Gut-Check Time on Biden v. Trump
As we prepare for a contest pitting the sitting president against the former president, it seems fitting to explain the kind of commentary you’re likely to see here over the next eight months
Every now and then I feel compelled to step back from commenting on the political scene to reflect on my own assumptions, premises, and fundamental habits of mind. The audience for this Substack has grown a lot since its early days, when I wrote several posts like this. It seems time for a new one crafted for this particular moment.
The proximal occasion for this piece is the post I published on Friday morning about Joe Biden’s State of the Union. Just about every left-leaning or explicitly anti-Trump pundit was extremely impressed with the speech, while every staunch conservative or Republican hated it. In keeping with the title of this Substack, my response was somewhere … in the middle—not in the sense that Biden’s remarks led me to waver in my commitment to vote for him in November, but in the sense that I thought the speech (in both content and delivery) was merely … fine. I was quite sure it would cheer up Democratic listeners but less sure it would change the impressions of the swing voters the president most needs to win over (again).
This didn’t sit well with some of my subscribers, who left critical comments on the post. That’s fine, of course. But several of the comments said much the same thing—and others left similar remarks in response some statements I (and others) made about Biden on to the “Beg to Differ” podcast last week (which was recorded before the SOTU). I’m going to quote one of those comments, anonymously, because it so nicely distills the criticism I keep hearing in both places.
Damon [and others on the podcast] are so completely negative and pessimistic that they are contributing to the downfall of our Democracy. … It is past time to put aside your trepidation about Biden’s candidacy and policies and do everything you can to get him elected. Hopelessness and apathy are friends to authoritarians. They lead to people staying home. You can offer suggestions for changes in policy without gloom and doom and trashing Biden.
The message here is admirably clear: The critic wants me to write and say things that will contribute to Biden winning and stop saying things that will supposedly demoralize voters, leading them to give up hope for victory and so possibly skip voting on Election Day. Which means the critic wants me to suppress my critical intellect or otherwise bring it into alignment with the kind of talking points that might be released by the Biden campaign’s communications office.
The Contested Place of “The Media” in Our Politics
The commenter quoted above assumes, like many other highly engaged left-leaning voters, that elections are won and lost by what “the media” is saying. If journalists talk about how great Biden did in his speech last week, the electorate will think he did great. But if, instead, journalists grumble about his remarks, the electorate will conclude Biden is weak and struggling. And if they think he’s weak and struggling, they will be disinclined to bother casting ballots for him.
To take the second point first, I’m unpersuaded that this is a psychologically valid chain of reasoning. If I think it’s important for Biden to defeat Trump and I fear Biden could be on the verge of losing, won’t I be more motivated to show up on Election Day than I would be if I assume he’s going to trounce the former president? Sports fans might be more inclined to show up for a football or basketball game if the home team is on a winning streak and less inclined to make the effort if they worry they’ll be passively watching a loss. But voting is different: The outcome is entirely a function of who shows up on the day votes are cast.
Then there’s the broader claim about the media and its role in our political culture. As the proprietor of a Substack with about 13,500 subscribers, fewer than 1,200 of whom pay to read (most of) my posts in their entirety, I’m inclined to scoff at efforts to apply this analysis to little ol’ me. I’m a modest-sized drop in an enormous bucket, and that should free me up to say anything I want. I could write two posts a week for the next eight months attacking Biden and it would make no measurable difference to the outcome. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to do that.)
But is this humility or false modesty? It’s true my following on here is quite tiny in the scheme of things. Yet my writings not-infrequently appear on other, larger platforms, like the New York Times, the Atlantic, CNN, the Daily Beast, and Persuasion. I’m just one voice in the din of the massive American agora, but I am a voice. Shouldn’t I be using it to defeat Donald Trump, which requires actively boosting Joe Biden?
As you might have guessed, I don’t think so. But why?
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