Policy be damned. It’s all about the vibes. The feels.
I’m talking about the 2024 general election, which effectively began this week when Donald Trump became the first non-incumbent Republican to win a primary in both Iowa and New Hampshire.
Back in 2020, the Republican National Convention didn’t even bother to write a new party platform. But the party may be even more devoid of policy ideas this time around.
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The Republican primary debates featured some important policy discussions (for example, Nikki Haley versus Vivek Ramaswamy, regarding U.S. support for Ukraine). But the elephant in the room was actually Donald Trump, who didn’t bother to participate in the debates.
My guess is that vibes always mattered more than issues, whether we wanted to admit it, or not. In the media age, charisma and looks (and height) are generally prerequisites for the presidency.
There’s always a “good” reason and a “real” reason for any behavior. Since we are unwilling to cop to our base instincts, we reverse-engineer substantive reasons to justify our votes.
For example, take the issue of spending. Did Republicans ever really care about debt and deficits? What was with all those Tea Party rallies with the guys in tricorne hats? I’m not sure.
Regardless, if you want to know why Republicans aren’t talking about spending (to the degree they once did), it’s partly because Republicans have zero plausibility regarding fiscal responsibility, post-Trump.
And just as the spending issue is no longer as potent for Republicans to invoke against Democrats, it has also lost its sting within the Republican Party. (Haley attempted, with little success, to use Trump’s big spending against him.)
If one believes in the “great man theory” of history, then it certainly stands to reason that strong leaders attract followers, who then adopt his agenda. This clearly happened with Republicans and Trump.
Case in point: Just last year, the fiscally conservative Club for Growth was desperately searching for ways that Ron DeSantis might outflank Trump from the right. Surely, they must have thought, they would find some policy apostasy—and some way of framing that issue—that devout conservatives would find unacceptable in Trump.
After spending millions on this effort, they came up empty. “Even when you show [a] video to Republican primary voters—with complete context—of President Trump saying something otherwise objectionable to primary voters, they find a way to rationalize and dismiss it,” the group’s president complained.
Issues might have always been overrated, but once upon a time, some of them mattered—a lot. There was a time not that long ago when regional issues affecting important stakeholders carried sway in important states. Consider how John McCain was forced to flip-flop on energy in Iowa, joking in 2007, “I drink a glass of ethanol every morning with Chuck Grassley for breakfast.”
(During the race for the Iowa 2024 caucuses, I heard very little about ethanol or farm subsidies. Our politics have been nationalized, and fealty to Trump has become the sole litmus test.)
But I’m not a cold-hearted materialist who thinks that voters only ever cared about issues regarding money. One imagines that supporting the right to life was also once a sine qua non in the Republican Party, nationally.
Today, considering the various positions Trump has staked out on the issue, the abortion issue is apparently no longer the third rail of Republican politics.
In truth, there probably are still a handful of non-negotiable issues for voters—it’s just that these non-negotiable issues tend to lean toward the angry, conspiratorial side of the right-wing spectrum. (Saving the unborn and avoiding crippling debt no longer moves the needle.)
After being booed for telling voters to get vaccinated, Trump has shied away from mentioning that he was responsible for Operation Warp Speed, which successfully fast-tracked the first COVID vaccines in the U.S., and helped bring an end to the pandemic. Perhaps even Trump perceived it was safer to follow than to lead.
Immigration and the border crisis are other examples of issues that today’s GOP base really does care about—not that there is any daylight between them and Orange Julius on the issue. The issue clearly matters to Trump—so much so that he would rather have the issue continue to exist than actually do something about it.
So far, I’ve focused on how Republicans are devoid of issues. But the truth is, there really will be only one issue in the general election: Donald Trump.
True, Joe Biden talks about a lot of issues. But as was the case in the Republican primary debates, Trump is the biggest issue facing the nation. Biden will want to make the election about him. And yes, Trump is a legitimate issue.
This election is not a Seinfeld-ian “show about nothing.” Much is at stake. But for wonks who care about the nitty gritty of public policy, you have picked the wrong time to be alive.
The voters are more into vibes, and the voters tend to get what they want. The year 2024 is already gearing up to be the most substance-free election in modern history. There’s no use trying to fight the zeitgeist.
