The End Is Not Quite Near
Peering into the crystal ball of November
Diary of the Late Republic, #2
Here’s what I hope happens. Actually, it’s also what I think will happen, God help me. I may look back on this at year’s end and laugh bitterly. I so rarely allow myself optimism. But I can’t seem to help myself this time.
As spring begins, Donald Trump remains ahead in most of the national polls, and in the key battleground states. Joe Biden’s age continues to be the source of lament even among his supporters, and rumblings of third-party challenges continue to fill the airwaves. By usual metrics like approval/disapproval, he seems to be in serious trouble, particularly when it comes to the key issues of the border, crime, and inflation. There also seem to be shifting tectonic plates in the electorate as working-class voters of color, especially men, are defecting from the Democrats. It looks like Trump will win.
But I don’t believe it. Trump has a fervent base of support in the neighborhood of 45 percent of the electorate, and it isn’t going anywhere. But I don’t see it growing, either. Third-party challengers generally fade over time, and it would not surprise me if someone like Robert F. Kennedy ends up drawing as many voters from Trump as Biden. Biden has a lot of money, a disciplined organization, and a restless army of supporters (I consider myself one of them) who in the end don’t have anywhere else to go come November.
The decisive factor will be Trump himself. There probably won’t be a definitive moment—a gaffe, decision, or other unexpected event that be seen as a turning point that has traditionally been a feature of presidential elections. (I don’t rule out a health crisis—how that man is literally still standing amid the chaos he generates seems to defy the laws of biology.) But the mishegoss that surrounds him like a cloud of dust will just prove exhausting to that crucial sliver of the population that’s deeply unhappy with the status quo but just can’t quite bring themselves to pull the lever for Trump. The election will be relatively tight by historical standards, but Biden will win by a decisive margin.
There will be lots of noise about legitimacy, and a cloud of disinformation that circulates and lingers. Actually, there are likely to be troubling developments and unanswered questions that linger after Election Day. But that’s really nothing new. (I don’t believe JFK actually won the presidential election of 1960—I suspect Mayor Daley dumped a lot of ballots in the Chicago River.) I expect crowds in the streets and lots of media coverage about threats to democracy. But in the end most people will just want normalcy. Trumpism lacks the intellectual and emotional coherence to represent a true populist movement. He’ll continue to be a sideshow: trials, lawsuits, and endless media coverage that will live on after his death, which will not take place in prison. Lawyers will feast on his estate.
Joe Biden’s second term will begin in a dreary manner. The Democratic Party will fissure into factional infighting. The Republicans will have to start over, which may well prove to be a boon in the form of a wiped slate. We may also witness the birth of a new political movement—maybe even a new political party—that will reshape the parameters of American politics. Whoever comes after Biden will pass a raft of new laws and upends decades of precedent. Look for a string of Constitutional Amendments and a new generation of young leaders we can scarcely imagine now.
And it’s here that my fever dream ends. In my more hopeful moments, I imagine joining this new movement built around a vital center. In my less hopeful ones, it takes a more ominous turn, perhaps stoked by a war or an economic crisis—the national debt is a throbbing time bomb—that fuels a bona fide radicalism that’s truly a threat in a way that, in the end, Trump was not.
We are indeed living at the end of the American Republic. But Donald Trump is a cut-rate Sulla, not a Caesar. The end is not quite near.