Ask Me Anything—May 2024
I answer questions about Biden’s bad polling, the mess in the Middle East, and how to teach a classroom full of undergrads who don’t want to think or talk about politics
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I believe this is the longest thing I’ve ever posted here—nearly 5,000 words. Since my next post won’t appear until roughly a week from now, I suspect some of you might want to read this one in bite-sized pieces. In order to facilitate that, I’ve divided it into thematic sections. This is the first time I’ve tried that with an Ask Me Anything post.
All Things Trump
How much do you believe the polls at this point? Do you believe that young people are tilting towards Donald Trump or at least against Joe Biden? Do you think that their views on the Gaza war will be decisive for the election?
I definitely believe the polls, which disappoints some of my subscribers. But let me be clear about what this does and doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean anything is inevitable. It doesn’t mean Trump is going to blow things wide open and win by a wide margin. It means that he has the potential to win the election, not by getting a majority of young people or black men or Hispanics to vote for him—but by increasing his vote share with these groups over what he received in 2016 or 2020. That’s what the polls are showing—that Trump is making inroads, weakening the Democratic Party’s lock on certain demographic categories of voters just enough that he could win this time, perhaps even with an outright plurality of the national popular vote. The motor of many of these relatively small but important shifts is increasing educational polarization (and declining racial polarization) that is leading voters of all races who didn’t graduate from college to view the world in somewhat more similar ways, regardless of their other differences.
One thing to add: it will all come down to turnout. Trump’s polling leads are usually larger among “all potential voters” than among “likely voters.” This means the shifts we’re seeing in opinion polls are less likely to materialize on Election Day if turnout is on the low end of expectations.
When it comes to Biden and Gaza: The president is stuck. If he moves toward the protesters, he may lose voters in the center; if he moves toward the center, he may lose voters on the left. For this and other reasons, I suspect he will win a smaller share of votes this time in comparison to 2020. The only question is where those soured voters live and whether the loss will be big enough in the key swing states to produce losses for him. I don’t know the answer to that. No one does or can. But it has me worried.
We’ve seen several pieces dedicated to predicting what Trump, the RNC, and his allies might do if they are allowed back into full power (the recent Time article, the full issue of The Atlantic, etc.). You seem to have a balanced, level-headed view. I’m curious what your thoughts are on how a Trump win would play out in America over four to five years, from election night through Inauguration Day in 2029 (when Trump might or might not attempt to stay in power).
It's always extremely difficult to predict 4-5 years into the future—who in 2019 would have predicted the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, or the COVID-19 pandemic, January 6, and President Joe Biden struggling for re-election because of inflation?—but this is especially so when it comes to Trump, because he holds very few positions on principle. He has a core of convictions on immigration, trade, and foreign policy, but even these he’s willing to trade away for the sake of a “deal” that advances his own personal interests. So would he pull out of NATO? I bet he’d like to in theory. But then he’d face the technical challenge of figuring out how to get it done, and the political headache of the consequences. So he’d likely just insult our NATO allies and threaten a withdrawal like he did the last time.
I do worry about Schedule F reform, which would allow Trump to fire tens of thousands of career civil servants across the executive branch and replace them with lackeys who’ve been vetting for ideological and personal loyalty. But of course any attempt to enact such a reform would prompt lawsuits and injunctions and court battles that would play out over the months and years of a second Trump administration. So what this ends up looking like in concrete terms, I can’t say for sure.
The thing that worries me more than anything else, honestly, is a scenario like the following: Trump wins; massive protests break out on Inauguration Day; Trump responds by invoking the Insurrection Act, which he uses to authorize “sending in the troops”; the protesters overwhelm members of the National Guard, prompting someone to open fire on the crowd, killing one or more; the protests grow and spread, leading Trump to send in more troops; and after a few rounds like this, several cities would be living under de facto martial law, which a newly militant left would begin fighting with acts of terrorism; etc.
I consider this the most realistic worst-case scenario I can imagine—one that leads to the imposition of a form of authoritarianism that may or may not be compatible with holding free and fair national elections in 2026 and 2028.
To add to Ben's question, what should the Never Trump coalition do should Trump win in November? What are some things we could do to thwart his worst impulses?
How might the election of Trump disappoint his supporters, and how long might it take? E.g., After the ACA is abolished, what then?
I have no idea how to thwart Trump’s worst impulses beyond bowing down before him and pledging him fealty, which might encourage his worst impulses as much as defying him. I also have no idea what Trump might do to disappoint his supporters. Did that ever happen at all between 2017 to early 2021? I don’t think so; eleven million more people voted for him the second time than did the first. So why would it happen after January 20, 2025?
As for how to win in November, hell if I know—beyond voting for Biden. And following Matthew Yglesias’ advice.
I am curious what you think about how Trump's enablers will react if he loses? Will we be facing another “Big Lie” reaction? Denial and a Congress that refuses to pass Biden's legislative agendas?
Maybe I’m being foolish, but I’m not especially worried about what happens if Trump loses (again). Yes, he’ll scream and cry like a toddler, and some in his party will play along (while most elected Republicans say a silent prayer of thanks). But unlike in 2020, Trump won’t be the president with the potential to use the enormous powers of the office to, for example, effectuate a self-coup. Yes, if (more) Republican voters become (even more) convinced that the electoral system is rigged against them, that will point to worse problems down the road for American democracy. But one problem at a time. If Trump loses in 2024, that’s fantastic news: another bullet dodged for the United States of America. (And of course Republicans in Congress will resist Biden’s legislative agenda. That’s a given no matter what happens in November.)
The Mess in the Middle East (and Its Reverberations at Home)
The protests over Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza finally made it to the University of Pennsylvania campus, complete with police breaking up the encampment. Any personal anecdotes or observations from the past several days? Was it in a part of campus you regularly traverse or were there any students that you know involved? You've shared your thoughts about the conflict, the protests, and the potential political fallout of both for Biden and the 2024 election; I was wondering if you had any personal reactions to the protests coming (close to) home for you that you could write up.
The protest at Penn was located on the College Green, at the core of the central campus, right outside College Hall (home to the central administration and history department) and across from the main library. The political science department, where my office is located and where I taught this semester, is a block away from central campus, on a West Philly street. So I didn’t have to pass the encampment in order to do my day-to-day job, though I did have to attend a meeting in Cohen Hall, a building adjacent to the protest, on May 2. That meeting went off as normal, aside from the fact that both regular entrances to the building were locked, forcing everyone to funnel in through an obscure side door. I assume this was to prevent the building from being taken over by protesters.
After that meeting, I wandered over to the encampment to have a look. It was noisy (with drums pounding and some chants going on), but peaceful. I didn’t feel the least bit upset by anything I saw or heard. Public statements from the Interim President of Penn portrayed the gathering as more threatening than I thought it was, but it apparently began to expand to more of the College Green several days after my visit, and it was after that that the police moved in to clear the encampment. Later that same day, I needed to visit the library and was surprised to discover the entire College Green had been fenced off and closed, requiring those headed for the library to enter on the basement level around the side, much like the entrance to Cohen Hall a week earlier.
I saw no sign that any of the 46 students in my lecture course this spring took part in the protests. I mentioned them a few times in the final weeks of my lectures, for illustrative purposes, not to express support or criticism for them. For the most part, I conceal my political opinions from my students.
Why are the pro-Palestinian college protestors so devoid of intellectual humility in the face of an incredibly complex set of realities? Both Israel and Hamas have much to be ashamed of. Why would students of elite academic institutions show so little ability to confront complexity? I simply don't get it—it can't simply be “young people gonna protest something.” There's something deeper and weirder about all of this.
I agree with your implicit criticism, though I don’t think there’s anything weird or unusual about it. Protests are like advertising: Their whole point (aside from serving as a means for citizens to blow off steam) is to distill complex issues down to simple talking points or slogans that can fit on placards and be chanted, like a tag line in an ad that sticks in your head after you hear it a few times. This is nearly always the case. The fact that the situation in the Middle East is, if anything, more complex than many other issues doesn’t change this. It’s very comforting to view the world in black and white, as divided between the children of light and the children of darkness. That’s why it’s important to follow Reinhold Niebuhr and others in resisting that temptation toward simplification.
But that doesn’t mean such efforts will be successful. The images coming out of Gaza are horrifying. The anti-colonialist ideologies that many on the left espouse have a ready-made answer to explain why it’s happening and why it’s terribly, unambiguously wrong. Responding “it’s complicated” is pretty weak in comparison, even if it’s truer to the reality of the situation. Who wants to trade in moral certitude and the feeling of justified moral indignation for skepticism when given a straight-up choice between them? Not many, I’m afraid.
Are the majority of Palestinian people really tied to Hamas? Do Egypt and Saudi Arabia want to form an Arab coalition to rule Palestine? Could they actually eliminate Hamas and Iranian influence or has it gone too far for the Palestinians to accept any sane government?
I don’t know the answer to your first question. On the second: No, Egypt and Saudi Arabia do not at all want to become responsible for ruling Gaza, which means Israel is probably going to have to do it or else see Hamas reconstitute itself, no matter how badly it gets decimated in Rafah. As for your last question, I don’t have a good answer to that either, but I don’t want to endorse your insinuation about Palestinian voters favoring insane government. I don’t know where Palestinian public opinion is. Hamas was voted in nearly two decades ago, and there hasn’t been an election in Gaza since. The Palestinian Authority has been in charge in the West Bank (under Israeli military rule) for almost as long with only occasional and erratic local elections taking place. This means there are no institutions in Palestinian society to measure and translate public opinion into accurate representation, and policymaking is badly constrained by Israel’s external control. It’s a mess, with no end in sight.
Foreign Policy in Theory and Practice
How would you recommend someone determine first principles on any given issue? For example, when it comes to foreign policy, I'm a bit of a mess and am trying to sort out something resembling a consistent philosophy. Like you, I was strongly opposed to the Iraq invasion in 2003 (and spent my two remaining high school years fearing a draft), take a dim view of the Vietnam War, and question some of the actions taken during the Cold War (even if I'm somewhat sympathetic to the goal of preventing the spread of Communism). However, when it comes to most NATO actions (i.e., Bosnia, Kosovo, etc), our support for Ukraine, as well as the initial invasion of Afghanistan, I'm much more on board, and generally believe in the U.S. playing a strong role in the world. Yet I struggle to square this with my aversion to overextending or getting mired in another Iraq debacle.
One of my stock lines around here is “judgment is all we have,” and that’s especially true about foreign policy. It all comes down to judgment about what’s in our national interest, which is itself a function of how we judge the proper scope of our interest in various situations down through the decades. All of which means I tend not to think about foreign policy in terms of first principles, if by that you mean something like, “The U.S. must always and everywhere defend and seek to expand democracy around the globe.” In my view, thinking about the world like that is going to lead you astray. (One example: Confronting Iran requires working with the Saudis, even though neither country is anything close to being a liberal democracy.)
This was obscured by the Cold War, in which we were both (1) facing a rival and opponent devoted to an ideology that sought the defeat and destruction of our political and economic system; and (2) responsible for defending Western Europe and Japan at a moment when they had just been utterly defeated in war and so were incapable of defending themselves. The confluence of those two facts gave us a sound basis for standing toe-to-toe with the USSR in Europe and with the USSR and China in East Asia from the late 1940s onward—based purely on national interest. But because there was an ideological aspect to the conflict, it made sense, in terms of our propaganda efforts, to portray the issue as one of “democracy” defending itself against “totalitarianism.” But that wasn’t the most fundamental cause the Cold War. The need to check Soviet ambitions, which we rightly judged as inimical to our interests, was the more fundamental cause.
But even within that narrower scope of Cold War thinking, it was possible to make bad judgment calls. I think Vietnam was one of them. The Johnson administration vastly underestimated the cost of pursuing containment of communism in that theater of the Cold War. From Vietnam to the War on Terror, I think we’ve seen that the attempt to control outcomes in what used to be called the Third World isn’t possible without greater expenditure of blood, treasure, and time than American voters (quite reasonably) are willing to support. One important reason is that, even if we mean well in attempting to export liberal democracy to these places, our very presence there confirms anti-colonialist narratives that make it relatively easy for opponents of our efforts in these places to organize insurgencies against us by making appeals based on local or national pride. Kick out the American imperialists! will work every time.
In Iraq, there was the added problem that our justification of the invasion and occupation in terms of national interest disappeared once we failed to find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. That left us with only a humanitarian rationale to power us through years of insurgency and civil war. No wonder support for the invasion curdled badly enough that it led the party that oversaw the invasion to undergo a radical reorientation away from humanitarianism over the next two decades.
Why, then, do I support the Biden administration’s policy in Ukraine? Because NATO has served us well, and Ukraine borders NATO. That makes what happens there much more important to the United States than what happens in, say, Sudan or Indonesia. But because Ukraine itself isn’t a member of NATO, what happens there doesn’t matter as much as what happens in Poland and Lithuania. Hence the wisdom of supporting Ukraine in its defense against Russia but not fighting in the conflict directly. That strikes me as a prudent middle position that fits the mid-level importance of Ukraine to the national interests of the United States.
If China, sensing American weakness and division, made a move on Taiwan, what should the U.S. do and what would be the downstream consequences of an invasion, especially as it relates to America's status as a world-bestriding superpower, the strategic calculations of other American allies in the region, and the economic fallout from a disruption in the supply of Taiwanese microchips?
I can’t possibly write an adequate answer to these questions in an AMA post. They deserve a book, or at least a full post of their own. I’ll simply say that if we don’t come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of a Chinese invasion, we will have shown the world that we don’t think opposing China’s regional ambitions are worth the cost. We will then have to do some serious, deep thinking about our willingness to defend Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and other East Asian allies. Short of some big demonstrations of such a willingness, none of those countries (or China) will be likely to believe our stated assurances. That will have enormous consequences on our standing in the world—and yes, it could give China control over Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, which would be very good for China and therefore bad for us.
But all of this assumes China would be capable of conquering Taiwan, even without our involvement. Would it be? Invading and conquering an island nation can be very challenging! (The British know this very well.)
Likewise, those who insist we would absolutely need to aid in Taiwan’s defense, even at the cost of direct war with China, tend to assume we would win or at least make Chinese victory over Taiwan much less likely. But what if China sinks a couple of our aircraft carriers and other naval vessels in quick order? Like my friend Noah Millman, I think it’s entirely possible that both China and the United States could lose in such a scenario—we could be defeated in a naval war with China, and China could be defeated in its effort to take Taiwan.
All of which shows why predicting the future with anything close to precision is extremely difficult!
The Fate of (Liberal) Democracy
I’m also a political science professor, and I teach American politics at a small, public regional school in a fairly rural area. About half of my majors are Trump supporters, half Democrats, and my non-majors just hate the topic in general but take it to fulfill a Gen Ed requirement. Regardless of political affiliation or belief, nobody speaks up in class anymore. It’s an ice skid. Next year will be my 22nd at the university and I have never had a problem engaging my students, but the past few years have been brutal and it’s only getting worse, thanks to the new ways people get their news and information. My question is this: How can we teach American politics to students who are a) predisposed to not believe me because they’ve been told liberal college professors are unfair; b) think I’m a squish for not driving a stake into the heart of MAGA; or c) avoid eye contact because they flatly refuse to answer even the most basic just-the-facts-ma’am question about the institutions of government? I’ve won the Distinguished Teaching Award four times, and even I am at a loss. Help?
Thanks very much for this question. My very tentative answer comes from a blend of my experience of teaching political theory as an existential pursuit with my commitment (as a certain kind of liberal) to refraining from making my own views known in the classroom. (When asked for them, my stock line is: This isn’t a class in Linker.) My advice would be to try and start from where your students are, which sounds like a position of maximal skepticism about even taking a class on politics. You could begin by saying, “I bet many of you hate politics. Or maybe you hate those of your fellow citizens who disagree with you about politics. Note that both possibilities presume that you know things—either, in the first case, what politics is; or in the second case, what politics should be. But are you right about that? Let’s try to figure that out this semester.”
Then you could move to using an icebreaker designed to get them talking. If they really resist that, you could also put their reticence on the table for discussion. “Why don’t you want to talk? What are you afraid of? That you’re going to say something wrong? Or that your peers in the class will think what you say is wrong? Or that your peers will say something you think is wrong and that gets you angry?” Once again, we see that they are presuming they know a lot of things about politics, both empirically and normatively. But do they? Your class will be an opportunity—maybe the one and only opportunity in their lives—to look into that question, to figure out whether what they know about politics is truly sound.
Another way to describe what I’m proposing is to say that it seeks to get them to reflect on the assumptions they bring to the class, from their families, communities, churches, the media, whatever. Yet another way to describe it is to say that your students need to learn how to disagree with each other, to criticize and face criticism, without it remaining at the level of unjustifiable assertion (Chocolate is best! No, vanilla is best!) and without it descending into hatred and violence over the disagreement.
I have no idea if this will work with the kinds of classes and material you teach. But it’s how I would respond to the very real challenge you describe. Good luck with it.
Do you worry at all about the authoritarian left's control of the federal bureaucracy? Most recent example: The EEOC just issued a diktat requiring any woman who needs to shower at the workplace to allow men to watch her do it. The men only need to think to themselves “I’m trans,” and it becomes illegal to remove them. What do you think of that policy? Do you think its sudden imposition is consistent with the notion that the U.S. is still a “democracy” in any meaningful sense?
Do I worry about this? No. Does it sound like a wise regulation? Probably not. But I’m not sure. Even if it is unwise, is it something that should take up a bigger portion of my brain than it currently does? I doubt it. Why? Well, let’s think about it. How many people must shower at their jobs? Not very many. And of those, how many of the employers provide only large, group showers as opposed to private stalls? Probably not many.
Now, how many out of 330 million Americans (1) hold such jobs (2) with such showers and (3) are publicly transgender (and also transwomen with penises as opposed to transmen with vaginas, since I presume the former are the ones posing threats to women in your eyes)? Couldn’t possibly be that many, right? Ten people out of 330 million? A hundred? Three hundred? Who knows. But by any plausible accounting, we’re talking about a teeny-tiny portion of the country. (And yes, I’m assuming that essentially no heterosexual man would pretend to be a transwoman at work simply in order to get a free pass into the women’s shower to ogle female coworkers in the nude.)
Sorry I haven’t validated your conviction that the United States is no longer a democracy “in any meaningful sense” because a federal regulatory agency is perhaps being somewhat overzealous in its effort to treat a very small number of Americans fairly.
One more thing to consider on this subject: Something around 3 percent of human beings are homosexual (which is something like six times the prevalence of transgenderism). That means some of the men and women in the gender-segregated public showers at work might be sexually aroused by seeing their same-sex coworkers in the buff. (This has been true for as long as public showers have been in existence.) Is this a problem you think needs to be addressed by federal or state laws or regulations? If so, congrats on your consistency. If not, maybe you should spend some time pondering why.
As EO Wilson famously said: “the real problem with humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. It is terrifically dangerous and now approaching crisis.” Do you see the rapid erosion of democracy to be a direct result of rapid social-technology adoption? And if so, what comes next?
I don’t think technology is leading to the “rapid erosion of democracy.” I think it’s one contributing factor to the erosion of liberal democracy, which is different. Democracy—the form of government that sees “the people” as the source of political legitimacy—is doing fine. The question is whether the people are beginning to favor illiberal forms of democracy as better suited to responding to and accurately representing public opinion. I do think the technological innovations of the past decade or so, on top of the innovations of the previous half-century or so (going back to the advent of television), may well be contributing to such a shift in the direction of illiberal democracy.
As for “what comes next,” I wish I knew. Beyond predicting it will be a period of greater internal instability than Americans have grown used to, I really have no idea.
If I were a billionaire and was willing to spend, say, $10 million over five years to support local and state level political/metapolitical journalism, how would you advise me to spend that money?
Would you believe I have no idea about this either? Honestly, this isn’t the kind of thing I think about. It also strikes me that $10 million is such a small amount of money that it wouldn’t do much good. It would be different if there were already some kind of network or enterprise you could contribute to. In that case, a $10 million donation might make a big splash in helping that organization to fulfill its mission. But starting something like that from scratch would require a lot more than $10 million. The U.S. is a huge place, with countless “local” places that are underserved by journalism—in large part because people aren’t reading or watching it where it survives. How much money will it take to get many millions of Americans to eat their civic broccoli? Hell if I know.
Historically speaking, how illiberal does a populace have to be to tip a nation out of representative government? In other words, how substantial does the liberal center need to be in order to hold, especially given that this group is probably inherently less vocal, less activist, etc. than the extremes on the left or right?
I don’t think there’s any hard-and-fast minimal level of centrism or cohesion that it’s necessary to maintain. It’s just bad when the country becomes very polarized, with each side viewing a win by the other as worse or more dangerous than breaking from norms governing the peaceful transfer of power to prevent such a win. That’s why Trump’s reaction to the 2020 election was so ominous: It showed that, for him and his most rabid supporters, we’d already gotten to that point. His efforts to halt the transfer of power were thwarted, but will they be the next time? It will depend on the success of Republican moves to replace rule-of-law types in key institutional positions with people who would rather hold onto power than stick to the norms of liberal-democratic procedure.
(For more on this, see my comments above about the relative lack of threat from Trump losing in November when he isn’t already in elective office, and my other comments about the threat of Trump pushing through Schedule F reform, and still other comments about a scenario in which Trump invokes the Insurrection Act to combat mass protests to his presidency.)
Damon, your response to Alison Dagnes is superb. It shows a great and practical wisdom in terms of how to engage contentious subjects in a necessarily pedagogical (and thus at least moderately parental) environment, the sort of wisdom that I recognize I too often fail to exercise, and I've been teaching for decades. Well done, sir.
Thank you for the thoughtful response to my question! That way of approaching FP strikes me as much more sensible to some unyielding grand strategy or set of ideological priors (see: John Bolton).
To Lukas Bird: if you haven't read it already, check out "Revolt of the Public" by Martin Gurri. It directly relates to your question; I suspect you'll enjoy it.