Nine days ago my longtime friend and colleague Crispin Sartwell, cynically perplexed by the current trajectory of the Democratic Party wrote that the pundits who, to a small degree, are “influencers” in Beltway politics, such as The New York Times’ Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias and The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait, have given up on policy and are more concerned about how the Democrats “sell liberalism.” Made sense to me, although I rarely read Klein or Yglesias and only skim Chait to cite an example of a well-paid but useless my-finger’s-in-the-wind-and-today-it-says, “Buckle up, folks, this will be a bumpy midterms election in November and even crazier in 2028.”
Crispin’s a self-described “anarchist,” although he reluctantly voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. I guess he was (mildly) freaked out about another Trump term, but now that the President’s a lame duck, he’s back to withering media criticism. He wrote: “I don’t understand why I have to read a hundred columns about how liberalism’s communications strategies can be improved… Manipulation of this sort is morally disgusting.”
I haven’t taken The New Yorker seriously for two decades—its diminished resources have precluded even an appearance of printing/posting articles that don’t hew to the anti-Trump party line—but I do check in (digital subscription) on occasion and must say I found Bill McKibben’s “An Idea For Democrats To Keep It Together in 2028” not unreasonable. Granted, McKibben—the well-known environmentalist/climate change activist and author of 20 books—is anti-GOP (and mentions the necessity of ridding the country of a “weaponized” Supreme Court), but the essay didn’t reek of the bile that’s the norm for that magazine and The New York Times.
McKibben’s Big Idea—I don’t mean that facetiously, for at least he has an idea—is that a few weeks after the midterms (he expects, as do I, a Democratic victory in the House, but the projected margin has been squandered by the internecine fight over Israel and the DSA), that a legitimate Democrat announces his or her intention to run for the presidency and at the same time takes the unusual strategy of naming a running mate from the get-go, breaking all precedents. (In 1976, in a half-hearted, last-ditch effort to wrest the GOP nomination from Jerry Ford, Ronald Reagan tapped liberal Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Schweiker as his running mate just before the convention, a weird gambit that went nowhere, although it’s more memorable than anything Schweiker did in his political career.)
The author gives an example: “Imagine this scenario (and feel free to substitute in other names). Say that, in a few months after the midterms, Governor J.B. Pritizker, of Illinois, strides to a lectern in Springfield to announce a run for the White House, with the usual bunting and copious references to Abraham Lincoln, but standing with him is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.” In this fantasy, Pritzker, given his age (68 by 2032), would serve a single term—McKibben doesn’t mention Biden’s promise to do just that in 2020—and then turn over the reins to a grateful AOC, who’ll supposedly pick up “executive experience” and be ready for 2032.
Pritzker, it’s said, is popular in Illinois, but as a Jewish billionaire (and also corpulent, which I still think is a turn-off for voters), I’m stymied to see how AOC and her “progressive” and DSA allies pitch in for such an arrangement. The author has an odd contention that such an unusual arrangement would “be closer to the European model,” as if right now, at least, that’s worth emulating. As McKibben admits, the New York Congresswoman might want to run in 2028 herself, and not inherit any Pritzker baggage (he’s never undergone national scrutiny, so I hope he runs), as demonstrated by her recent “listening tour” in which she suddenly acquired a Southern accent (as did Hillary Clinton in 2016) in Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia.
I did like this accurate sentence: “American politics has been much too ego-driven in recent years: it’s been Bill or Barack or Joe—and now, of course, it’s Donald Donald Donald.” That McKibben felt comfortable criticizing Barack Obama is just another sign that the 44th president is losing currency fast, and it’ll take more than Bruce Springsteen and his new Chicago edifice/library to get back in the game. Obama’s not yet 65, has nothing much to do except make more money, and since he’s already loaded, it’s hard to imagine he’ll simply retreat to one of his mansions and pretend to read books and watch films that aides recommend.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023