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In an earlier era, the Founders imported revolutionary ideals from the likes of French thinkers including Rousseau and Voltaire. When a union of French centrists and Leftists beat back the right wing in crucial elections earlier this month, they offered yet another roadmap for democracy in America—if America could manage to relieve itself of its political stupidity long enough to recognize it.
Alas, the elites morons leading the Democratic Party—who delivered us Clinton, Obama, and [ [link removed] ] Trump [ [link removed] ], before more recently anointing Biden—are hardly ready to learn from their mistakes. Having done everything they possibly could to derail [ [link removed] ] democracy over the past 20 years, they found themselves in an increasingly untenable position as their chosen leader revealed his unfitness for office, yet resisted their calls for him to step aside.
The same Democrats who created Trump in 2016, then made Biden the nominee in 2020 despite his demonstrable lack of support, now find themselves the victims of their own success. Having put Biden in the White House, they have now discovered their inability to drive him from it—even though Biden revealed himself on national television as unfit to lead.
Biden may have effectively lost the 2024 election months before it has even happened. And that was before an act of political violence propelled his opponent, an unrepentant would-be tyrant, into a new role as survivor. Today, Donald Trump is poised to return to the White House, ironically buoyed by the sympathy that yesterday’s failed assassination attempt will inevitably invite.
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France follows the lessons of Lincoln
President Abraham Lincoln delivered a historic speech [ [link removed] ] to an audience of 1,000 at the Illinois State Republican Convention on June 16, 1858. He went on to lose the Senate race for which he was campaigning at the time, and stoked fears that may have helped fuel the Civil War, while articulating a forceful and eloquent rejection of slavery—as well as political division.
Columbia University history professor Eric Foner has explained [ [link removed] ] that Lincoln’s opponent, Senator Stephen Douglas (D-IL), “had been seeking a middle ground between North and South, some way of comprising on the slavery issue.” Lincoln’s speech, according to Foner, argued that “‘No, there is no compromise…. You’ve got to be on one side or the other.’ In effect, he’s saying, ‘I’m on the side of freedom and Douglas…is on the side of slavery.’”
Evoking the Bible, Lincoln said [ [link removed] ]:
“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”
While Lincoln lost his race in 1858 to replace Douglas in the Senate, the Lincoln-Douglas debates made him a political star, preparing him for the 1860 presidential election, which he won.
Only seven years later, President Lincoln would die at the hands of an assassin wielding a gun. (Political violence in the U.S. is a disturbing theme to which we will return in a moment.)
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166 years after Lincoln’s “Divided Union” speech, another Republic across the Atlantic Ocean demonstrated how to put his prescient words into practice.
The French Republic held historic elections [ [link removed] ] earlier this month, called by President Emmanuel Macron in the wake of an electoral defeat in the European Union elections, and mere weeks before France hosts the Olympic Games. Macron’s decision to call for elections may have been something of an “own goal [ [link removed] ].” After the first round of voting, it seemed like he had invited the destruction of the Republic that he had led at the hands of the right wing voices who dominated the first round.
Mercifully, between the first and second rounds of voting, centrists and Leftists [ [link removed] ] in France managed to hurdle their differences and come together by embracing a strategy of tactical voting [ [link removed] ] to deny the right wing an electoral mandate. In electoral districts where multiple candidates faced each other, centrists and Leftists agreed to an alliance, inviting the third place voter-getters from the first round to step aside so that voters committed to democracy could coalesce behind a single voice.
By uniting the center and Left, France was able to hold at bay the fascism that has been rising around the world for the past decade, preserving the values of “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite” that animated the French Republic over the past two & a half centuries.
It was a unity that Americans who support democracy desperately need to demonstrate—but have never found the fortitude to embrace or embody.
Democrats—yet again—kick democracy in the knees
Long before Biden embarrassed [ [link removed] ] himself (and the entire country) on a national debate stage last month, the Democratic Party insiders who put him in the White House demonstrated their own ineptitude.
In 2016, they put Trump in office by actively promoting [ [link removed] ] him in the Republican primary, stupidly thinking that he would be an easy foil for Hillary Clinton to beat.
In 2020, they intervened [ [link removed] ] to deny Democratic Party voters a chance to nominate Bernie Sanders (who enjoyed by far the most support [ [link removed] ] among any of the many candidates in a crowded primary field) in order to guard the interests of capital. It was the same calculus [ [link removed] ] that drove Biden to the White House as Obama’s Vice President in 2008.
Many of us said at the time that Democrats would rather lose with Biden than win with Bernie. As I recently noted [ [link removed] ], we were right, while ahead of our time.
The same Democrats who created Trump in 2016, then made Biden the nominee in 2020 despite his demonstrable lack of support, now find themselves the victims of their own success. Having put Biden in the White House, they have now discovered their inability to drive him from it—even though Biden revealed himself on national television as unfit to lead.
Any number of voices [ [link removed] ] have clamored for Biden to step aside in order to allow a more qualified candidate to take his place. Others, ironically including [ [link removed] ] Bernie Sanders (et tu, Brutus?), have raced to defend him, inviting voters to set aside their well-justified concerns and instead trust Biden for no good reason.
Yet, demonstrating a nearly Trumpian dedication to himself (while tragically sacrificing his own political legacy), Biden has steadfastly rejected [ [link removed] ] every such plea for sanity, inviting Americans to instead ignore their senses and embrace political dogma, instead. We already saw how well that worked out in 2016.
Some have called for Vice President Kamala Harris, in particular, to take Biden’s place.
Given that she was unable [ [link removed] ] to win a single state primary when she ran [ [link removed] ] for the White House in 2020 against fellow Democrats, however, it seems preposterous to imagine that Harris could win the White House in a general election contest against Trump. Her racial and gender demographics make her a stronger candidate, rather than a weaker one, but two seemingly insurmountable challenges confront a potential Harris candidacy.
First, her record poses a similar challenge to Biden’s: neither of them can attract support from the grassroots progressives on whom Democrats rely in national elections. Having shared a city with Harris years before she went to Washington, I have long observed the unfortunate conservativism of her ideology despite the values she espouses in her rhetoric. She served as a predatory [ [link removed] ] prosecutor at both the local and state level before going to Washington.
Second, the Democratic Party is no less besieged by racism [ [link removed] ] and sexism than the Republican Party. I learned that the hard way [ [link removed] ], and suspect that those dynamics would confront Harris undiminished by her service as Vice President.
Yet—while Harris has frequently disappointed [ [link removed] ] supporters, and repeatedly invited mockery [ [link removed] ] for her futile attempts to emulate Barack Obama—she has yet to deliver a political performance as undeniably abysmal as the one that Biden did in late June.
Despite Harris’ various challenges, she would certainly be a stronger candidate than Biden. Between his debate performance and disqualifying support for a preventable genocide [ [link removed] ], he might actually be the least plausible Democrat in the country to run for the White House in November.
It’s not only that Democrats, like Mary Shelly’s Dr. Frankenstein, can’t control their own creation in Biden. The party has also taken steps to suppress reasonable dissent. Many Democrats have indicated that they fear [ [link removed] ] to speak out in public about the dire need for Biden to step aside, essentially because the “Democratic” party is anything but democratic. 
Having worked for the relatively conservative [ [link removed] ] Democratic administration of Barack Obama, the hosts of Pod Save America are ironic messengers for political sanity. Even they, however, have described [ [link removed] ] Biden’s insistence on staying in the race as “fucking insane” and “really stupid shit.”
The mere fact that stating the obvious reality—that Biden can’t possibly win another national election—has fallen to them, of all people, is itself a reflection of how absurd U.S. politics has become.
A shot heard ‘round the world
The shooting [ [link removed] ] that targeted Donald Trump at yesterday’s campaign rally in Pennsylvania has ironically breathed new life into his campaign—and will likely assure his victory in November if Biden stays in the race.
It was bad enough before, when Trump faced a candidate whose grasp on the issues appeared feeble at best, and who has saddled himself with a record of supporting [ [link removed] ] an internationally illegal genocide that has alienated many of his potential supporters. It is worse now, as Trump’s allies claim justifiable outrage [ [link removed] ] in the wake of political violence and spread disinformation leveraging it.
Trump’s first term in office was an unmitigated disaster for the United States. His policies undermined [ [link removed] ] human rights, his rhetoric invited [ [link removed] ] racialized violence, and his statements [ [link removed] ] during the 2024 re-election campaign suggest that he plans to escalate [ [link removed] ] his attacks on longstanding constitutional norms.
Whatever motivated the shot that grazed Trump yesterday, it has already produced a wave of sympathy [ [link removed] ]. His unsurprising endorsement [ [link removed] ] by one of the world’s most wealthy robber barons is one (among too many) examples.
The sympathy that Trump will gain from the attack on his life will likely buoy his fundraising and polling results. And, ultimately, it will likely land him back in the White House.
Paid subscribers can access a discussion of the disinformation responding to yesterday’s attempt on Trump’s life. Beyond Biden’s refusal to step aside despite his embarrassing public performances, the Democratic Party’s refusal to accept dissent, and the attack on Trump in Pennsylvania, the rising tide of disinformation represents a further threat confronting democracy in America that our country remains poorly poised to address...

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