Polling expert sees a "basic flaw" in Democrats' 2024 strategy: "An informed and engaged electorate"

An overwhelming majority of the American people feel like the country is heading in the wrong direction. The American people are also divided – division driven by Republicans – on basic questions of fact and reality. For example, a majority of Republicans believe in Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election, that Trump is a “victim” who is being “persecuted” with 91 felony charges and multiple civil trials, that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was somehow both a peaceful protest by MAGA and an attack by “Antifa." None of these things are true.

In addition, a large percentage  — and depending on the poll, outright majorities — of both Republicans and Democrats are unsatisfied with having to choose, again, between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Thus, a growing desire for new presidential nominees from the Democrats or Republicans — or even a third-party candidate(s).

In all, there is a growing lack of faith across partisan divides in the country’s governing institutions and leaders. Tens of millions of Americans are disaffected, angry, and in response looking for answers from conspiracy theories, right-wing Christian extremism, demagogues, echo chambers, disinformation, false populism – and yes, violence.

So while it is true that last Tuesday in elections in Ohio and other parts of the country, voters pushed back against the Republican fascists and larger right-wing, as seen from the GOP's response to those setbacks, they do not care that their policies are unpopular. Predictably, the Republican fascists and their forces’ solution to losing an election is less democracy and not more of it.

In an attempt to make better a sense of where we are in the Age of Trump and what comes next, I asked a range of experts for their thoughts and suggestions.

These answers have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Darrin Bell is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, creator of the syndicated comic strip Candorville, and author of the graphic novel “The Talk." He is also a contributing cartoonist for the New Yorker.

I’m pessimistic. I’ve felt as if our democracy has been circling the drain for nearly half my life, ever since the Supreme Court handed George W. Bush the 2000 election and I can’t shake the feeling we’re nearing the final flush. I’m old enough to remember when both Republicans and Democrats called our system a “democracy.” When Republicans began saying “We’re a republic, not a democracy,” it was clear they’d realized their views were highly unpopular and demographically they had only a few decades left to even compete.

They gave up trying to win by persuasion, and they were going to do whatever they could to trick people into believing absurdities, and to rig the system in their favor. They’ve succeeded in turning much of the public against the media, against our institutions, against academia, and against vulnerable minority groups, and they’ve made white nationalism popular again. They’ve surrendered to a cult of personality and they’re openly excusing and advocating for political violence. I don’t see how we come back from this. The rot has gone too far. Dr. King said the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. I think he may have spoken too soon.

For almost the entirety of human civilization, we’ve been warlike, tribal, and ruled by authoritarians of one degree or another. Democracies are falling all across the globe, and America is on the verge of re-electing an authoritarian who’d seek to ally our nation with the Orbans and Putins of the world. We may be about to learn that liberal democracy wasn’t an evolutionary step, instead it was a brief interlude between tyrannies. An aberration that barely lasted a handful of centuries. I’m making sense of it by changing my view of my work. I have a trophy on my mantle with the engraved motto “Give light and the people will find their own way.” I don’t feel any more as if I’m doing that. These days, I feel as if I’m speaking to future generations that will arise long after this darkness is gone. I’m chronicling the downfall of democracy for them. Hopefully, someone in 2123 will be able to cut and paste some of my cartoons into their history report.

We’ve been told for decades that every election was “the most important election of our lifetimes,” because they were. And more often than not, during my lifetime, we’ve chosen wrong. There are now six Christofascists on the Supreme Court who are eager to erase all the progress made during the 20th Century. They’ve already done irreparable damage on multiple fronts. If we re-elect Biden, there’s a chance we can knock that back down to five (though I’m pretty sure Clarence Thomas will cling to his seat as if his initials were RGB, so it’s a very slim chance). But if we elect another Republican, within a decade there’ll probably be 7 or 8 Heritage Foundation fascists on the court and it’ll be game over for our democracy. But I have serious doubts that the 2024 election will go democracy’s way. This isn’t 2020. The House is full of MAGA cultists now who probably would overturn the results of a close election. Decent people would denounce it, we’d create some brilliant columns and cartoons about it, win some Pulitzers, and millions of Americans would take to the streets to protest, for about a month or two. Then the fascist Supreme Court would rule in MAGA’s favor. It may not even get that far, because voter suppression efforts have been proceeding without much coverage since 2000, and in a few states that should go for Biden, those votes may not end up being cast, and if they are, they may not end up being counted. Their 2020 insurrection will most likely turn out to have been just a dry run.

Where are we in the story that is Age of Trump?

We’re closer to the book being burned, and a new one being written by the white nationalists who’ve anointed themselves the arbiter of proper history. The only hope I have right now is that it seems impossible for Trump to escape prison. But that hope is tempered with the knowledge that the entire neo-Confederate party has decided that laws don’t apply to them. It’s only a short step from there to them deciding that verdicts don’t apply to them either. What gives me the most fear is that we don’t have a real understanding of the magnitude of this fascist movement.

Matthew Dallek teaches at George Washington University and is the author of “Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right.” 

It’s hard to make sense of recent events. I’m concerned with several obvious and somewhat related developments. We have now experienced the effects of climate change like never before, yet it’s hard to see a way forward in which the world’s leading emitters combat this threat with speed and unity. (My nine-year-old commented that the human species probably won’t exist in a few hundred years, a sentiment that may be as apt as it is unsettling.) Totalitarianism, in the United States and around the globe, has become emboldened in recent months. Putin's Russia has allied with China, North Korea, and Iran. Hamas has committed one of the most horrific acts of terror I’ve seen in my lifetime. To paraphrase Yeats, by way of Joan Didion, the center does not appear to be holding.

Still, in the United States, there is cause for hope because democracy remains at least somewhat resilient. A majority of the public seems still to be committed to free and fair elections and to the peaceful transfer of power. Most Americans still appear to back values like pluralism and tolerance. The mobilization in the wake of the overturning of Roe has been inspiring and one of the most impactful progressive movements in memory. Three years ago, Biden beat Trump at the ballot box. Last year, a pro-democracy coalition prevented election denialists from winning control of the Senate. And since January 6, the judiciary has become something of a democracy bulwark. Trump is facing 91 criminal counts, and some of his former lawyers have pled guilty to forms of election interference. Thanks to the Justice Department’s often unheralded efforts, scores of insurrectionists are now convicted felons. Authoritarianism has gone mainstream, securing a foothold in the GOP, but there's a case to be had that it is a minoritarian movement.

Where are we in the story that is Age of Trump? We appear to be in the middle rather than at the end of this story. As I attempt to argue in my recent book “Birchers”, the radicalization of the American Right occurred over several decades. It was partly made possible by changes sweeping the nation and the world – the end of the Cold War, the Great Recession, growing income inequality, often racist reactions to the nation’s first Black president, and a decades-long diminution of faith in federal power, to name a few factors. Trumpism, then, is fairly deeply stitched into the political culture, so a knockout blow, in the form of a single election result, seems dubious. Ending the Trumpocene is probably going to mean the defeat of MAGA candidates over many years. Losing, time after time, may eventually force the GOP to take less conspiratorial, less bigoted, and less radical paths.

I fear the rise in antisemitism in the U.S. and Europe and the silence and implicit justification of Hamas’s horrific acts by some on the American left. I fear the killing of innocent Palestinians and the surge of Islamophobia in this country, too. I fear that a wider war will erupt in the Middle East and that certain forms of hate have become normalized in the United States. The erosion of people’s commitments to bedrock values like reasoned debate, tolerance for others, and civil rights is another cause for concern. But it’s impossible to predict the future for a good reason: Sometimes, the unanticipated happens. Crises and times of insanity can occasionally yield to hopeful, unforeseen outcomes. Maybe the two-state solution makes a comeback. Or perhaps efforts to combat antisemitism become even more focused.

It’s possible to envision a time when Trump's political career has ended, when Netanyahu is out as Israel's Prime Minister, when Hamas is severely weakened, when the liberal project – a robust welfare state, principles of freedom for all and human rights, and international alliances—surges anew.

Rachel Bitecofer is a political analyst and election forecaster. 

We’ve been trapped on an out-of-control train and now the track is getting bendy! It will get increasingly intense as we enjoy this last winter of discontent. So what I would tell people is it’s a marathon, not a race.

In terms of the 2024 election, by avoiding a competitive Democratic Party primary, Democrats had a big edge on Republicans in terms of party unity. The terror attack on Israel and the war launched in response has undermined that advantage and left Democrats vulnerable to being attacked for supporting terrorism. It will take months to ascertain how much impact this will have on Democrats in 2024 but it is highly concerning.

Folks, 2024 is the end of the “game” whether you want it to be, or not. Beat Trump and American democracy likely makes it through this turmoil. Lose and it's game over, folks. Personally, I am ready for the final act of the Trumpocene.

My greatest fear right now is the House of MAGA and Preacher of the House Mike Johnson. Believe it or not, Kevin McCarthy’s entire rise and fall from Speaker of the House was invisible to average Americans. They don’t read news; they don’t watch TV news programs like "Meet the Press." Democrats still don’t understand this basic flaw in their strategy, an informed and engaged electorate, and I have about 6 months left to convince them that if they don’t center a messaging campaign about how crazy the House Republicans are, no one will ever know, even as they shut down the government and gut the government. If we want voters to know that we face an existential crisis from Republican extremism, we have to tell them.

Mia Bloom is a professor of communication and Middle East studies at Georgia State University. She is the author of several books, including "Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror." Her most recent book (with Sophia Moskalenko) is "Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon."

Many people who are familiar with the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have knowledge of terrorism understand this to be a very dangerous time and many of us are very anxious. We know there are no good solutions, certainly anything the President does has the danger to backfire. Netanyahu is a terrible leader and only interested in his own political survival. And so, his priority does not seem to be Israel’s safety. Biden cannot abandon Israel as many countries are seemingly moving away from it because the optics from Gaza are terrible. As countries come to terms with the loss of Palestinian life, despite a genocidal terrorist group hiding in its midst, the ability to support Israeli policies will become more difficult what is most troubling is the effect the conflict is having on youth and the left, it is splintering the Democratic Party. In some ways this way is the best outcome for Putin and Trump who are reaping the rewards of Democratic disarray and increasing skepticism about Ukraine.

Unless President Biden steps in aggressively and is able to curtail Netanyahu’s blood lust, it has the potential of damaging 2024 election prospects. Biden is seemingly losing the youth support upon which he relies, and members of his own party (the Squad) are vocal critics of his Middle East Policy. The Abraham Accords are unraveling first the Saudis postponed normalization, Bahrain has recalled its ambassador to Israel, and our allies in the region will be under extreme pressure to side with the Palestinians – even if that means against the US. It’s a lose lose situation.

We are still either at the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end of the story that is the Age of Trump. So many things can change on a dime. I am sadly fearful and somewhat hopeless.