Ask Me Anything—December 2023

I answer questions about how to ensure Trump's defeat in 2024, the right anti-anti-Semitic position to take on Israel, and whether AI will give us new music by dead artists forevermore

Credit: Malte Mueller (Getty Images)

I got sick while traveling over the past week and I’m afraid my voice can’t handle reading this lengthy AMA post. So this will be my first post in a very long time without an audio version. If you make a habit of listening to my posts, I’m sorry about that. I’m sure I’ll be back to reading next week.

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Tony
Do you think Biden will ultimately be the Democratic nominee next fall? Will it be Biden/Harris again?

Unless President Joe Biden dies or suffers an incapacitating medical event between now and Election Day 2024, he will be the Democratic nominee for president. And Vice President Kamala Harris will be his running mate. (Biden shows no signs at all of stepping aside, and no one running against him in the Democratic primaries is anywhere close to defeating him. As for Harris, she is no longer polling worse than Biden, which means she’s no longer a liability, if she ever was one.)

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Bill Murphy
What do you think are the most important principles to guide those seeking to build a coalition/movement to save/renew American democracy?

Ken Peabody
What steps can individuals take to ensure Trump's defeat in the 2024 election?

At the level of individual citizen, all you can do is vote and try to make the pro-Biden/anti-Trump case to family and friends, realizing there’s no guarantee those members of your family or friend group will be convinced. Volunteering for the Biden/Harris campaign might also make sense if you live in a swing state.

When it comes to what the Biden campaign, Democratic officeholders, and pro-Biden/anti-Trump opinion journalists should do, I think it involves trying to divide the Republican coalition by highlighting issues that GOP voters disagree about. These include: how much to restrict abortion, and whether to do so at the state or federal levels; whether and how much to cut Social Security and Medicare in order to shrink the deficit; and how to conduct foreign policy (especially whether to continue funding Ukraine in its war with Russia).

As for a positive case for Biden, that will only prove effective if voters at large begin to feel like increases in their own wages are beginning to compensate for the sharp price hikes of the inflationary period of 2021-2022. Which means Biden’s fate will be determined to a considerable (and unnerving) extent by economic “vibes.”

Finally: Note that I haven’t said anything about describing Trump as a threat to American democracy. That’s because I think those who see that threat are already convinced and those who don’t see the threat are, by this point, pretty unpersuadable—and certainly so by Democrats making the case. The Biden campaign will continue to make that case, as will opinion journalists, but I doubt it will do much to move people. (This places me at the opposite extreme from those left-leaning media critics who constantly harangue mainstream outlets to stop “normalizing” Trump and insist they must actively frame every story about him in terms of his dictatorial aspirations. I agree that Trump has those aspirations but I think that if ordinary journalists adopt that framing on every story, the few remaining Republicans who get their news from mainstream outlets will join the rest of their party in tuning out.)

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Dalessandro
What is the anti-anti-Semitic position to take in opposition to Israel's current government? Also, are the predictions of Benjamin Netanyahu’s political demise based on a lot of wishful thinking?

The anti-anti-Semitic position is to say that Israel, like every other country in the world, cannot and will not tolerate living next to a political organization that seeks its elimination and is willing to act on that goal with ruthless, deadly force, as Hamas did on October 7. The current war to destroy Hamas is therefore fully justified.

But, Israel’s current coalition government includes far-right parties that support the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank—and this goal is broadly compatible with the settler movement’s longstanding pursuit of such ethnic cleansing in slow motion. This doesn’t undermine the legitimacy of the current war against Hamas, but it does badly compromise Israel’s current government. I have appreciated Joe Biden’s steadfast support for Israel through this crisis, but I would also appreciate him pivoting to a harder line once the current war in Gaza has been completed. This would include making military aid contingent on a settlement freeze. Barack Obama attempted this in the opening years of his presidency, but it didn’t last. I hope Biden makes another attempt.

As for Netanyahu’s fate, I don’t know. The man clearly hasn’t a shred of magnanimity in him. He will fight to the political death to maintain control of the Likud Party, no matter how unpopular the polls reveal him to be. As long as that’s the case, and as long as the electorate continues to lean right (which it almost certainly will post-October 7), it will be extremely challenging to form a government without Netanyahu (just as it will also prove extremely challenging to form a government with him). And that assumes his current government falls, which it hasn’t yet. So we’ll have to wait and see.

One final point on Israel: As I was writing this response, I saw an interview clip in which the Israel ambassador to the UK answered a question about the possibility of a future Palestinian state like this: “The answer is absolutely no.” That is the official position of the current Israeli government and Netanyahu himself. If this doesn’t change, I fear support for Israel in the U.S. and throughout the liberal-democratic world will fall further. But I also wanted to add that it’s hardly surprising Israelis (not just its elected government but Israeli public opinion more generally) would hold this view in the aftermath of October 7. What, you expected being the victims of a mass slaughter by the Palestinians living right next door would inspire the Israeli electorate to become more open to the founding of an independent Palestinian state? The absurdity of the question helps to illustrate why those who long for a two-state solution should be among the most unrelentingly critical of Hamas’ bloodthirsty tactics, which aim at the elimination of Israel, not accommodation with it.  

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Kevin Bowe
To build off a recent piece you wrote about the prospect for a “rational middle” developing into a stronger political force, don't you think that our election system has too many incentives that reward extremism and punish moderation? (An obvious example is a member of Congress who is afraid to take a moderate position because for fear of losing in the next primary election.) What do you think could change the dynamics and reward moderate behavior?

Kevin
Recently, much of my thinking has focused on the proper balance between democracy and republican government. To wit: Would you prefer the primary nomination system be expanded or constricted (more “democracy” vs. “smoke filled rooms”), and what role should term limits play, if any, in finding that balance?

Tim
I'm a Bulwark subscriber and I really enjoy “The Focus Group” podcast. I always find myself wondering whether or not those in party leadership get connected to these voters' unvarnished takes or if all of that is really just screaming into the void.

There are a lot of things feeding into extremism/polarization: the ideological sorting of the parties since the mid-20th century; the increasing potency of negative messaging to drive voter turnout; the nationalization of political engagement; and an incentive-structure in the media that rewards sharply argued “hot takes” that demonize and concede nothing to the opposing side of the argument.

But underlying all of these broadly structural trends is the primary system for choosing general-election candidates. That system tends to incentivize extremism because the most politically engaged and informed voters (those most likely to show up to vote in primaries) tend to be highly motivated by extreme ideological appeals. The solution to this aspect of the problem is the adoption of a different set of rules. Instead of giving the win to the candidate who achieves a bare plurality, use rank-choice (instant runoff) voting or an actual second-round runoff vote among the first round’s top two candidates. I prefer the latter because it’s more transparent to voters who these days tend to be maximally inclined to distrust election officials.

I think this would be likely to give us fewer victorious extreme candidates, but it wouldn’t guarantee this outcome, since it’s always possible that more than 50 percent of the voters in any given district hold extreme views. But it sets a higher threshold for victory, and in doing so it would make it more difficult for the extremists to prevail against moderates. Note also that this is just as democratic as our current system, not some imposition of anti-democratic republicanism, or a reversion to smoke-filled rooms, neither of which are possible in the present. Despite the Republican frontrunner’s authoritarian instincts and aspirations, rhetorical appeals to “democracy” remain the only game in town when it comes to political legitimacy. (If Trump ended democracy in America, he would be guaranteed to do so in the same of vindicating democracy.)

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Azor Cigelske
I've read your posts for a year and a half now, and the one subject I would like to see you expound on is the connection between psychology and political beliefs. How much does our background (and possibly our trauma) inform our political identity? And is there a possible cure for divisiveness by recognizing this?

Back in August 2022, I wrote a post on this exact subject that I’m still proud of. I’m afraid my thinking hasn’t advanced much beyond what I wrote then, so I’ll just send you there for an answer.

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John Murphy
What is your view on the rolling personal rights revolution that has done so much to drive the culture war? In your “Letter to My Daughter,” you expressed support for Roe v. Wade, and in “Ten Theses for Liberals on Sex and Gender,” you criticized aspects of trans ideology while nevertheless supporting an unspecified slate of trans rights. I think stances like these needlessly politicize the law, give issue advocates and others who are conversant in the law a cheat code to do end-runs around the democratic process, give legislators an excuse to punt on difficult issues, and help fuel the sense of alienation and dispossession on the part of those who are the losing side of these issues. Why am I wrong?

I think we need to be clear what we’re talking about here. The main problem, as I see it, is anti-discrimination law, which grows out of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its language prohibiting employment discrimination “based on race, sex, color, religion, and national origin.” Given the unique history of anti-black discrimination in American history flowing from the institution of slavery and its pernicious legacy (Jim Crow, redlining, etc.), I would have preferred the key passage to read simply “based on race or color” and to apply only to black Americans. What we’ve gotten instead is an ever-lengthening list of groups claiming to part of a specially protected class, with able-bodied white males their assumed oppressors in every case. I think that’s been civically corrosive, though I also recognize it’s very late in the day and hard to imagine it being reversed at this point.

This is different from groups claiming rights stated or implied under the Constitution, which is perfectly legitimate—though I agree with you that it’s usually better for groups to seek the recognition of these rights in the democratic arena than to rely on them being proclaimed by the courts, because the later has the effect of reversing/invalidating democratically elected laws, which can spark a potent backlash in the name of “the people.”

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Russell Arben Fox
With the release of the “new” Beatles song “Now and Then,” is there anything you'd want to add to or change about your two big columns for The Week about the end of classic rock and roll? Strictly speaking, of course, your basic point holds completely: All of these musical stars from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s are going to totter off and die eventually, a lot of them probably quite soon. But does AI introduce any kind of wrinkle to your thesis, allowing long-dead artists to remain alive, with new songs and performances?

My answer is an unambivalent no. “Now and Then” isn’t a real Beatles song, and neither are “Real Love” and “Free as a Bird,” songs that first appeared as part of the mid-1990s Anthology project. These are Beatles* songs—with the asterisk conveying that the surviving members of the band finished a song demoed by a deceased member of the band long after the band itself had broken up. (The recently released Rolling Stones album, incidentally, is different because the band’s primary songwriters, its singer, and its lead guitar player—Mick Jagger and Keith Richards—are still alive and both contributed fully to the record. That wasn’t possible for the Beatles after John Lennon was killed.)

AI really doesn’t change anything about this distinction. It merely provides a powerful tool with which to clean up lower-fidelity recordings. On the other hand, what if AI is used to extrapolate from existing material to create a new “song”? My answer: That wouldn’t even be a new song by the Beatles*. It would be more like Beatles music.

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Greg Stewart
The issues and attitudes that we call “woke” are broadly unpopular, and I fear they will put Trump in office. Do you think the good fortunes Trump is enjoying in the polls, and especially the move of minorities toward Trump, is related to this?

Aversion to social-justice progressivism (or “woke” ideology) is certainly one thing driving Trump’s presidential campaign. I’m not sure it makes much sense to fight wokism by voting for Trump, given that the progressive left flourished and wokeness exploded during his presidency. But there’s no reason to think people are going to listen to me on this.

I also think it’s easy to overstate this dimension of what’s going on. Joe Biden doesn’t portray himself as a warrior for social justice. His approval ratings first fell through the floor during the hapless withdrawal from Afghanistan. Polls consistently show voters are most concerned with price hikes associated with inflation and high interest rates. Woke stuff is in there somewhere, but I’m not convinced it’s the main driver of Biden’s troubles or Trump’s relative elevation in the polls.

That goes for Trump’s apparently rising support from minorities as well. That appears to be driven primarily by the country’s increasing educational polarization. Opposition to woke trends likely follows from that shift, since those who graduate from elite colleges tend to be the most culturally progressive, while those who don’t attend college tend to hold more conservative cultural views.

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Bruce Kelly
This is an invitation to speculate, but... I'm curious about where you think your former colleague Richard John Neuhaus would be politically today. All in for Trump? My guess is that's where he'd be, although shrouded in a fog of obfuscation. He would have had little respect for Trump personally, but he cared more about politicians delivering the goods. What do you think?

I received a question like this in an earlier AMA post, so I’m just going to quote from my answer. Note that this earlier question was put in terms of what Neuhaus would think of the current right-populist iteration of First Things.

The question of what Neuhaus would think of FT today is a hard one—and obviously entirely speculative. The answer depends on whether I assume he would have remained wedded to the principles and modes of thinking that carried him through most of the last 2-3 decades of his life. (He died in 2009.) If he continued to affirm those principles and modes of thinking, he would have become a Dispatch-style center-right Never Trumper who refused to vote for Joe Biden and held out for the GOP to regain its senses. 

My hunch is that this wouldn’t have been where he ended up. For one thing, Neuhaus was a left-wing antiliberal radical in his youth, and as I explain in The Theocons, that radicalism sometimes returned after he migrated to the right, especially when he became convinced his own side was in danger of losing. That means, in terms of temperament, he would have been susceptible to the same despair and desperation that convinced many on the right during the second term of the Obama administration to give Trumpian populism a try. (The Obergefell decision embedding same-sex marriage in the Constitution would likely have been a major catalyst for him, as it was for many others on the religious right.)

The other thing that may have pushed RJN toward the populist right is Pope Francis. The thought that Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Pope Benedict XVI were all allies, fighting for the same things, was a huge contributing factor to Neuhaus’ political commitments. The church coming to be led by someone clearly on the leftward side of decades-old debates would have shaken him and forced him to re-evaluate a lot of his prior judgments about where history was heading. Could it have led him to shift FT in the populist direction the current editor (R.R. Reno) has embraced? I think so. Though I’m a little uncomfortable saying that precisely because it’s based entirely on my own musings.

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George Scialabba
In “Liberalism v. The Left,” you wrote: “[Patriotism and other] forms of particularism are coeval with human social and political life.” But violence, bullying, deception, and greed are also coeval with human social and political life. No one thinks this is a sufficient reason for their continuing to exist. You endorse Isaiah Berlin's recommendation that nationalism and other forms of particularism should be “tamed, moderated, and humanized.” If that's the best that can be done, fine. But utopians believe we can do better than that. Why are we wrong?

If violence, bullying, deception, and greed are as coeval with human social and political life as what I called in that post “sub-universal forms of communal solidarity,” then that is something we should also take note of as we try to determine the limits of what is possible in politics. If the anti-liberal left has one enduring defect, it is, in my view, an irritable unwillingness to accept any such limits on the possible. One way to describe that unwillingness is to call it “utopian.” I have no objection to that, since the word means literally “no place” in ancient Greek, which is as it should be.

Now, if the utopian idea is a kind of model or blueprint of a better society that we can use in reforming our own, then I have no objection to it at all, provided we don’t lose sight of the difference between ideas and reality. Is it possible, for example, to eliminate violence, bullying, deception, and greed? Or can they only be minimized? My study of history and political philosophy teach me that the latter is the best we’ll ever do, because these human tendencies are too widespread and commonplace to be eliminated entirely—and that the effort to do more than that is likely to be a cure worse than the disease. The history of the anti-liberal left, from the Soviet Union to Maoist China to the Khmer Rouge and beyond, is one marked by lots of such false cures administered by people who refused to accept limits on what is possible in politics.

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NancyB
When Republicans say that Democrats/liberals in America have become so radical that almost any means are justified to keep them out of power (the “Flight 93” rationale), exactly what do they have in mind? Putting to one side whether their perspective is overblown or not, what do you think has convinced so many Republicans that we are one inch away from Armageddon?

Most of the people on the right who hold such views can point to a “long train of abuses and usurpations,” an elaborate story of decline going back to the 1960s, or the New Deal, or Woodrow Wilson and the Progressives, or Andrew Jackson, or Machiavelli, or William of Occam, or the founding of Christianity, or the withdrawal of Being with the advent of Platonic philosophy. America used to be wonderful—maybe even the “best regime” possible for human beings—but then there was a fall away from this Golden Age of self-government into the dystopian present. In that present, we have rule by unaccountable bureaucrats and robed tyrants on the Supreme Court, along with broad-based moral decline that has men behaving like women, women behaving like sluts, couples opting for pets instead of kids, the Holocaust of legalized abortion, the Canadian government facilitating the death of poor and depressed people, and the entire moral order of creation collapsing into anarchy.

You get the idea. I’ve blended bits and pieces from several such stories of decline. The details don’t really matter. What matters is the form: Golden Age; revolutionary fall and decline; and the need for a counter-revolution to retvrn us to the mythical past before the abomination of the administrative state, ugly architecture, universal suffrage, Taylor Swift, modernity, Hawaiian pizza, etc.

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Gary
Is it possible that America doesn’t work over the long term unless some minimum number of white Christians feel comfortable with their place in our society?

It’s possible, but I don’t think so. I don’t like thinking about our disagreements in terms of identity categories like that. If people on the right started saying, “I hold my views because I’m a white Christian and I’m sick of non-white non-Christians having an influence,” that would be one thing. But that isn’t what most of them say. I’d rather engage with their actual claims, poke holes in them, and then ascend to truer positions. But then, I’m unsure if I’ve understood your intent in asking this question.

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Bruce Deacon
If Donald Trump were to win in 2024, how could Democrats defend against his actions to replace civil servants with Trump servants?

Other than going to the courts and asking them to block Schedule F reform (which is what you’re referring to), I’m unsure what Democrats can do. I certainly wouldn’t advise taking to the streets. I explain why in answer to the next and final question.

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Al Z
Please assess the likelihood and likely form of political violence we can expect in connection with the election, whether Trump or Biden wins.

I don’t much worry about violence if Biden wins. Not that some angry right-wingers couldn’t be tipped into rioting and terrorism, but even if some did take that turn, the country and its form of government would remain intact. (In an 18-month period in 1971 and 1972, there were 2,500 bombings on American soil by left-wing terrorists, and most people today haven’t even heard about it.) The difference between January 6, 2021 and what might follow a Biden win in 2024 is that Biden is already the president. It was conceivable that the sitting president and his supporters might have held onto power after losing nearly 3 years ago; it is close to inconceivable Trump and his supporters could topple the sitting president after losing a year from now.

What worries me far more is a series of events that could follow a Trump victory next November. I laid out this scenario in a recent post and so will close by, once again, quoting myself. Nothing about politics keeps me up at night, but pondering this possible series of events comes closest.

• Trump wins the election next November.

• Protests begin very quickly and accelerate as inauguration day approaches.

• On that day or soon after, larger protests break out in cities across the country. They quickly turn violent, on a scale roughly equal to or surpassing the riots and looting that frequently intermingled with peaceful protests in the weeks following George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in late May 2020.

• Before long, President Trump invokes the Insurrection Act and deploys troops to disperse these protests. 

• Soon trigger-happy soldiers shoot and kill some protesters, which sparks larger protests and more spectacular acts of violence.

• At which point, Trump declares martial law in several American cities.