The Stupid Party vs. the Evil Party
One of the two parties has no intention of losing with these two front runners. Guess which one.
By Daniel Henninger Aug. 30, 2023
An overwhelming majority of the public, more than 60%, doesn’t want either Joe Biden or Donald Trump to run for president. Yet the two major political parties are tumbling toward that unwanted choice. The late Washington economist Herb Stein articulated what came to be known as Stein’s law: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” That’s my belief about this election: Biden vs. Trump is unthinkable, therefore it won’t happen.
Former Wyoming GOP Sen. Alan Simpson, one of the most acerbic characters in our politics, used to call Republicans “the stupid party.” But Sen. Simpson wasn’t done. Democrats, he said, were “the evil party.”
Which would you rather be right now, the stupid party or the evil party? My money says the evil party will find a way out of the Biden-Trump dilemma.
Put it this way: The party that nominates someone other than these two will win the decisive votes of independents, and the election. The Republicans look locked into their forget-the-independents choice. I don’t think the Democrats are.
It is difficult to disagree with the assumption that the multiple prosecutions are ensuring Mr. Trump’s nomination. Virtually every event related to the four indictments ratchets up the Republican rage meter another several points for the former president. You knew that Trump mug shot was worth millions the moment you saw it. So too U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s decision to plop down the Trump trial in Washington on March 4, hours before the Super Tuesday primary. Her explanation: “My primary concern here is the interest of justice and that I’ve balanced the defendant’s right to adequately prepare.” Uh-huh.
The support for Mr. Trump is overwhelmingly an emotional rush and blood feud. But come election time, Democrats won’t do emotion. They’re bloodless, with eyes only on the prize. As Bill Clinton said after the 1996 election to Bob Dole who complained about unfair Clinton attack ads: “You gotta do what you gotta do.” This time, Democrats will take the advice of a Clinton who knew how to win.
Mr. Trump’s capture of the GOP nomination could become secure if their support for him in polls rises into the strong 60% or even 70% range. That polling momentum, propelled by anti-prosecution rage, could produce early, fait-accompli Trump wins in Iowa, New Hampshire and then South Carolina on Feb. 24.
Once Democrats conclude the Republican Party has arrived at a point of no return on a Trump candidacy, it will be time for another Clyburn moment.
Ahead of the February 2020 Democratic primary in South Carolina, Rep. Jim Clyburn, reflecting the Democratic establishment consensus, pulled the plug on then-front-runner Sen. Bernie Sanders as unelectable in a general election, and endorsed Joe Biden. It was a fraud on voters that Mr. Biden was a “moderate,” but Democrats do what they gotta do.
To win in 2024, they will pull the plug on Joe Biden.
Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota is already laying the groundwork, saying recently that “Democrats are telling me that they want, not a coronation, but they want a competition.” As widely reported, some 50% of Democrats don’t want Mr. Biden to run.
The 2024 presidential election has mega-importance beyond the needs of any single personality. The U.S. is at a political tipping point. Depending on party control of the White House, the country will go further left, as it is now, or turn back across the center-right. For nearly three years, Mr. Biden has been a figurehead president, allowing the party’s career progressives to use executive orders and administrative rulemaking to put in place their longtime policy goals and mandates on climate, labor-union practices and statistically derived social equity outcomes.
The party that wins next year could set the country’s direction for a generation. Democrats won’t let Mr. Biden’s weaknesses put their agenda at risk.
I don’t know which village elders would go in to tell Mr. Biden he has to withdraw. But the message to Mr. Biden would be that he has a choice: Be remembered by his party as the most progressive president since FDR, or as an unpopular incumbent who lost to Donald Trump or was forced to resign for reasons of incapacity.
Unlike the Clyburn endorsement, there won’t be a coronation. Democrats can’t explicitly throw over Kamala Harris, but they can open their primaries to an array of Democratic governors who would evade responsibility for Mr. Biden’s economic policies: California’s Gavin Newsom, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, North Carolina’s Roy Cooper, Colorado’s Jared Polis, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, New Jersey’s Phil Murphy or Illinois’s J.B. Pritzker.
Democrats don’t have to win big. They just have to win, and most of these governors, with the party and its donor base behind them, could pull across a winning margin of independents desiring a minimally acceptable alternative to voting for the Trump tumult. Then they would likely win again in 2028.
Of course, the opposite is true: Virtually any of the other Republican candidates would surely defeat a Joe Biden unpopular for personal and policy reasons. What is not a mystery is whether the stupid party or the evil party will figure this out first.
Write henninger@wsj.com.
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Appeared in the August 31, 2023, print edition as 'The Stupid Party vs. the Evil Party'.