Could J.B. Pritzker be contemplating a run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024?That’s not the first, second or seventh most important question in connection with the massacre in a Chicago suburb on July 4. But Politico raised it, at least implicitly, the following day, noting that the Illinois governor was taking advantage of the national spotlight on him to model a rage over gun violence that President Biden doesn’t always project.The Washington Post made the same observation. “In the view of many distraught Democrats, the country is facing a full-blown crisis on a range of fronts, and Biden seems unable or unwilling to respond with appropriate force,” wrote Ashley Parker and Matt Viser, who identified Pritzker as one of several Democratic leaders adopting a more combative tone. They mentioned Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, as another. Like Pritzker, Newsom is the subject of speculation about 2024. And he only fueled it in recent days by running television ads in Florida, a pivotal presidential election battleground, that attacked that state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, who could be a major contender for the Republican presidential nomination.As if November 2022 weren’t causing Democrats enough grief, November 2024 won’t wait. Biden’s age, dismal approval rating and seeming inability to inspire confidence in the party’s ranks have created an extraordinary situation in which there’s no ironclad belief that he’ll run for a second term, no universal agreement that he should and a growing roster of Democrats whose behavior can be read as preparation to challenge or step in for him. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.That’s not to say that incumbent presidents haven’t confronted competitive primaries before. Jimmy Carter did in 1980, against Ted Kennedy. George H.W. Bush did in 1992, against Pat Buchanan. Carter and Bush vanquished those challengers — only to be vanquished themselves in the general election.The doubts swirling around Biden recall the doubts that swirled around those men, but they’re intensified by our frenzied news environment. They’re also exacerbated by Democrats’ sense that the stakes of a Republican victory in 2024 — especially if the Republican is Donald Trump — are immeasurable.And the insistent and operatic airing of these misgivings is deeply worrisome, because I can’t see how they’re easily put to rest, not at this point, and they’re to some degree self-defeating.Pointing out Biden’s flaws and cataloging his failures is one thing — and is arguably constructive, inasmuch as it points him and his administration toward correction — but the kind of second-guessing, contingency planning and garment rending that many Democrats are currently engaged in is another. It threatens to seal Biden’s and his party’s fate.Republicans are so much better at putting a smiley face over their misfortunes, marketing dross as gold and pantomiming unity to a point where they actually achieve it. Their moral elasticity confers tactical advantages. Democrats shouldn’t emulate it, but they could learn a thing or two.Biden won the party’s nomination in 2020 not for random, fickle reasons but because Democrats deemed him a wiser, safer bet than many alternatives. Are Democrats so sure, two troubled years later, that the alternatives are much wiser and safer than he would be?He has dimmed since his inauguration — that’s indisputable. And the crisis of confidence around him is a difficult environment in which to campaign for a second term. If that gives him pause, if he’s hesitant in the least, he should announce as soon after the midterms as possible that he’s limiting himself to one term so that Pritzker, Newsom, Kamala Harris or any number of other prominent Democrats have ample time to make their cases for succeeding him.And if he’s all in? Then Democrats can’t have their knives out the way they do now. Our president is already bleeding plenty.For the Love of LyricsLaura Nyro in 1968.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesAfter the celebration of women in this feature’s previous installment, Michael Ipavec of Concord, N.H., wrote, “No love for Laura Nyro?” Anita Nirenberg of Manhattan posed the same question.Michael, Anita: Have faith. There is infinite love for Laura Nyro here.During college, I just about wore down my vinyl LP of “Eli and the Thirteenth Confession.” Then I moved on to “New York Tendaberry” and lingered on my favorite track, “You Don’t Love Me When I Cry,” which has the most melodramatic vocal performance this side of Jennifer Holliday’s “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.”Nyro, who died in 1997 at the age of 49, was a prolific and prodigiously talented songwriter, one who, like Carole King and Karla Bonoff, was at times better known as the author of other musicians’ hits than as the singer of her own compositions. She was arguably more gifted with melodies than with words, but “Wedding Bell Blues” and “Sweet Blindness” are perfect blends of the two, and there are many great lines in “And When I Die,” which the group Blood, Sweat & Tears popularized:I’m not scared of dyingand I don’t really careIf it’s peace you find in dying,well, then let the time be nearSo I hereby add Nyro to our growing (but still woefully incomplete) pantheon of women lyricists, which already includes Joni Mitchell, Aimee Mann, Lucinda Williams and others. I also add Joan Armatrading, another of my college favorites. I thrilled to the straightforward yearning and palpable ache of Armatrading’s “Love & Affection” (“Now if I can feel the sun in my eyes / And the rain on my face / Why can’t I feel love”), which she always performed brilliantly. I admired the wit and wordplay in “Drop the Pilot,” with its Sapphic suggestiveness, and it has to be the only American pop song with the word “mahout” in it.The pantheon, I realize, shows my age (57) and generation, giving short shrift to younger singer-songwriters. The one who comes quickest to mind is Taylor Swift, whose sprawling catalog belies her 32 years. I’m not well versed in her work, so I turned to a former Duke student of mine, Allison Janowski, who’s the most devoted Swift stan I know. She gave me a brilliant mini-tutorial, beginning with the extended version of the song “All Too Well” and these lines, from different sections of it:We’re singin’ in the car, getting lost upstateAutumn leaves fallin’ down like pieces into place’Cause there we are again in the middle of the nightWe’re dancin’ ’round the kitchen in the refrigerator lightYou kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oathAnd you call me up again just to break me like a promiseSo casually cruel in the name of being honestAllison, you’ve turned the teacher into an appreciative pupil.“For the Love of Lyrics” appears monthly(ish). To nominate a songwriter and song, please email me here, including your name and place of residence. “For the Love of Sentences” will return with the next newsletter; you can use the same link to suggest recent snippets of prose for it.What I’m ReadingMahershala Ali will star in a miniseries based on the novel “The Plot.”FilmMagic/FilmMagic for HBO, via Getty ImagesPage-turners by writers who take real care with language and bring moral questions into play aren’t that common, but “The Plot,” by Jean Hanff Korelitz, about a struggling writer who helps himself to someone else’s idea, definitely fits that bill. Although it came out last year, I only recently found my way to it — and enjoyed it despite spotting its biggest reveal well in advance. It’s being made into a mini-series starring Mahershala Ali. The mini-series “The Undoing” was based on Korelitz’s previous novel, “You Should Have Known,” which I’m listening to now and not liking as much.I also listened recently to “Blood Sugar,” by Sascha Rothchild, which was published this year and earned a place in Sarah Lyall’s roundup in The Times of the summer’s best thrillers. Rothchild, like Korelitz, is a keenly observant writer with many excellent metaphors up her sleeve. Her novel asks you to root for a woman who kills repeatedly — and not in self-defense — and it’s fun to behold Rothchild’s climb up that steep hill. But I wished the main hinge of the plot — the central death — were just a bit more interesting.Because Francis Fukuyama once announced “the end of history,” I’m automatically and reliably interested in his subsequent explanations of why history defied him and marched on. His new book, “Liberalism and Its Discontents,” in some measure summarizes what he’s already written or spoken about in shorter, discrete chunks. But it’s nonetheless an incisive, succinct look at how the United States and other countries arrived at the current crossroads for democracy.Given how many Republican candidates unabashedly echo Trump’s self-serving and democracy-subverting fantasy of a stolen 2020 presidential election, the fate of Democratic candidates in the looming midterms is crucial, as are the questions about the party’s positioning that Jason Zengerle raises in his most recent article for The Times Magazine.On a Personal NoteSadly, that’s not me.Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesI can’t defend the color scheme. Purple and yellow? It’s like you’re walking into a space for children to play pranks, not for adults to do planks.And the wordplay in the signage beside the weight-lifting equipment is a bit much (even for the prankish, plank-ish likes of me). No “gymtimidation”? I can think of better prohibitions against look-at-me preening than aren’t-I-clever portmanteaus.But I love Planet Fitness, the gym I chose when I’d had my fill of others, the gym that doesn’t put on biometrical airs (I’m looking at you, Orangetheory) or promise boot-camp brutalization or crow about the ablutions in its locker rooms, the gym that costs less per month than a movie with popcorn, the gym that’s content to be just a gym.I hesitate to write that because it sounds like I’m doing cardiovascular evangelism (trust me, or just look at me — I’m not) or getting a commission (I wish). What I’m really after is a metaphor. A moral. And for journalistic purposes, Planet Fitness provides just that.It’s an answer and an antidote to much of what’s depressing and exhausting about American life. In a country and era so intent on sorting us into strata of economic privilege and tiers of cultural sophistication, Planet Fitness is a kind of nowhere for everyone, blunt and big-tented, patronized for reasons of utility rather than vanity, with dozens of treadmills that have zero bells and whistles, upon which you find a true diversity of customers.I looked around the other day, which could have been any day, and spotted several apparently nonbinary hipsters. An older woman in a tracksuit used walking sticks to move from one exercise station to another. There were white people, Black people, brown people and as many body types as skin colors. No one sported athleisurewear by Lululemon or Gymshark. No one snapped selfies.Planet Fitness has been criticized for not doing justice to the second word in its name. In the past, it apparently gave members free pizza and bagels.And several years ago its chief executive officer, Chris Rondeau, made political donations — both to Donald Trump and to a conservative New Hampshire lawmaker with an anti-gay record — that contradicted the company’s inclusive messaging. That doesn’t please me.But in my experience at Planet Fitness, you can trust in the “judgment free zone” advertised in big letters on a back wall. That, I realize, is its own branding, its own shtick. And I suppose I’m making an anti-statement statement by going there.So be it. I find a cross-section of Americans there that I don’t find in many other places. I find the opposite of an enclave. Upon second thought, maybe it’s purple and yellow because red and blue are too loaded. Color me grateful. More
