In The Wall Street Journal’s latest poll of the 2024 election, President Biden and former president Donald Trump are locked at 46% each. Other recent polls have shown essentially the same thing. While there will be many twists and turns before next November, at this point the race is a toss-up.
If that makes you feel like your country has gone mad, you’re not alone.
This is not a feeling we talk about much. While political reporters obsess over the anger and resentments felt by blue-collar white men in Rust Belt diners, liberals’ emotions are seldom considered worthy of the same kind of exploration.
How is it that half of our fellow citizens can contemplate for an instant giving Trump all that power again?
Even those who feel this way know it’s an irrational way to approach politics. I could offer you a lengthy and sober explanation of why a Trump-Biden election will be so close. I can give you chapter and verse to detail why it is that a former president who faces four separate criminal indictments, who attempted to overturn a lawful election, who oozes corruption and dishonesty, and who has made clear his intention to practically dismantle the American system of democracy as soon as he gets the chance, is nearly an even bet to take back the White House.
I can describe the power of partisanship in a polarized age. I can explain the incentive structure that keeps Republican politicians in line behind Trump. I can tell you why Biden gets no credit for bringing the economy back from the depths of recession. I can explain why, despite the fact that he has literally the best one-term job creation record of any president in history; inflation has fallen to 3%; and he has signed legislation providing some of the most important investments in decades, most Americans think Biden has done a poor job on the economy.
I can tell you all that, calmly and reasonably. I’ve done so so many times, when asked by friends, relatives and interviewers. I’ve written so many articles about the nature of Trump’s appeal that I lost count long ago.
Yet part of me looks at those polls and wants to respond not with calm and reason, but with a blood-curdling scream of rage. Or at least with the kind of frustration bordering on despair that usually prompts those questions in the first place.
How can it possibly be, I keep getting asked, that after everything we’ve been through since 2015, even 5% of Americans, let alone 45%, would consider letting him within a mile of the White House? How is it that half of our fellow citizens can contemplate for an instant giving Trump all that power again?
Conservatives disagree vehemently with Biden’s policy choices, you say? Fine — there are a dozen other Republicans running for president, most of whom are quite right-wing, yet not lunatics. Why not pick one of them?
Some details of the primary race may have been unexpected (Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ swift fall, for instance), but Trump’s glide to the nomination is no surprise at all. Anyone who pays close attention to politics by now has a Ph.D. in Trumpology gained over years of watching and considering the man himself, the carnival roadshow of his devoted cultists, and the more casual supporters who keep him atop his party. We all saw this coming. But when you step back for a moment, the whole picture can seem even worse than it was, like a horror movie when the protagonist wakes from her nightmare only to realize she’s still in her nightmare.
Now sanity itself seems a temporary anomaly.
My informal canvas of liberal friends reveals that this feeling — something like incredulous despair verging on panic — is not unusual. We tamp it down and joke about it, but it never disappears. Tens of millions of Americans are fine with Trump’s brand of revanchist authoritarianism, and even yearn for it. Tens of millions more see him as just one choice among many; maybe they’ll vote for him again if the price of gas goes up.
Like many on the left, I will never again be seduced by the inspiring feeling of hope and belonging we felt when Barack Obama was elected in 2008. But the emotions of 2020 were supposed to be less naïve. When Biden won, it felt like a return to sanity. Yes, this abominable person temporarily took hold of our political world, but in the end the electorate did the right thing and sent him packing.
But now sanity itself seems a temporary anomaly. Trump came back, not in some friendlier packaging like the “New Nixon” of 1968, but even worse than before. He quickly regained whatever support he lost in the wake of Jan. 6, as though it never happened.
To be clear, just as I could explain why Trump is in a relatively strong position, I could also offer many good reasons why Biden has the advantage in the general election, and why the most likely outcome may be a repeat of 2020, which he won rather handily. At this time 12 years ago, Barack Obama trailed slightly in the polls, and he won comfortably the following year. The odds are still ever so slightly in Biden’s favor.
But even if that is the outcome, and even if we spend another year between now and the election carefully analyzing the structure and shape of the madhouse we’re locked in, it’s still a madhouse.
As infuriating as it is to admit the electorate may choose another Trump term, the only answer may be to hold on to that truth. Rejecting reality only replicates Republicans’ errors that led to Trump’s rise. Exercise your reason, stay informed, understand what’s happening in all its detail. But at those times when you want to scream in fear and anger, don’t think you’re being foolish or irrational. It just means you can see what’s in front of you.