Democrats and the Superhero's Dilemma
PLUS: The meaning of "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation"
I began 2021 with hope. I end it with dread.
I began it with hope because while we were in the midst of a pandemic, a medical miracle had arrived in the form of mRNA vaccines that promised to deliver us from this plague. That, and Donald Trump’s White House tour was coming to an end.
And then, just six days into the new year, I watched a political party commit political suicide. Republicans, having spent the past two months either lying about the legitimacy of the 2020 election or refusing to refute the Big Lie, instigated a violent insurrection at the Capitol while Congress was certifying the results of the election. It was horrifying but clarifying: Republican lawmakers were more devoted to appeasing Trump than they were to American democracy. Even after rioters had made it to the floor of the Senate and almost to the floor of the House (it took barricades rather than the usual “No Visitors Beyond This Point” sign to keep them out) over half of all Republicans in Congress continued to perpetuate the lie that the 2020 election had been stolen by voting against its certification.
If that wasn’t proof enough of just how degenerate the Republican Party had become, once vaccines became widely available, many on the right began to cast doubt on the efficacy or even necessity of the vaccines, spread conspiracy theories about them, or refused to get a shot despite the vaccine’s enormous personal and social benefits. When the more infectious Delta COVID variant began sweeping through the country this past summer, not only did many Republican governors refuse to implement new pandemic mitigation strategies, but, in many cases, also explicitly forbade localities in their states from implementing their own local restrictions. Despite the widespread availability of a free and highly effective vaccine, this resulted in the pandemic’s second-worst wave of cases nationally, the worst wave of cases some states had experienced, hospital systems pushed to the brink, and, since late August, the deaths of between one thousand to two thousand Americans every day because of COVID. And for everything Republicans and the right-wing media have done to undermine confidence in the vaccine and vilify efforts to fight the pandemic, most of those who remain unvaccinated, who get sick and need to be hospitalized because of infection, and who die of COVID live in counties Trump won. In other words, the misinformation propagated by the right-wing messaging machine is effectively killing their own followers.
Yet by year’s end, Republicans appear emboldened and poised to regain majorities in both houses of Congress, quite possibly by large margins. FiveThirtyEight’s poll of polls measuring generic congressional preference shows Republicans leading Democrats 43.4% to 41.8% (and remember, for Democrats to win control of Congress, Democrats can’t just win with a slim majority; given the way votes are distributed throughout the states and in gerrymandered House districts, Democrats need to win by fairly substantial margins.) In Texas, one of the states hit hardest by Delta, Republican Governor Greg Abbott led Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke by 15 points in a recent poll. Similarly, in Florida, another state hammered by Delta this past summer, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis broke 50% in hypothetical races against two prospective Democratic opponents. And looking way ahead, the odds-on favorite to win the GOP’s nomination for president in 2024 is none other than Donald Trump, who led Biden 48%-45% in a recent 2024 head-to-head poll conducted by Harvard CAPS-Harris.
How did we end up here?
The GOP’s current strength relative to Democrats is partially a reflection of the bad fortune experienced by Biden and his party over the past year. Some wounds, such as Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, were self-inflicted, but it’s hard to see that ordeal as a drag on his poll numbers now. The main culprit is probably the pandemic. Biden promised to end it and ran in 2020 as the steady hand that could get the country back on its feet after a year of shutdowns and disruption. For about a week in July, it appeared as though the country had put the pandemic in its rear-view mirror. All we awaited was a vaccine for children. But then Delta flared up, spread everywhere, and gained strength as the holiday season approached and immunity waned in the absence of boosters. Now the much more transmissible Omicron rages.
The pandemic has also jostled the economy. By most measures, the American economy in 2021 has performed quite well: Nearly 6 million new jobs (the most ever recorded in one year) and a 4.2% unemployment rate. But inflation—driven mostly by supply chain issues connected to the rapid reopening of the economy (although some argue it has also spiked on account of Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed earlier this year)—has reared its head and put the squeeze on Americans’ pocketbooks. Millions of workers remain idle, either waiting for the public health crisis to pass before returning to the workplace or holding out for better jobs to emerge. There’s also the sense since reopening that the economy just isn’t working the way most people expect it to, with poor customer service, dismal box office receipts, sparsely stocked store shelves, and empty used car lots providing the proof.
The country is experiencing pandemic fatigue, and Joe Biden is bearing the brunt of it. It’s not exactly fair—Biden has always promoted mask-wearing and vaccinations as the way out of the pandemic, while Republican resistance to those basic steps has prolonged the emergency, increased suffering, created uncertainty in the economy, and left the country vulnerable to the current wave—but the buck does stop with him. A president is supposed to lead, but right now Biden seems to be at the mercy of other things (like Omicron) and other people (like Joe Manchin). He often seems to be faltering or overwhelmed by events (while Biden remains mentally sharp, he does seem to be slipping as a public speaker as he ages.) I sense his real struggle, however, is with trying to figure out how to lead the nation through a crisis that has lingered far beyond people’s willingness to treat it as such. Yet the more Biden focuses on non-pandemic matters like infrastructure or Build Back Better (and all the congressional gamesmanship that goes with that) the more distracted he seems to the average voter.
So the nation enters 2022 in a bad spot. Exhausted by the pandemic and its bitter politics, there is simply no political will to address the threat posed by Omicron. Hospitals were already severely strained by Delta; it’s possible Omicron, even if it is less virulent, proves so infectious that it overwhelms our health care system. That prospect, more than the risk posed to individuals, should lead to some tough conversations and serve as the main consideration people take into account over the next few weeks when making decisions for themselves and the organizations they lead.
Meanwhile, the unvaccinated remain the most vulnerable to infection, meaning they are also the ones most likely to bring our health care system to its knees. They also remain the most defiant. Just a few days ago, Donald Trump was rebuked by his own supporters after he recommended getting a booster shot. Meanwhile, the Ghost of MAGA Past Sarah Palin, affirming the idea that freedom includes the right to do obviously stupid things and the right to spite your enemy just because, proclaimed she would only get vaccinated “over my dead body.” We’ll never know how many of the nearly 800,000 Americans who have died of COVID so far or the potentially tens or even hundreds of thousands more who will die over the next few months ultimately agree with that sentiment.
Additionally, there seems to be little political urgency to shore up our democracy even as Republicans spent the year undermining it. They refused to hold Trump accountable for the 1/6 insurrection by impeaching him, then refused to support a bipartisan inquiry into the insurrection. The few Republicans who were courageous enough to condemn Trump and support an investigation have essentially been kicked out of their party. Republican-controlled state legislatures, inspired by the Big Lie, have passed a wide array of laws that not only make it harder for people to vote but grant partisans and legislators greater control over electoral systems and electoral results. Non-partisan election administrators, harassed by Trump supporters, have quit their posts in droves. Democrats have a bill that would address these issues, but Democratic Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema thinks it’s more important to preserve the Senate minority’s right to filibuster than it is to preserve American citizens’ right to vote.
Meanwhile, Trump’s minions have turned the insurrectionists into heroes, convinced their followers that 1/6 wasn’t that big of a deal, and are openly bragging about their efforts to subvert the election. (Here’s former Trump advisor Peter Navarro a few days ago to Steve Bannon: “You were the hero on J6, Steve. You were the guy who had the strategy to go up to Capitol Hill. Pence was the quarterback. We had 100 people working on the team who were going to make sure we remanded the results back to the battleground states.”) Now Trump himself has scheduled a news conference on January 6, 2022, stating, “Why isn’t the Unselect Committee of highly partisan political hacks investigating the CAUSE of the Jan 6th protest, which was the rigged Presidential Election?” What did LL Cool J say? Yeah, he never really went away. Nearly a year after 1/6, American democracy remains in a state of peril.
These are not the only problems Biden faces. His legislative agenda is stalled and potentially dead (although I suspect he has a decent chance to revive it in 2022, but that’s a topic for another article.) Russian and Chinese saber-rattling over Ukraine and Taiwan could, following Afghanistan, lead to another round of embarrassments on the international stage. More than anything else, however, Biden won the presidency because he promised to both end the suffering and hardship wrought by Trump’s cavalier handling of the pandemic and repair the damage Trump had inflicted on our democracy during his four years in office. Yet nearly a year after Biden’s inauguration, the vandals seem emboldened while Biden struggles to counter them. These are not minor issues, either: The pandemic is the most pressing issue this country faces when it comes to our quality of life, while democratic decline is the most pressing issue we face when it comes to our way of life.
So what should Biden and the Democrats do about this? If you’ve been reading the op-ed pages recently, you’ll have run across hundreds of answers. I have no specific prescription, but I do have one recommendation for Biden and his administration. It’s about their mindset and their approach to the president’s job: It’s time Biden starts acting like a politician.
When Joe Biden became president, I think he and his advisers assumed his presidency would be buoyed by events and a self-evident contrast with his predecessor. The vaccines had arrived. The pandemic would ease. The economy would return to normal. Kids would be back in school and safe. People would be out and about and doing all the things they couldn’t do in 2020. Without having to say it, voters would know Republicans were fools for having embraced Trump, for not taking the pandemic seriously, for undermining democracy. The GOP would have to change their ways or find themselves in political oblivion. Biden would be able to travel the high road.
But the Republican Party didn’t change. Instead, they doubled-down on the Big Lie and anti-vaxxism in the hope that as the inherent difficulties of governing might begin to burden Biden, they would be able to rally their faithful and, in short time, reclaim control of Congress. I also think they sensed Biden wasn’t much interested in throwing down with them, preferring instead to ignore their ravings and let their poor record of governance speak for itself.
But presidents can’t expect to stay above the fray. I understand the impulse, especially when facing down an opponent as disreputable as today’s GOP. Biden doesn’t want to stoop to their level, validate their insanity, or play to people’s passions and fears the way they do. He wants to play it straight, win on the merits, show Americans that good people with good intentions and good faith can deliver good results without all the ugliness. When they go low, he wants to go high. In politics, though, everyone eventually gets dragged into the dirt. Even angels will end up filthy simply by association. While there will be times when a president needs to rise above the moment, there will also be times when they need to roll up their sleeves and get down into the mud with an opponent who has no qualms about playing rough. It’s the nature of politics.
Here’s a good example: If Sarah Palin is going to tell a crowd she’ll only take a vaccine over her dead body, throw that right back at her. Yes, she’s a straw man, but everyone knows who she is and everyone knows she’s an idiot. A statement like that should be political poison for the Right. So make them drink it.
Biden tiptoed into this sort of terrain yesterday at his press conference when he called those who refused to get a vaccine “unpatriotic.” He admitted he’d probably get criticized for putting it that way, but after all these months and the emergence of a highly-transmissible variant at the worst possible time of the year, that sort of framing is more than apt. Not only is it time for anti-vaxxers to pay a political price for their behavior, but it’s also time to honor those who have gotten shots for serving their community and doing their civic duty. That’s real patriotism, and the people should understand that.
This line of attack also has the potential to connect the anti-vaxxers to the insurrectionists. Each may wave the flag and claim they’re defending freedom, but their behavior isn’t patriotic. Rather than help their fellow countrymen in a time of crisis and defend democracy, they would instead tear this country and its democratic traditions down. That’s the sort of message that needs to reach the people. It needs to be spoken first and repeated over and over again for it to sink in. It’s not just going to happen on its own.
If we’re lucky, Omicron will spike and pass quickly with few hospitalizations and deaths. (There are promising signs out of South Africa along these lines.) A highly contagious but less virulent strain like that may be what it finally takes to deliver us from this pandemic. Perhaps then supply lines will clear up, inflation will ease, and the economy will finally return to full steam. Maybe in the new year, the House select committee on the Capitol insurrection will produce a report authored by Liz Cheney that will finally blow the lid off the events of 1/6 and expose the Big Lie. That might be all it takes for Biden to recover his standing in the polls and for Republican prospects to dim. That would go a long way toward reinforcing democracy in the United States. It probably won’t be that easy, though. It’s going to take a fight.
If you’ve read a few comic books in your life, you’re probably familiar with what I call the “superhero’s dilemma.” It’s a simple concept, really: Confronted by an implacable villain, the superhero must choose between adhering to their moral code even if that means letting the bad guy get away vs. using their power to set the world right even if that means crossing and blurring the line between hero and villain.
Heroes, after all, gain authority by aligning themselves with right. They don’t want to stoop to the bad guy’s level lest they be seen as no better than the bad guy and tarnish their cause. Our most admired superheroes don’t cross that line. They recognize limits.
But still they fight. The superhero’s dilemma isn’t a choice between engagement and disengagement. It’s instead a question of how far that engagement will go. The villain must still be confronted. The hero won’t win simply by showing up with the goodness of their example in tow. It will almost always take some brawn and brains. They’re going to have to mix it up. They’re going to have to do what heroes do.
It’s hard for politicians to win, too, if they’ve resigned themselves to floating above the political fray so as to remain untarnished by the political give-and-take. Their goodness—presumably derived from their detachment from politics—won’t save them; in fact, their mere association with the political world will end up soiling their reputation. They’ll need to get into the political scrum as well. A good politician will know there are limits to how far they’ll push their fight, but they’ll fight hard nonetheless.
For too long, Biden and the Democrats have assumed the American people will simply turn on the anti-vaxxers and the proponents of the Big Lie, that even Republicans will finally come around to see the light of day. That hasn’t happened. If anything, Republicans have only embraced the Big Lie even more. So the people need a champion. If there was ever a cause worth fighting for, a cause worth the dirt and sweat and tears, this is it. It’s in your name. You’re Democrats. Fight for democracy.
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Vincent’s Picks
(Vincent’s Picks theme song here)
Outside of maybe one of the original Star Wars movies, there is probably no other movie I’ve watched more often in my life than 1989’s National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. I remember watching it in junior high the day before Christmas break and then again at my aunt and uncle’s house one Christmas day with my Grandpa, who cracked up watching it with us. I usually watch it every December.
That’s sort of strange, because the movie takes a chainsaw to the sanctity of tradition. The plot…actually, there isn’t really a plot, just a series of vignettes built around an attempt by Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) to have a “fun old-fashioned family Christmas.” It goes disastrously. His extended family sours the effort. Cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid) arrives in an RV and ends up dumping sewage into a storm drain and then kidnaps Clark’s boss, which brings a S.W.A.T. team to his house. Clark goes overboard with the Christmas lights and the Christmas tree (which eventually goes up in flames and is replaced by one with a squirrel in it that soon escapes and leads a rambunctious dog named Snots to tear up their home.) The turkey gets overcooked. His aunt’s cat accidentally gets wrapped as a gift and then gets electrocuted. For some reason he hides wrapped Christmas gifts in his attic and gets himself locked up there when his family heads off for the mall.
While in the attic, Clark discovers old black-and-white family films of past Christmases. Rather than leave the attic (he had earlier accidentally collapsed a portion of the attic’s floor, which gives him passage to his son’s bedroom) he stays to watch the home movies. So nostalgic. But the idiot’s set up the projector on the ceiling door to the attic, so when his wife opens it when she returns home, the floor falls out from under him, undoubtedly yanking him out of his reverie. The scene sums up the movie’s message.
Please heed the moral of this movie this year. Last year, a lot of families spent Christmas apart. This year, many will spend it together under strenuous circumstances. Just know that this year, you don’t have to have a fun old-fashioned family Christmas. Just have Christmas, however that turns out. Don’t go overboard, don’t feel like you need to recreate every family tradition, don’t try to stuff the base of the tree with oodles and oodles of presents. It’s OK if the cookies don’t turn out right or if the carolers can’t make it or if you can’t get your hands on an ugly Christmas sweater or if the Christmas cards are stuck in Oregon for some reason. (I seriously have no idea why they’re stuck in Oregon.) Just roll with it and, as they say, take the time to remember the reason for the season. Let’s all just be grateful for what we got, whatever combination of fun, old-fashioned, and family we end up with.
And if there’s no snow and you can’t go sledding, that’s OK too. I hear stores are out of that new non-caloric silicon-based kitchen lubricant everyone’s been using on their sled this year.
Merry Christmas.
Exit music: “Things Fall Apart” by Cristina (R.I.P.) (1981, A Christmas Record)