This is the next of our series of missives on our unfinished work to restore the promise of our country and its government. Each will focus on a single element of the many opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Each will provide three steps we can all take to build upon our huge victories winning back the House in 2018 and the Presidency in 2020.
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Don’t discount the danger that Joe Biden will soon have the wrong thing in common with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In 2013, after Barack Obama told her that Democrats were likely to lose the Senate in 2014, thus inhibiting his opportunity to name her successor, Ginsburg made the choice to stay on the Court.
Ginsburg was 80 then and had beaten cancer, but like Biden today, she felt fine. Being a Justice of the Supreme Court was her life, and there was much work to be done. Moreover, she felt good about Hilary Clinton winning the presidency in 2016.
Ginsburg died at 86, four months before the end of Donald Trump’s term in 2020, thus making possible the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It wasn’t her intention to put her nation at risk. How it turned out was heartbreaking for her and for us.
At 81, Joe Biden loves the work and feels good about his chances for re-election. He aims to serve at 86. At this point, he is putting our country at great risk. The big danger is not that he will be elected in the face of his diminishing capacity. The two far greater perils are 1) that he will lose because the American voter has already made a different calculation than he has about the implications of his age, or 2) He will suffer a medical incident between his nomination and the election, thus creating near certainty that the Republican candidate will win.
There is still a chance that Joe Biden will decide not to run, but his recent rejection of David Axelrod’s voiced concerns is troubling. Independents and even some Democrats are casting their eye on the very conservative Nikki Haley, aware that she has read the Constitution and does not seem to have a Trumpian vitriol addiction. This is because when you fear for your country, you can start thinking about the least bad alternative, in case Democrats band behind Biden until November 2024 and it doesn’t work out so well.
None of this has anything to do with Biden’s performance up until now, as some “progressives” seem to have misunderstood. Blaming Joe Biden for not having a bigger package of incentives to reduce carbon than the huge package he got enacted is bizarre. Are we going to go back to Ralph Nader’s assertion to younger voters that there was “no difference” between Al Gore and George W. Bush? How did that turn out?
Instead, this is all about Joe Biden’s future potential. The Democratic Party leadership needs to huddle with each other and with Joe Biden and start active consideration of Gretchen Whitmer and others. In the meantime, we can revel in the six strengths we have heading into 2024.
- Choice - The Dobbs decision which overturned the right to choose has richly rewarded Democratic candidates ever since the Supreme Court ruled in June of 2022. It must seem like a decade for Republicans rather than just 18 months. Among other things, it cost Virginia Republican Governor Glen Youngkin a Republican majority in both his House and Senate. Democrats gleefully project initiatives putting choice on the ballot in 2024 in the swing states of Arizona, Florida, Nevada, and Colorado.
- Demographics - Depending on the candidates, there is no guarantee that the Democrats’ 70%-30% margins among Latino voters will materialize at that level in the fall of 2024. However, the percentage will still be favorable and the non-white population of nearly all the swing states is growing at a faster rate than the overall population.
- The House of non-Representatives - It has arrived at the point where the impasse among House Republicans is so intractable that political damage for Republicans is inevitable, especially in swing states. It takes a lot to disabuse the American voter of their idea that both parties are equally to blame for Congressional dysfunction. In response, Republicans are pioneering new ways to obstruct legislation, and there isn’t anything Speaker Mike Thompson can do about it.
- The Economy - There is a popular and peculiar notion among commentators that Democrats aren’t getting and won’t get any boost from recent inflation reduction, market upswings, lower gas prices and 14 million jobs. “No boost” is an overstatement. Every piece of good news about the economy helps Democrats, just not nearly as much as they wish it would.
- Trump - Obviously, it is a great danger to have him around, but Trump boosts Democratic chances with independent voters everywhere he goes. There should be a Democratic PAC that pays to send him to swing states. He isn’t staying put on the old list of wrongs, grudges, and recriminations. He finds new people to insult every day, including Iowa evangelical leaders. There’s a shibboleth that putting Trump on trial only reinforces his support, but that is among the minority of voters that are his base. As the trials reveal a new litany of misdeeds, independent voters will walk away, as they have in every election since 2016. Even the Koch empire knows this, as they demonstrated in their support of Nikki Haley.
- Ukraine - Surprisingly, a lot of Republican leaders share Trump’s desire for a bromance with Vladimir Putin. No accounting for taste. As we get into the election year, Zelenskyy will soldier forward, Biden and McConnell will get him and the Ukrainians the necessary support, and the Republicans will continue to find themselves in another minority position.
Building on these strengths, let’s do these three things now:
| 1) Take Advantage of the House Republicans Fighting Each Other | |
 | The battles between House conservatives and House ultra conservatives have created a caucus that cannot function, whatever the efforts of new speaker Mike Johnson. Ever since Democrats helped them pass a continuing resolution to fund the government until January, the Republican majority has been unable to even pass a procedural rule covering floor debate on two appropriations bills. There is no way forward. Republicans won’t kick Johnson out as speaker because they have nowhere to go. Instead, they will keep on warring until the next election. These persistent battles put the Republicans in swing districts at enormous risk, including several who were elected in districts that Joe Biden won in 2020. Swing Left has served up a first list of targeted districts in which to invest, including explanations of why they selected them. |
2) Consider Dean Phillips | |
| For some who think that it is time for Joe Biden to step aside, supporting another Democratic candidate would be a difficult or even painful thing to do. The other point of view is that either way Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips is not going to end up as President. Supporting him in New Hampshire might be a good way to send a signal to the Democratic Party, which seems frozen behind Joe Biden’s unwise candidacy. | |
3) Alarm Yourself About Trump and the Insurrection Act | |
 | One more good reason to fight Donald Trump is that he has already discussed using the centuries old Insurrection Act to involve the American military in domestic situations. As the Brennan Center for Justice has pointed out, none of the protections that would keep a President from misusing the act are present in the law as written and interpreted by the courts. The effort to amend the law is still in the early stages. It isn’t too early to use the Brennan Center as your source to keep track of all such matters. You can subscribe to their outstanding newsletter. |
As this missive reports, we have a lot of electoral strengths as we head into 2024. Will we all jump in so late that we fail to take full advantage of those strengths? That would be a pity, no?
David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington
