For a fragmented coalition that sometimes seems united by spitting, belligerent tales and old memories of Barack Obama, the Democratic Party has a remarkably singular message: Donald Trump is an existential threat to the country.
For Biden’s campaign, threats to the existence of democracy have become the overriding theme of his re-election bid. “There is an existential threat: It’s Donald Trump,” Biden said At a fundraiser in February.
For the party’s environmental activists, climate change is an existential concern, and a Trump victory would be devastating for the planet, as would Biden himself. argued In Thursday’s debate: “The only existential threat to humanity is climate change, and [Trump] Didn’t do a damn thing about it.”
Reproductive rights, too, are cast in terms of existence. “Trump poses an existential threat to abortion rights in Pennsylvania,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon said At a press conference in April. “If given the chance, he would ban abortion across the country with or without Congress.”
Existential Mathematics
As it happens, I know a little about existential threats Wrote a book in 2019 subject It refers to those threats Which could conceivably risk the extinction or mass destruction of humanity.
The real way to tell the difference between an existential threat and a more general one is not what people warn about, but what they do. Existential threats demand existential responses. After all, if you conceivably felt that the country and even the world were in real danger, you would probably do everything you could to prevent that disaster.
When it comes to Democrats and the left — from the Biden campaign to activists — it’s impossible to look at what they’re doing and conclude that they truly believe Donald Trump is an existential threat. And that can become an existential challenge for the party.
Winning is the only thing
Biden clearly lost Thursday night’s debate, and it’s safe to say that afterward, few people — perhaps outside of Biden’s inner circle — think the president is positioned to win this election. The debate highlighted an issue that voters have repeatedly told pollsters is a serious problem, one that Biden can do almost nothing to change: his age. And instead of taking a rare opportunity to belie those fears, Biden’s halting, often confusing performance did the opposite.
Democratic consternation and an entire New York Times editorial board of columnists called for Biden to step down. The campaign immediately said, as it has every time these calls have been made, that the president would do no such thing and at this point had little reason not to believe them.
Some of that is risk aversion: A president has never abandoned a re-election bid so late in a campaign, and no one really knows what will happen next. Some of it is probably pride. Biden is a proud man who made a third attempt at the presidency after finally winning in 2020. Giving up is not really in his DNA.
Some political accounts of it. If the president steps down, the logical candidate is Vice-President Kamala Harris, but Harris has contested the office and His poor poll ratings Biden’s mirror. If the Democratic Party tries to sideline Harris and open the door to other candidates with an open convention, they risk alienating him and his supporters and creating further wounds in the Democratic coalition.
Bad choices, all. But the nature of an existential threat is that everything else – feelings, ambitions, everything – is set aside. Yet while the prospect of a second Trump presidency looms large, the Democratic political establishment does nothing. That’s not how you act in the face of existential threats.
It exists until it doesn’t
It’s not just politicians though. The winners of presidential elections pick Supreme Court justices, and it was clear that an 83-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg would not be able to do so in the next presidential term after the 2016 election, potentially undermining abortion rights among other Democratic priorities. Yet Ginsburg — booed by many Democratic supporters who saw her retirement calls as sexist — refused to resign. We all know what happened next.
One would think that Democratic justices would have learned from Ginsburg’s example and acted differently in the face of a new perceived existential threat from Trump. Yet Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — who are 70 and 64, respectively — have so far refused to heed the increasingly desperate calls of writers like my colleague Ian Milheiser to stay in their seats for decades. Each, like Ginsburg, has perfectly good reasons for staying; None of these factors make sense in the face of real existential threats.
Nowhere is the gap between existential rhetoric and existential action greater than in climate change, which has emerged as one of the top priorities for Democrats in recent years.
You can’t find a climate activist — and, increasingly, a Democratic politician — who doesn’t frame climate change as an existential issue. With reason – worst-case climate scenarios really do Representing something like an existential threat Not only for the US, but for the future of the entire world. And given by Trump Strong opposition to real climate policyIt is fair to see his possible return to the White House as part of that threat.
Still there A clear and yawning gap Between climate discourse and climate action. From a democratic political point of view, this is perhaps understandable; The climate is changing Not a top priority For most voters, and politicians have to contend with that fact. (You can’t save the world if you don’t vote.)
Very often, though, climate activists and groups The opposition is over From transmission lines to solar projects to wind power, they are often mired in years of litigation. The Sunrise Movement, has one of the most radical climate activist groups out there has surprisingly held back its supportersSo far from Biden, though, he prioritized passing the most ambitious climate bill in US history.
Groups have reasons for what they’re doing — always reasons — but if climate change is viewed as an existential threat, say the most vocal activists, those reasons don’t matter.
Do you believe what you say?
Treating an existential threat as existential requires one thing that democratic coalitions have increasingly struggled to do: priority. It means putting aside personal feelings, individual ambitions and subjective preferences in favor of a single goal: success. Otherwise, it is empty rhetoric.
According to the New York Times Columnist Ezra Klein, who has been pushing the possibility of an open convention to replace Biden, said on his podcast after Thursday’s debate: “If the fate of American democracy depends on this election — as Democrats have always told me, and I think it likely will — then you should do everything you can to win it.” Any strategy, any strategy, that can make people or groups uncomfortable, cannot be a reason not to pursue it in the face of existential threats. If you don’t believe what you say.
This story was originally published byToday, explainedVox’s flagship daily newsletter.Sign up for future editions here.
