Facing the World as It Is

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

Facing the World as It Is

In previous and more normal elections, Super Tuesday was a big deal. With so many states holding primaries and caucuses, the results would clarify who would likely advance to the general election in the fall. Sometimes, front-runners fell behind, underdogs raced to the front of the pack, or a surprise changed the course of the race. Fluke results from one-off contests in Iowa or New Hampshire were quickly swept away in a broader test of popularity.

Such clarity was the whole point of Super Tuesday. As dramatic and fascinating as it was to have messy floor fights and multiple ballots at the conventions, by the 1980s, both parties wanted less drama and smoother, glossier coronations of a beloved nominee. The primaries soon took the place of arm-wrestling matches in classic, smoke-filled rooms. (As an occasional cigar smoker who thinks primaries are now dysfunctional, I would like to go back to those rooms, but that’s a discussion for another day.)

Tonight, there will be almost no tension at all. Donald Trump will emerge as the numerically prohibitive front-runner for the Republican nomination; President Joe Biden will cruise to a Democratic renomination, as incumbents almost always do. We know the result already: 2024 will feature Biden versus Trump, an ordinary career politician facing off, one more time, against a would-be dictator.

No one needed Super Tuesday to predict the shape of the fall general election. Biden is an incumbent running on a good record—despite what Republicans think, Biden’s had as consequential and solid a first term as any president since Ronald Reagan—and there was virtually no chance his party was going to deny him renomination, because no sensible party would do that with a successful first-term president. (Even Jimmy Carter eventually swatted away the supposedly indestructible Ted Kennedy in 1980.)

Trump was the Republican favorite from the moment former Speaker of the House Kevin   McCarthy went to Mar-a-Lago   in 2021 to rehabilitate Trump’s standing in the GOP. His nomination was inevitable the night most of his primary opponents   raised their hand   on a debate stage—one from which he was absent—and said they’d vote for him if he beat them,   even if he was convicted in a court of law . Even   Nikki Haley   is still   dithering   to this very moment about whether she’d support a man who calls her “Birdbrain” and whom she has passionately argued is unfit for office.

And yet, for months now, many voters, including both Democrats and dissident Republicans, have engaged in childlike wishcasting about how the 2024 election might be different.

Some of them put their hopes in the courts, longing in vain for Trump to be disqualified from the ballot or for Special Counsel Jack Smith to clap Trump in irons before Election Day. The idea that Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas—who are now behaving   as right-wing activists   from the bench—would join hands with three Trump appointees to stop Trump was always some industrial-strength psychedelia.

The decision to leave Trump on state ballots seems (at least to me, as a non-lawyer) sensible enough, which is probably why all nine justices affirmed it. But the Court’s conservative majority is clearly   playing games . If hurrying helps Trump, they move with alacrity: They decided the Colorado ballot case in 25 days. If dawdling helps Trump,   they slow down : The presidential-immunity case (a crackpot theory they should not have even taken up) won’t be heard until late April. The conservative effort to seize the Court by hook or by crook—one of Mitch McConnell’s greatest and   most shameful legacies —has paid off just when Trump needed it most.

Others entertained the fantasy that a Republican could knock out Trump in a primary. You may remember Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who was supposed to arrive in the primaries in a flash of light that would turn Trump’s campaign to ash and leave nothing of the former president’s candidacy but a chalk outline on a sidewalk. Instead, DeSantis   folded early , and I assume it is only a matter of time before he appears on a stage shaking Trump’s hand in the name of “supporting the nominee.”

Meanwhile, Democrats have been panicking for at least a year about Joe Biden, because Biden is old. As a former Republican, I find this astonishing; if you stripped Biden’s name off his record and handed it to a voter, he’d be as formidable a candidate as either party could field. But we live in a time of vibes and optics: Biden   sounds   old, he walks like an older man, and his occasional gaffes and mistakes are more numerous than they used to be. (Trump seems younger because he bellows and gyrates as he howls red-faced into microphones at rallies; despite the fact that much of what he says is slurred nonsense and autocratic threats, he seems more vital and active.)

Democrats have therefore plunged into their own silly wishcasting.   Perhaps some magical third-party centrist will emerge from the clouds and unite the country. Why, it could be … Joe Manchin! Or a Democratic candidate will emerge to push both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris out of the picture—maybe someone like Dean Phillips!   (Phillips was outperformed in the Michigan primary by the self-help writer Marianne Williamson, who at the time had already suspended her campaign.) Perhaps a reenergized left could offer a new face—how about Cornel West? What if we change the Electoral College? (This last one is a perennial favorite on social media). And of course, there’s always Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who initially ran as a Democrat but whose heart is with   conspiracy theorists   everywhere.

Much of this eyes-squeezed-tight wishing is linked to the peculiar   American belief   that presidents are godlike creatures who can make things better by fiat. Too many voters, when they encounter difficulties, create in their mind a superhero president who, if elected, will bring down the price of eggs, make the Russians go home, and end the war and suffering in Gaza. And if the current candidates are too flawed to fit that bill, Americans design one in their head.

All of this wishcasting has to end. The past year has birthed a lot of political nonsense—have I mentioned Cornel West?—but the time for such foolishness is over. Barring an act of God, or the   Fickle Finger of Fate   coming to rest on one of the candidates, the contest is now between Trump and Biden.

American democracy is on the ballot. Individual freedom, including reproductive rights and civil liberties, is on the ballot. The security of Europe, of the United States, of the world … all of it is on the ballot. It is time for voters to take a deep breath, deal with the world as it is, and decide what they really want when they make one of the most fateful decisions in American history.