The nation’s pundits are panicking over Biden’s acuity, not threats to representative American democracy by Trump and MAGA Republicans.
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How does the turmoil surrounding President Joe Biden’s reelection bid end? As historian Timothy Snyder succinctly noted, there aren’t many choices.
One choice, looking more likely with each passing day, is Biden stays the course as the Democratic Party nominee. Or he withdraws his candidacy, and Democrats hold a lightning round of forums and debates going into the Democratic National Convention. Or Biden resigns the presidency, elevating Vice President Kamala Harris. The country then sees a President Harris operating with the same successful White House team, following Biden’s blueprint and, with luck, preventing Donald Trump’s return.
We don’t know with certainty what will unfold. But we do know that the Washington-centric political press corps cannot be relied upon to cover the real stakes in this election.
“They have become a stampeding herd producing an avalanche of stories suggesting Biden is unfit, will lose and should go away,” author and cultural observer Rebecca Solnit wrote in The Guardian. “It’s a dogpile and a panic, and there is no one more unable to understand their own emotional life, biases and motives than people who are utterly convinced of their own ironclad rationality and objectivity, AKA most of these pundits.”
How Do You Cover the End of the Republic?
The White House press corps is guilty of multiple fails — and seems to be overcompensating for those lapses. As a former Washington desk national political reporter, I find it inconceivable that my latter-day colleagues did not notice Biden’s frailties and how the White House staffers covered them up.
Whether those frailties should matter to the electorate is another question, because, as Synder has pointed out, Biden’s presidency has a record of accomplishments unmatched for decades. And, if Trump is re-elected, “Every single gain will be undone.”
“Sometimes I wonder if all this coverage is because the media knows how to cover a normal problem like a sub-par candidate; they don’t know how to cover something as abnormal and unprecedented as the end of the republic,” Solnit wrote. “For the most part they don’t.”
What do these thinkers mean when they say Trump is threatening to end the republic? It’s fairly simple. Trump and his enablers, who include corporate titans and far-right culture warriors, don’t want representative government. The predatory capitalists want to do as they please without consequence. The culture warriors want to lord over the citizenry, forcing everyone else to live under their dictates. That’s American authoritarianism.
Bannon’s Vision
Don’t take my word for it. Read David Brooks’s July 1 New York Times opinion section interview with Steve Bannon on the eve of Bannon’s jail term for contempt of Congress. Bannon sees Trump’s return as heralding America’s third revolution — after the 1770s war of independence and 1860s Civil War. Federal government, as we know it, would be dismantled. Overseas alliances would lapse. Immigrants would be expelled.
“Project 2025 and others are working on it — to immediately focus on immigration, the forever wars, and on the fiscal and the financial,” Bannon said, when asked what a second Trump term would look like. “And simultaneously the deconstruction of the administrative state, and going after the complete, total destruction of the deep state.”
And Bannon’s role in this — as host of the The War Room podcast?
Bannon said, “I’m not a journalist. I’m not in the media. This is a military headquarters for a populist revolt. This is how we motivate people. This show is an activist show. If you watch this show, you’re a foot soldier. We call it the Army of the Awakened.”
Bannon’s comments are not unique. Kevin Roberts — who leads the Heritage Foundation, which created project 2025, and has for decades sought to dismantle federal agencies that regulate business — said that the country was in the midst of another “American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Go Back to Sleep — There Are No Monsters Under the Bed
Against this backdrop, and Trump’s saturation lying in the debate with Biden, what have the national press pundits focused on? Not Trump’s latest wave of falsehoods. Not how Trump is pledging to arrest and deport millions of undocumented people whose work sustains many economic sectors. Not the idea that this election isn’t a choice between two candidates, but a choice between drastically different visions of power and rule.
This is painfully clear to Solnit:
We are deciding whether this nation has a future as a more-or-less democratic republic this November, and on that rides the fate of the earth when it comes to acting on climate change. If the US falters at this decisive moment in the climate crisis, it will drag down everyone else’s efforts. Under Trump, it will. But the shocking Supreme Court decisions this summer and the looming threat of authoritarianism have gotten little ink and air, compared to the hue and cry about Biden’s competence.
It’s undeniable that Biden spooked tens of millions of Americans in the debate. It’s undeniable that his explanations — and those of his handlers in the White House and surrogates on the campaign trail — have failed to quell those concerns. I’m in no position to judge Biden’s neurological functionality, even if I’ve heard whispers from well-connected friends that Biden has been this way throughout his otherwise successful presidency.
As Snyder summarized, there seem to be three ways this crisis can break. He suggests the absence of a quick resolution has a silver lining because it allows the electorate “to think things over.” But many Americans aren’t thinking. They’re reacting. And that behavior is being modeled by the blinkered gyrations of the one American institution that’s supposed to help the public see things clearly as they are: the press.
Steven Rosenfeld is a longtime national political reporter. Most recently, he has specialized in election administration and disinformation. He has covered those topics for the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, L.A. Progressive, AlterNet and others. Previously, he covered money and politics for National Public Radio, Monitor Radio and Marketplace.
