Joe Biden Should Pass the Torch to a New Generation of Democrats. Here's How That Can Happen.
PLUS: A review of "What Now" by Brittany Howard
Joe Biden needs to stand down as a candidate for president in 2024.
That’s not an easy conclusion to reach. Despite what most Americans think about his time in office, Biden has actually been an able, successful, and positively consequential president. He has earned re-election. If you question that assertion, you should check out this article Stuart Stevens wrote for The New Republic a couple weeks ago touting Biden’s record. You don’t have to be against Donald Trump to vote for Joe Biden. You can vote for Biden on the merits.
But special counsel Robert Hur’s report concerning Biden’s retention of classified documents has, whether fairly or unfairly, put the issue of Biden’s age front and center in the 2024 presidential campaign. Hur’s report exonerated Biden of any criminal activity in the case, but his characterization of Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and “diminished faculties in advancing age” has stuck.
Democrats can complain all they want about the inclusion of those details in Hur’s report. I’m not getting hung up on that, though. It seems to me what upset Democrats is that Hur said something many Americans were already thinking but that Democrats don’t want to talk about. Denial is not just a river in Mexico Egypt. Even if Hur hadn’t brought up Biden’s mental acuity, someone with a similar platform speaking from a similar position of prestige eventually would have. The hit was coming. It was only a matter of time.
Democrats can also complain that Hur’s observations painted an incomplete picture of Biden. This is a more legitimate gripe. If anyone took the time to listen to Biden speak, they’d notice he actually is in command of the issues and fully engaged in the details of policymaking. He does tend to slip up and wander off-script (sometimes in very cringe-worthy fashion) but he’s done that throughout his political career. It’s not a sign of hopeless confusion. As for his memory, it’s worth remembering mental acuity involves far more complex tasks than simply recalling dates and names, something anyone of any age can mix up. (Show me a parent who has never called their own child the wrong name.) And so what if Biden mixed up French President Emmanuel Macron with former French President François Mitterrand? How many Americans even know François Mitterrand was a former president of France?
I’m not worried about Biden’s mental capacity. He’s a sophisticated thinker who has what it takes to govern. I wish more Americans would pay enough attention to politics to appreciate that (and to note how superficial so many Republicans are by comparison.)
What worries me more than anything else, though, was Biden’s reaction to the report. If Americans think a president is no longer mentally sharp, the easiest way for a president to assuage those concerns is to get in front of a camera and prove them wrong. Biden’s public response not only failed to reassure Americans, but fed into Hur’s characterization of the president. Biden was unsteady, irritable, slow, tired, and overwhelmed by the moment. He didn’t present his age as an asset—a reassuring source of wisdom and experience—but as a liability.
The critique of Biden as a senile old man is superficial in so many ways—again, pay attention to the actual substantive results and you’ll see a competent, accomplished administration—but it’s a concern many Americans (including many Democrats) have about Biden. According to a recent ABC News poll, not only do 86% of all Americans think Biden is to old to serve another term, but so do 73% of Democrats. That doesn’t automatically disqualify Biden in the minds of many voters, but it does indicate a lot of people want an option that inspires more confidence. Americans have long worried Biden is too old for the job. He’s in danger of convincing them he isn’t up to the task. That’s a low bar Biden is struggling to clear.
The real danger is that over the next nine months, Biden will only end up reinforcing people’s notions about him every time he steps in front of a crowd to refute them. And he can’t avoid public appearances either; his absences will only feed the narrative. This wouldn’t be a problem if Biden only had to govern, but he has to hit the campaign trail if he wants to keep his job. He needs to be able to draw crowds, inspire voters, energize activists, jump from city to city and state to state day after day and for weeks on end. He can’t rely on surrogates. He has to match the enthusiasm Trump brings to his rallies. I’m not sure Biden is at a point in his life where he can do any of that without drawing attention to what many consider a serious political liability.
Democrats are telling voters this fall’s election will be the most important election of their lifetimes. I do not disagree; with Trump on the ballot, American democracy is at stake. But Democrats cannot undercut that message by nominating someone for president whom most Americans—and not just Republicans—believe is faltering on the job. The danger Trump poses to American democracy should be enough to convince any conscientious citizen to vote for Biden. The risk, however, is that low engagement voters who lean Democratic—young liberals perhaps, or swing voters who aren’t keen to Trump but could live with another Trump term—won’t take the Democrats’ message about the gravity of this election seriously if Democrats are not putting a strong candidate forward themselves. A Biden re-nomination would suggest to these voters that the Democratic Party, despite its warnings about Trump, is more concerned with doing right by Biden than it is with doing right by the nation.
So what can Democrats do? Well, there’s not much the rank and file can do beyond continuing to tell pollsters they’d like Biden to step aside. No potential alternative who stands a chance of beating Biden in a primary would dare challenge the president out of fear of dividing the party. Even if such a candidate did run, their entire campaign would be built around a critique not of policy but of Biden’s fitness to serve, which would either be a very difficult critique to smooth over come the general election if Biden prevailed or open up a rift within the party that would be difficult to close if he lost. And besides, it’s probably too late for an alternative to Biden to get into the race and assemble a campaign operation that could effectively get out a vote.
That means Biden would need to voluntarily step aside, which is unlikely unless he is nudged. That nudge would have to come from congressional leaders like Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, and Jim Clyburn as well as state party leaders and elected officials who could speak more directly to conditions on the ground. I also suspect it would fall to Barack Obama to ask Biden to stand down. Obama would need to push Biden to reckon with his ability to personally conduct a vigorous campaign and tell him he runs the risk of destroying his legacy by running again and losing to the man he promised to save American democracy from four years ago. Obama would also need to reassure Biden that no one in the party would view stepping aside as an admission of failure. On the contrary, the party would praise Biden for leading the country to a better place. Biden could assert and party members would agree that, going forward, the Democratic Party’s vision for the country is best served by a new messenger. Most importantly, Biden would need to signal he came to this decision on his own, and, like every decision he’s made as president, that he believes it is being made in the best interests of the country.
The obvious challenge Democrats would now face would be selecting a new nominee. The primaries are already underway, so it would be difficult for candidates to not only get onto primary ballots in the states but to build up campaign operations that would enable them to effectively compete for the nomination. Some contests, however, are far enough away that a candidate could enter those races and try to build momentum that way. The problem with that, though, is that a candidate who emerges from such an abbreviated primary schedule might be regarded as an interloper who took advantage of unusual political circumstances to claim the nomination.
Consequently, Democrats would need to develop a more deliberate way to select a nominee, one that for this cycle would avoid the regular primary system. One way to do that would be for the higher-ups in the Democratic Party to select a slate of nominees and put them to a vote during state party conventions. To get their potential nominees into the public eye, the party could host a series of campaign rallies and televised events in the months before party delegates voted. The party-in-the-electorate wouldn’t get to weigh in directly, but their preferences would likely factor into the calculations of delegates.
Another way—and my preferred way—would be to ask party leaders (specifically Obama) to pick the ticket themselves, thus avoiding a contentious nomination process that could divide the party before Election Day. The idea here would be for a team led by Obama to identify a presidential and vice-presidential ticket that appeals to the party as a whole, its various factions, and the general electorate in order to provide Democrats with their best chance at defeating Trump, bolstering down-ballot candidates, and advancing the Democratic agenda. Specifically, the selection committee would want to find a candidate with broad appeal who could connect with less-engaged voters to drive up turnout while running strong in the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The presidential nominee should be a seasoned governor or senator to ensure they have experience campaigning in and serving a large, diverse constituency. (I’ll show my cards: How about Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer for president, with New Jersey Senator Cory Booker as her running mate?)
Either plan would make the timing of Biden’s withdrawal announcement critical. The sooner this process could get under way, the better, so that the eventual nominee would have the time to hire staff, study policy, polish up a stump speech, raise money, and organize at the grassroots level. But Biden would need to wait long enough to ensure another candidate didn’t sweep in to start snagging delegates before the plan could be implemented. Ideally, Biden would control as many delegates as possible heading into the summer so that he could instruct them to act in accordance with the succession plan.
There are plenty of risks that come with this plan, enough in fact that party leaders may conclude replacing Biden at this late of a stage would be too big of a gambit. Democratic voters could react in anger over not getting the opportunity to select Biden’s replacement, but those concerns could be assuaged if the party employs a trustworthy selection process and lands on a good ticket. That may not matter, though. If Biden did step aside, I suspect the party faithful would welcome a more intentional approach to selecting a nominee in order to get the pick right during a critical moment in American history. And so long as the nominee is a mainstream Democrat and not from the Joe Manchin or Bernie Sanders wings of the Democratic Party, my guess is Democrats would rally around them. (I think unaffiliated voters would also support making a switch; they wouldn’t get hung up on process so long as Democrats could say they heard what people were saying about the ticket and responded accordingly.)
A more serious concern would be with how the public at-large would view the new nominee. There’s the risk the nominee may come across as a puppet of the party. Early missteps could suggest they are in over their head. Since they would not have a national profile, Republicans could end up defining the new nominee before the nominee can make their own impression with voters. Who knows what skeletons they may have in their closet. And there’s always a chance Democrats end up with a DeSantis: Someone who looks good on paper and scans as the Next Big Thing but turns into a dud on the campaign trail. It’s impossible to completely eliminate these concerns, but the party could attempt through the selection and candidate preparation processes to keep these problems at bay. (There is something of a well-established precedent to this approach, though: The normal vice-presidential selection process.)
Democrats would also need to address Vice President Kamala Harris’s status in the party. Harris would certainly be considered for the nomination, but she would need to know there is no expectation that the nomination would automatically transfer to her. Truth be told though, given her own polling, I doubt she would receive the nomination on the merits. Even if the vice president is assured a spot in the next administration’s cabinet (Attorney General perhaps?) or on the Supreme Court, Harris and her supporters could feel the party is betraying women of color by refusing to give Harris a chance to win the presidency. A bigger issue is at stake at the moment, though, one that trumps the personal political ambitions of not only Kamala Harris but Joe Biden: The preservation of American democracy. The Democratic Party needs to rally around that goal and put their best foot forward.
On the issues, Democrats are positioned very well for the 2024 election. The economy has turned around and there are signs voters are beginning to acknowledge that. Democrats are on the right side of the abortion debate. By voting down the border bill, Republicans have given Democrats a major opportunity to neutralize their biggest political liability. Crime is falling. The chaos within the Republican Party also recommends the Democrats.
Yet despite this, polls indicate Biden is trailing or basically even with Trump. It could be all these factors will eventually rebound to Biden’s advantage. If the presidential election follows the pattern established in the midterms and during special elections, Biden could inch ahead of Trump over the next nine months as voters in swing states again reject MAGAism. But given everything that’s happened over the past four years, Biden should already hold a polling advantage over Trump. The evidence suggests he doesn’t.
There’s also this: The MAGA movement shouldn’t just be defeated at the polls. It should be crushed. Republicans need to learn the hard way that Trump’s brand of bigoted, strongman politics is a political loser. If Biden is only projected to win by a razor-thin margin, Democrats should see if there’s someone who could deliver a more decisive victory.
There’s a majority in this country that wants to move on from Trump. I believe there’s also a majority willing to rally around a mainstream Democratic agenda. To create that majority, however, a Democratic nominee needs to aggressively campaign on the issues (the reality won’t sink in on its own) and inspire enough people to turn out to counter the MAGA devotees and obsequious Republicans who will head to the polls in force. The nominee also needs to inspire confidence in their own leadership, so that the campaign isn’t one big apology for their inadequacies positioned against the argument that the other guy is even worse. If Biden can’t do that—and I’m very concerned right now that he can’t—then for the good of the country, he needs to bow out of this race and help Democrats find a winning ticket.
Some other perspectives:
And Jon Stewart had a lot to say about it during his return to The Daily Show:
Signals and Noise
Josh Kovensky of TPM has acquired a trove of documents showing the full scope of the scheme Trump’s lawyers had orchestrated to plunge the nation into chaos following the 2020 election in order to keep Trump in power, including a scenario in which the certification of the election would have lasted days rather than hours.
True the Vote, a prominent group that claimed to have evidence of illegal ballot stuffing in Georgia during the 2020 election, admitted in court it actually had no evidence at all to support that claim.
The judge in Don Trump’s civil fraud trial levied a penalty against Trump of over $350 million for conspiring to manipulate his net worth. With interest, that number is likely to cross $450 million. (Additionally, Trump owes $83.3 million in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case.) The judge, who noted Trump’s “complete lack of contrition…borders on pathological,” also banned him from serving a top role in any New York company for three years and placed a similar two-year ban on his two oldest sons. The judge did not, however, dissolve Trump’s business empire. The penalty threatens to wipe out the cash Trump has on hand, which could force him to sell some of his properties (which are valued at over $1 billion.) Trump is expected to appeal, but to do so, he will need to come up with cash to pay the penalty within 30 days.
Abdallah Fayyad of Vox notes Trump’s new financial troubles would be very problematic should he become president, as he would be very tempted to use his position to recoup his losses through corrupt means or by manipulating policy.
And what do you know, Trump announced at Philadelphia’s “Sneaker Con” that he is now selling a $399 pair of branded sneakers. Get a look at these kicks:
Are we sure those aren’t a pair of spray-painted Yeezys?
Trump’s criminal hush money case will begin in New York at the end of March.
Don Trump boasted about having told the leader of a European NATO nation the United States not only would not protect them if attacked by Russia but that he would “encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want.”
Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, and Lisa Lerer of the New York Times report Trump is privately telling people he supports a 16-week abortion ban.
By David A. Graham of The Atlantic: “The Real Difference Between Trump and Biden” (“One thing the two administrations have made clear is that whereas Biden follows an approach to governance that seems to offset some of his weaknesses, Trump’s preferred managerial style seems to amplify his.”)
Sophia Cai and Alex Thompson of Axios report Trump will install campaign senior advisor Chris LaCivita as the RNC’s chief operating officer, effectively merging the Trump campaign with the RNC. Trump is also naming head of the North Carolina Republican Party Michael Whatley (accused by some in North Carolina of rigging the NC GOP chair election) and daughter-in-law Lara Trump as co-chairs of the RNC.
“If I am elected to this position, I can assure you…every single penny will go to the number one and the only job of the RNC: That is electing Donald J. Trump as president of the United States.”—Lara Trump (The RNC’s job is electing Republicans nationwide, not just electing Donald Trump.)
“Republicans are No Longer a Party” by David A. Graham of The Atlantic (“When historians chronicle the end of the Grand Old Party, they may mark 2024 as the turning point. Something called the Republican Party will surely exist for years to come, like a legacy brand subsumed by a competitor, but it appears to be coming to its end as a functional party. Instead, the Republican Party has become just another subsidiary of Donald Trump Inc.”)
The Senate passed the standalone Ukraine-Israel-Taiwan aid bill. Twenty-two Republicans voted for it while twenty-six opposed it. House Speaker Mike Johnson (whom nearly everyone agrees is in way over his head on this whole running the House business; like, seriously, everyone, and everyone’s grandma, too) is refusing to bring it up for a vote, but there is talk Democrats will try to organize a discharge petition or a PQ (“defeating the previous question”) to force a vote. That will require Republican help, though, particularly if Democrats opposed to Israel aid begin defecting. There are reportedly a large number of House Republicans who want to vote for the bill but are reluctant to buck their party. Republicans could try to attach a border bill of some kind to the aid package, but that wouldn’t get through the Senate, which has already negotiated such a bill. Some House Republicans are trying to pass an alternate foreign aid package that would strip out non-military funding from the Ukraine aid.
Republican Senator Lindsey “Goose” Graham of South Carolina voted no on the foreign aid package. He had helped negotiate the border bill and was assumed to be a Ukraine hawk but he followed Trump’s line and voted no on the border bill and no on the aid package since it wasn’t a “loan” as Trump had proposed. His credibility with senators as a negotiator is reportedly shot; independent Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who helped negotiate the border bill, described him as a “chaos monster.”
An ABC News poll asking Americans who they blamed for the failure to pass border legislation found 53% blamed Republicans, 51% blamed Democrats, 49% blamed Biden, and 39% blamed Trump. In truth, the border bill—which was composed almost entirely of Republican policy priorities—failed in the Senate because Trump urged Republicans to vote against it so Biden could not claim a win on the issue. Every Democrat voted for the bill, only four Republicans voted for it, and Biden said he would have signed it into law.
The House managed to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on their second go-around after failing two weeks ago. The margin was one vote, which was provided by Steve Scalise, who returned to Capitol Hill from cancer treatment. Had Republicans waited much longer, newly-elected Democrat Tom Suozzi of New York (who won the special election to replace “George Santos” that evening) would have created another tie vote. Unusually, Mayorkas has not been charged with a “high crime or misdemeanor” by the House.
How did Suozzi win? Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times has some key takeaways, including flipping the script on Republicans over immigration and Democratic use of mail-in ballots, which came in handy when a blizzard dumped six inches of snow on Long Island on election day. (Suozzi’s win also leaves Republicans with 219 House members; a party needs 218 votes to form a majority.)
Democrats continue to do well in special elections, performing about 9 points better than 2016 results on average.
In a sign of how dysfunctional House Republicans are right now, a band of House Republicans defeated another rules vote. That’s a procedural vote majority party members are expected to support. A total of six rules votes have been defeated this term. Before that, the last time the majority party failed to pass a rules vote was in 2002.
The FBI informant who connected Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine to Joe Biden was charged by federal officials with lying about those claims. House Republicans leaned heavily on the informant’s claims to build their case against the Biden’s.
As for the hearing in Georgia about whether the Fulton County prosecutor in the Trump election fraud trial there had diverted the case to her boyfriend’s firm, here’s Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post summing it up: “The spectacle that unfolded in an Atlanta courtroom over whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified from prosecuting Donald Trump was My Cousin Vinny meets The Real Housewives of Atlanta — equal parts bad lawyering and let-it-all-hang-out behavior more suited to reality TV than a real-life courtroom. In the end, Willis probably isn’t going to be ousted from overseeing the 2020 election interference case in Georgia, and she shouldn’t be….Still, the performance tarnished Willis, and while she portrayed herself as the victim of ‘lies,’ she is primarily the victim of her own bad judgment. Even assuming that nothing was going on between Willis and Wade before she brought him into the DA’s office — and the questioning on this point was so ineffective that I remain agnostic on the subject — the notion that you shouldn’t be sleeping with your subordinate seems never to have entered Willis’s mind.”
Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC dug up campaign footage of Fani Willis vowing to “not be choosing people to date that work under me.”
An inspector general report on the White House medical unit’s operations under Presidents Obama and Trump condemned the unit for, among other things, freely distributing potent drugs to staffers without prescriptions. Much of the criticism was directed at White House doctor Ronny Jackson, who is currently a Republican House member from Texas.
Guess who’s suing someone over being lied to? Former Rep. “George Santos”.
That’s right, “Santos”, who has been recording personalized Cameo recordings for $400 a pop, is suing late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel on the grounds Kimmel deceived Santos into recording videos with false and outrageous messages that Kimmel then aired on his program during a segment called “Will Santos Say It?” (Among the messages was one congratulating a man for winning a contest by eating six pounds of ground beef.) “Santos”, who was found to have fabricated much of his biography while campaigning for Congress, is suing Kimmel for, among other things, “false inducement.”
By Brian Beutler: “How False Republican Bravado Warps Politics” (“The phenomenon doesn’t spawn from bad journalism so much as from the clash between insecure liberalism and kayfabe conservatism. These sorts of [‘Things Seem Bad For Democrats’] headlines are inevitable, and aren’t even really falsifiable, because they reflect Democratic neurosis and artificial Republican aggression back out into the world, and the affects persist despite the more reliable barometer of public polling. Two changes would make this sort of thing less prevalent: First, a liberalism that was more confident in its appeal to a majority of the country; second, a press corps that was better at detecting false Republican bravado, and more willing to identify it as such.”)
By Ron Brownstein of The Atlantic: “Biden’s Hidden Economic Success” (“President Joe Biden’s economic agenda is achieving one of his principal goals: channeling more private investment into small communities that have been losing ground for years.”)
Yet…Jonathan Chait of New York magazine writes recent evidence showing an economic rebound for white working class Americans proves white working class disapproval of Joe Biden is not rooted in economic factors.
Nate Silver argues in the New York Times that people’s views of the economy are improving but their views of Biden are not, suggesting there is something else besides economic factors driving voters’ evaluations of the president.
Annie Karni of the New York Times looks at how commonplace it has become for Republican politicians to use bigoted and thinly-veiled racist attacks in public. It’s become so common, in fact, that it barely causes a stir anymore.
A University of Massachusetts Amherst poll found 35% of Donald Trump voters believe immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Only 32% of Trump voters and 37% of Republicans disagree with the assertion. And while 54% of Americans disagree with such a claim, a quarter of the country did not feel one way or the other about it. “Poisoning the blood” rhetoric is often spouted by white nationalists and was characteristic thought of Nazi Germany.
“Shout out to all the Democrats living in Mom's basement that like to talk shit on the Internet. You know, no matter how hard you try, arguing on the Internet, it’s like being in the Special Olympics. No matter how good you perform, you still have… you’re still fucking retarded at the end of the day.”—Republican House candidate JR Majewski of Ohio during a right-wing podcast. Majewski is the House candidate who misrepresented his military service during his failed 2022 campaign. Republicans have come around to support him after his opponent in the Republican primary was discovered to have been critical of Trump in the past.
Wisconsin Republicans agreed to adopt state legislative maps that undo the gerrymanders that gave Republicans a disproportionate amount of power in the state legislature. The new maps, proposed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, still slightly favor Republicans, but the districts are much more competitive. Republicans chose this option over one imposed by the State Supreme Court that could have been much more disadvantageous.
Republican Kentucky State Representative Jennifer Decker—who is white—claimed her father—who was white and born in the 1930s—was a slave because he was born into poverty and worked as a farm hand for a white man, which supposedly put him at the same level as a slave.
Despite the presence of more than 800 armed police officers (aka, “good guys with guns”) a gunman was able to kill one person and wound 22 during a mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory parade.
By Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post: “The Surge in Immigration is a $7 Trillion Gift to the Economy”
Russian opposition leader and Putin opponent Alexei Navalny died suddenly while imprisoned in the Arctic. He joins a long list of Putin critics who have died under mysterious circumstances. Western leaders immediately blamed Putin for Navalny’s death. Trump has remained silent.
In light of recent news Russia is developing space-based weapons that can disable satellites, check out Tim Fernholz’s article for Vox titled “How the US is Preparing to Fight—and Win—a War in Space”.
David Sanger and Julian Barnes of the New York Times write about U.S. intelligence reports that Russia may put a nuclear weapon into space, where it could be used to destroy satellite systems.
Sometimes it’s too easy: If Tucker Carlson loves Russia so much, maybe…you know? MORE: “Carlson, Like the Populist Right, Dislikes What Makes America Great” by Fareed Zakaria of the Washington Post
Top 5 Records Music Review: What Now by Brittany Howard
The sound of psychedelic rock and roll is too often reduced to sound effects. You know the kind: Something trippy, spacey, distorted, far out, like the wobbly, echoey opening to “Reflections” by the Supremes (1967). It works as an intro, suggesting Diana Ross won’t just be reminiscing about yesterday from the shelter of her bedroom but actually tumbling through “the mirror of [her] mind” as she sings the song. Or, perhaps more accurately, that sound effect represents the “distorted reality” around her, the world that no longer makes sense now that her lover has left her. Either way, what that sound effect is suggesting is that Ross still has it together but that everything else is coming apart and threatening to sweep her into the chaos as well. Makes sense for a year like 1967.
But psychedelic rock isn’t just the sound of a chaotic, disintegrating world. That would be too easy (and, let’s be frank, creating that impression would not have depended on the influence of LSD.) Psychedelic rock is also about heightened sensitivity. It’s about really feeling whatever kind of feeling the music is conveying. It’s meant to fiddle with the listener’s nervous system, playing our axons and dendrites like guitar strings so that we are hypersensitive to the language of sound.
Brittany Howard, who rose to prominence a little over a decade ago as the lead singer of the bluesy rock band Alabama Shakes (“Hold On”), is out with her second solo album, What Now. It’s a record about the loss and pursuit of love, but its immersion in psychedelic rock liberates Howard so she can question what we really want out of love and if it’s really worth it. (Happy Valentine’s Day?)
There isn’t a note on What Now that isn’t laced in psychedelia. The opening track, “Earth Sign”, sounds like Nina Simone, the John Coltrane Quartet, and the Chi-Lites dissolving into one another.
Other songs show how psychedelic music enhances sensation. Howard daydreams on “To Be Still” that she is a flower her lover plants in her garden. With the buzz of the recording studio hissing in the background, the track is nearly paralytic; when the percussion finally kicks in, we feel like a flower blooming in one of those time-lapse videos as the sun comes up. A similar effect happens during “Samson”, only this time it feels as though we’re crumpled on the floor of a recording studio’s control room, unable to move, with the remnants of a jazz recording and an incidental drum beat playing over the intercom. But on “Every Color In Blue”, the album’s closing song, it feels like we’re a train barreling down the tracks toward a head-on collision with another train. It seems real not because the song is out of control, but because Howard somehow worms her way into our brains and starts playing our panic buttons as though they’re the valves of a trumpet.
That heightened sensitivity also allows Howard to swim deep into the subject of love. The record opens with a couple songs about love: The anticipation of it, and the lack of joy that comes with its absence. But much of the album questions if love is all it’s cracked up to be, and if not, if it’s worth the heartbreak. Howard wonders if love is too powerful an emotion to casually indulge or accept as unconditionally beneficial, particularly if it ends up tying someone down or committing them to a relationship that isn’t worth preserving. As she sings on the funky, fuzzed-out title track (see Exit Music), “I don’t wanna fall for your potential.”
The tension between striving for love and actually reaping the rewards of love pulses through “Prove It to You”, a disco/house track that connects those styles of music to the ecstasy and release that can be derived from psychedelia. Howard admits she is hot and sweaty for a crush on the song, but that confession also doubles as an admission she is perhaps too desperate to fall in love, leaving her vulnerable. Over a four-on-the-floor beat, she sings
I’ve never been any good at falling in love
I fall so hard I never get up
Don’t hurt me, girl
I can’t take it no more
Makes me ask what I’m doing it for
It’s a question that has sociopolitical implications, too. Love certainly seems like an idea worth committing to, but is it worth devoting ourselves to the pursuit of an ideal our partners are poorly committed to or don’t deeply understand? Is that ideal attainable, and what would it take to reach it? (“What now,” indeed.) What if love is just a rush of endorphins, a naturally produced psychedelic that severs us from the true nature of relationships? Maybe love is a fool’s game, a hollow sentiment. (Describing the way she allowed desire to blind her to someone’s flaws on “Red Flags”, Howard drops this gem: “I came, I saw, unconscious.”) If that’s the conclusion, how weird is it that it took a trip to a psychedelic fantasyland to put us in touch with this aspect of reality?
Ultimately, it may be the power, if not the promise, of love is too strong. Near the end of the album, on “Patience” (which channels Sign o’ the Times-era Prince) Howard considers if going slow with a new relationship might make it last. She does wonder, though, if that will only end up delaying the inevitable disappointment. A couple songs later, the album concludes with “Every Color In Blue”, the song that sounds like a locomotive on a collision course with the Heartbreak Express. Why do we long for love? What keeps drawing us back to it? Is it hope? Or is it madness? Or maybe, as Roxy Music once suggested, it’s a drug.