The Gathering Storm

History books are filled with existential moments for both states and entire societies. We need to face ours squarely. And win.

There was a Twitter meme last week about favorite paintings, and amongst the many Renaissance, Impressionist and Modernist works posted, I put up Martin Johnson Heade’s magnificent Approaching Thunderstorm. It’s a lovely painting that I have visited again and again over the course of more than four decades, stopping by almost yearly to see an old friend in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum. Completed in 1859, Heade’s masterpiece captures a moment of serene calm, as a lone man surveys a distant landscape over Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay. Alone with his dog, he watches a boatman row hard for shore as the darkness of a storm bears down on the beach. A sailboat wears around a point, trying to make it to safety. The moment itself is beautiful  and tranquil, but the danger is both obvious and unavoidable.

In 1859, a storm was bearing down on what was still a very young and fragile republic. Two years later it would shatter the bucolic calm of American pastoral scenes from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. The republic survived, battered and wildly imperfect, with 600,000 fresh graves hacked into the blood-soaked democratic soil.

There have been other approaching existential storms since Heade set up his sketchpad by the water. Reconstruction and its terrorist gangs. The Great Depression and the threat of extremism in the face of vast suffering. Foreign attacks, from Pearl Harbor to 9-11. Economic crashes. Yet the thunder has generally out-performed the lightning and wind. The republic has persisted in its stubborn but flexible resilience.

Will it survive 2024?

I strongly believe that it will. The threat is both longshot and total. Unlikely and existential. If we lose - we lose it all. There will be camps. We will be Spain under Franco. Or worse. The country will be permanently re-ordered (at least for the lifetimes of those capable of reading these words). Ethnic and religious minorities will suffer. Millions will be targeted because of sexual orientation. Immigrants will suffer. Public benefits will be destroyed. Criminal gangs will run the Federal government and even deep blue states will be hard-pressed to resist the pull of authoritarian rule. 

So those are the stakes. But I think we will win, and in convincing fashion. Despite the media obsession with President Biden’s perceived weaknesses (they want Trump for monetary reasons, but will find themselves listed as 1A for the MAGA internment camps), Biden’s strengths are the kind that win elections - a strong and resilient economy, excellent wedge issues that line up in our favor (abortion, Medicare and Social Security, jobs creation, student loans, infrastructure investment and the even healthcare costs) point to a Democratic victory.

And you know who agrees? State parties in swing and blue states - who have been working overtime on redistricting efforts that put the maximum number of Congressional seats in play for the Democrats. Folks, this is an indicator. Our side is not passive - we’re in court. And well funded. Though widely derided in the age-old “Dems in Disarray” framework that political reporters memorize in middle school, there’s plenty of legal array, thanks to the work of Mark Elias and the legal eagles at the Democracy Docket and the manifold election law firms retained by Democratic committees and legislative caucuses around the country. We’re winning the cases, too. But I’m also paying attention to the energy and motivation - these aren’t rote pro forma lawsuits. They’re part of a passionate legal wave (if such a thing can be said to exist) based on one big bit of political calculus - that in a Presidential year, the Democrats have the edge.

Now yes, there is some significant “chicken littling” going on among those of you who post about national politics on the various social media platforms. Here, I must pause to tip my cap to the late great Al Giordano - my friend - who we lost last summer, and whose 64th birthday would have been on New Year’s Eve. Chicken littling was Al’s accurate descriptor for the kind of public worrying so often engaged in by liberals. We worry aloud. We clutch for the pearls. We think the sky may be about to fall. Al’s response was usually some version of the following.

Yeah, it might! Do something about it besides complaining. 

Then he’d provide cogent and actionable analysis of the field of play that showed a path to victory. Al always argued that Democrats (and our allies) need to see victory as possible before making it happen. We have to believe. And that sometimes (ok, every time) our side needs a swift kick in the metaphorical ass to get moving. And a much tougher outlook.

More on that in a moment, but I’m going to let Simon Rosenberg do a little of the heavy lifting for those who may require a swift kick in the…er, rather…some moral encouragement on this first working day of 2024. I’ll use the same excerpt from his MSNBC essay that Simon pulled for his excellent Hopium newsletter (subscribe right now). Call this “the good news” -

First, President Joe Biden has kept his central promise in the 2020 election: that he would lead the nation to the other side of Covid, successfully. The pandemic has receded. Our economic recovery has been better than any other G7 nation. GDP grew at an annual rate of 4.9% last quarter, and more than 3% for the Biden presidency. We have the best job market since the 1960s and the lowest uninsured rate in U.S. history. The Dow Jones broke 37,000 this month for the first time. Wage growth, new business formation and prime-age labor participation rates are all at historically elevated levels. Prices fell — yes, fell — last month. Rents are softening, and gas prices and crime rates are falling. Domestic oil and renewable production are at record levels. The annual deficit, which exploded under Trump, is trillions less today. 

Consumer sentiment has risen sharply in recent weeks, and measures of life, job and income satisfaction are remarkably high. There is no doubt that recent years have been hard — Covid, an insurrection at the Capitol, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, repeated OPEC price hikes, global and domestic inflation — but it is increasingly clear that America is getting to the other side of this challenging period, and are in a far better place than when President Biden took office. 

Second, the strength of the president’s record is only matched by the strength of his party. I don’t think it is widely understood how strong the Democratic Party is right now. The party has won more votes in seven of the past eight presidential elections, something no party has done in modern American history. Over the last four presidential elections, Democrats have averaged 51% of the popular vote, their best showing over four national elections since the 1930s.

In both 2022 and 2023, Democrats prevented the historical down ballot struggle of the party in power and had two remarkably successful elections. In the 2022 midterms, Democrats’ statewide margins were greater than the 2020 presidential margins in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — all recent battleground states. That showing led the party to pick up a Senate seat, four state legislative chambers and two governorships, and helped keep the House of Representatives close, making it far more likely Republicans lose it in 2024.

Got all that? Good. Internalize it. Make it into some handy talking points for the hundreds of conversations you’ll have and thousands of posts and emails you’ll send over the next ten months urging friends, colleagues and relatives to turn away from fascism in America. Keep it folksy. And now consider these hard truths without turning away.

• There is a non-zero chance of losing the 2024 election. The electoral college advantage for minority conservative rule is always difficult to overcome. Biden is an octogenarian. The world is in crisis. We have to win the crucial swing states. Voter suppression is the name of the GOP game. You know the drill.

• At least 25 percent of the electorate is completely in the tank for radical MAGA ideology and actively supports fascism. Don’t think they’re “fooled” by false promises; on the contrary, they love the extremist authoritarianism flaunted by Trump and his henchmen. They dig the hatred and bigotry. Don’t pretend otherwise. That’s just the way it is.

• The people who own “prestige” media want Trump for bottom line financial reasons. His radicalism boosts clicks. He’s entertaining like a car wreck. They love him. Don’t count on media companies to oppose extremism or support American democracy. Some journalists will; many will simply kow-tow to their bosses.

• Putin also wants Trump. And so does the Chinese state. There’s no subtle or hidden reason for this (though the disinformation tactics employed can be) - they want to weaken the liberal democratic West. This motivation is as old as your grandparents. Or your great grandparents.

• It’s not the job of “the Democrats” to elect Joe Biden. It’s your job to defeat Trump. The DNC holds almost no cards that can swing this election. Neither does your state party. The country’s electorate must decide to continue liberal democracy. It’s a weak and frankly, almost collaborationist argument to constantly winge about “the Democrats.” And it is collaborationist to boost any third party or crank primary candidate. Just put on the MAGA hat, dude.

• Trump’s legal troubles are a drag on his election chances, but they are not the deus ex machina factor in this race. Frankly, only cataclysmic health events are. The courts are not going to save us. They’re too slow.

The thunderstorm is coming. We can’t avoid it. It’s here with 2024, and like the man on the shore in Martin Johnson Heade’s painting - a free Black man in anti-slavery Rhode Island right before the Civil War, by the way - we should exude no panic at all.

History books are filled with existential moments for both states and entire societies. We need to face ours squarely. And win.