If the general election campaign turns out to be Trump vs. Warren, what the heck are we supposed to do?
The first thing we could do, of course, is pray for a miracle. Maybe the Democrats will nominate Biden, Buttigieg, Booker, Bennet, Bullock or Klobuchar.
They are pluralists, not purists. They practice the craft of building coalitions to get things done.
If the party nominated one of those six, you could see the Democrats gather progressives and moderates into an enduring majority coalition as the Republicans recede into obsolescence. You could see movement on a range of issues where majorities are already stacked: guns, climate change, reducing income inequality, expanding health coverage.
But Elizabeth Warren has the momentum, and those of us who feel politically homeless may face a stark choice.
For many, supporting Warren is too high a price, even for ousting Trump. “There is no universe where I will ever vote for Donald Trump, and there is no universe where I could ever vote for Elizabeth Warren,” Jennifer Horn, a former chairwoman of the New Hampshire GOP, told The Washington Examiner.
On trade, Warren’s a protectionist. Her 10-year, $34 trillion health care plan isn’t paid for. Her student debt cancellation plan is a handout to the upper middle class. Her campaign seems to not acknowledge the inevitable trade-off between economic growth and high spending, high taxes and high regulation.
She’s one of the few Democrats who could actually lose. As Yascha Mounk notes in The Atlantic, Democrats won in 2018 because they won back a lot of nonpartisan suburban office park workers who found moderates they could vote for. When you remind independents of Democratic support for abolishing private health insurance and decriminalizing unauthorized border crossing – two key Warren policies – they become six percentage points less likely to vote for the Democrats. Trump will tell voters: You may despise me, but she’ll destroy the economy.
A Warren presidency would be deeply polarizing and probably unsuccessful. Her policy ideas would make any progressive-moderate coalition impossible. She’d try to govern with her 40% partisan base, just as Trump has, which is no way to pass big legislation. And there is a wave of insular intolerance coursing through parts of the American left. If given executive power, some progressives may use it to cancel any culture or faith other than their own.
And yet, if it comes to Trump vs. Warren in a general election, the only plausible choice is to support Warren. Over the past month, Trump has given us fresh reminders of the unique and exceptional ways he corrupts American life. You’re either part of removing that corruption or you are not. Staying home and not voting is not a responsible option.
Politics is downstream from morality and culture. Warren represents a policy wrong turn, but policies can be argued about and reversed. Trump represents a much more important threat to the soul of this country. He all but greenlighted the ethnic cleansing of Kurds without an ounce of remorse. He normalizes dishonesty and valorizes cruelty. His letter to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan proved we have a president whose professional competence is at kindergarten level.
Over the past few years, I’ve thought the progressive fears of incipient American fascism were vastly overblown. But, especially over the past month, Trump has worked overtime to validate those fears and to raise the specter of what he’ll be like if he is given a second term and is vindicated, unhinged and unwell.
This election is about whether we can hold together as a functioning nation, across our economic, racial, geographic and ideological divides. In such circumstances, a bad option is better than a suicidal one.
David Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times.
