The 2024 election one year out: Don't wait to panic about the polls

The 2024 presidential election is one year away. As it stands now, tens of millions of Americans appear prepared to forsake their own democracy. A series of public opinion polls show that Donald Trump is tied with or leading President Joe Biden nationally. A new poll from the New York Times-Siena is especially dire for Democrats as it finds Trump is now ahead in key battleground states.

Early polls have been met with the usual qualifiers by many in the pundit class.

The elections are one year away and it is too early to make predictions.

Early polls are often wrong and anything can happen.

There is no need to panic because the American people are fundamentally decent and would not do something so crazy as putting Trump, a person who could soon be a convicted felon, back in office.

Such soothsaying is of little comfort, however, to those who can see the reality of the country’s worsening democracy crisis and the deep cultural and institutional failings that have created it. Moreover, the “it is going to be okay because how can it not?” narrative from the hope-peddlers and professional centrists is no protection for already marginalized communities who will have their rights and freedoms taken away by a second Trump regime. So, yes, given that the 2024 election is a de facto referendum on the future of democracy in this country (and the world), the American people should in fact be very afraid. The question is now, what to do about it?

Writing at the Bulwark, Charlie Sykes sounds the alarm and then reflects on what to do going forward in response to the emergency:

And right now, the threat of a MAGA restoration is the heart attack. It is the immediate, red-light-flashing, firebell-in-the-night crisis of the moment.

So, this would be a good time to put away the wish-casting and the indulgence in denial, contempt, and partisan myopia, because the stakes are simply too high. I suspect you know what I’m talking about….

If you are expecting Republicans to suddenly become Democrats — or conservative swing voters to embrace the progressive agenda — then you are stalking unicorns.

Centrist swing voters are unlikely to jump from one tribalism to another. Any campaign to defeat Trump will have to include voters who are willing to cross the lines to vote for the alternative, but don’t expect them to swallow the whole enchilada.

This brings us back to the fragile anti-Trump coalition.

Even though the last few years have tended to paper over the incongruities and conflicts in a group that ranges from AOC to Liz Cheney (!), recent events remind us that it is not held together by ideological agreement. The splits over Israel and Hamas have exposed deep fissures in the coalition, and those may widen.

So, this is a critical time to refocus on what matters.

This coalition needs to be held together by a shared alarm over the danger of a Trumpian restoration. Nothing else matters.

We are not the crazy ones. We are the ragged, thin line that is the last best hope of holding back the insanity.

So be afraid. But don’t despair.

The choice that the American people will make between President Biden and Donald Trump is a very clear one – that in more normal times and in a healthy society would be very easy to make. President Biden believes in democracy and the American project. Donald Trump and American neofascism are monstrous. In a conversation here at Salon, David Rothkopf makes the juxtaposition very clear:

They're just not comparable. Joe Biden is a good man, a dedicated and effective public servant who's trying to do a good job, who believes in our institutions, who believes in our values, who believes in alliances, who believes people are fundamentally good, and who is the kind of person that Donald Trump thinks is a sucker. Donald Trump is a bad man; he is all about himself. He doesn't care. He has no moral code whatsoever. He doesn't believe in the rule of law. He doesn't believe in the Constitution. He doesn't believe in American values…

Trump, the second time around, is a dictator in waiting. As detailed in a much-discussed article at The Washington Post, his plans are not secret. They have been publicly announced and detailed and are actively being put in place so that on Trump’s first day in office he can begin to systematically destroy American democracy and civil society.  These plans include invoking the Insurrection Act, i.e. martial law, and putting political “enemies” in prison (or worse). Trump’s regime also has plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants who are "criminals" and others deemed to be “enemies of the state”. The Alien Enemies Act was last used to put Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Trump and his inner circle and followers have a demonstrated attraction to that particular type of cruelty.

In a second Trump term, the First Amendment will be severely limited, if not de facto nullified, as part of a broader assault on constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms. White Christianity will become the country’s de facto state-sponsored religion.

Trump has promised to pardon his Jan. 6 terrorists who assaulted the Capitol as part of his coup attempt. These men and women will become the core of his personal shock troops and paramilitary force, the street thugs and enforcers for the regime. Contrary to what many among the news media and political class would like to believe – even after seven years of experience to the contrary — Trump's followers have not been tricked or bamboozled or somehow manipulated into voting for him and the Republican fascists. If Trump wins another term, he will be empowered in his assaults on democracy, freedom, and the rule of law.

Trump’s MAGA people and the other Republican voters may lack a specific and highly sophisticated understanding of politics and public policy, but they do, however, know how Trumpism — with its fake populism and fake patriotism — makes them feel. Hatred and rage are intoxicating. Such emotions and energies can all be cathartic and liberating and yes, even fun – until it destroys those who wield it. This makes sense given that fascism in its very forms is not really an ideology but is closer to being an imaginary and a vessel for feelings, emotions, and a sense of recreating and renewing the self (and the nation) by being part of a great destructive movement. On this, Tom Nichols writes at The Atlantic:

Trump has told his voters that he is their vengeance; in reality, he is mostly a vessel for people around him to satisfy their thirst for power and status. But Trump also relies on millions of voters who love his tough talk, and who likely would have no problem with the idea of jailing prominent Americans for their political views, especially after years of being schooled by the right-wing media to identify Trump’s enemies as their own.

But other American voters—even those who despise Trump—can’t seem to unite long enough to face the authoritarian danger taking shape right in front of them.

Beyond politics and policy, at its core, the American people’s choice between President Biden and Donald Trump is a test of their individual and collective character. Tens of millions of Americans are prepared to willfully fail this test by voting for Trump.

One of the main reasons that the country’s responsible political class and mainstream news media have been so impotent in their attempts to stop Trump and the Republican fascists and larger white right is because of a failure, if not outright aversion, to using the correct moral language to describe the existential danger such forces represent to the country. As I watch Trump and the MAGA movement’s enduring power and how they are stalking the White House – in so many ways this all feels like the year before the 2016 election, when the impending disaster was obvious to those of us who chose to see clearly and were not stuck in a state of denial — I keep thinking back, in particular, to my 2017 conversation with philosopher Susan Neiman here at Salon:

In one sense the answer is easy. Yes, I certainly think Donald Trump is evil.  The question is indeed how to describe the ways in which he is evil, for he seems to be one of those rare human beings who has no sense of morality whatsoever. That, you might say, is itself a measure of evil: the simple absence of a moral compass, the inability to value anything except power. In his entire life, Donald Trump has never revealed that he even understands any other values — compassion, justice, love, curiosity about others and the world around him. He seems driven by the urge to dominate and lacks the ability to grasp that others might be moved by different goals….

In the end, what matters in determining evil is not the state of one’s soul, but the effects our actions have on the world we live in — which is why having good intentions but not significantly acting on them is never enough. And here it is just unquestionable that what Donald Trump has done is evil….

More than seven years of the Trumpocene have only confirmed Neiman’s wisdom and warnings. Fortunately, there are a few leading voices in the pro-democracy movement who are not afraid to use the correct moral language to describe Trump.

At the Stop Trump Summit that was recently held in New York, actor Robert De Niro (who co-stars in Martin Scorsese’s new film “Killers of the Flower Moon”, which itself is a profound exploration of the banality of evil as manifest through white supremacy, greed, and genocidal violence against Native American people) told the following truth:

I’ve spent a lot of time studying bad men. I’ve examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, the utter banality of their cruelty. Yet there’s something different about Donald Trump. When I look at him, I don’t see a bad man. Truly. I see an evil one….

This guy tries to be [a gangster], but he can’t quite pull it off … he’s a wannabe tough guy with no morals or ethics. No sense of right or wrong. No regard for anyone but himself – not the people he was supposed to lead and protect, not the people he does business with, not the people who follow him, blindly and loyally, not even the people who consider themselves his friends. He has contempt for all of them….

We must take the danger of Donald Trump very seriously. Remember how we were jolted by crisis in early 2020, as a virus swept the world. We lived with Donald Trump’s bombastic behaviour every day on the national stage, and we suffered as we saw our neighbours piling up in body bags. The man who was supposed to protect this country put it in peril, because of his recklessness and impulsiveness. It was like an abusive father ruling the family by fear and violent behaviour.

The fact that Donald Trump leads President Biden in the polls, controls the Republican Party and is growing in power because and not despite his criminality, embrace of violence, and promises to be a dictator, are all a reminder that evil in its many forms is compelling for those broken people who surrender to it.

The American people have a year left to decide what type of people they are going to be on Election Day 2024 and going forward. Neutrality in the face of evil is not an option, despite how far too many people have tried throughout history to convince themselves otherwise.