We'll get through this. Probably.
Dan McLaughlin at NR has a long essay turning the Trump/Biden coin before coming down.... NO SPOILERS. His gist - Trump is even weaker on character and competence than Biden, the Democrats are terrifying on policy and Biden lacks the principles or energy to rein in the left, but we have to choose.
Her makes an interesting point about the possible value of a rebuilding year, or two, or four:
Coalitions and the Right Time to Lose
Losing to this Democratic Party would be very bad. But: We live in a two-party system, and its natural equilibrium is an alternation of power. Moreover, a rise in presidential power for one party tends to produce an immediate reaction in the rest of the system for the other. That is even truer since people stopped electing presidents with divided government in the first place. We saw this under Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump. It is possible that Trump is the end times for Republicans, but it is unlikely. In other words: Democrats have to win sooner or later, and we will again have to live with it, and we will again get our turn after that.
I could not in good conscience vote to make that happen, but what if Trump is really the worst possible Republican president? What if Biden is, by virtue of his age, the least likely Democratic president to get reelected on the strength of incumbency? What if a 6–3 Republican-appointed Supreme Court, with the oldest Republican appointee (Clarence Thomas) being 72, and only one Democratic appointee likely to step down in the next four years, is the safest of times for the nation to go blue? What if the 2022 Senate map looks not so bad under a President Biden, but ghastly under a second Trump term?
What if it really is true that it was good that Trump won in 2016, but is also good that the next four Republican years not be his? What if a Trump win will make the worst people and ideas in the Republican Party stronger, at the expense of the best? What if a Biden loss will make the worst people and ideas in the Democratic Party stronger, at the expense of the least-bad — as seems sure to happen? What if we still have a strong case, even with a narrow Democrat majority in the Senate, for stopping Court-packing and other insanity now? What if Trump is the only thing holding together an incoherent Democratic coalition, which needs the White House before it can tear itself to ribbons over an agenda Biden never really ran on? What if that coalition would only grow otherwise, so that the 2024 election after eight years of Trump is likely to give Democrats a much wider majority and mandate?
I do not, as a rule, believe in winning by losing. But we do have to lose eventually. A good football coach knows when to punt and get the ball back in better field position. Everything good about a second Trump administration would be better under a subsequent Republican, with less risk of a truly permanent defeat for conservatism.
Bill Belichick nods. His point that a Trump win will probably bring out the worst in both parties is a good one. And what about a Biden win?
Republicans complained after 2008 and 2012 that we lost by not running a true conservative. Nominating and then winning with Trump kinda/sorta vindicated that view, since Trump mostly held onto his new-found conservative positions, especially on judges. If Trump loses in 2020, purity of message may not identified as the problem.
I think (or certainly, hope) that Biden really is the temperamental centrist he portrayed in the primaries. In the Presidential campaign he's been chasing my vote, not the vote of my kids. I think the phrase "Reagan Democrats" has chafed Old Joe for decades and he wants to read about "Biden Republicans". IF post election analysis (will exit polls mean much this cycle?) shows a lot of disaffected Republicans for Biden that ought to embolden and empower the centrist Dems who have dragged Joe this far. It might also empower something like a "Sensible Center" on the Republican side as Reps try to lure the defectors home.
That said, Biden is running on fumes and follows polls rather than principles. But if polls tell him to be a centrist he won't object. His long-time aides are undoubtedly corporatist centrists, so his chief of staff pick and other nominations will be critical. If Elizabeth Warren is nominated as Treasury Secretary all bets are off. But she won't be!
As to Congress, Pelosi was quite firm in 2019 with the message that she did not regain the Speakership because AOC primaried a safe-seat timeserver. She won due to 30 swing-seat Democrats who weren't in a position to take crazy progressive votes.
Senate Majority Leader Schumer (if Mitch can't hold on!) will face a similar dynamic. Will a Senate with 51 Democrats that includes Joe Manchin and five of his ideological siblings really vote to pack the court and bring in DC and Puerto Rico as new states? Maybe! But probably not. ("Probably"? This is a hell of a thing to be betting on, right? Yet here we are.)
Beyond that, Biden and his strategery team surely remember Bill Clinton's come-uppance in 1994 and Obama's in 2010.
Clinton lost control of the House and Senate, leading to a long six years; Obama lost the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014, leaving him with a pen and a phone. One would hope the Democratic leadership has figured out the problem and won't try for "third time lucky".
However! There is a theory that 2020 might be the last election. The analogy is to elections in Muslim states that vote in a religious party - the laws are changed and the incoming party never leaves power. The 2020 peril is that Senate and House moderates are persuaded to hero up, vote in the two new states, pack the court, amnesty and grant the vote to ten million undocumented Democrats, and never lose either the House or Senate again. I mostly think this is about as likely as the impending "Trump coup" progressives enjoy getting wound up about, but... time will tell.
Tough times ahead regardless.
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