In 1965, as New York City was preparing to elect a new mayor, legendary columnist Murray Kempton judged the Republican candidate, then-Rep. John V. Lindsay, with one of the great observations in political journalism: “He is fresh and everyone else is tired.” Even if Lindsay never turned out to be the GOP version of John F. Kennedy, the observation was true at the time—for a brief moment, Lindsay made New Yorkers believe in his hopeful vision of the city.
Were he alive today to observe the 2024 presidential contest, Kempton would have to turn his famous verdict on its head: Nobody is fresh, and everyone is tired.
On Tuesday, 15 states voted in the presidential primaries. The results thus far appear to be as surprising as sunshine in San Diego. As of this writing, Donald Trump has easily won every state on the GOP side save for Vermont (which at the moment is too close to call). Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has effortlessly swept for the Democrats (save for a mostly insignificant defeat in American Samoa’s caucuses). There have been no reasons to believe that either party has any meaningful interest in another candidate.
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The cake is baked, only I can’t quite figure out who exactly ordered this bland confection. Last month, a University of Massachusetts-Amherst poll found that a majority of voters wished that neither Biden nor Trump were running. They wanted choices, options, alternatives. Instead, they’re going to get a chance to relive the 2020 election. I’d rather sit through a second viewing of You People, or maybe an orthodontic exam.
It’s more than a little concerning that the world’s most robust democracy has no room for new people or ideas.
Super Tuesday, as the bevy of early-March primaries is known, was a foregone conclusion on the GOP side after Trump romped through Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Michigan. His last remaining challenger, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, does not appear to have performed well enough on Tuesday to make a convincing case for staying in the race. So far, she has won only the Washington, D.C., primary. She will be gone soon.
There was some hope among Democrats that Biden would step aside, recognizing that his age (he is now 81, older than any incumbent seeking re-election) had become too great a concern for too many voters. But that didn’t happen. Biden remains improbably convinced that he is the guy in 2024, just as he was the guy in 2020. “He is not diverted by politics or by bad polling or by some crazy-ass shit that Donald Trump has done,” one of his advisers told The New Yorker.
So here we are, on the most dreadful double date in modern political history. We can blame the primary system devised after the disastrous Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968; the flow of money into politics that followed the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United; demographic sorting; media polarization; the Russians.
These are all factors, to be sure, but even taken together they do not make for an explanation.
Americans do hunger for bold originality, but our institutions are too ossified to meet that demand.
For the last several years, liberals have shown unbridled affection for telegenic, charismatic leaders like Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand) and Volodymyr Zelensky (Ukraine). The right, meanwhile, has found new heroes in Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, who has ruthlessly and improbably restored order in a country ravaged by drug gangs, and Javier Milei of Argentina, a cross between Milton Friedman and Rod Stewart. Tellingly, both Bukele and Milei spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland last month.
There remain 244 days until the general election. They will be days of nastiness, bluster, and deception; of bad punditry and worse political clichés; days of anxiety and fear; days of rage. We are likely to see the rise of artificial intelligence as a tool of disinformation, and we’re going to have actual party conventions this summer (they went virtual in 2020 because of the COVID pandemic), ostensibly grassroots gatherings that were never intended to serve as the corny made-for-TV coronations they have become.
I hope there will not be political violence, but I was in Washington on Jan. 6.
The following day, Trump supporters strolling by the U.S. Capitol told me that reports of violence were being grossly exaggerated. In any case, they said, whatever minor acts of vandalism did occur (as peaceful tourists looked for pleasant repartee with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as a chance to hang out, so to speak, with then-Vice President Mike Pence) paled in comparison to the supposed electoral crimes of the Democrats. These included servers in Germany, servers in China, something about Hillary Clinton, something about Hunter Biden, and did I want to see videos of antifa stuffing ballot boxes in Wisconsin?
Since then, delusions and divisions have only grown deeper. Trump is already claiming that the 2024 election is being rigged. He did this before the 2016 election, too, but back then you could fool yourself into thinking he was only kidding around. That luxury is gone.
Yet we cannot despair. As dreary as our national politics have become, we have to believe in that most American of concepts: renewal.
Our politics are thrillingly malleable. And though bruising, it welcomes anyone winning to join the fight. The recent “uncommitted” effort in Michigan’s Democratic primary was a show of force by Arab Americans and American Muslims, a reminder that the megaphone of democracy has no fixed owner (on Super Tuesday, the uncommitted effort was relegated to the background, where it will likely remain through the general election).
And that alone should give us hope. If the 2024 election is proving uniquely unsatisfying, we can use that discontent as fuel for 2028 and beyond. There is always a chance to make it better.
