Our No-Win Scenario

There’s still time to avoid a Biden-Trump rematch, but it would require party leaders to lead.

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Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden at the first 2020 presidential debate. (Photo by Jim Watson, Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

America’s decision tree has gone horribly awry.

The Constitution doesn’t mention political parties, but the Constitution and the two-party system rest on a central Madisonian idea: make politics safer and more boring. James Madison wouldn’t put it that way, though John Adams might.

Both our formal and informal political decision-making processes are designed to force a lot of debate and contemplation, to secure buy-in from diverse coalitions of interests and stakeholders. One reason for constitutional checks and balances is to make sure that momentary popular passions don’t overpower reason with demagoguery.

The parties, meanwhile, are supposed to pick candidates who are the least objectionable to the broadest array of interests within the party coalition. Even the primaries—which I loathe—were intended to give geographically diverse voters a chance to see if a candidate has the temperament and character to be president. They’re also supposed to give the press and other institutions an opportunity to vet candidates before they get the nomination.

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  1. R. James

    TD cannot even recommend an alternative; so, I'm not sure why they expect Americans to choose one.

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  2. Todd.S.Boyce

    Biden need only do one thing to win: offer to withdraw his nomination if Trump does the same. Such a move would signal to those independents and reluctant Biden voters that he understands. Trump won’t do it of course and the GOP won’t take advantage, but the offer would be impressive.

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    1. R. James

      Biden wants power. His family needs it to create wealth. This will not happen.

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    2. Dnanni

      This will not happen. It is a pipe dream.

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  3. Pasayten

    It has occurred to me that the party of Lincoln has been transformed into the party of Jeff Davis. Sadly the ineluctable presence of Mr T turns that observation into an insult on reputation of the president of the rebellious confederacy.

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    1. R. James

      LOL

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    Connie

    If we had more voters voting in the primaries, the rabid would not rule the roost.

    We are the problem. The people who strive to get out of jury duty. The people who don’t engage in the primaries.

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      Rev Snow

      How different are the turnout numbers for primaries vs the general election? Much more than the exclusion of independent voters would explain? Does the boil down to a complaint that not enough independents pick a team?

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  5. R. James

    Thank you CNN, you greedy, ham-fisted morons, for adding to our misery.

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  6. Kwinter

    Once the nominations are over it absolutely is a binary choice.

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    1. Richard.Finch

      There are third parties. There is abstaining. You do not have to be complicit in this.

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    Bill B

    I keep hearing that there is an alternative to Joe Biden but I'd really like to hear from Conservatives here who on the Democratic side they believe that is?

    Would they feel comfortable voting for them to avoid another Trump presidency?

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    1. R. James

      TD can't even pick an alternative on the Republican side of the aisle. Asking them to decide on a Democrat alternative is just unfair.

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        Bill B

        I’m sure they could come up with a Republican alternative… just not one that stood a chance in hell of making it past a primary.

        Problem is that the Republican Party is a charnel house of rot and corruption and no candidate can overcome the stink and horror of that; not with all the VapoRub in the world.

        At some point they really are going to have to smother their delicate ideological sensibilities under a pillow, “think tragically” as R. Kaplan puts it, and pull the lever for a candidate that can win; not a write-in like Alfred J. Nock, R. Reagan or a fantasy Libertarian. That would be a Democrat.

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    2. Andy

      I'm not a conservative, but I think Jared Polis would be an excellent candidate and President.

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        Bill B

        Interesting. Dem Gov Andy Beshear might be another one. My Trump adjacent sister seems to like him.

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    3. Acre00

      I'd vote for Joe Manchin in a heartbeat over Trump. There's a couple democratic governors I'd probably vote for, but I'd have to look into them more before I commit.

      Of course, anyone I'd vote for would never win the Democratic primary, specifically because they're the kind of candidate the other party would vote for.

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        Bill B

        Sound like a perfect encapsulation of the dilemma that Democrats face - hence Joe Biden.

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        1. Acre00

          Oh, absolutely. I was just responding to your question of who a conservative would vote for.

          The Democrats have the weird problem of both having too many people on the bench and having absolutely no good options. Biden *has* to run or else the Democrats have a civil war between the plausible successors. Harris would typically be the clear successor, but it's pretty universally agreed that she's a bad candidate. Biden would be under very heavy pressure from the black caucus to endorse her, but that would create a massive backlash from groups that don't like her. It'd be 2015 all over again, only this time the thumb on the scale would be right out in the open.

          Somebody would challenge her, and once one person challenges her *everybody* would. My bet would be on Newsom stepping in first, personally. The last thing the Democrats need this cycle is a messy primary, and anyone to the left of Biden almost certainly loses to Trump.

          So you're absolutely correct that Biden is who has to be candidate, regardless of his problems and flaws.

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            Bill B

            That says it all. Newsom, besides being a CA Democrat gives off a very John Edwards vibe to me. Not sure about that guy.

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      The Bell Tower

      I would not vote for anyone “to avoid a Trump presidency” because that’s not a good reason to cast a vote. If there was a real moderate in the race, I’m sure I could vote for that person. If it’s Joe again, I will probably not vote at all.

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        Bill B

        Problematic. Kind of depends on how you define “a moderate”? Someone sufficiently acceptable enough to lose any Democratic primary?

        Would you jump out of the way of a freight train into the path of a Mazda Miata if you had no other choice?

        We may have to resurrect the Trolley Problem.

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        1. Ingenero.lux

          Except - and this is a massive except - in the vast majority of situations a single voter can’t change anything. If you don’t live in a swing state or a near swing state (and there are fewer of each these days), your vote literally doesn’t matter for President. My entire congressional district (second most conservative one on the West Coast) could all have voted twice in 2020 and our state still would have gone for Joe Biden. Now, I have always considered Trump unfit to be President and have and will never vote for him - but in situations like that, my vote literally doesn’t matter. Places like Wisconsin or Arizona or Georgia, with a recent history of shifting presidential results and close races, you could definitely make a case for a “binary choice” - but even there you’re looking at margins in the range of ten to twenty thousand votes. One person not voting for either major candidate wouldn’t make a difference. You and your entire extended family and friends not voting wouldn’t make a difference. Only place that question’s been close in decades is in Florida in 2000.

          And let’s be real here - as long as we keep encouraging the bastards by going along with their “binary choices”, they’ll keep giving us the choice between Kang and Kodos. You can tell me I have a responsibility to “stop Trump” - but I literally can’t. Voting one way or another isn’t mystical - you don’t get ethereal “good guy” points for or become a better person by voting some way. Voting is a way to solve a practical problem and to send a political message - so it should be looked at pragmatically and morally. As pragmatically my vote makes literally no difference, and morally I think both men are not fit to be President. They have completely different reasons they aren’t fit, and each man has completely different levels of personal morality or lack thereof, but unfit is unfit. I’m not going to pretend that the guy who is well into his dotage and does the large bulk of what the far-left of his party wants is somehow acceptable to me because the other guy is a egomaniacal moral monster who tried to overturn the results of the last election by getting a pathetic group of know-nothings to try to lynch people. The former is far less bad - but he’s still a doddering old man jumping when the progressives say hop.

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          1. Bryson DeAwesome

            "they’ll keep giving us the choice between Kang and Kodos"

            why isn't the people who are deciding who the choices should be?
            this mysterious "they" are ruining the country with a Biden v Trump selection

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            Bill B

            True. In the edge case where my vote means nothing I’m unconstrained in my choice at least politically if not morally. I used to live in Paul Gosar’s district so I know the feeling.

            I think it’s hard to argue with your logic in an electoral system that is so inefficient. While I might agree with you on the candidate choice take a step down to party choice and I think even a symbolic vote has some value. I’m neither a Republican or Democrat but I have some pretty firm views on which party at this moment in history is better prepared to govern and which would prove disastrous, if not fatal. Sending a signal that both the candidate and the party bound so closely to him/her are unfit to govern seems to me to possess some utility.

            I don’t think either candidate is ideal - not even close. We still have to choose; “We follow in the bondage of Necessity. This is the bitterest pain to human beings: to know much and control nothing.”.

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          The Bell Tower

          I thought Biden ran very successfully as a moderate. He just hasn’t governed like one.

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            Bill B

            Agreed. Question might be whether Trump is giving Biden room to embrace his inner Progressive and run further left? Puts moderates in an uncomfortable position.

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  8. CatoTheElder

    It’s almost a script for Idiocracy II: End of the Party. Our political parties are on course, through seemingly rational election-focused (note: NOT policy-focused) analysis, to nominate candidates that most reasonable people, that most serious political people, that most people genuinely concerned about the country, that most people, full stop, think should not be allowed anywhere near the cockpit. Yet it seems, if one believes the polls, pundits, headlines, etc., we are destined to have one of these piloting the super-jumbo airship that once was a shining light for civilization, but is now evolving into a complex economic system in which powerful persons doing daily battle for the maximization of profit measured only in dollars in turn influence the ship of state, demanding stability and protection for MegaCorp Intl. and First-Last-and-Always National Superbank and their kin. These machinations are tuned to take further and take advantage of tribe-first tendencies of the populace daily feeding themselves on a mind-rotting buffet of “entertainment, information, news, and scripted rage, fear, and (barely) stage-managed panic.

    Much of, perhaps most, of the continuing socio-political power play drama centers on keeping the masses drugged (literally or figuratively) and the economic system stable so as to keep producing mind-boggling profits for the super-rich and those that wanna be super-rich. It often seems as if we’re confined to a train about to run out of track and plummet over a cliff, with those arguing that we need to stop and get off this train shouted down by those who wanna finish watching their new NetPrimeCockParaHulu limited series, those who insist that slowing or stopping the train will have calamitous effects on our magnificent progress to wherever it is we’re going on the most magnificent train ever, and those that wanna enjoy being in charge of the train, and tell us “Don’t worry about what’s ahead, the free market economy will always solve whatever the problem is. It always has.”

    A republic, if you can keep it, Franklin said. John Adams told us, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” He might have added, for emphasis, that such remains true regardless of how much money Exxon, Amazon, Tesla, and Apple made last year or stand to make this year.

    Other than when we’re screaming at TV or computer screens, often prompted by Fox “News”, some nonsense on MSNBC, or the latest horrifying events, opinions, or whatever being reported by—and tuned for emotional response by—other news/information media companies, we’re too ready to numb the mental pain and anguish by ever-higher doses of UFC fighting, the Sports Spectacle du Jour, billion-dollar big-screen (or on your smartphone screen!) comic-book superhero movies, the Real Housewives of [Fill in Your Zip Code], Survivor: Season 783, Call of Duty: John Wick, etc., etc.

    We. Are. Doomed.

    Seriously. Biden v. Trump II? Are there not alarm bells that go off in the back of your mind every time you see or hear about this prospect? Where are the grown-ups? Who left the idiots in charge?

    And please don’t try to excuse one side or the other by proclaiming how the enemy, defined by those wearing blue as those wearing red, and vice versa, pretty much the same as the Bloods v. Crips, is somehow “worse”. I don’t care whether the victim got knifed or shot or bludgeoned to death by one side in some way allegedly more heinous than the means of murder chosen by the other side.

    Now get off my lawn.

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  9. Joe1776

    They didn’t “trade on the family name”. China is not making a”Joe Biden Grill” or “air Biden” shoes. In fact they hid the name in LLCs. They almost certainly sold the only thing they had: promises of political influence. Our press has allowed Joe and Hunter to avoid any questions about this.

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    1. R. James

      Yes, because all of those countries are giving Hunter and the other eight direct blood relatives of Joe fat checks out of a sense of altruism....

      They are getting something for their money. And it's more than just promises.

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  10. Betsybowditch

    While I agree with the premise of this piece, the respective parties are not in the same situation. Joe Biden manipulated the primaries, by shaking up the traditional order in which Iowa and NH go first, to make it difficult for anyone else to challenge him for the nomination. If African-American turn out is low for him in SC, now the first state for Democrats and the one that resurrected his floundering campaign in 2016 when it was third, he could still win the state and invite a challenger.

    By contrast Trump's diehard supporters simply don't seem care about his actions. As he boasted back in 2016, "I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes." Is there a tipping point?

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      The Bell Tower

      I think the changes in the primary open a huge door for a real moderate. Democrats showed that this is what they preferred in the last election. I would argue that the Democratic electorate as it voted in the last presidential election is far more moderate than the Republican electorate. I don’t know why they can’t find one to steamroll Biden and whatever candidate the Republicans put up.

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      1. Betsybowditch

        The primary process is so front loaded and Iowa and New Hampshire are not demographically representative of the electorate as a whole. But given it is a foregone conclusion that the Democrats will not win South Carolina in the general it is an odd kickoff place.

        If SC African-American voters don't turn out for Biden in the primary it could encourage a governor to throw in their hat. I have heard good things about Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, my native state, but he was just elected. There are others, though, who could probably excite Democrats more than Biden does.

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      2. Acre00

        Who do you think would be able to steamroll Biden in a primary?

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          The Bell Tower

          A serious moderate if one existed. I don’t see one but it’s hard to know what a candidate would run on until they are running. I think any Democrat who put together the message that Biden has failed to bring the country together. That he’s far too old and frail to survive another four years in the White House. And someone who would chart out a middle course when it comes to climate, the border, education, etc would be formidable.

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          1. Acre00

            I agree that a candidate like that would be a force to be reckoned with, especially in the general election. Unfortunately, I don't think that such a candidate exists on a national level and I don't think another Mayor Pete would be able to win either the primary or the general election.

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