Peggy Noonan

I hear America absorbing. Quietly. Not screeching around and having fun, not stomping and shouting as you’d expect at this point in a dramatic campaign with weeks to go, not acting up and merrily pulling campaign signs from the neighbor’s lawn in the dead of night. It all feels so subdued. As if people are taking it all in, coming to terms with where this is going.

There’s been so much to take in! The past week was bizarre, berserk, almost biblical—the president’s illness, the sudden helicopter to Walter Reed hospital, the botched mess of his spokesmen withholding information about his condition and treatments, the joyride to wave at fans. His sudden, eerily lit return to the White House, the tearing off of the mask, the salute, the balcony speech, the apparent gasping for air. The sheer deranged spectacle of it, and the underlying sense it heightened, that the White House has been reduced to a stately facade with nothing going on inside—an empty place, a ghost government.

A former member of Congress summed the week up: “Trump is China. He started out denying the pandemic and became a superspreader.”

So far 34 have been reported sick in the White House as of Wednesday. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, chief of the effort to appoint conservative judges, skipped the Rose Garden nomination ceremony for Amy Coney Barrett, which itself became a hot spot. Wednesday night I asked if this was due to health concerns. “He did stay away but you should know he’s stayed away from the White House for several weeks now because of their lax (he would say reckless) behavior re covid,” a McConnell strategist emailed. “He did not go near the ACB event.” Thursday Mr. McConnell told reporters he hasn’t been in the White House in two months.

This is how a lot of Republican political professionals sound to me: ready for a jailbreak and afraid to dig a tunnel. They don’t know where the floor is soft, which direction gets them outside the walls.

They believe the polls. They think the president is going down and is all too willing to pull the rest of the ballot down with him. A few will try to cut loose. And he’ll be gracious about it, in the way Tony Montana was being gracious when he said, “Say hello to my little friend.”

But this is also the week that journalists and politicos in Washington began wondering about something they never expected to be thinking about this year. They are wondering if Nov. 3 won’t be a win for Joe Biden but a blowout, a landslide in a polarized country that doesn’t produce landslides anymore.

It’s not only the past week’s events, not just the polls and their consistency, their upward tick from a lead of 6 or 7 to a lead in some polls of double digits; it’s the data about women and voters over 65.

No one will talk about it in public because they’re not idiots. Journalists don’t want to be embarrassed if they’ve got it wrong; Democrats don’t want to encourage complacency; Republicans don’t want to demoralize the troops; and the networks have to keep everyone hopped up on the horse race. But Tim Alberta wrote a smart and hardy piece in Politico in which he said with four weeks to go, “it’s time to inch out on a limb.” Among his impressions: There’s a lot of Trump fatigue, and it’s peaking at the wrong time for the president. Even Trump supporters “feel trapped inside a reality TV show and are powerless to change the channel.” “Trump might lose women voters by numbers we’ve never imagined.” Every poll has always shown his deficit with women, “but what we’re seeing now, in polling conducted by both parties, isn’t a wave. It isn’t even a tsunami. It’s something we don’t have a name for, because we’ve never seen anything like it.” “When it comes to the white, college educated women who made up a sizeable chunk of Trump’s base . . . his numbers have collapsed entirely.” We could see “the biggest gender gap in modern election history.”

No one knows what’s going to happen, and after 2016 people are rightly spooked off making predictions. But if what a growing number of people are seeing as a real possibility happens, if we are in blowout territory, I think part of the reason won’t be political in any classic sense, or ideological, or having to do with some stupid question about which candidate you want to have a beer with. If Joe Biden wins big, part of the reason, maybe a big part, will be simply that he is normal. Not “he’s such an accomplished legislator,” not “he’s the man of the future” or “charismatic” or “warm” or “has such a moving back story.” No. He is normal. And people miss normal so much.

Here I want to say something about the president’s debate performance Sept. 29, then get to this week’s vice-presidential debate.

He has been knocked, including here, for his belligerence. But it needs to be said that his belligerence was offensive not because he was aggressive, not because he was trying to knock the Biden Ltd. off its track and into a ditch. That’s a political debate. Sometimes you have to throw hard swings. You need a little Jake LaMotta in you if you enter the arena. What was offensive about the president was that he was aggressive about small things that mean nothing. Hunter Biden, Pocahontas, you didn’t beat Bernie Sanders by much. Those are garbage issues. He wasn’t aggressive about issues that actually bedevil the country. Politics is big and has meaning, is often crucial and sometimes even noble. He comported himself as if it’s only about small, personal concerns. It’s not that his conception of the purpose of politics is small, it’s that he’s a carrier of that smallness, a superspreader. That is what people mean when they say he diminishes the office.

As for the vice-presidential debate, neither candidate damaged the party’s prospects or especially advanced them. You could view the evening as smirky versus smarmy, theatrical versus sedated, or dramatic versus dignified, and at different points I did. It featured the worst sentence ever uttered at a vice presidential debate, from Sen. Kamala Harris: “I want to ask the American people, how calm were you when you were panicked about where you’re going to get your next roll of toilet paper?”

Both ducked questions. Ms. Harris wouldn’t answer on court packing. Since Mr. Biden wouldn’t at his debate either, I guess that’s where they’re going! Mike Pence didn’t answer on pre-existing conditions. It would have been good if the moderator had pointed out that their evasiveness is at odds with the purpose of the event, which is to find out where they stand and why.

But Mr. Pence at points reminded those viewers who hung in there of the old, differing visions of Democrats and Republicans, which used to be spoken of, even considered at the heart of things, before Donald Trump distorted all vision fields.

The vice president referred to the private sector and its power to help solve public problems, school choice, law enforcement and charges of racism, in a way that harkened back, if only a little, to the old days.

It felt . . . normal.

I strongly felt in the winter of 2016 that it was right and wise to hold off on a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia, who’d died in his sleep in February at 79. The court has taken on outsize importance in our lives, the kind of judges Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would choose would be very different, let the people decide in the coming election. But there was another reason, and it had to do not with constitutional prerogatives or political calculus but with human sentiment and the respect it deserves. This was the Scalia seat. It had been held for 30 years by a man who was the gravitational center of conservative thinking on the court. He was one of nine but it wasn’t just any seat; for many Americans his presence on the court had an almost spiritual meaning. So let the people in on this one, more directly than usual. This will allow a more peaceful acceptance of outcomes.

Likewise in this case: Hold off, lower the temperature. It was Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat, held for 27 years by a liberal icon of the court. In a great and varied nation of 330 million people some tact is in order, some give, some deference to what is important to others. We won’t survive otherwise. The presidential election is in a matter of weeks. The kind of judge Donald Trump and Joe Biden would choose will be very different, we all know this. Let the people decide, and accept outcomes.

A Trump Republican might say, “The other side would never do that for us!” That is completely true. But someone’s got to think about the larger project, which is trying to keep the country together when a million forces are tearing it apart.

So we’re about to have—in the middle of a pandemic, an unprecedented economic emergency, a new and enduring wave of racial division, and a distinctively passionate presidential election featuring an incumbent who won’t even say he will accept the final result—a new layer of turmoil, the confirmation of a new Supreme Court justice.

And it will be ugly.

This column is published before the president announces his nominee. It is expected to be Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. With this president you never quite know! Let’s assume it will be.

Her Democratic interrogators in Senate Judiciary Committee hearings will go forward with one intent: to kill. Barring accusations of high-school sexual assault and personal financial malfeasance, which don’t seem promising lines of attack, the committee will attempt to paint her as an extremist—not only a judicial one but also a religious one.

Judge Barrett is a Roman Catholic, like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi. Judge Barrett is also a member of a faith community called People of Praise, which is part of the Charismatic Renewal movement within the church that started in the 1970s, after Vatican II. The movement emphasizes personal conversion and bringing forward Christ’s teachings in the world. There are tens of millions of members throughout the world, and about 1,700 members of People of Praise in more than 20 cities in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean. Judge Barrett is associated with the founding American chapter in South Bend, Ind.

People of Praise has been accused of being a right-wing sect. It answers that it has politically liberal and conservative members. They don’t appear to be obsessed with traditionalism or orthodoxy and are ecumenical: Members include Protestants as well as Catholics. They have joined together intentionally, in community, to pray together, perform service, and run schools. They’re Christians living in the world.

If they are right-wing religious extremists someone had better tell Pope Francis, who appointed a member of People of Praise’s South Bend community as auxilliary bishop of Portland, Ore. The pope has created a Vatican body to serve the renewal, and reminded the world-wide movement that its work must include service to the marginalized. Austen Ivereigh, author of an admired biography of Pope Francis and an essayist who writes with some asperity of conservative Catholicism, has written that although the Charismatic Renewal hasn’t been distinguished by its social commitments, “there are important exceptions to this story,” and People of Praise in South Bend is one.

They have been accused of encouraging the subjugation of women. Until 2018, women who were leaders in the organization were called “handmaids.” “Handmaid” is a reference to the Blessed Mother and the annunciation—she was “handmaid to the Lord.” After Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, “The Handmaids Tale,” became a TV series and a symbol for anti-Trump activism, the group dropped “handmaid,” saying “the meaning of this term has shifted dramatically in our culture in recent years.” I’ll say.

There have been charges that women in People of Praise are encouraged to be submissive. One former member said as much to Reuters. Yet as O. Carter Snead, a Notre Dame law professor and director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, notes, Amy Barrett—herself a law professor as well as a judge—appears to be failing at being submissive and a total disaster at being subjugated. Mr. Snead said an interview that he thinks People of Praise draws scrutiny in part because of nomenclature and terminology: “Even the name, People of Praise, sounds to the secular ear either corny or sinister. If you wanted to imagine a group in a dark dystopian hellscape, People of Praise is the name you’d give!”

Joannah Clark, a local leader of People of Praise in Portland and the head of Trinity Academy, a People of Praise school, also appears to be failing at submissiveness. “I consider myself a strong, well-educated, happy, intelligent, free, independent woman,” she laughs. She has a doctorate from Georgetown. Trinity’s culture is “distinctly Christian” but “purposely ecumenical.” The emphasis is on reading, writing and Socratic inquiry. “Our three pillars are the humanities, modern math and science, and the arts—music, drama.”

Do they teach evolution? They do.

“We are normal people—there’s women who are nurses, doctors, teachers, scientists, stay-at-home moms” in the community. “We are in Christian community because we take our faith seriously. We are not weird and mysterious,” she laughs. “And we are not controlled by men.”

If Amy Coney Barrett is the nominee, People of Praise will come under discussion. Good. We can all understand each other better. Some bigotry against Catholics and Christians is unintentional, and all bigotry is a kind of fear. Senators can fairly ask Judge Barrett about the impact of her faith on her jurisprudence, as they have with previous nominees. When John F. Kennedy met with the Houston ministers who wanted to know the impact of his membership in the church on his ability to govern a varied constitutional nation, he had no trouble.

But Democrats shouldn’t overplay their hand. People of Praise isn’t a strange radical group, it’s ardent Catholics being Catholic, American Christians trying to be Christian. Questioning with a hostile, aggressive or accusatory inflection may please and excite those who are alienated by or unknowing of religious life in America. Will it please anyone else? It might more likely produce a Kavanaugh-like disaster for the Democrats, perhaps even for some of their media handmaids.

Let’s talk about the terrible time America might be in for in the days and weeks, maybe months, after the election.

It starts with what is known: On election night we probably won’t know who won the presidency. The event we’ve been hoping would resolve things instead may leave them more mysterious.

As in the past we will know fairly quickly what happened in the voting booths. But because of the pandemic an unprecedented number of Americans are expected to vote by mail. In 2016 about 25% of voters voted by mail. This year it may be more than twice that. Meaning more than half of all ballots.

It may be days or weeks before we know the mail-in results. Different states have different laws: Some count or certify mail-ins pretty much as they receive them and can report results with dispatch. Some begin to count mail-ins on Election Day. Few or none have ever been engulfed as they will this year.

Another wrinkle. Republicans seem to prefer voting in person, and Democrats by mail. NBC News has reported that 54% of those who lean Republican plan to vote in person on Election Day, while 71% of Democrats plan to vote by mail or early. This newspaper reports that in North Carolina, Democratic voters requested 53% of absentee ballots, Republicans only 15%.

Because of this it’s possible that on election night there could be what looks like a solid margin in favor of President Trump, especially in the states that will decide the election. Maybe it won’t be a “red mirage,” as it’s been called; maybe it will signal a real and coming red wave. Or maybe a big blue one will swell. Again, especially if the outcome is close, we likely won’t know for days or weeks.

The waiting will require patience and trust. That’s not, as we know, the prevailing political mood. We are riven and polarized. “It is my greatest concern,” Joe Biden has said. “This president is going to try to steal this election.” Mr. Trump: “They’re trying to steal the election from the Republicans.”

Suppose, to take one scenario, the president declares himself the victor before the victor is known: “What a landslide, this is fantastic, the polls and pundits were wrong!” Maybe it will be his supporters or family members who declare victory.

And what if in the following days and weeks the count changes? What if on day five, or 10, or 30, Mr. Biden looks like the winner?

That’s the general area when things could go very wrong. “Postelection through to the inauguration, we have a real danger zone,” says Larry Sabato, the great veteran director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

There will be charges and countercharges, rumors, legal challenges. There will be stories—“My cousin saw with her own eyes bags of votes being thrown in the Ohio River.” Most dangerously there will be conspiracy theories, fed by a frenzied internet.

Let’s make the picture darker, to deepen the point. What many people will fear in such an atmosphere is the possibility of violence. We’ve just been through a round of street violence this summer. It is not beyond imagining that in a tense national environment we would see it again. Maybe it will be Black Lives Matter and antifa versus white nationalists and QAnon. Maybe it will include honestly enraged citizens who believe their side was wronged.

The extreme edges of both parties are punching above their weight against their respective centers right now. They will be a source of pressure for their candidates not to concede, no matter what the results.

All this would only further undermine America’s morale, giving us all the impression of profound national deterioration. It would subvert the democratic process and tarnish our reputation in the world.

The Electoral College meets Dec. 14. There, Mr. Sabato notes, it’s possible there could be a 269-269 tie. There is also the issue of so-called faithless electors, who could deny the winning candidate a majority. In either case, the election would be thrown to the House, where people may be surprised by the rules. They assume that if the Democrats have a majority, as is expected, the House would vote Democratic. But the House would vote not by individual member but by state delegation. There, in the current Congress, the Republicans have an edge.

What a crisis—including a constitutional crisis—may be coming down the pike.

Maybe we should think about ideas that might forestall trouble or make things better.

We should laud and encourage those states that are seeing the potential challenge and concentrating on timely vote counting and voter integrity. We should encourage states to take actions that will accommodate the changed voting reality, and celebrate those that are on the case. Boosting trust in the process this year is a patriotic act.

It may be late with 40-some days to go, but if you’re not in the U.S. military or away from home, and not sick or especially vulnerable to illness, and if you haven’t already voted early, sent in your ballot or requested a ballot, you should try hard to vote in person. This will help election-night numbers align more closely with ultimate reality, bolster the system, and help avoid the mischief of political operators. Mask up, glove up, maintain your distance, and show up. “It’s inconvenient.” Democracy is inconvenient. Do your part.

Here a word on the civic, even ancestral nature of voting in person. I am one of those who takes pleasure in it. When my son was a child I’d take him with me. We’d get in line, close the big curtain, as it was then, and I’d move the toggles and tell him what I was doing, what democracy is, how I am one vote of many. I mentioned this to Mr. Sabato, who laughed and said his parents used to take him too: “It was like the Roman Forum. You saw people you knew; you enjoyed it.” All the neighbors were there, launched together on this wonderful project.

He had an idea to help forestall this year’s problems. Get a group of Americans of national stature, people who would stand for the national interest even when at odds with their own party’s. Ask them to come together and speak as one. “It will seem Disneylandish,” Mr. Sabato said, “but distinguished Americans on both sides really need to teach the American lesson to the young and the old—how we have survived and been so successful and prosperous because we had common sense, which so many ideologues have lost.”

He thought they should make it clear, before the results are in, “that we have to do this in the American way, we have to accept outcomes whether we like them or not, otherwise we will dissolve.” They could ask citizens to join them in a pledge of nonviolence. “They should say sometimes demonstrations are useful, sometimes justified, but no violence under any conditions.” He suggested leaders from a wide range of fields—Nobel Prize winners, artists, people of left and right.

I nominate Tucker Carlson and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

We don’t have long until Election Day. We should be thinking about all this now.

The polls seem to show Joe Biden sailing forward with a solid national lead, and some tightening in the battlegrounds. Nobody knows what’s going to happen; after 2016 only dopes are confident. I’m thinking of the larger prevailing currents that may have some impact this year.

If 2020 turns out badly for the Democrats this will be a primary reason: The party since Hillary Clinton’s loss has been undergoing a kind of revolution, with the progressive left rising, punching above its weight, holding intellectual sway and influence. In the debates of 2019 and 2020 the Democratic presidential candidates bowed, some with natural enthusiasm, to the progressives’ clout. This contributed to a perception that they were all kind of far to the left. (I will never forget Julián Castro saying his health-care plan would ensure that “a trans female” has “the right to have an abortion.”)

On Feb. 29 Joe Biden emerged victorious in the South Carolina primary. To reread his victory speech is to visit another world. He talked about ObamaCare, the environment, gun control, inequality. He didn’t even mention the pandemic. It wasn’t on anybody’s mind.

That moment was exactly the hinge on which everything was about to turn, and nobody in politics knew. In the days and weeks following, the entire ground on which the 2020 election would be fought shifted. By March it was clear a once-in-a-century pandemic had arrived. Lockdowns, economic catastrophe and cultural upheaval followed.

America has now been battered by waves of distress. Summer is becoming fall and there’s little sign people want to remake everything in a progressive direction. They want stability, not a cultural and economic revolution, which many of the Democratic candidates seemed to imply they’d be open to, even support. They want the economy to come back. They don’t want looting in the streets; they feel they’ve already been looted, by history.

If this, as we look back, turns out to have truth to it, history will probably say Joe Biden’s campaign wasn’t supple, didn’t shift tone and emphasis enough to respond to events, failed to think imaginatively about all the anxiety out there and how the anxious perceive risk.

As for Donald Trump, those who cover politics seem not fully in touch with how much his own voters disapprove of him. I’ve written of this before. Reporters watch the rallies, see the cheers, perceive a cult. Some of it is. Much of it isn’t.

I was in the car on a long ride with a friend who will vote for Mr. Trump when the story of Bob Woodward’s book broke. I read her the reported highlights from my phone. The president had been briefed in January on how bad the pandemic was, and he misled the public. I asked my friend if it surprised her. She looked at me sidelong as she drove: “No. He has no integrity!” I pressed: “But lying to the public on such a grave issue . . .”

“What was his reason?” my friend asked. “He didn’t want panic?” The report didn’t say, but I guessed it was because he didn’t want to spook markets and endanger his re-election. “Of course,” she said, nodding. Later I asked if the story might shake her intention to vote for him. No, she said. Later still I learned her guess had been right: Mr. Trump told Mr. Woodward he didn’t want a panic.

Our conversation reminded me of a lot of letters from Trump supporters I got after last week’s column. They are so critical of him.

One was from a self-described independent who isn’t drawn to either party. “Donald Trump is a boorish, narcissistic, self aggrandizing, petulant child who has sown significant discord among my fellow citizens,” he said. “He has little knowledge of his current job description or limitations.”

Mr. Biden, on the other hand, “has a past of significant combativeness in the Senate, a penchant for hyperbole and feigning indignation and disgust for its theatrical effect. . . . And yes, in my opinion, he does exhibit a degree of obvious cognitive impairment.”

He will vote for Mr. Trump based on “the people with whom the candidate chooses to surround himself.” Trump appointees—he cited Steve Mnuchin, Mike Pompeo and Eugene Scalia—“have performed well.”

“In Mr. Biden’s case,” the reader adds, “this question is a huge unknown.” He is surprised there is no effort to show “who would play a supporting role in his administration.” He fears those who are “ideologically adversarial to the ‘opposition,’ ” and will serve as “demagogues” and “disruptors.”

Back to my friend in the car. I asked what kind of story would have to happen for her not to vote for him? “If something terrible happened and he put peoples’ lives in danger and he lied about it, I’d say, ‘I’m done.’ ” She cast about for what she meant—some huge accident or a 9/11-type event. She emphasized it would have to be something real that we all know happened; it can’t just be gossip or hearsay. She didn’t care about his personal life, didn’t care if the people around him say he’s bad. She feels he had a good economy until Covid, was pretty good as president, especially at the beginning, and no one could handle a sudden pandemic perfectly. She’s afraid the Democrats would take actions that would make the economy worse. She wants things restored.

I end with the Atlantic story. From the moment it broke this week that Mr. Trump reportedly called members of the military who died for their country “suckers” and “losers” and said to Gen. John Kelly, at his son’s grave at Arlington, “I don’t get it, what’s in it for them?” I thought: I know where that’s from.

“The Godfather,” one of Mr. Trump’s favorites. Three generations of American politicians know the script, the references, even the dialogue by heart. The theme is universal: men at war with others, and themselves.

In the famous coda to “The Godfather Part II,” the brothers are in the dining room of the Godfather’s house on Long Island, awaiting his arrival at his birthday dinner. It’s late December 1941, just after Pearl Harbor. Sonny says, “Whatta you think of the nerve of those Japs . . . dropping bombs in our own backyard.” Tom Hagen says, “We should have expected it after the oil embargo.” Sonny snaps, “Expect it or not, they got no right dropping bombs. What’re you a Jap lover or something?”

When someone says 30,000 men just enlisted, Sonny calls them “a bunch of saps”: “They’re saps because they risk their lives for strangers.”

Michael: “They risk their lives for their country.”

Sonny: “Your country ain’t your blood—you remember that.”

Michael: “I don’t feel that way.”

Sonny says then he should quit college and join the army. Michael says he did: “I enlisted in the Marines.”

Tom Hagen says: “Pop had to pull a lot of strings to get you a deferment.”

Michael says he didn’t ask for a deferment, didn’t want it.

Sonny slaps Michael and calls him a punk.

Mr. Trump would know that scene well. Perhaps it gave him a higher rationale for claiming bone spurs in his deferment during Vietnam. It wasn’t selfishness, disagreement with the war, cowardice. It was loyalty to family.

FROM: Charles Smith, an ambassador from the Obama-Biden era

TO: Joe Biden

Boss, happy Labor Day. Hope this finds you well. We’re still in Edgartown and fully recovered from the virus. Betty had it worse than me, but right now I’m hearing the fierce thwack of the ball as she plays doubles and I’m in the pool house banging this out, so I guess we’re OK!

We’ve been watching you closely, cheering you on. You asked me to check in when I have advice. I hesitate because I know you’re inundated. I remember seeing old Bush at dinner in Kennebunkport in ’88, and he was grousing about all his friends telling him “be strong,” “show you’re tough on the trail,” but they never had advice on exactly how to portray “strength.” He sort of comically threw up his hands and said, “What do they want me to do, punch somebody in the face?”

So I know how it is. I’ll keep it short and describe what I’m seeing. We’ve never had a year like this—pandemic, economic contraction, cultural upheaval. Everyone has the jits. Summer’s over, they’re headed home to re-emerge into . . . what? The unknown. Normally people are kind of geared up for the fall, not bracing for it.

You’re good in the polls but I’m worried about the so-called shy Trumpers. The guys who work at the club—they don’t want to say when I ask who they’re for; it’s like they think I’ll get them fired or not give them a tip. And they know me! It’s all gotten so timorous.

I saw your speech in Pittsburgh and I have to be blunt about it, as we always are. You were strong in your condemnation of Trump, that malignancy metastasizing in the Oval, but it’s not as if people don’t know how they feel about him. He’s already vivid, I’m not sure you have to repaint the picture.

More seriously I thought there was a certain off-pointness and disconnect. I thought: This is a man with personal political problems he’s solving with words, as opposed to a leader speaking deep truth about the extraordinary problems that face us.

I think Trump got in your head with “He’s weak.” You felt you had to be what your aides tell you is the opposite of weak, which apparently involves indignation and sarcasm.

You said, in language that was seemingly direct, “Ask yourself: Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?” Joe, no one thinks you’re a radical socialist. No one. They’re afraid you’ll bend to crazy progressives when you’re in the White House because you’re Ol’ Joe and just want everyone to get along.

You addressed law and order and were right to address it. But there was an air of snottiness, even cluelessness. Addressing Trump supporters you said, “The murder rate now is up 26% across the nation this year under Donald Trump. Do you really feel safer under Donald Trump?” Covid has taken 180,000 lives; “more cops have died from Covid this year than have been killed on patrol. . . . Do you really feel safer under Trump?” The Republicans will repeal insurance protections for people with pre-existing conditions. “Does that make you feel safer?” Trump will defund Social Security. “Do you feel safer and more secure now?”

You could have ended each refrain with “Jackass.” It was like late-career Bob Barker telling you the Price is Wrong.

This is no time for patronizing anyone. No one feels safe under Trump, because he’s a nut. This is a tragedy, not a wedge issue.

Some of your advisers are pols who came up in the days of Clintonian moderation and the Democratic Leadership Council. They’re our age. Their vision of the country is at least a generation old, as are the clichés with which they’re most familiar and comfortable. Some younger advisers are progressive or simply more attuned to the left. People sense a tug of war in what you say.

You seem way too afraid of progressives. Their rise has been slowed by the current and constant air of emergency. People want moderation, sanity, stability and competence now.

Stop trying to appease the left—that’s what makes you look weak. You’ll never make them happy, and if you lose they’ll dance on your grave: “Obviously an old-school moderate wasn’t the answer.” I wish they’d publicly denounce you but they’re too bright, and they’re playing a long game. They don’t care about 2020. It’s all about ’24 and it’s better for them if you lose.

I want you to think aloud honestly about big things. What do we owe the police in America? What function do they perform, what can help them do their jobs right? It’s not enough just to repeat, “I didn’t say we should defund the police.”

What about the racial drama sweeping the country? What is happening there, what does it portend? It strikes me as a real cultural upheaval. It’s not 1968, it’s something we’ve not been through before. The air of accusation and guilt—can we continue like this, with a nation daily at its own throat? Where do you want to go on race, and what path will get us where we ought to be? Saying you want an America where we all get along isn’t the answer to those questions, it’s a dodge. You might be thinking here: Come on, as if Trump answers those questions. But you’re offering yourself as an antidote to Trump. He is incapable of seriousness. Your seriousness—your thoughtfulness—would come as a relief.

*   *   *

On the pandemic, it was a mistake to say a while back that you were open to another lockdown. I know you’ve tried to walk it back. But get to Trump’s “right” on this. He’d open up everything but everyone knows he’s afraid to do anything and can’t persuade anyone, he just burps out thoughts and moves on. Joe, it would lift everyone’s spirits, make the economy zoom and people cheer, if you took an attitude of tough realism—if you said, “This is a fearful virus. We closed down the country to limit its lethality, we saved the hospitals, but guys. it’s been six months, we must rejoin life. Yes, with full caution—masks, hand washing, social distancing. And with suppleness. But we must live again.” Open the stores, the restaurants, be careful as hell but let the working man work. You and I came up in the age of lunch pail Democrats. I want to stand with them again. We can’t let this thing we have die, this land of a million businesses.

You want a message of unity and bringing people together. But it can’t consist of vague rhetorical stylings. Bring them together how? What is the higher purpose of this project we’re all engaged in? Americans are “an optimistic nation full of hope and resolve,” you said in Pittsburgh. They’re optimistic only when there’s a path and it makes sense to them. Otherwise optimism is just mindless sunniness.

I hope I haven’t offended. Next month I’m canvassing for you in Pennsylvania. Betty and I have made reservations for January 2021 at the Hay-Adams in Washington. They’re nonrefundable. I put my money where my mouth is. See you then, old friend.

It was a real insane-a-thon. It was genuinely moving. It didn’t avoid big issues. It led with a lie. It was a success in that it will have pleased the base and done some degree of outreach to others.

The parts of the Republican National Convention that were crazy included but were not limited to:

“Trump is the bodyguard of Western civilization,” said Charlie Kirk. “The frontier, the horizon, even the stars belong to us,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz. I’m still recovering from Kimberly Guilfoyle’s screaming. It was like seeing Eva Peron in an extended manic episode running from balcony to balcony warning the descamisados to stay armed, the oligarchs are coming. This was unfortunate because it was the first night and if Ms. Guilfoyle seemed insane, Republicans seemed insane.

They reduced the White House to a stage set for a political convention, which had never been done before. Had it never been done because all previous presidents were unimaginative? Why, no. It had never been done because they had some class. By tradition and long custom the two parties are political constructs that exist outside and apart from the peoples’ house. Maintaining the boundary protected that house’s standing as a place higher than politics to which all have recourse. “I fly from petty tyrants to the throne.”

Republicans will see the civic sin of this when the Democrats do it, as they will. For now they say, “Huh, it’s all politics there anyway.” It is, pretty much. But it’s healthy to pretend otherwise. “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.” You’ll miss that tribute when it’s fully gone.

Some speakers decried elitist-insider nepotism. Others introduced the Trump children.

We are not a third-rate banana republic but at the moment we’re imitating one.

The president’s leadership in the coronavirus epidemic was lauded as timely and visionary. This is the big lie mentioned above. He denied the threat, lied with an almost pleasing abandon, especially about testing, and when forced to focus held bumbling daily briefings that only made things worse.

It was a mistake to insist it was a success. That ship has sunk.

*   *   *

What lifted the convention was the normal people who spoke, who were moving and provided the policy ballast the politicians often did not. More than half the speakers were homespun policy nerds in the way Americans learn to be now. We heard—and it was compelling—about U.S. timber and forestry regulation, lobster quotas, FDA protocols regarding permissions for the terminally ill to access experimental treatments, and breakthroughs in tele-health services. It was not all granular. Rebecca Friedrichs, a veteran California public school educator, painted the teachers unions as a reactionary force. “They spend hundreds of millions annually to defeat charter schools and school choice.” They do. It’s odd we don’t speak of this anymore since school choice is so crucial to so many.

Maximo Alvarez, who fled Cuba when young, looked at the protests that have been sweeping our cities for three months and said, “I have seen people like this before. I’ve seen movements like this before. I’ve seen ideas like this before.” It reminded him of a man long ago: Fidel Castro.

A convicted bank robber, Jon Ponder, became a religious man, changed his life, and started a prisoner re-entry program. He was issued a pardon by Mr. Trump, live, the FBI agent who’d befriended Mr. Ponder standing with him. If you weren’t moved by it you don’t do moved.

Abby Johnson, formerly of Planned Parenthood, gave the most compelling speech on abortion, explaining why pro-life people stand where they stand, that has ever been given at any convention anywhere. Nick Sandmann, the libeled teenager who did nothing wrong when the Native-American activist banged a drum in his face, spoke, entirely believably, on why Americans do not trust the media.

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina was impressive.

He too spoke for school choice. “A quality education is the closest thing to magic in America.” It had changed his life. He and his brother were sons of a single mother; they lived with relatives and slept three in the bed. He got an education, went into business, ran for Congress in an overwhelmingly white district in Charleston and beat the field, included the son of former-Sen. Strom Thurmond. How did a black man who started with nothing do that? “Because of the evolution of the Southern heart.” That is a beautiful phrase.

Mr. Scott said his grandfather would have been 99 this week. That old man had suffered indignities; no one had even bothered to teach him to read and write. But he lived to see his grandson become the first African-American elected to both the U.S. House and Senate. “Our family went from cotton to Congress in one lifetime,” he said, with an air of what seemed fresh wonder.

It was beautiful, and affectionate about America to the point of tenderness.

The Republicans confronted what the Democrats at their convention glossed over: rising crime, looting and rioting in city protests, increased unease about personal safety, and besieged police forces. They hit on the one fear shared equally now by the rich, the poor and the middle: that when you call 911 you’ll go to voicemail. Someone literally used that image.

Social media is sharing the videos of diners at outside restaurants being swarmed by BLM protesters who try to harass and bully them into raising their arms in affiliation. There are videos of protesters marching on so-called gentrified neighborhoods at night, telling those who live there, through bullhorns, that they’re guilty of appropriation. There aren’t a lot of these videos but they carry a suggestion of where things are going. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D. Mich.), made an acute observation this week to Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times. She said in her district there are a lot of signs saying Blue Lives Matter—cops matter too. On voter sentiment she quoted a viral social media post: “I used to think I was pretty much just a regular person. But I was born white into a two-parent household, which now labels me as privileged, racist, and responsible for slavery.”

This country is full of law-abiding people of all colors who are appalled by Donald Trump. It is political malpractice to push them toward him.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the controversial couple who recently met protesters on or near their property in St. Louis with guns, looking in the photos provocative and nutty, gave their side of the story: They were trying to protect their home from what they thought was immediate danger. They spoke against violence, defunding the police, and ending the cash bail system.

Andrew Pollack, the father of a teenage daughter killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., eviscerated the liberal school and police policies that he believes contributed to his daughter’s death. “Far left Democrats in our school district made this shooting possible.”

Democratic political professionals must have found all this pretty powerful because almost immediately Democratic candidates began to decry the violence with what might be called increased vigor.

The president spoke also. The headline on his acceptance speech was the staggering degradation of the White House as his rally prop. The subhead is that he smacked Joe Biden around like a ruffian. It’s going to be something to see them debate. That will be one intensely human encounter.

To be fair in critiquing certain public events you have to be like a judge in the Olympics and factor in degree of difficulty. No one had ever done a Zoom convention before, so no one knew how to do it. Should there be a host each night? Should it be an earnest actress? Does that make us look shallow? Do we want to look shallow?

What hadn’t been done before was done rather poorly, with high schlock content. You got the impression no one creative or daring was authorized to be either. It has been compared to a telethon, an infomercial, and fundraising week on public television. Marianne Williamson said it was “like binge watching a Marriott commercial.” Mostly it was the Democratic Party talking to itself and playing to its base.

Missing was any hint of priorities or plans, of the meaning of the party or its intentions. They made the case against Donald Trump, and a case for Joe Biden as an essentially decent person. But they didn’t say what they’ll do. And this year that is key.

I’m not sure they’re sufficiently aware of two things. One is the number of people who don’t like Mr. Trump and will vote for him anyway. They don’t have to be talked into thinking he’s a bad character, they’re already on board.

All summer I’ve been running into two kinds of people. One kind says, “That man is a living shame on our country and must be removed.” The other kind says very little. They don’t defend him. They say, “I can’t believe I may vote for him, but . . .” And always they explain it this way: “What the other guys are gonna do on taxes,” “What the other guys will do to my industry,” “What the Democrats will do to the economy.”

I’m getting the impression that for a lot of people, the ballot this fall won’t read “Trump vs. Biden” but “Trump vs. What the Other Guys Will Do.”

Do the Democrats understand how hunkered-down many people feel, psychologically and physically, after the past six months? If I asked this right now of a convention planner or participant I think they’d say, “Yes, people feel battered by systemic bias, inequality, and climate change.” And I’d say no, they’re afraid of foreclosures! They’re afraid of a second wave, no schools, more shutdowns, job losses and suddenly the supply lines break down this winter and there are food shortages.

When this is the context, what a great party plans to do couldn’t be more crucial.

*   *   *

To the speeches:

Barack Obama’s speech will stick in history; it won’t just slide away. No former president has ever publicly leveled anything like this criticism at a sitting successor: “I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously, that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care. But he never did. For close to four years now, he has shown no interest in putting in the work.”

This is a former president calling the current one shallow and lazy. He also suggested he’s greedy and intellectually incapable. Unprecedented? Yes. Unjustified? No, alas. And I’m not seeing Trump supporters rise up in indignant defense. They know it’s true, too.

Kamala Harris achieved complete adequacy. I can’t remember anything she said without referring to notes, so she gets no quotes. She’s a natural performer of politics and good at acting out warmth and joy, but she did something that they’re all doing more and more, which involves a husky catch in the voice as if they’re so sincere, so moved by what they’re saying, that their throats constrict for a moment. Mr. Obama did it. Michelle Obama did it a lot. Panelists will soon do it on cable news. Please everyone, stop.

As for Mr. Biden, all his political life he’s tried to express himself in ways he thinks eloquent but that tend to be only long-winded. He chases a thought a long way, even when it’s a small one and not worth the hunt. All of this is part of his old-school way and is neither harmful nor helpful. But he had a strong, tight speech. He looked good, spoke crisply, maintained focus. The speech is going to do him some significant good. Though he didn’t make his plans and intentions clear.

*   *   *

Two small thoughts I’ll try not to chase too far:

First, Democratic Party professionals are funny about policy. They take it seriously but don’t think other people do. The past three decades they wound up thinking all politics is about glitz, emotion and compelling characters. Part of the reason they’re like this is they never thought Republicans were serious about policy, because if they were, they’d be Democrats. They find it hard to credit the importance of policy in the making of a party’s fortunes. They thought Republicans liked Reagan because he was handsome, and George H.W. Bush because he fought in the war. But their elections were policy victories. Charm and humor, stagecraft and showbiz matter, but they’re not everything. They’re not even half of everything.

Because boomer Democrats thought Republicans won on glitz, they got glitzy in return. It was the central Clintonian insight of 1992: We have to become actors, like the actors we seek to replace.

It only made politics worse and left Democrats unable to speak in public forums of the central point of politics: why you stand where you stand and what you intend to do.

(Fairness forces me to note that socialists love talking about policy, and so does Elizabeth Warren. And that Republican political operatives, as a class, are naturally hostile to the meaning of anything.)

Second, apart from the “We The People” gauziness, there was a nonstop hum of grievance at the convention. To show their ferocious sincerity in the struggle against America’s injustices, most of the speakers thought they had to beat the crap out of the country—over and over. Its sins: racism, sexism, bigotry, violence, xenophobia, being unwelcoming to immigrants. The charges, direct and indirect, never let up. Little love was expressed, little gratitude. Everyone was sort of overcoming being born here.

Even Mr. Obama, trying, in a spirit of fairness, to expand the circle of the aggrieved, spoke of “Irish and Italians and Asians and Latinos told: Go back where you come from. Jews and Catholics, Muslims and Sikhs, made to feel suspect . . . black Americans chained and whipped and hanged. Spit on for trying to sit at lunch counters, beaten for trying to vote. . . . They knew how far the daily reality of America strayed from the myth.”

The cumulative effect of all this, especially for the young, would prompt an inevitable question: Why would anyone fight to save this place? Who needs it?

If I were 12 and watched, I’d wonder if I had a chance here. If I were 20, they’d have flooded me with unearned bitterness.

Injustice is real, history is bloody. But guys, do you ever think you’re overdoing it? Are you afraid that this is all you got? Is that why you don’t talk about policy?

Kamala Harris is a sitting U.S. senator who was vetted during the primaries, the daughter of immigrants and the first black woman and Indian-American on a major-party ticket. She thus satisfies the basic requirements of a vice-presidential choice: First do no harm, and second pick up what you can.

Three salient points:

She rose far fast. She was sworn into the Senate in January 2017. She went national early and quickly, like Barack Obama, who’d also been in the Senate less than two years when he began running for president. (Her pre-Senate background includes more-impressive offices, notably California attorney general.)

She is a woman of the left who entered the law not as a defense attorney but as a prosecutor. This hurt her in the Democratic primaries, where she was called a cop, but will help her in the general election with centrists and moderates.

She is an excellent performer of politics. Like Bill Clinton she enjoys and has a talent for the necessary artifice. She takes obvious pleasure in campaigning—making speeches, waving, laughing, pressing the flesh. In committee hearings she cocks her brow in the closeup to show skepticism. Her glamour, and her consciousness of it, were vivid enough to be spoofed by Maya Rudolph on “Saturday Night Live.”

Reading her 2019 autobiography, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” it occurs to you that what she’s really bringing Joe Biden is the things she doesn’t say and the stories she doesn’t tell on the trail.

She was born and raised in a climate of liberal activism in Oakland and Berkeley, Calif., in the 1960s and ’70s. Her father, Donald Harris, born in Jamaica in 1938, was a student there and went on to be an economics professor at Stanford. Her mother, Shyamala, was born in southern India, graduated from the University of Delhi at 19, and earned a doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. Shyamala, who died in 2009, was expected to return home for an arranged marriage; instead she met Donald. They married, had two children and divorced.

When Kamala Harris was a toddler, her parents brought her to civil-rights marches. “I have young memories of a sea of legs moving about,” she writes. Her mother liked to tell a story. Once Kamala was fussing in her stroller, and Mrs. Harris leaned down and asked, “What do you want?” “‘Fweedom!’ I yelled back.”

The general atmosphere was ’60s Berkeley—diverse, full of passion, consumed by identity politics and debates about liberation.

They took periodic trips to India. “My mother, grandparents, aunts, and uncle instilled us with pride in our South Asian roots. . . . We were raised with a strong awareness of and appreciation for Indian culture.” (India looks to be an increasingly important ally as America’s relationship with China deteriorates. If Biden-Harris wins and her background is helpful, good.)

She went to ballet class, sang in the choir in the 23rd Avenue Church of God, went to a black cultural center called Rainbow Sign on Thursdays. She saw Rep. Shirley Chisholm speak and was electrified.

By the time Ms. Harris graduated high school she wanted to become a lawyer like her heroes Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley. Also like her Uncle Sherman and a family friend named Henry. “Any time someone had a problem . . . the first thing you’d hear was, ‘Call Henry, call Sherman. They’ll know what to do.’ . . . I wanted to be the one people called.”

For college she chose Justice Marshall’s alma mater, historically black Howard University in Washington, founded just after the Civil War and rich with legacy.

Her first day on campus she thought, “This is heaven.” She’d hang out with other students in the campus’s central lawn: “On any given day, you could stand in the middle of the Yard and see, on your right, young dancers practicing their steps or musicians playing instruments. Look to your left and there were briefcase-toting students strolling out of the business school, and medical students in their white coats, heading back to the lab. . . . That was the beauty of Howard. Every signal told students that we could do anything.”

She ran for student office, joined the debate team, pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, the powerhouse sorority founded in 1908. Expect to see its colors, pink and green, at campaign events this year.

She was a tour guide at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Once she bumped into the great actors Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis waiting for a VIP tour. “They projected an aura . . . they made a special point of engaging me in conversation and telling me that it made them proud to see me as a young black woman working in public service.” She never got over how they made her feel.

Then on to San Francisco’s UC Hastings law school. She was mortified at failing the bar exam—you get the impression it was her first failure; she always aced the test. She passed on the second try, joined the local prosecutor’s office. She had to defend her choice to family and friends. She is tough and seems sincere in her writing on her early days up against sexual predators and other violent criminals.

She is extremely interesting when writing about real things. She talks about how hard it was to put grade-school victims on the stand to testify to their sexual abuse, and teenagers who’d been virtually abandoned into an inadequate foster-care system. She didn’t see prosecutors as oppressors: “I had found my calling.” There are plenty of cases in which prosecutors have used their office as “an instrument of injustice.” But “I knew the history of brave prosecutors who went after the Ku Klux Klan in the South” and “corrupt politicians and corporate polluters.” It was the attorney general who sent officials to protect the Freedom Riders in 1961. “I was going to be a prosecutor in my own image.”

“You can want the police to stop crime in your neighborhood and also want them to stop using excessive force,” she writes. “You can want them to hunt down a killer on your streets and also want them to stop using racial profiling. You can believe in . . . accountability, especially for serious criminals, and also oppose unjust incarceration.”

In the primaries we saw that when she changes her stands it tends to be politically convenient, slowly acknowledged and poorly explained. There are signals of seeing policy as an external thing, not an outgrowth of one’s own belief structure, and things can change.

In the book we get a sense of gusto. She admires toughness. She is a natural pol. She was bred to achieve in an aspirational immigrant environment. She loves to compete.

She is warm, humorous. Like most of the men around her in politics, she enjoys being important. She isn’t embarrassed by attention.

Again, she has risen far fast. She ran nationally for the first time this year, in the Democratic primary. It didn’t end well; she dropped out before the first vote.

She is running for the second time now. The tough learn a lot from defeat, but most politicians find it hard to change their moves.

This is going to be interesting.

It’s August, high summer, and you’re trying to ease in and relax with family, and friends. You’ve imagined it for months. You’re at the beach with pails and shovels and towels and the short chairs, and you’re trying to sit back and do nothing after this unrelenting year of stress and effort and rolling with every punch. That’s something people don’t fully appreciate about themselves, don’t fully credit—that they rolled with every punch this year, even when history wouldn’t stop throwing them.

You’re looking at the waves with this fixed and pleasant look on your face because the kids or grandkids are always picking up cues and clues. But really you’ve got this thousand-yard stare, you’re a million miles away, immersed in your concerns, your fears. About everything.

It is the salient fact of the summer of ’20, that everyone goes so quickly from “Beautiful day” to “How you doing?” to “I’m so worried.”

People who haven’t worried in years are worried, and it’s not about regular things, it’s about big and essential things. It’s a whole other order of anxiety.

That’s all this is about. How anxious everyone is, and how deep down they know they’re going to be anxious for a long time.

We’re in the middle (perhaps—nobody knows) of a world-wide pandemic, a historic occurrence that for everyone alive has been without precedent. We are in the middle (perhaps—nobody knows) of a severe economic contraction that looks likely to produce a long recession. We’ve experienced a national economic shutdown, again without precedent. The virus continues, and everyone fears it will turn worse in the fall when it starts to collide with the flu.

Everyone is worried about the future of the big cities. Crime, protests, the feeling nobody’s in charge. The historic upending of a commuter model that has, in New York at least, reigned for centuries. When you return to the city in the fall, what will you be returning to?

You’re thinking: Do we want to live there, should we live there, should we live someplace else? What you’re really asking is: Will the city hold?

Are we going to have school? How will that work? If we don’t, what will it do to the kids and to parents who have to work? If schools open, what might the kids catch and bring home?

Is my business going to make it? Will it really open up again as an office, a store, a way of working? If it does, will it continue to need me? At the same salary? Real-estate sales outside my city are booming.

The mood: Everyone is trying to think all this through, even though it’s too big to “think through.”

And everyone is afraid of making a mistake.

Everyone wants a feeling of safety. But no one is certain where safety is.

I’m not sure Washington and the national political class see this, but a great question of 2020: What will make us feel safer?

Am I right in what I’m seeing? I ask five disparate friends. In spades, they say.

A nurse in a lake community in New Jersey names her worry: “Evictions and foreclosures.” People are maintaining a surface cool. “Everyone I talk to is getting by day to day but anxious about what the future holds.” “The uncertainty is so much.” People in the medical field tend to feel secure in their jobs, but she isn’t sure the nation’s nurses, in a second wave in the fall, will be willing to go back and work in the same conditions they faced in March and April. “Do we have it in us to do it again?’

A retired political pro in the Midwest: “Most people I interact with put on a good face, but the conversation usually goes to serious concerns”—the economy, jobs, the schools. Some large local employers are laying people off; several local businesses have gone under. “People are very worried about both the short-term impact and longer-term consequences.”

A university administrator in Southern California: “What adds to the weirdness for many in their 40s and 50s in particular is the dissonance between what people are seeing around them every day and what they feel and know is sand shifting under their feet.” People with white-collar jobs are still in their homes and on Zoom. “They see their co-workers every day, virtually, and if there are layoffs these people just—poof!—disappear into another dimension. No goodbyes or farewell happy hour.” If you read the papers you see there’s no run on the banks, and the stock market is booming. “But is it? There are warning signs—unemployment but also all the apparel firms going under, malls empty. Commercial real estate is next.”

A lawyer in Westchester County, N.Y., said weekday evening services at his synagogue are drawing twice as many congregants as in the pre-Covid past. “Folks are frayed, bewildered, they need a time-out from the uncertainty. It’s not that they expect deliverance—the High Holiday liturgy and history are a giant cautionary tale.” “It’s like things around us are broken and we want some certainty. Not the certainty that everything will be all right, but the certainty that ‘this’ is here this moment and will again be here in the morning.”

To a writer and consultant based in Virginia, this historical moment feels charged. “It’s maybe not quite the summer of 1914 or 1939, but there’s a definite sense of worry, of not knowing, and thinking there’s a long road until we’re done with this, if one can even say such a thing, and certainly a long road until the joys of next summer, which seems very distant.”

If you broaden your lens and look toward Washington, what makes you feel better, more secure, inspired? What makes you feel safer, as if there’s a way out or a path through? Anything?

There’s something I’ve been trying to write for a few weeks but can’t get my hands around—but it’s as if there’s no president, it’s an empty White House, nobody’s really there, it’s not an administration but an eccentric event that causes clamor. I’ve never had that feeling before, that a White House is empty and weightless. The media, whose job it is to hold it to account, are distrusted. A Knight Foundation-Gallup survey released this week showed 86% of Americans seeing “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of political bias in news coverage. The Democrats can’t agree on what they’re running on beyond “We’re Not Trump, ” which may or may not be enough, with a presidential candidate age 77 who sometimes seems confused. People can’t even be confident the election will work, that it will be orderly, that the old rough integrity of the system will hold. They know there will likely be no “election night” with states called and a winner declared. But will there be an election week? Month?

When you look toward Washington it’s not solid ground, it’s more shifting sand.

And so the mood this charged summer of ’20: Everyone’s scared, everyone’s trying to figure out where safety is, everyone’s afraid of making a mistake.

You aren’t alone. The whole vast middle of the country now is a Coalition of the Worried.

Where did Donald Trump come from? Where is the GOP going? Should the whole thing be burned down? A lot had to go wrong before we got a President Trump. This fact, once broadly acknowledged, has gotten lost, as if a lot of people want it forgotten.

Mr. Trump’s election came from two unwon wars, which constituted a historic foreign-policy catastrophe, and the Great Recession, which those in power, distracted by their mighty missions, didn’t see coming until it arrived with all its wreckage. He came from the decadeslong refusal of both parties’ leadership to respect and respond to Americans’ anxieties, from left and right, about illegal immigration. He came from bad policy and bad stands on crucial issues.

He came from the growing realization of on-the-ground Americans that neither party seemed to feel any particular affiliation with or loyalty to them, that both considered them lumpen bases to be managed and manipulated. He came from the great and increasing social and cultural distance between the movers and talkers of the national GOP, its strategists, operatives, thinkers, pundits and party professionals, and the party’s base. He came from algorithms that deliberately excite, divide and addict, and from lawmakers who came to see that all they had to do to endure was talk, not legislate, because legislating involves compromise and, in an era grown polar and primitive, compromise is for quislings.

He came from a spirit of frustration among a sizable segment of the electorate that, in time, became something like a spirit of nihilism. It will be a long time repairing that, and no one is sure how to.

And here, in that perfect storm, was Mr. Trump’s simple, momentary genius. He declared for president as a branding exercise and went out and said applause lines, and when the crowd cheered, he decided “This is my program,” and when it didn’t cheer, he thought, “Huh, that is not my program.” Some of it was from his gut, but most of it was that casual. After the election a former high official told me he observed it all from the side of the stage. This week the official said that after a rally, on the plane home, all Mr. Trump and Jared Kushner would talk about was the reaction. “Did you see how they responded to that?”

The base, with its cheers, said they weren’t for cutting entitlement benefits. They were still suffering from the effects of 2008, and other things. They weren’t for open borders or for more foreign fighting. They were for the guy who said he hated the elites as much as they did.

The past four years have produced a different kind of disaster, one often described in this space. The past six months Mr. Trump came up against his own perfect storm, one he could neither exploit nor talk his way past: a pandemic, an economic contraction that will likely produce a lengthy recession, and prolonged, sometimes violent national street protests. If the polls can be trusted, he is on the verge of losing the presidency.

Now various of his foes, in or formerly of his party, want to burn the whole thing down—level the party, salt the earth where it stood, remove Republican senators, replace them with Democrats.

This strikes me as another form of nihilism. It’s bloody-minded and not fully responsible for three reasons.

First, it’s true that the two-party system is a mess and a great daily frustration. But in the end, together and in spite of themselves, both parties still function as a force for unity in that when an election comes, whatever your disparate stands, you have to choose whether you align more with Party A or Party B. This encourages coalitions and compromise. It won’t work if there are four parties or six; things will splinter, the system buckle. The Democratic Party needs the Republican Party, needs it to restrain its excesses and repair what it does that proves injurious. The Republicans need the Democrats, too, for the same reasons.

Second, if the Republicans lose the presidency, the House and the Senate in November, the rising progressives of the Democratic Party will be emboldened and present a bill for collection. They’ll push hard for what they want. This will create a runaway train that will encourage bad policy that will damage the nation. Republicans and conservatives used to worry about that kind of thing.

Third, Donald Trump is burning himself down. Has no one noticed?

When the Trump experience is over, the Republican Party will have to be rebuilt. It will have to begin with tens of millions of voters who previously supported Mr. Trump. It will have to decide where it stands, its reason for being. It won’t be enough to repeat old mantras or formulations from 1970 to 2000. It’s 2020. We’re a different country.

A lot is going to have to be rethought. Simple human persuasion will be key.

Rebuilding doesn’t start with fires, purges and lists of those you want ejected from the party.

Many if not most of those calling for burning the whole thing down are labeled “Never Trump,” and a lot of them are characterologically quick to point the finger of blame. They’re aiming at Trump supporters in Congress. Some of those lawmakers have abandoned long-held principles to show obeisance to the president and his supporters. Some, as you know if you watched the supposed grilling of tech titans this week, are just idiots.

But Never Trumpers never seem to judge themselves. Many of them, when they were profiting through past identities as Republicans or conservatives, supported or gave strategic cover to the wars that were such a calamity, and attacked those who dissented. Many showed no respect to those anxious about illegal immigration and privately, sometimes publicly, denounced them as bigots. Never Trumpers eloquently decry the vulgarization of politics and say the presidency is lowered by a man like Mr. Trump, and it is. But they invented Sarah Palin and unrelentingly attacked her critics. They often did it in the name of party loyalty.

Some Never Trumpers helped create the conditions that created President Trump. What would be helpful from them now is not pyromaniac fantasies but constructive modesty, even humility.

The party’s national leaders and strategists don’t have a lot to be proud of the past few decades. The future of the party will probably bubble up from the states.

But it matters that the past six months Mr. Trump has been very publicly doing himself in, mismanaging his crises—setting himself on fire. As long as that’s clear, his supporters won’t be able to say, if he loses, that he was a champion of the people who was betrayed by the party elites, the Never Trumpers and the deep state: “He didn’t lose, he was the victim of treachery.”

Both parties have weaknesses. Liberals enjoy claiming progress that can somehow never quite be quantified. Conservatives like the theme of betrayal.

It will be unhelpful for Republicans, and bad for the country, if that’s the background music of the party the next 10 years.