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.