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Joe and Jill Biden, 2012 | Photo: Anthony Quintano
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The Digital DNC
Last week, the Democrats hosted the first digital convention in American history. Driven by concerns over the coronavirus, the convention featured pre-recorded videos, digital delegations, a few smaller in-person meetings, and a synchronous Zoom national anthem.
Religion and patriotism took central roles during the prime time portions of this year’s DNC. It was just 8 years ago that the Democrats made a point to remove every mention of God from their official platform. At the time, the press secretary for the convention, Melanie Roussell, called the issue a faux-controversy and cited the numerous mentions of “faith,” “religion,” and “church” in the platform. These assurances did little to persuade conservative and religious voters that the Dems were interested in any recognizable form of Christianity.
After Donald Trump won evangelical voters by historic margins in 2016, the Democrats have decided to make a more overt appeal to religious voters in 2020. To that point, the Dems have changed their nomenclature but they haven’t changed their theology. In her column in The Atlantic this week, Emma Green chronicles the battle over the Bible Belt leading up to November. Between the protests over the death of George Floyd and calls for racial reconciliation, immigration reform, and an unrelenting focus on justice and inequality, the Dems are making a moral argument for the presidency, and many Christians are finding it both refreshing and appealing. But will it be enough to win their votes?
From a policy perspective, this seems like a longshot. The Dems did little to quell any of the political fears evangelicals may have about the way they will actually govern. The party remains committed to late-term abortion, the LGBTQ agenda, activist judges, and crackdowns on religious liberty. Cities run by Democrats are the ones that bear the scars of rioting and vandalism. Democratic leaders have yet to denounce Antifa or the demands of racial justice groups calling for defunding the police, creating discriminatory policies, paying reparations, and suspending the rule of law. At the convention, these topics left a lot to be desired for evangelicals who supported Trump in 2016.
The difference between the town halls and party meetings during the day and the patriotic messages of hope at night will be hard to reconcile for the two months between now and November. The Democratic Party has lurched to the left, as Bernie Sanders made clear in his speech A decade ago, he was off the radar on the far left and now he’s in the mainstream. John Kasich’s assurance that Biden won’t turn left would be easier to believe if Biden hadn’t already given prominent leadership roles to Sanders and AOC.
The Biden Coalition
The Democrats are making a very different appeal to Christians. They are not going to accommodate Christians politically, they want to accommodate them personally. If you listen to Joe Biden and his coalition, this election isn’t about policy, it’s about one man’s character versus another’s. This cross-sectional approach pits Joe Biden’s soft and inclusive demeanor against Trump’s calloused lizard-brained approach. Michael Gerson called it the “romance of decency.” There’s no use denying it’s a strong selling point for Biden.
This is one of the reasons the pandemic is such a significant talking point. So far, Biden has given no indication that he would have handled the virus any better than Trump. In fact, after constantly blaming Trump for wrecking the economy, he said this weekend he would shut the country down again to follow the science. Biden’s supporters have criticized Trump for driving the economy into the ground as they propose $10 trillion in spending including a $2 trillion climate plan, $4 trillion in higher taxes, and over $2 trillion on additional healthcare spending. In the narrative, the economics are second to empathy. Ezra Klein argued this week that Biden “likes you” and Trump does not. Democratic strategists are beginning to understand that resentment was the most important factor in the 2016 election. Voters felt like Trump, not Clinton, would fight for their best interest. In 2020, they plan to flip the narrative.
Joe Biden wants to be seen as a coalition-builder. In the Wall Street Journal, Joseph Sternberg argued that Biden was approaching this election more like a hopeful Prime Minister than as a President. This metaphor captures what Biden sees as his appeal: he can build the coalition that will bring Democrats back into the White House and propel them into the future. He’s already announced that he’s a transition candidate running for one term. He’s picked a VP from the progressive left and also made every attempt to rekindle the nostalgia of the Obama years. It’s likely his cabinet and senior positions will be a mix of these two groups and the promise that Biden can hold things together.
The inescapable reality lurking behind the well-laid plans of the Biden campaign is that Trump is still the star of the show. The election will be a referendum on Trump, not Biden, and not his coalition for the future. In fact, if the Democratic primaries yield any lesson, it’s that voters aren’t thrilled with the “future” of the party. Sanders and Biden, both over 75, controlled the race, followed by Elizabeth Warren, 71, and Pete Buttigieg, who campaigned as the moderate in the group.
Insofar as voters are convinced that this is a referendum on the personalities of the candidates, Biden has a sizable advantage over Trump. Brayden Harrington’s story about Biden taking time to talk to him about overcoming his stuttering is powerful and memorable. Every person in America should want dozens of stories like that being told about our leaders. How can you not love that story?
The media has presented Biden as the honest, compassionate, empathetic father figure that America needs right now, but their strongest and most consistent argument doesn’t have anything to do with Joe Biden. The selling point is that he isn’t Donald Trump. This is their appeal to every voter, including evangelicals.
RNC Counterpoint
You couldn’t conceive of a more opposite political strategy than the one the GOP will employ against Biden and the Democrats in this week’s Republican National Convention. Whereas the Dems showed off their broad coalition, brought in outsiders, and limited Biden’s time in the spotlight, the Republicans are placing all their eggs in one basket. But the name on that basket, emblazoned in gold-gilded lettering, is Trump.
The President will speak every night of the convention. The goal is to reignite the rally momentum that won Trump the presidency in 2016, even without the gargantuan crowds. The spectacle plays to Trump’s strengths. He’s a media superstar, for better or worse, and he thrives as a television personality. In theory, this convention should highlight Trump’s appeal and showcase a fundamentally different vision of America and plan for the future.
Behind the power of personality, though, the Trump campaign will have to come to grips with why the President is losing if they want to move the needle. COVID is the top issue in the election, and while nothing is predictable in politics, it’s likely to be the defining issue all the way through to November. Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru have made the case that COVID highlights all of the president’s flaws and none of his strengths. If the polls are any indication, the American people agree.
Peggy Noonan leveled a strong critique against the approach at the DNC, “Missing was any hint of priorities or plans, of the meaning of the party or its intentions. They made the case against Donald Trump, and a case for Joe Biden as an essentially decent person. But they didn’t say what they’ll do. And this year that is key.” Criticizing the country without presenting any plan to fix it may play to Trump’s advantage. On this point, Biden faces an impossible bind. He needs to continue to campaign on possibility and that means putting forward as few policy proposals as possible. Add to that the fact that the policy proposals he has released are coming from the far left and that spells opportunity for Trump’s record and his vision for the future.
Biden is not as unpopular as Clinton, and if Trump wants to win again, he needs to get back to the basics, double down on his record, and remember the reasons he won in 2016. Rebuilding the economy is a great place to start. Trump needs to remind the American people of the way things were in January and assure them he can do it again. It wouldn’t hurt to enlist others to make these points for him. The President touts his success among minority communities; let’s hear them talk about the Trump economy. Trump promised he would “drain the swamp” and push back against the left. Trump’s approval was at an all-time high between the impeachment and the virus, the Left wing of the Democratic party is more radical now than it was in 2016, and the Durham investigation may yield results before the election.
Rep. Tim Scott will take the stage tonight and talk about the opportunity of the next four years under Donald Trump. He’ll paint a picture of America that looks similar to January of 2020, where unemployment for African Americans was at an all-time low and the markets were at an all-time high. Tom Cotton, Mike Pompeo, and Nikki Haley are all expected to double down on Trump’s China policy. The President will re-emphasize his accomplishments in office: standing up to China, renegotiating trade deals, killing Soleimani, bringing troops home, and resetting the Middle East, bringing jobs back to America, shoring up our southern border, rooting out the corruption in the administrative state, cutting regulations, and building an economy friendly to American workers.
Lowry and Ponnuru bring the talking points back to the core issue, the presidency is about personality as well as policy: “But a president is more than a collection of policy positions. The office has had, since the beginning, quasi-monarchical trappings, and the president is the American head of state. How the holder of the office conducts himself matters.” If Trump wins in November it will be two parts policy and three parts personality. He’s right about media bias, but he’s got a lot of work to do in the next 71 days.
The Bigger Picture
What does all of this mean? From a historical and sociological standpoint, Niall Ferguson has been making an interesting argument that historically speaking, populism is followed by progressivism. This certainly seems right in the U.S. today. The globalization of the Bush and Obama years combined with the financial crisis of 2008 sparked a backlash that gave rise to Trump, Trump’s populist uprising pushed the progressives even further left, the energy is running out of Trump’s core appeal and the progressives are poised to step in and enact the most radical agenda in American history. Younger voters seem to be driving this shift.
Christians bring other concerns to this election. Conversations about character and policy, abortion and oppression, tradeoffs, and the lesser of two evils will continue through November and onto the next election. I’ve covered those topics (religious conservatism, voting, pro-life implications, racial justice, and church resistance) in the past and will continue as we get closer to the election. But in the wake of the parties presenting their candidates and platforms, there are more fundamental questions we need to be asking. What have Christians done in the last four years for the cause of Christ? How are we loving our neighbors no matter who’s in the White House? How will we continue to do what’s right no matter what the government does?
These are not sleight of hand questions. Our commitments and our identities run deeper than politics. We fundamentally believe that the eternal mission church will be more successful than the agenda of any government. We believe that we have been told what justice is and how to pursue it. What goals do we have that will never be mentioned in a party platform and what are we doing to pursue them? It’s time to start thinking of Christian political engagement as perpendicular to American political parties. We cannot walk in perfect parallel with either party, however much we may agree with particular platforms.
In fact, it’s this distance from the political situation that gives us our greatest opportunity to influence the world for good. When we have our own agenda, we become a force for change rather than a force to co-opt. Whether it’s abortion, religious liberty, the LGBTQ agenda, racial reconciliation, economics, or anything else, our independence is stronger than our coalescence. Our votes and our advocacy should be to lend support to the issues and initiatives that fall under our agenda as Christians first and members of political parties second. We are dual citizens and while both are important, one citizenship is far more important than the other. In the midst of the conventions, it’s important to remember that highest loyalty is to the kingdom of God, to our Savior, and to his plan for the world.
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Study Philippians
When Paul wrote the letter to the Philippians, he saw an opportunity for the Gospel in a difficult time. In this series, Terry Feix walks through the unique opportunity we have to see our world changed by the Gospel during these unprecedented times.
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Dr. Fauci said it’s safe to vote in person in November. While Fauci has been caught in the political maelstrom between Trump and the Democrats, he’s charting a pretty logical course based on the newest data on the virus. The risk of the virus is now less than the risk of shutting down the country again. Tyler Cowen took a similar approach to the economy and school openings. “Phantom risk” is the perception of risk, even when it isn’t there. Of course, the virus is risky. There is a significant risk for at-risk portions of the population and that should be taken seriously. Cowen’s question is how long will this last? The risks are low for school children, and especially low for college students who won’t go home to live with older parents and relatives. Considering the boredom, anxiety, and rising crime rates in America, a logical and scientific approach to the risks the virus poses is in everyone’s best interest.
Reopening has become a political talking point, but it’s in the best interest of the country to reopen at the fastest and safest rate possible. That particularly includes schools. When kids can go back to school, parents can go back to work, and when parents can go back to work the economy will continue to improve. But there’s another important line of reasoning. As more young people get the virus, there will be fewer people to spread it. The combination of quarantining and therapeutics could dramatically lower the death rate for everyone.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy will appear before the House Oversight Committee today. Last week he testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, acknowledging concerns about the USPS, asking for emergency funding, explaining some of the changes he’s made, and assuring the committee that the Post Office would do everything necessary to facilitate the demands of the election. DeJoy emphasized the point that no government agency can function under this level of politicization.
House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, called the House into emergency session over the weekend to pass a Post Office funding bill. The measure includes $25 billion in additional funding and called for DeJoy to delay any changes until 2021. 26 Republicans joined the Democrats in the vote, but the measure is not expected to pass in the Senate.
Kellyanne Conway will be leaving the Trump administration at the end of the month. Conway is one of the President’s longest-serving advisors. She joined the campaign during the home stretch in 2016 and has been an unwavering supporter of the administration. She will speak Wednesday night at the RNC. Her husband, George Conway, is a former Republican and attorney who co-founded the Lincoln Project, a political media group that exists to attack the President and his administration. George Conway has written for the Washington Post during the Trump presidency, calling him a narcissistic racist sociopath who is unfit for office and who has destroyed the honor of the presidency. It’s no surprise they’ve been having trouble at home.
The couple announced that they will be spending time with their four kids and investing in their family. The announcement is a reminder of the grueling reality of political life, and the divisive nature of politics, even among family members. The Conways are political dysfunction writ large, but they embody some of the more important lessons of the Trump presidency. What’s going on nationally isn’t as important as what’s going on locally. Gaining the world and forfeiting your soul applies equally to politics and family life.
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The Jefferson Memorial | Photo; Wikipedia Commons
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Best Reads:
“A Better Anti-Racism” - Coleman Hughes, Persuasion
Coleman Hughes has become a really important commentator on social issues, race, and American life. Here, he delineates two competing views of racial reconciliation; reconciliation, embodied by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and race-consciousness, embodied in the new social justice warriors like Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. The difference comes down to a pretty stark binary: Would we rather race be the defining characteristic of individuals or not?
Hughes highlights the positive hopes for race-consciousness: “For black people, race-consciousness seems to promise more status and more access to opportunity. For white people, it promises a way to act on, rather than simply brood over, feelings of guilt over their complicity (real or imagined) in America’s past sins. For the nation as a whole, it seems to promise solutions to ongoing problems like mass incarceration and police brutality.” This totally undermines Dr. King’s vision that people would be judged on the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin. This vision enshrines race as a divisive and unsolvable issue. The most insidious aspect is the way that anti-racist advocates today engage in the kind of discrimination Americans have worked so hard to eliminate; “But any political program that insists that black people be held to a lower standard will never be able to bring black achievement up to those same rejected standards—and thus will struggle mightily to address racial disparity.”
Hughes calls for renewed support for King’s vision, a society in which every person is valued for their character and integrity, and each person is seen as an image-bearer. True racial reconciliation will come when we confront the racial issues in our country with humility, love, justice, forgiveness, and work toward the peace that only God can provide.
“The End of Secularism Is Nigh” - Tom Holland, UnHerd
Secularism is receding. A lot around the world shows religion on the rise and the facade of secular society slowly slipping away. Holland cites several recent examples in Turkey, India, and elsewhere of religious ascendancy, gives a brief history of the “secular state,” and makes a few projections about the future: “The summer of 2020, notable as it already is, will surely be remembered by historians of the future as a key waystop on what is likely to prove perhaps the key narrative of the 21st century: the decline of the West and the rise of a multi-polar world.” This is interesting from a geopolitical perspective, but it’s fascinating to think about it as a multi-polarity between religion and secularism.
“Clinesmith’s Guilty Plea: The Perfect Snapshot of Crossfire Hurricane Duplicity” - Kevin McCarthy, National Review
This is the first in a three-part series McCarthy is writing on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and it should be required reading headed into November. The Durham report, Lindsay Graham’s investigation in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Ron Johnson’s investigation in the Senate Oversight Committee may detail one of the worst political scandals in American history. The fact that it’s being dismissed as a conspiracy theory by some of the people who participated in it should be a sign of its seriousness. It can be hard to take Trump seriously when he talks endlessly about how he’s been treated, but he certainly has a point. McCarthy works through the Clinesmith plea and shows the slippery duplicity that runs all the way through this story, from Comey to Rice to Biden to Obama. The FBI and the CIA were used to spy on and sabotage the Trump campaign. You might agree with their underlying concerns, but you certainly cannot agree with their methods. This will become one of the most important stories of the election as time goes on.
“MathGate: Or the Battle of Two Plus Two” - Cathy Young, ARC
You wouldn’t think that 2+2=4 is a controversial topic, but in our world, everything is up for grabs. When James Lindsay tweeted that the rules of mathematics would be shunned as white Western oppression, the progressive left proved his point. Nicole Hannah-Jones, the editor of the 1619 Project at the New York Times, chimed in, followed by a chorus of woke mathematicians and teachers. You have to step back and marvel that the laws of logic have been drafted into the culture wars, but it goes to show that the politicization of every inch of society is almost complete.
If this argument is remembered as anything other than a reductio ad absurdum case study, it will be as a reminder that we need common spaces to function. There has to be a set of principles and maxims that people who live in the same society assent to. All of our engineers need to agree on basic math; it’s not racist or oppressive to say so. But it also reminds us just how comprehensive the neo-Marxist deconstruction of society is and how much credence has been given to racially motivated lines of reasoning. Get used to this line of reasoning. The ascendant worldview in our culture sees everything as an act of oppression, an exertion of power, and as an instance of violence. It’s not a particularly honest or coherent worldview and it also doesn’t seem to have any brakes.
“What Is Masterclass Actually Selling” - Carina Chocano, The Atlantic
You’ve seen the adds for Masterclass. Take a writing class from James Patterson, play tennis with Serena, learn leadership from Doris Kearns Goodwin. It’s one of the best ideas to come along in the streaming innovations of the last decade and the viewership ballooned during the pandemic. Chocano covers the startup and the interesting shift from viewing platforms like Masterclass through different lenses. Is it more like online education or Netflix? The genius is found in merging the two. But Chocano also notices something really significant about our culture. Toward the end of the article, she puts her finger on Masterclass’s appeal, “In a way, Masterclass seems ideally suited to frustrated 30-somethings for whom education has not necessarily resulted in upward mobility or even a job, who feel stuck in their career without a clear path to success.”
When I read this quote, I thought less about the career crisis many young people are having (this was true before the pandemic) and more about the desire for mentorship and approval that have spurred it on. The appeal of Masterclass is that a world-renowned master would give you individual attention. Now, the fact that this attention is illusory only underscores the deeper problem. In a digitally connected age, people are starved for real, meaningful, personal investment. As Christians, we know this as discipleship, when someone comes alongside you and takes interest and responsibility in your growth. People are starving for discipleship - vocationally, relationally, and spiritually.
“The Inside Story of the $8 Million Heist from the Carnegie Library” - Travis McDade, Smithsonian Library
This story is pure intrigue. How often does $8m worth of rare books and manuscripts go missing? More than you might think, apparently. This story starts and ends with incunables - these are the first book printed using movable type, made between 1450-1500 - and the extraordinary collection of these artifacts in the Carnegie Library. This thief made off with a first edition of The Wealth of Nations, Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, and a collection of sermons printed in 1472. When the collection was audited in 2017 using a 1991 inventory, they realized that over the span of 25 years, this caper had taken millions from the collection. This is a fascinating story for its intrigue and also for the reminder of the value of our cultural heritage.
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