The Most/Least Predictable of Times
American politics has become both completely predictable and disorientingly uncertain
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If someone sent you this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
My apologies again for today’s canceled Zoom cast. Hopefully, I’ll have a functioning computer again soon!
We Know Everything/We Know Nothing
On Thursday, I had lunch with a friend, and we got into a conversation about whether Vice President Kamala Harris would make for a compelling future presidential candidate. It was one of those theoretical discussions that those of us who spend far too much time thinking, reading, and talking about politics sometimes find ourselves engaged in. But as we got more into the topic, I found myself slightly exasperated. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next year, no less in 2024 or four years after that,” I said. Perhaps that was a bit overconfident … I don’t know what will happen in American politics next week.
To be sure, it’s always been a challenge to see into the political future. I wrote a book a couple of years ago on the 1968 election, and one of the more striking elements of that campaign is how quickly the nation’s politics shifted. In ‘64, Lyndon Johnson got more than 61 percent of the popular vote against Barry Goldwater. The Republican appeared forlorn and seemingly devoid of hope. Four years later, Johnson was hounded out of the White House by his own party, and his Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, received less than 43 percent of the vote against Richard Nixon. Rarely before had the country seen such a stark reversal in fortune — and one that no political observer saw coming (except ironically Humphrey, but you’ll need to read the book to get that story!).
Those four years were an outlier. American politics rarely, if ever, shifts that dramatically, and right now, we are in a period of remarkable stasis. The shift in the popular vote percentage received by the two major-party candidates was relatively small (Trump improved by 0.8, and Biden did 3.1 better than Hillary Clinton). It essentially confirms that we are a very narrowly and bitterly divided country.
Beyond the electoral outcomes, even with a narrow divide in both the House and Senate, Democrats have passed one major piece of legislation (the American Rescue Plan). It appears quite likely that they will soon pass a major infrastructure bill and a multi-trillion dollar budget bill. Afghanistan is dominating the news today, but once US troops depart, it will likely fade from consciousness, as it so often has in the past.
Yet, there is still so much uncertainty out there. Will we ever get past COVID-19? Will we return to some semblance of normalcy as kids head back to school this Fall and offices fill up again with workers? Will the former president of the United States be indicted for any number of offenses — be it inciting a riot, tax evasion, or obstruction of justice? Will the GOP’s assault on democracy continue, and will the increasingly violent rhetoric of the far-right go beyond words to action? What’s the next major weather event, and which region of the country will bear the brunt? There’s a discombobulation to our national politics these days that is perhaps best summed up by this gif.
A big part of the issue is that the range of possible political outcomes is so much greater than in the past. We are still living through a major black swan event - the global pandemic. But there have been others: a twice-impeached incumbent president who tried to steal a presidential election and inspired an insurrection on Capitol Hill. Vaccine and mask mandate hostility may not qualify as a black swan event. Still, Republican governors and state legislators purposely and ostentatiously trying to lift public health restrictions and put their own citizens at risk of getting sick is something that is so outside the realm of what many of us ever imagined possible. Honestly, if you had “people drinking horse de-wormer rather than take an easily accessible and highly effective vaccine” on your 2021 Bingo Card … you win. One of the recurrent refrains of the Trump era is that there is no bottom — and that continues. The only thing that surprises me anymore is that I’m still capable of being surprised.
There’s another factor at play too. Since we’re living in an era of extreme polarization, the usual political guideposts don’t apply. In 2020, hundreds of thousands of Americans died, and Trump did little to mitigate the impact or follow basic public health precautions. He was impeached for inciting an insurrection. He still constantly lies about the 2020 election — and none of this has dented his support among Republicans. If anything, they appear more devoted to him. I’ve never before seen a political party so wedded to one political leader after he has left office. It feels almost unimaginable that Republicans would be foolish enough to nominate Trump for the White House in 2024, but at the same time, it also feels like the most imaginable possibility.
On the Democratic side, it’s entirely possible, even likely, that the economy will dramatically improve next year (that tends to happen when you pump several trillion dollars into it). But it’s far from clear that Biden and his party will accrue significant benefit from it, which is something that rarely happens in American politics. Usually, as the economy goes, so goes the president’s approval. But that wasn’t true during Trump’s presidency. It wasn’t true at the tail end of Obama’s presidency, and it seems unlikely to happen now. Since the country is so polarized, Republicans know they aren’t going to win over Democratic voters, so they have every rationale to do and say whatever crazy thing that excites their political base. That’s precisely the reason there is no bottom: the current political incentives encourage more digging.
These elements have combined in creating a political environment that is confusing and uncertain yet overlaid, bizarrely enough, by rather odd predictability. We know with near precision how Democrats and Republicans will land on 90-95 percent of issues. We know what the vast majority of voters are simply unpersuadable, and, strange as it may sound, we have a fairly good sense of where the current legislative politics will end up. But it’s what we don’t know and what we haven’t imagined that constantly upends the apple cart.
As another friend put it to me today, paraphrasing Charles Dickens, “it’s the most predictable of times; it’s the most unpredictable of times.”
What’s Going On?
The New York Times interviewed New York’s new governor, Kathy Hochul, and she had a very interesting comment on redistricting.
Do you plan to use your influence to help Democrats expand the House majority through the redistricting process?
Yes. I am also the leader of the New York State Democratic Party. I embrace that.
I have a responsibility to lead this party, as well as the government. I’m going to be doing whatever I can to let people know that the values of the Democratic Party today are part of who I am, fighting for people that just had a tough blow dealt to them in life.
Not only is this smart politics for a candidate who is likely thinking about the 2022 governor’s race, but it suggests a more aggressive attitude toward keeping Democrats in the majority in the House of Representatives. Or, to put it in simpler terms, Hochul is acting as Republicans do.
The horse de-wormer story is … I don’t know people. There’s a picture of a horse on the package. A horse.
Great piece by Emma Ashford on the Afghanistan Papers.
I’m going to do something a bit unusual today: I’m recommending my books! I mentioned above that I wrote a book on the 1968 presidential election. It’s called American Maelstrom, and if you haven’t read it, you should consider picking up a copy. It offers, I think, a fairly good primer on how we got to our current place in American politics — and argues that the roots of our current divisions and intense polarization began in that seminal year. Unfortunately, for a reason that basically boils down to “Amazon is evil,” it’s not on Kindle. But you can download it from Apple Books or Barnes and Noble for the Nook. Or you can read it the old-fashioned way.
I co-wrote another book, more recently, called “Clear and Present Safety.” It’s all about why the world is safer than ever, how the foreign policy community inflates foreign threats, and America’s most significant challenges are on the home front. So it has some relevance to what’s happening in the news right now. Also, it is available on Kindle (though Amazon is still evil).
Musical Interlude
I was lucky enough to see concerts last week - two Dead and Company shows and a Wilco show sandwiched in the middle. All three were excellent, though Wilco did play in a driving rainstorm, which was less than ideal. The Dead and Company shows were two of the best I’ve seen, and I was amazed how tight they sounded after a nearly two-year layoff because of the pandemic. The second set in Bethel Woods, New York, featured the band playing their entire set list from Woodstock, a show the band has called one of the worst of their career. They did better this time!