Opinion | Democrats: Stop Panicking

As a former Republican who spent decades pointing out flaws in the Democratic Party, I watch the current Democratic panic over President Biden’s debate performance with a mix of bafflement and nostalgia.

It’s baffling that so many Democrats are failing to rally around a wildly successful president after one bad night. But it does remind me of why Republicans defeated Democrats in so many races Republicans should have lost.

Donald Trump has won one presidential election. He did so with about 46 percent of the popular vote. (Mitt Romney lost with about 47 percent.) The Republican Party lost its mind and decided that this one victory negated everything we know about politics. But it didn’t.

One debate does not change the structure of this presidential campaign. For all the talk of Mr. Biden’s off night, what is lost is that Mr. Trump missed a great opportunity to reset his candidacy and greatly strengthen his position.

Mr. Trump lost the popular vote by a margin of seven million and needs new customers. He could have laid out a positive economic plan to appeal to middle-class voters feeling economic pressure. Instead, he celebrated his tax cuts for billionaires.

He could have reassured voters who are horrified, in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise, by the stories of young girls who become pregnant by rape and then must endure extremist politicians eager to criminalize what was a constitutional right for two generations. But Mr. Trump bizarrely asserted that a majority pro-abortion-rights country hated Roe v. Wade and celebrated his role in replacing individual choice with the heavy hand of government.

He could have said he would accept the outcome of the next presidential election. He refused.

For 90 minutes, Mr. Trump unleashed a virulent anti-American rant. The America he lives in is a postapocalyptic hellscape of violence, with people “dying all over the place” — more “Mad Max” than “morning in America.”

Is this how Americans see themselves? When we watch the American flag carried at the Olympics in Paris, are we to feel ashamed, not proud? When Ronald Reagan was president, he believed that to be born in America was to win life’s lottery. Now, in Trump’s America, are we victims, chumps, losers?

I don’t think so. Mr. Trump has difficulty expanding his base because most Americans are still proud to be Americans. Most Americans do not wake up mad at the world, fearful to go outside their homes. What is it that you are supposed to hate the most — the record-high stock market or low unemployment?

At the Lincoln Project, we found that one of the most effective weapons against MAGA was asking voters, “Is this who you are?” Hold up a picture of Marjorie Taylor Greene, red-faced and screaming. Is this how you see yourself? Do you want to be the guy in the “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt storming the Capitol? Do you want your kids to think that being found liable for sexual abuse and being a felon are presidential qualities?

The Republican Party is at war with the modern world, and it is losing. What happened when Republicans attacked Nike for its endorsement deal with Colin Kaepernick? Nike made a fortune. How is it possible to get in a fight with Disney, the happiness company? This is a party that thought it was a good idea to go after Taylor Swift when it was already suffering from problems with female voters over the death of Roe. Seriously?

Before Thursday’s debate, the presidential race was about the past versus the future. After the debate, it is about the past versus the future. And so it will be on Nov. 5.

A bad night for Mr. Biden doesn’t change the fact that Mr. Trump opposes any mandatory vaccines for public school students. Do Americans really want to live through more polio, measles and whooping cough epidemics?

It’s easy to be for your guy on good nights, but it doesn’t mean much. The test is on bad nights.

Of all the Democratic pearl clutchers, the most disappointing and offensive are the Barack Obama insiders who can’t bring themselves to do what Mr. Biden did for their old boss: cover his back and fight. For them, politics is “Love Story,” that one true and pure love when they were young and the future stretched out before them in glorious possibility. Every non-Obama candidate will forever be like a fourth marriage, regrettable and unsatisfying.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California showed Democrats how to fight after the debate: “You don’t turn your back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?”

Unfortunately, for the moment, it’s much of the Democratic Party establishment. Many of the same people wrote off Mr. Biden in the 2020 Democratic primaries after he was crushed in Iowa and New Hampshire. Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina refused to panic, stuck by Mr. Biden and helped save the campaign. Let his courage and steadiness be a model. My one plea to my new friends abandoning Mr. Biden is simple: Suck it up and fight. It’s not supposed to be easy.

Stuart Stevens is a former Republican political consultant who has worked on many campaigns for federal and state office, including the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. He is an adviser to the Lincoln Project and the author of “The Conspiracy to End America.”

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