I am not the first to argue that the media excessively covers the horserace side of electoral politics, and I daresay I will not be the last. It’s a grim fact that news organizations — like all businesses — must look out for their bottom lines. And if that means treating each half-percentage-point swing in the polls like a basket in the closing minutes of game seven of the NBA finals, then so be it.
For all of its glaring irregularities, this election cycle has been no different from past presidential campaigns in this regard. Every day from now until Nov. 5, 2024, pundits from both the left and the right will chatter around glass tables in front of television cameras, drone into podcast microphones, and type away into their Substacks, adding their own banal layer of spin to the cacophony of takes on the day’s triumphs and missteps. Candidates whose resumes appear marginally better than a trip to the White House gift shop will continue to be treated as serious up-and-comers. Every scenario that can possibly occur, no matter how outlandish, will be posed, argued over, and posed again before a single American ever casts a ballot.
Don’t get me wrong, I live for this stuff. I do believe that punditry has its time and place, and I’d be a hypocrite to thumb my nose at political hobbyism.
But it’s time to face the facts: The Republican primary is over. Donald J. Trump, jury-determined sexual abuser, insurrection leader, and target of 91 felony charges, will be the party’s anointed nominee. Above the hand-wringing of the feckless GOP establishment, the muted scoffs of the party’s aloof donor class, and the too-cute-by-half tactics of a slate of feeble primary challengers, Trump will ascend, empowered and emboldened.
Equivocate as pundits may, and I’ve listened to many try admirably over the past several months, the numbers point overwhelmingly toward this singular truth. It’s been over six months since Trump’s poll numbers have dipped below 50% in FiveThirtyEight’s poll aggregator, and his lead is only growing. Despite making significantly fewer appearances in Iowa and New Hampshire than the rest of the crowded GOP field, the former president commands large margins in these early primary states as well, as verified by a September CBS News poll. In a standard election cycle, conventional wisdom says there are three tickets out of Iowa. In this climate, any challengers who manage to limp all the way to the first-in-the-nation primary will be lucky to escape the Hawkeye State with their careers intact.
Try as we may to evade this grim inevitability — and we are morally obligated to try with everything we have — there is little that can be done to change the hearts and minds of the significant number of Americans who have seen Trump for what he is: a racist, a liar, a fraud, and have chosen regardless to stand by the man whom they hail as their “retribution.”
But what we can do right now is come to terms with the reality of the threat we face, and take advantage of what remaining time we have to confront it. Forget Ron DeSantis. Forget Vivek Ramaswamy. As scary as the visions for America they outline are, they are equal parts dystopian as they are illusory. However, with the last Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump faceoff decided by just over 40,000 votes in a few swing states, the possibility of a second Trump administration is deeply real.
The Biden campaign is showing its first indications that it has finally adopted this theory of the case. After tactfully sending the president to the United Auto Workers picket line in late September, the Biden camp unveiled its first ad spot explicitly mentioning Trump, hammering him on his anti-labor policies just before Trump conspicuously visited a non-UAW plant in Detroit and declined to express support for the union’s contract demands. Such an explicit move against Trump is a swift departure from the Rose Garden strategy Biden operatives previously expressed a desire to follow. Such a plan would have allowed the campaign to maintain a positive message and focus on signaling strong leadership on the economy, while giving the GOP contenders room to hit each other with crossfire and ultimately inflict lasting damage to whichever candidate eventually emerged as the nominee, Trump or otherwise. This was a smart strategy in what once appeared to be an open and contentious field. Now, Biden no longer has this luxury.
To any American who cares about the future of democracy: Your work starts now. Talk to your friends. Talk to your family. Talk to strangers. Knock on doors. Hand out fliers. There’s an existential threat on its way, and it’s not going to stop on its own.
And to all the pundits of America, this is me throwing down the gauntlet. For all the Playbooking, Punchbowling, and X doomscrolling your profession is famous for, you’re all falling awfully behind the curve.
Sure, covering a general election that’s 13 months away may not be as exhilarating as tracking the latest debate standoff between Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, but there’s plenty of work to be done. After all, Trump has over 30,000 lies to debunk; maybe you can start there. Please, don’t spare any words.
