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      Kamala Harris Deserves a More Important Job

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      Credit…Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOpinionKamala Harris Deserves a More Important JobShe could be at the forefront of helping a part of America that’s been left behind.Credit…Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSupported byContinue reading the main storyOpinion ColumnistDec. 15, 2020, 7:00 p.m. ETI was speaking recently to Matt Dunne, founder of the Center on Rural Innovation, which promotes digital economic development in small-town America, and he was telling me about a Vermont community near his home with a great public library: “You could drive by on any Sunday and the parking lot would be full,” he said. “There was just one problem: The library was closed on Sundays.”The parking lot was full of cars with kids doing their homework and adults doing their office work — using the wireless connectivity spilling out of the empty building because their rural homes lacked high-speed broadband. Alas, stories abound of rural Americans going to Subway sandwich shops and Dairy Queens in search of free Wi-Fi.And that is why I want to talk today about Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.Harris is too smart and energetic to be just the vice president, a position with few official responsibilities. I’d love to see President-elect Joe Biden give her a more important job: his de facto secretary of rural development, in charge of closing the opportunity gap, the connectivity gap, the learning gap, the start-up gap — and the anger and alienation gap — between rural America and the rest of the country.President Trump feasted off those gaps in our last two presidential elections to dominate Democrats in rural America. Putting Harris in charge of fixing them would be a real statement by the Biden team.It would provide a vision for American renewal and signal that Democrats were no longer going to cede rural America to Republicans but were instead going to seize it from them. And it would make Harris a super-relevant vice president from Day 1.A school in Summertown, Tenn., recognizes some students don’t have internet access at home.Credit…Brett Carlsen for The New York TimesIn Tucson, Ariz., school buses are equipped with Wi-Fi and parked in poor neighborhoods so access is available.Credit…Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesDemocrats must not kid themselves. Biden won this election by narrowly winning the suburbs and urban centers in key battleground states, where just enough people decided that they wanted to “de-Trump” the White House but not “defund” the police.That is, a lot of suburban voters rejected Trump personally but also rejected far-left Democratic ideas that had percolated up in the last few years. Democrats won the presidency but took a beating from those same suburban voters in many statehouse, U.S. House and U.S. Senate races.If Democrats go into 2022 — let alone 2024 — appealing only on the cities and suburbs, they’re crazy. They will be highly vulnerable if the G.O.P. is led by a smarter, less offensive populist than Donald Trump.Most important, lifting rural America is the right thing to do for all of America and fulfills Biden’s vision of a nation that “grows together” in every way.That concept remains in the DNA of the Democratic Party, which in my home state, Minnesota, is still known as the “D.F.L.” — the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. The party needs to reconstitute that coalition.“One way to do that is by reconnecting with its populist roots — when it really was a party focused on the empowerment of workers and farmers and ordinary citizens,” argued Harvard’s Michael Sandel, author of “The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?” “Trump gave populism a bad name. Democrats should provide an alternative to Trump’s xenophobic, plutocratic populism by showing how populism can be a source of civic activism, engagement and renewal across urban and rural America.”That should be Harris’s mission, and it’s one worthy of a vice president. And it starts in rural America.“I fear the word ‘rural’ connotes a geography that is not my problem,” Beth Ford, president of Land O’Lakes, the influential farmer-owned cooperative headquartered in Minnesota, said to me. But, in fact, spreading connectivity and technology to rural America “is an American issue, an American competitiveness issue and an American national security issue,” she argued.Persistent “underinvestment in rural America will leave us less secure and less prosperous as a nation” — and less competitive with China, which is rapidly connecting its rural heartland, Ford said. “Some 35 percent of farmers lack enough bandwidth to run the equipment on their farms, ensure their kids get a good education and that Grandma has access to telemedicine.”What should a Biden-Harris rural strategy look like? It would start with showing up regularly. “Showing up” and “just listening to people” with respect goes a long way in rural America, Duluth’s mayor, Emily Larson, remarked to me. Actually, nothing earns more respect than listening to people respectfully.“Rural areas have their own social networks,” Larson said, but they’re different from the metropolitan ones. “Here, people will show up for you in the middle of the night, but they don’t post about it on Facebook.”On policy specifics, the Biden-Harris team should commit that in four years every rural community in America will have access to broadband — the basic infrastructure needed for an inclusive modern economy.Dunne suggests a new federal loan program that would offer 50-year, no-interest loans to communities and co-ops (and ease regulations) so rural public-private coalitions can build broadband networks with a minimum 100 megabits per second of speed for downloading and uploading all kinds of remote learning tools, work tools and telehealth tools. Representative James Clyburn has already won passage of a bill in the House with a similar approach.Every rural community in America needs access to broadband to succeed.Credit…Jenn Ackerman for The New York TimesTraveling with Dunne last year to Red Wing, Minn., to see how gigabit networks can support high-tech start-ups and traditional farmers, I wrote about a couple of inventors we met who had created a robotic rooster that patrols the poultry house for dead birds and tills the bedding, but with an unexpected byproduct: The birds exercise more and gain weight faster, because they are constantly running away from or pecking at the robot.While these “Poultry Patrol” robots work autonomously 80 percent of the time, said Dunne, “there are significant periods when they need to be remotely operated and receive coding updates from afar, which is only possible with very fast broadband.”But while better connectivity is necessary, it’s not sufficient. “We also need to ensure investment in digital skills training in rural communities and incentives for tech companies to hire remote workers in small towns,” added Dunne. “Today rural America represents 15 percent of the nation’s work force, but only 5 percent of digital economy jobs of the future. But the pandemic has opened people’s eyes to the idea that digital economy jobs can be created anywhere.”Kamala Harris is a natural for that task. Who better to bridge Silicon Valley and the rural valleys of America?She is also a natural bridge builder to a more inclusive American heartland, because rural America is not white America. According to a report by the Urban Institute, “one in five Americans lives in rural communities, and more than one in five (22 percent) rural residents are people of color.” I wrote last year about Willmar, Minn., a town that was all white back in the 1950s and today is nearly half Hispanic, Somali, Asian and Native American.In Minnesota, small towns like Willmar that can manage inclusion and diversity are the ones now thriving, because they can attract new labor and home buyers when so many of the young white adults have left for the big cities.Harris will soon be the first woman, the first Black and the first Indian-American vice president, which certainly resonates with a lot of urban voters. However, if she could make herself the person in the Biden cabinet who always shows up FIRST to listen in rural America and the FIRST to appreciate its concerns and the FIRST to make sure its concerns are addressed, she and the Democrats could make themselves competitive in a lot more rural counties.Even if it is just 10 or 15 percent more competitive, it might be enough to deprive today’s deeply warped Trump-led G.O.P. from taking back the White House or the House in the next four years — and maybe force it back to sanity. The Republican Party needs shock therapy, and nothing would shock this G.O.P. more than losing its automatic hold on rural America.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Did the Resistance Defeat Donald Trump?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyDid the Resistance Defeat Donald Trump?Some reasons to doubt a theory that’s shared by liberals and Trump supporters alike.Opinion ColumnistDec. 15, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETMedia members watching Joe Biden onscreen and the White House in front of them in November. Credit…Oliver Contreras for The New York TimesTwo of the most intense factions in our politics, the anti-Trump Resistance with its claim to be standing against fascism and the conservatives trying to delegitimize Joe Biden’s victory with claims of widespread voter fraud, agree on almost nothing, but they do agree on one point: The Trump administration was successfully undermined — the Trump agenda thwarted and Donald Trump himself defeated — by liberal institutions that refused to normalize him, maintained a persistent alarm about his presidency and took every opportunity to obstruct, investigate, protest and impeach.The liberals urging constant vigilance and outrage against Trump’s challenge to the 2020 outcome are trying to see this project of resistance through to its Biden-inauguration end. Meanwhile, the Trumpian side is trying to imitate it, since lurking below the right’s fantasy politics is a more cynical assumption that it’s a great idea, a highly effective political counterpunch, for Republicans to act like Biden is an anti-president, a Great Pretender — because that’s what liberals did to Trump and it obviously worked.I think both of these groups are mostly wrong — that what defeated Trump was Trump himself, that the “fascism” discourse around his presidency was often a distraction, and that the most successful strategies pursued by the Democrats were strategies of normalcy rather than alarm. But now that the Electoral College has voted and a Biden presidency seems essentially assured, let’s consider the best arguments for how and why the Resistance undid Trump.From the Resisters themselves, those arguments accuse anyone who was skeptical of their alarmism of ignoring the importance of passion, organization and mobilization in American politics. To eye-roll at the would-be defenders of liberalism and democracy, Laura K. Field of the Niskanen Center asserted just before the election, is to engage in an “implicit denial of the work that has gone into attempting to defeat Trump.” If his authoritarianism has fizzled out in fantasy and hopeless lawsuits, it still could have been much, much worse if people hadn’t felt a world-historical incentive to resist — an effort that merits “gratitude and respect, not dismissive call-outs and belittling tweets.”Rather than emphasizing mobilization, meanwhile, the Trumpist version of Field’s argument emphasizes elite power — the way that the media and the judiciary and the bureaucracy joined with congressional Democrats in denying Trump any of the normal space of action that his predecessors enjoyed. This newspaper’s famous Op-Ed by “Anonymous” (later revealed to be Miles Taylor, the homeland security secretary’s chief of staff) claiming to represent the Resistance inside the Trump White House offers a condensed symbol of what these Trump supporters have in mind — a kind of inside-outside game of obstruction, with media entities and government officials cooperating to keep the agenda that Trump actually campaigned on from taking shape.To these arguments I would offer a concession and a rejoinder.The concession first: There’s no question that the anti-authoritarian, America-imperiled narrative of the last four years had some benefits for Trump’s opponents. It helped pressure the disparate factions of the American elite, from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, to close ranks against the president. It created an ideological home and a compelling self-understanding for anti-Trump Republicans. It contributed to the mobilization of suburban and minority voters in crucial states like Georgia and to the general sense of purpose that a successful political movement needs. And in its inside-game form, elite resistance definitely obstructed at least some of Trump’s expressed desires, from Gary Cohn and John Bolton maneuvering deceptively on NAFTA or NATO to the generals who repeatedly slow-walked orders to withdraw forces from the Middle East or Afghanistan.My rejoinder, though, is that it’s not clear whether the Resistance mentality was more effective than more politically normal modes of fighting Trump, and whether the inside-the-system obstruction of the president actually derailed a real agenda rather than just adding extra layers of chaos to a presidency that never had a vision or a plan.On the first point, one might observe that the Trump-era controversies most dominated by Resistance theatrics were conflicts that the Resistance didn’t win — the long Russiagate investigation and imbroglio, the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation battle, the impeachment fight.At the same time, Trump’s actual defeats were the work of very conventional political campaigning: a midterm campaign in which the Democrats organized around health care and other kitchen-table issues and a presidential election in which they nominated their most moderate candidate and ran on normalcy and decency, casting Trump as a terrible person and a bad president but not a Mussolini in the making.Then, too, the gains from the Resistance mentality came with a political price. The anti-Trump closing-of-ranks within elite institutions helped shore up the president’s populist bona fides, his claim to represent outsiders and non-elites, even when his actual policies favored insiders and the rich. The tendency to see an authoritarian depredation behind every policy move, however banal, weakened the credibility of the media, especially putatively neutral outlets like CNN. The pitch of anti-Trumpism bound once-dubious Republicans to his cause, almost matching the mobilization on the Democratic side.And the liberal belief that Trump was obviously, self-evidently a white supremacist and semi-fascist left liberalism somewhat blindsided by the voters who disagreed: not just the white shy-Trumpers of the suburbs but also the Trump-voting Latinos and African-Americans who helped keep the 2020 race competitive, denying Biden his blowout and the Resistance the full repudiation of Trumpism that it sought.On the right, meanwhile, the Trumpist conceit that the Mueller investigation or MSNBC hysteria were the main forces preventing a more successful Trump agenda gives that opposition way too much credit — and Trump himself way too little blame. It was not the Resistance but his own indifference that induced Trump to outsource policymaking to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell during the two years when his party actually controlled the government. It was not the Mueller investigation but the attempted Obamacare repeal and a not-very-populist tax plan that drove his polling numbers to their notable lows.When Kayleigh McEnany complained recently that her boss “was never given an orderly transition of power,” she had a point — but the major source of disorder was not Crossfire Hurricane or the Steele dossier but just the Trump team’s own incompetence, notably Jared Kushner’s decision to ditch Chris Christie’s transition plan without having a replacement.The Resistance may have induced Democrats to take a lot of party-line votes against the president, but if Trump actually pursued his promised infrastructure bill he would have found Democratic takers. In areas where he had competent people working for him (judicial nominations, above all), the political and media opposition was impotent to stop him. Impeachment was just a segue into his presidency’s peak, a triumphant State of the Union address just before the coronavirus came calling. Even late in 2020, Nancy Pelosi was willing to make a deal with him on a big new round of coronavirus relief, which might have helped save his re-election bid — yet Trump preferred instead to go down tweeting.So treating Biden the way Trump was treated, opposing him as Trump was opposed, is only a devastating strategy if you assume that Biden and his White House will miss as many opportunities and perform as many face-plants as Trump’s administration did.And that’s without even getting into the fact that the Republican campaign to delegitimize Biden can’t really emulate the Resistance, since the whole point of the anti-Trump effort was to mobilize a political and cultural establishment from which the populist right is notably excluded. At most a refusal to recognize Biden’s legitimacy could keep congressional Republicans voting in lock step against whatever the new president supports. But most would vote in lock step anyway, and the Republican senators most likely to break ranks, a Mitt Romney or a Susan Collins, are the least likely to be swayed by appeals to Biden’s supposed illegitimacy.Which means the attempt to build a right-wing Resistance narrative should probably be understood less as an effort to actually impede Biden’s administration and much more as a project to maintain Donald Trump’s position as his party’s leader, a president in exile — because, after all under its theory, he never really lost.If the idea of Trump 2024 appeals to you, as it currently does to many Republicans, then this kind of Resistancing may sound like a good way to keep anybody else from claiming any kind of real position in the party. But the primary claim being made for it — that it will obstruct and defeat Biden the way Resistance liberals took down Trump — is a twofold error: They didn’t, and it won’t.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Your Tuesday Briefing

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      Trump Allies Eye Long-Shot Election Reversal in Congress, Testing Pence

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      Rep. Max Rose Launches Exploratory Bid to Run for N.Y.C. Mayor

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRep. Max Rose Launches Exploratory Bid to Run for N.Y.C. MayorThe congressman, who lost his re-election bid last month, is casting himself as a blunt populist who would end New York’s cycle of “broken politics.”Representative Max Rose, a Staten Island Democrat, is a relative moderate in a field that may be defined by debates over ideology and competence.Credit…Stephanie Keith for The New York TimesDec. 13, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETRepresentative Max Rose, the brash Staten Island Democrat who recently lost his re-election race, appears all but certain to run for mayor of New York City, confirming for the first time that he is exploring a bid and casting his potential candidacy as a sharp rebuke of the de Blasio administration.Mr. Rose’s entry into the race at a moment of extraordinary crisis for New York would test whether a relatively moderate Democrat could catch fire in a crowded field that may be defined by debates over both ideology and matters of competence.Mr. Rose has little background in navigating the byzantine corridors of city bureaucracy, and on Thursday, his team took the unusual step of registering a mayoral campaign committee with the city’s Campaign Finance Board, with no announcement or much public elaboration.In his first extensive remarks since then, Mr. Rose positioned himself as a blunt, populist possible contender who hopes to frame his background outside of city government as a source of fresh perspective rather than a mark of managerial inexperience.“If you want someone with a typical politician, typical government experience, you’ve got plenty of other folks,” Mr. Rose, a military veteran, said in an interview on Saturday. “But if you want someone with experience and guts and ability to end our broken politics, then I could be your candidate.”Taking an apparent swipe at rivals who are more rooted in local politics, he continued, “If someone wants to tout their experience in city politics, then they certainly should not be pointing at problems that they helped — big problems — that they helped create. They can’t act as if they aren’t holding the shovel.”For some of the Democrats already in the race, experience in city politics brings with it a record to defend, but it also provides valuable advantages in Democratic-vote-rich pockets of New York.Eric L. Adams is the Brooklyn borough president, for example, and is backed by many of Brooklyn’s Democratic power brokers. Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, is closely tied to Manhattan’s West Side and has already secured endorsements from several progressive Democratic leaders.Staten Island, the city’s most conservative, Trump-friendly borough, simply does not offer the same kind of liberal power base. Mr. Rose, 34, and a relative newcomer to politics, may face a challenge in constructing a citywide coalition without built-in infrastructure and strong early support in traditional Democratic circles, though certainly the race is fluid at this stage.“He’s got to figure out how you go from being the congressman from Staten Island and then losing, to running for mayor of New York City,” said Marc H. Morial, the head of the New York-based National Urban League, a major civil rights organization. Mr. Morial, a former mayor of New Orleans, added: “He’ll be an energetic candidate, and energetic candidates sometimes break through. But starting out, you’re from Staten Island.”A person close to Mr. Rose’s operation said the team was ramping up quickly, interviewing staff members and talking with pollsters, and engaging with potential supporters and donors.“This will be an underdog campaign,” Mr. Rose acknowledged. “This would not just be a campaign that involves me being the underdog. This is a campaign that would be fighting for the underdog.”In the wide-ranging interview, Mr. Rose sketched out his vision for a possible bid, stressing issues of economic inequality; he is on the side of “working people,” he said repeatedly. He contended that he would be fully focused on the city, contrasting himself with Mayor Bill de Blasio, who, even before running for president, had made frequent trips to Iowa.“There should be a pledge that in their first two years, they are not leaving New York City,” Mr. Rose said as he expounded on city challenges that require urgent attention. “‘Sweetie, we are vacationing in Breezy Point.’ OK? We’re not leaving. We’re not going. No traveling to Iowa. No thinking about your next higher office.”Mr. Rose repeatedly laced into Mr. de Blasio’s stewardship of the city on matters from managing school openings during the pandemic to his handling of Covid-19 testing issues. That he would cast himself as the antithesis to Mr. de Blasio is little surprise; during his congressional campaign, he released an ad calling Mr. de Blasio “the worst mayor in the history of New York City.”If Mr. Rose runs, he must persuade voters that his set of past experiences — as a decorated Army veteran, an executive for a nonprofit health care company and a one-term congressman — has prepared him to manage a vast government at a moment of peril for the city. Asked about the greatest number of people he had managed, he cited his time as chief of staff at the health care company, saying it employed around 1,000 people.Mr. Rose pointed to a range of policy proposals that he would support as a candidate, including raising taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers — he did not directly define “wealthy,” beyond urging “millionaires and billionaires” to pay their “fair share” — and giving city employees a property tax deduction if they live in New York City. He also said he backs a universal basic income program. (He is not the only champion of a universal basic income who is eying a run; that has been a top priority of Andrew Yang, who is expected to enter the race next month).He described New York schools as “deeply segregated” and urged changes, but he opposes eliminating the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, the controversial exam that determines who is admitted to New York’s most elite public high schools.“I do think that the SHSAT plays a role,” he said. “Should that be the only consideration? No, you can have a holistic process here. But under no circumstances should it be ignored.”As a candidate, Mr. Rose would face significant challenges around issues of politics and geography, identity and experience.In Congress, he represented a slice of Brooklyn and all of Staten Island. There, Mr. Rose embraced a number of positions that put him to the right of many New York Democratic primary voters, including his reluctance to impeach President Trump, though he ultimately voted to do so.“The city’s ideology is drifting leftward, and to survive in his district, Max had to reflect a less progressive ideology,” said Steve Israel, the former eight-term House Democrat of New York who was seen as one of his party’s top strategists. “On the other hand, it could be that the progressives cannibalize each other and then Max has a clear shot.”Mr. Rose insisted that he has a record of rebuking Mr. Trump, noting his strong opposition to “the racist Muslim ban” and saying that he voted to impeach Mr. Trump, “knowing that it could be the end of my career.”“Did I work across the aisle to get things done? Absolutely,” he said, casting himself as focused on those “who need action today.” “If you’ve got a problem with that, sue me. And you know what? You’ve got 30 other candidates to choose from.”Mr. Rose, who was the first member of Congress to endorse former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s presidential bid, already appeared to be recalibrating his message. In the interview, he did not say whether he would want Mr. Bloomberg’s endorsement; he highlighted his past criticism of stop-and-frisk policing tactics; and, asked to name the best mayor in his lifetime, he suggested David N. Dinkins.Still, running from the center may resonate with some New Yorkers who are alarmed by a surge in shootings; worried about businesses leaving and are simply in a less ideological mood these days given the struggles of the city. But Mr. Rose would have competition for those voters, too: Raymond J. McGuire, a longtime Wall Street executive, has attracted the support of many centrist business leaders, a sign of just how competitive every lane of the primary will be. (Mr. Israel, a relative moderate who does not live in the city but intends to contribute financially, is supporting Mr. McGuire, too.)Then there is the matter of identity.This year, as issues of police brutality and racism have torn at the fabric of the city and communities of color have been hit disproportionately by the virus and its aftermath, many New Yorkers would like to see a mayor of color. There is a diverse slate of candidates already running, including Mr. Adams; Mr. McGuire; Maya D. Wiley, a former top lawyer for Mr. de Blasio; and Dianne Morales, a former executive of nonprofit social services groups.“I do think someone of color is best suited for this moment,” said Leah D. Daughtry, a veteran Democratic Party strategist with close ties to New York politics. Asked about Mr. Rose, she said, “I don’t know him.”Mr. Rose, who devoted his final floor speech in Congress in part to grappling with racial injustice, said that it would be his “No. 1 responsibility,” should he run, to build a diverse campaign and potential administration. But he knows he has some introducing of himself to do.He met recently with the Rev. Al Sharpton, a prominent civil rights leader who called Mr. Rose hard-working and “fiery” and said Mr. Rose would “add some excitement to the campaign.”But even as he moves forward, Mr. Rose said that he was “intent on listening far more than talking.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Texas Lawsuit and the Age of Dreampolitik

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Texas Lawsuit and the Age of DreampolitikThe separation of political reality from political fantasy stills exists — for now.Opinion ColumnistDec. 12, 2020Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesWhen it comes to Donald Trump’s efforts to claim victory in the 2020 presidential election, there are two Republican Parties. One G.O.P. has behaved entirely normally, certifying elections, rejecting frivolous claims and conspiratorial lawsuits, declining to indulge the conceit that state legislatures might substitute their votes for the electoral outcome.The other G.O.P. is acting like a bunch of saboteurs: insisting that the election was stolen, implying that the normal party’s officials are potentially complicit and championing all manner of outlandish claims and strategies — culminating in the lawsuit led by the attorney general of Texas that sought to have the Supreme Court essentially nullify the election results in the major swing states.What separates these two parties is not necessarily ideology or partisanship or even loyalty to Donald Trump. (Nobody had Brian Kemp and Bill Barr, both prominent members of the first group, pegged as NeverTrumpers.) It’s all about power and responsibility: The Republicans behaving normally are the ones who have actual political and legal roles in the electoral process and its judicial aftermath, from secretaries of state and governors in states like Georgia and Arizona to Trump’s judicial appointees. The Republicans behaving radically are doing so in the knowledge — or at least the strong assumption — that their behavior is performative, an act of storytelling rather than lawmaking, a posture rather than a political act.This postelection division of the Republican Party extends and deepens an important trend in American politics: The cultivation of a kind of “dreampolitik” (to steal a word from Joan Didion), a politics of partisan fantasy that so far manages to coexist with normal politics, feeding gridlock and stalemate and sometimes protest but not yet the kind of crisis anticipated by references to Weimar Germany and our Civil War.The cultivation is a bipartisan affair. When conservatives defend their fight to overturn the election as an answer to the way Democrats reacted to Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, they are correct in the sense that most of their arguments and proposed tactics have antecedents on the liberal side. The attempts to scrutinize swing-state data for anomalies that prove the fix was in recapitulate similar attempts by early #Resistance pioneers. The state-legislature fantasy is an answer to the “Hamilton elector” fantasy, in which faithless electors were going to deny Trump the White House. The widespread Republican belief in voter fraud is akin to the widespread Democratic belief that Russian hacking changed vote totals.The difference, though, is that the right’s fantasy has been embraced from the start by a Republican president (Hillary Clinton was a follower rather than a leader in calling Trump “illegitimate”), and it has penetrated much faster and further into the apparatus of Republican politics. In January 2017, only a handful of Democratic backbenchers objected to Congress’s certification of Trump’s election. But you can find the name of the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, on a brief supporting the ridiculous Texas lawsuit.That brief did not persuade the Supreme Court, Biden will be president, and the Republicans who signed up for the fantasy have been protected from their folly, once again, by Republicans with actual responsibility — in this most recent case, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts.But it’s reasonable to wonder how long this can go on — whether dreampolitik and realpolitik can continue permanently on separate tracks, brushing up against each other from time to time without a serious collision, or whether eventually the dreamworld narratives will force a crisis in the real one.One possibility, which I explored in my recent book, is that political fantasy can actually be a substitute for radical action in the real world. There are ways in which the internet, especially, seems to contain and redirect the same extremism it nurtures — pushing it into memes and hashtags and social-media wars rather than actual revolutions, giving us Diamond and Silk tweeting about a military coup rather than the thing itself.In this theory, certain kinds of partisan fantasy might actually be stabilizing forces, letting people satisfy their ideological urges by participating in a story in which their side is always on the verge of some great victory, in which Trump is about to be exposed as a Manchurian candidate or removed by the 25th Amendment (I participated in that one), or alternatively in which Trump is about to order mass arrests of all the pedophile elites or get the Supreme Court to put him back in office for another four years. Or, for the apocalyptically inclined, a fantasy in which your political enemies are poised to do something unbelievably terrible — like all the right-wing militia violence that liberals expected on Election Day — that would vindicate all your fears and makes you happy in your hatred.Crucially, as in certain famous cults, the failure of these prophecies doesn’t undo the story. It just requires more elaboration and adaptation, more creative fantasizing — and meanwhile the gears of normal politics grind on, choked with sand but still turning steadily enough.I am certain this analysis fits the career of Trump himself, who has conjured wild fantasies among his friends and enemies alike, but who clearly doesn’t have the capacity to bring the real world into alignment with his own reality-television imagination, to suborn the custodians of institutional legitimacy — whether the military or the Supreme Court or his own attorney general and the governor of Georgia. And while Trump may get one more great performance in 2024, I’m not sure that any plausible successor will be able to achieve his mind-meld with the right’s dreampolitik — in which case this postelection fight might be a unique convergence between reality and fantasy, rather than a foretaste of the two collapsing disastrously into each other.On the other hand, we saw over the summer how amid the unique combination of pandemic, lockdown and Trump’s provoking presidency, the fantasy politics of the left could slip free of the dreamworlds of academia and online activism, contributing to violence and purges in the real world — from the streets of the Twin Cities to the board of the Poetry Foundation. Police abolition and apologias for rioting belonged to the realm of ideological fantasy politics until they didn’t, and if certain left-wing impulses have gone back to being fantastic in the months since, the memory of May and June remains.The Texas lawsuit didn’t torch any city blocks, but all those congressional signatures on the amicus brief did make it feel like something more than just another meme. The crucial question it raises is whether people can be fed on fantasies forever — or whether once enough politicians have endorsed dreampolitik, the pressure to make the dream into reality will inexorably build.The last month of 2020 won’t resolve that question. But we can look forward, in the next decade if not sooner, to discovering whether my confidence in the separation of political fantasy and political reality was the greatest fantasy of all.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      10 Months Later, Iowa Democrats Blame National Party for Caucus Meltdown

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      Biden’s Iowa Bus Tour Is Headed for a D.C. Reunion

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesFormal Transition BeginsBiden’s CabinetDefense SecretaryElection ResultsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPolitical MemoBiden’s Iowa Bus Tour Is Headed for a D.C. ReunionA year ago, Joe Biden was on a grim bus tour through Iowa, joined by many old friends, including Tom Vilsack and John Kerry. Now Mr. Biden wants to bring some of the crew back to Washington with him.Joseph R. Biden Jr. and John Kerry traveled through Iowa on a bus tour in December 2019. Last month, Mr. Biden, as president-elect, named Mr. Kerry to a top climate post.Credit…Calla Kessler/The New York TimesSydney Ember and Dec. 12, 2020, 10:01 a.m. ETJoseph R. Biden Jr. wasn’t the main event, and he knew it.As he trudged from one small Iowa town to the next on a cold, grim bus tour last winter, trying and failing to generate even a spark of enthusiasm for his presidential candidacy in the leadoff caucus state, he had a habit of quietly delivering his stump speech and then welcoming a more formidable closer.“Thank you for listening,” Mr. Biden said at a campaign stop in Storm Lake last December before ceding the spotlight to Tom Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa.“I’m going to turn this over to a guy who’s forgotten more about farm and rural policy than I know about foreign policy,” he quipped.It was a lonely road for Joe Biden in Iowa a year ago. As his rivals enjoyed big crowds and splashy surrogates, friends of Mr. Biden’s who had retired from elected office — including Mr. Vilsack and John Kerry, the former secretary of state — suited up once more to lend their support in what looked at times like a last hurrah as Mr. Biden plummeted toward a fourth-place finish.Yet those frosty days in Iowa have now led somewhere more glamorous: Mr. Biden’s administration, or so he hopes.In recent weeks, Mr. Biden — now the president-elect and unquestionably the next main event in Washington — rewarded Mr. Vilsack and Mr. Kerry with nods for prominent roles, alongside others who championed Mr. Biden during the roughest stretches of the primary campaign. The early Iowa surrogates embraced his comparatively modest pledge of a return to normalcy — and his relentless focus on the fuzzy concept of electability — when party activists in the leadoff caucus state seemed more captivated by new faces like Pete Buttigieg or the ambitious ideas of Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.One year later, Mr. Biden is again facing skepticism from activists and officials alike. This time, it is around whether the administration he is assembling reflects the racial and generational diversity of the party and the nation — something he has promised to achieve. And Mr. Biden’s elevation of Mr. Vilsack has sparked considerable backlash from progressives and from some civil rights leaders.The expected nominations, however, are a vivid illustration of how central personal relationships are to Mr. Biden’s view of governing. Selections including his chief of staff and his nominee for secretary of state are people who have known the former vice president for decades and often bear extensive Washington credentials.Not to mention, in some cases, extensive Iowa credentials.For Mr. Vilsack, Mr. Kerry and other former politicians who braved the frigid expanse of Iowa before Mr. Biden’s bid caught fire with the support of Black voters in South Carolina, the possibility of a significant role in the incoming Biden administration is a vindication of their efforts during the bleakest days of the caucuses, when their alliance with Mr. Biden was viewed by other teams more as a vestige of long-ago politics than as a winning strategy.Mr. Biden’s winter bus tour failed to generate even a spark of enthusiasm for his presidential candidacy in the leadoff caucus state.Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesEven Mr. Biden’s friends realized his campaign was not doing well at the time.“When I got there, we were going door to door in a blizzard,” said State Senator Dick Harpootlian of South Carolina, joking that he had developed post-traumatic stress disorder “as a result of my experience in Iowa,” where he volunteered and where he recalled running into Biden allies like Mr. Vilsack. “Those folks that were there in Iowa and stuck with it, those are the folks who basically bought into Joe Biden,” he said. “The politics of it at that point were not particularly bright.”None of that dampened their zeal for the task at hand. For some of his surrogates, campaigning for Mr. Biden back then meant advocacy for a man who, they believed, could defeat President Trump. It also meant a return to the campaign trail — and perhaps renewed political relevance.Several top surrogates had run for president themselves, including Mr. Vilsack and Mr. Kerry, and their enduring support for Mr. Biden afforded them another turn in the spotlight, complete with rallies in school gyms and coaxing of voters at coffee shops. Other allies (and former candidates) like former Senators Christopher J. Dodd and Bob Kerrey were also on-hand sometimes.They had staff members shepherding them again. They received news media requests. They hobnobbed with friends and ran into rival candidates at Des Moines hot spots.Mr. Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee, joined a diverse, rotating slate of other Biden endorsers on a seven-day bus tour across Iowa 16 years after he had won the state’s caucuses.As the tour’s headliner, Mr. Kerry’s moves and snack cravings were captured by the Biden campaign on Instagram as he attested to Mr. Biden’s foreign policy experience.The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 11, 2020, 9:07 p.m. ETCongress might ban surprise medical billing, and that’s a surprise.Biden is considering Cuomo for attorney general.‘Our institutions held’: Democrats (and some Republicans) cheer Supreme Court ruling on election suit.There was some occasional rust, and some anxiety, too.At an event in Des Moines last November as he promoted his endorsement of Mr. Biden, Mr. Vilsack admitted that he “woke up at 4:30 this morning pretty nervous about this speech.”And Mr. Kerry, on the day before the caucuses, tweeted and then deleted a profane message rebutting a news report about his own presidential ambitions — and reaffirming his support for his friend.Mr. Biden visited a farm with Tom Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, in November 2019. Mr. Biden nominated Mr. Vilsack to be his agriculture secretary this week.Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesMr. Vilsack in particular was viewed as an important endorsement in the state at the time. But some of Mr. Biden’s rivals, including Mr. Sanders, Ms. Warren and Mr. Buttigieg, were enjoying boosts from celebrities like Mandy Moore and young progressives like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — which contributed to the sense that Mr. Biden, with his stable of silver-haired white men, was out of date.“Circulating in Iowa at the time was ‘Biden’s too old,’” said Mr. Kerrey, the former senator from Nebraska who was among the friends who campaigned for Mr. Biden during the primary race. “That was the conversation that was going on — he’s yesterday’s business. He’s too moderate.”Mr. Kerrey allowed that the Biden lineup might not have been the most dynamic.“If you think Vilsack was boring, you should have been with me!” said Mr. Kerrey, who is in his 70s. (He did, however, bristle at the suggestion from a reporter that Mr. Biden’s supporters were not seen to be quite as youthful or hip as those of his now-vanquished opponents. “You are suffering from ageism,” he said. “I called you out. I’ve become woke!”)As it turned out, traditionally conservative-leaning senior citizens would help propel Mr. Biden to the presidency, and he had stronger appeal in the primary campaign among Black voters than any of his rivals did.Now on the verge of entering the White House, Mr. Biden has signaled his intent to gather his faithful squad together again with the alacrity of a coach rallying his team for one last game. This past week, he named Mr. Vilsack as his choice for agriculture secretary. He has picked Mr. Kerry for a top climate post. And Antony J. Blinken, a longtime top aide to Mr. Biden who was spotted in Iowa with him, is now his choice for secretary of state.If Mr. Biden’s selections so far underscore his experience and his deep bench of long-lasting relationships, it is also a stark reminder of his roots in an older, whiter generation that has at times seemed at odds with the energy in the current Democratic Party.He may not have won over youthful crowds a year ago, but he is, his team insists, committed to empowering the next generation of Democratic leaders.At a briefing with the news media on Friday, the incoming White House press secretary, Jennifer Psaki, made a point of highlighting younger members of Mr. Biden’s team. Mr. Biden has also named a number of people of color to major cabinet positions, including helming the Pentagon and the Homeland Security Department, even as he faces intense pressure from some in his own party who believe he needs more people of color in senior positions.Not everyone who assisted him, even in Iowa, is so far an administration choice, including Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta, who joined Mr. Kerry on the bus tour.Mr. Kerrey also said he was not on Mr. Biden’s list.“There are a lot of people that have endorsed Joe Biden that aren’t going to be in his cabinet,” he said. “You’re talking to one.”Thomas Kaplan contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More