve had some odd elections in American history; in 1976, for example, an obscure former Georgia governor ran against a sitting president whom no one had actually elected. (The vice president was also an unelected appointee.) In 2000, the son of a former senator and the son of a president ran against each other. But in 2024, we are heading into a rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden that promises to be weirder than any presidential election we\u2019ve ever experienced. Let\u2019s review where things stand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the Democratic side, Biden is facing a reversal of the laws of political gravity, mostly because so many American voters are now ruled<\/a> by vibes and feelings rather than facts. By any standard, Biden\u2019s first term is perhaps as consequential and successful as Ronald Reagan\u2019s first four years. With achievements including holding together a NATO coalition in the face of genocidal Russian aggression and an economic soft landing almost no one thought possible, Biden should be running far ahead of any Republican challenger\u2014and light years beyond Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, Biden is not only struggling with Trump; he\u2019d likely lose to almost any other Republican nominee. Why? Well, he\u2019s old, apparently. (Unlike, say, 77-year-old Trump, or 76-year-old Joe Manchin.) And people are still mad about the economy, which continues to torment them with its low inflation, low unemployment, declining mortgage rates, and high growth. As my friend Jonathan V. Last notes<\/a>, this is a \u201cmass economic delusion,\u201d and there\u2019s not much Biden can do about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden has also been castigated by some of his fellow Democrats for not welcoming a primary challenge. I was very surprised to see Ron Fournier (a writer, now based in Michigan, whom I\u2019ve long followed and enjoyed reading) grousing<\/a> that Biden\u2019s massive win in the South Carolina Democratic primary over Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips\u2014who came in third after the writer Marianne Williamson\u2014was \u201chow Putin rolls.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, okay, but it\u2019s also how Obama rolled (he was unopposed in 2012), and how Bill Clinton rolled in 1996, when South Carolina didn\u2019t even bother with a primary for an incumbent and instead held a caucus. In a serious country and a serious party, no incumbent president with Biden\u2019s record would be criticized for crushing two flyweight candidates; indeed, anything less than a total win would invite charges of political weakness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More to the point, barring an unforeseeable event, the 2024 election is set: Biden is going to face Trump again. In yet another sign of the public\u2019s lack of seriousness, most Americans claim <\/a>not <\/em>to want this rematch, but it\u2019s time to stop wringing our hands over those objections. (We also need to stop talking about third parties; the 2024 election, like every presidential election, will be binary.) American voters engage in this whining and complaining in every <\/em>election cycle, a ritual in which many citizens\u2014after refusing to pay attention to politics and staying away from primaries and off-year elections\u2014demand to know who keeps saddling them with such poor electoral options. Americans ask this with clockwork regularity, despite the abundant presence of mirrors in their homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Democrats have been having a rough ride lately, in part because of the stubbornly obsessive belief among so many voters that a good economy is terrible, but also because, I suspect, so many Americans have not yet internalized the dangers of a second Trump term<\/a>. But a lot of Democrats, especially younger people, have turned on Biden because of the war in Gaza, believing that he could solve it if only he concentrated hard enough. This \u201cPresident Superman\u201d<\/a> problem afflicts both parties, but if angry Arab and Muslim Americans put Michigan in play<\/a>\u2014another challenge for the fractious prodemocracy coalition the Democrats hope to create\u2014then Biden\u2019s loss to an anti-Muslim bigot<\/a> would be among the greatest face-spiting nose removals in political history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Republicans, however, have completely departed Earth\u2019s orbit and are now plunging headlong into the destructive black hole of Trump\u2019s personal needs. In the past week, the GOP has moved along toward a Trump coronation, and they have been trying to help Trump\u2019s later general-election chances by hamstringing solutions to the border crisis and holding up important foreign-aid packages\u2014all while the military situation in Ukraine worsens and U.S. and allied forces carry out strikes in Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senate Republican leaders proved yet again that the upper chamber of Congress tends to be less chaotic than the House, by reaching an agreement with their Democratic opponents and the president on a border deal. Biden has said that he would sign the bill, which includes money for Ukraine and Israel. My colleague David Frum, himself an immigration hawk, says<\/a> the proposal is \u201cbasically a border hawk\u2019s dream bill, plus frosting and candles,\u201d and that Republicans will never get a better deal<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

House Republicans, of course, have therefore vowed to kill<\/a> the whole business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, anyone who has ever worked in politics knows that sometimes good bills die for stupid and cheap partisan reasons. The House GOP\u2019s obstruction, however, is beyond partisanship. Republicans are threatening to harm the country and endanger our allies merely to help Trump\u2019s <\/a>reelection chances, obeying a man under multiple indictments and whose track record as a party leader has been one of unbroken losses and humiliation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump, of course, cares nothing for national policy. He has also clearly abandoned any pretenses about democracy, a position that might seem less than ideal heading into a general election, which is likely why Trump\u2019s campaign has tried to ridicule concerns<\/a> about its candidate\u2019s commitment to the Constitution. But the former president\u2019s footmen can\u2019t help themselves, and they continue to trumpet their hopes for a dictatorship. Over the weekend, Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio, under pressure from ABC\u2019s George Stephanopoulos, said<\/a> that a president has the right to defy the Supreme Court. (This wasn\u2019t the first time: Trump, the senator said in 2021, should \u201cstand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, \u2018The chief justice has made his ruling; now let him enforce it.\u2019\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vance is only one of the many morally vacant politicians<\/a> hoping to swim in Trump\u2019s victorious wake should he regain the Oval Office. I wrote<\/a> before Vance was elected about his careerist transformation, but even now, it is jarring to see a U.S. senator applauding a presidential candidate\u2019s promises to eviscerate the powers of two of the three branches of the American government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such is the state of play in national politics, with only nine months until an election unlike any other in our post\u2013Civil War history. The good news is that it\u2019s early in the cycle, and Americans tend not to focus on and get serious about fall\u2019s elections until summer. There is still time for voters to realize that this year, focus and seriousness are more important than ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Nichols\/The Atlantic “An unserious nation faces dire choices.” (image: Elena Lacey\/WP) 06 february 24 (RSN.org) An unserious nation faces dire choices. We are heading into a rematch that promises to be weirder than any presidential election we\u2019ve ever experienced. Let\u2019s review where things stand. More than two years ago,… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1785],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31540"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31541,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31540\/revisions\/31541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}