Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. How are you feeling — despondent, energized, enraged, dumbstruck?
Gail Collins: Pretty much all of those, in 10-minute intervals. But I’ve got to add “scared” to your list. How about you?
Bret: Honestly?
Gail: No Bret, in the spirit of the incoming administration, I want you to make up anything you feel like making up.
Bret: Hehehehe.
Gail: OK, honestly. Of course I haven’t forgotten that you were the one who predicted Trump would win, while I thought women voters would rescue Kamala Harris. Instead, Trump seems to have reduced the gender gap, compared with his run against Joe Biden.
Bret: We got through one Trump administration. We’ll get through another. What happened last week wasn’t the end of democracy. It was its reaffirmation. We’ll vote again in 2026, when the Senate map is more favorable to Democrats. And we’ll vote in 2028, when Trump will be ineligible to run for re-election. Gnashing one’s teeth helps nobody, least of all the teeth. Life goes on.
Gail: Or at least staggers on …
Bret: Also, selfishly? I feel vindicated. I spent years warning that Biden should build the damn wall, that he wasn’t mentally fit for a second term, that there was a credible case for Trump, that Harris would be a poor candidate, and that it wasn’t enough for her to run on being Not Trump.
Gail: Pause for the sound of trumpets …
Bret: I’m nothing if not full of myself. One additional thought: Tuesday’s election was a blessing in disguise for Democrats. It’s the shock they needed to rethink how they conduct politics in a second Trump term.
Gail: Before we get to the cosmic question of Democratic rethinking, let’s spend a minute on Joe Biden. Beginning by mentioning — just mentioning — that we were on the same side when it came to urging the president to acknowledge he was too old to run for another term. If Biden had done that in good time, the Democrats would have run primaries to see who would take his place at the top of the ticket, and either picked a better candidate or given Harris time to learn how to run a strong campaign.
Bret: Agree. At a minimum, it would have given the Democrats a chance to have an honest-to-goodness primary contest and weed the weaker candidates from the stronger ones. I don’t think Harris would have emerged the winner, but if she had, she’d have been a more nimble candidate with a clearer articulation of what she meant to do with the presidency. Senior Democrats in Congress and the White House deserve a lot of blame for pretending that Biden’s health was fine — or fine enough. I’m looking forward to the tell-all memoirs when members of the president’s inner circle fess up to covering up the extent of his maladies.
Gail: The tell-allers are probably already typing away. They’ll certainly have a lot of time on their hands.
Bret: But I think it’s a mistake to suppose that Biden overstaying his welcome was the only or even the main reason Democrats lost last week. The party just lost touch with too much of America, including its historic base of supporters.
Gail: I agree, but I suspect we’ll be coming up with very different solutions.
The Democrats devoted way too much time to attacking Donald Trump and not nearly enough to acknowledging how many Americans are frustrated or scared by a rising cost of living for their families.
They should have focused on plans to raise taxes on the wealthy, increase spending on practical programs like preschool education and public building projects, like constructing new housing for low- and middle-income tenants.
Bret: I agree with the diagnosis part of your answer, though maybe not the prescription. The Biden team sold too many liberal pundits on the notion that times had never been so good, which, to working-class Americans struggling with the high cost of living, made the administration seem either hopelessly dishonest or completely out of touch. The problem for Harris, of course, is that she had no easy way to dissociate herself from the economy over which she and Biden had presided, which is yet another reason it was a mistake to anoint her as the nominee.
Gail: And so, what next?
Bret: A big part of the Democratic Party’s problem is that it’s become too associated with a type of cultural progressivism that rubs many people the wrong way. I mean things like the tedious and harmful D.E.I. pedagogical complex, bail reform, drug decriminalization, public encampments and so on. Democrats really need to jettison this part of the left, much in the way that Bill Clinton did in the early 1990s. Or do I have that all wrong?
Gail: Hey, I’d never call you all wrong. Mostly, sure.
The left is part of the Democratic Party and the party is not gonna dump active members who want to prioritize issues like bail reform or L.G.B.T.Q. rights. But I think most Democrats, when they come out of shell shock, will realize that right now the central issue has got to be creating an economy that offers more people more ways to move up.
Bret: My view is that the next Democratic leader is going to have to have more than one “Sister Souljah moment” in order to regain lost trust. When will someone tell college students that it’s appalling and unacceptable to call for Israel’s destruction or be openly sympathetic to Hamas? Or that effectively decriminalizing shoplifting in some blue states is an outrage to public order and an insult to law-abiding people? Or that it is absolutely not OK to have a biological male like the trans swimmer Lia Thomas change in a women’s locker room, or for children to begin gender transitions without their parents being notified? Or that we can’t have any kind of immigration reform until there is good control over the border? The Democrat who does these things first is the one who’ll be able to defeat Trumpism.
Gail: But let’s move on to the new House and Senate. Looks like Trump will, in theory, control both — although a few of the House race counts aren’t completely over. What’s your prediction for 2025?
Bret: Wait, I have one more question for you before getting to that. What do you make of Trump improving his standing with ethnic minorities, particularly Latinos? Doesn’t exactly square with the expectation among some liberal pundits that the comedian making an anti-Puerto Rico joke at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally would drive the Hispanic vote to Harris.
Gail: One more example of how the Democrats erred by stressing the awfulness of the opposition instead of the Harris agenda. I think the Latino vote was about dissatisfaction with the economy and not a rejection of the idea of a female president.
Bret: I think Latinos are no more enchanted by high inflation and uncontrolled immigration than anyone else struggling to make ends meet.
Gail: Sure hope it’s the economy. Although it’s hard to ignore the fact that the only two major-party female presidential nominees in history were both defeated by … Donald Trump.
Bret: What does that say to you? Deep residual sexism in the American public? Or two really bad candidates who happened to be women?
Gail: The really-bad-candidate theory looks sort of shaky when their opposition is a felon with a long history of terrible sexual behavior.
If you want another sign of how tough it is for a woman to become a presidential nominee, consider the fact that the two women who’ve gotten the nod were both beneficiaries of … something else. Hillary Clinton was the wife of a former president and Kamala Harris was Joe Biden’s running mate.
Sigh. OK, Bret, give me one more thought on the subject and then let’s move on to Congress.
Bret: I’ll refrain from opening my stupid man-mouth on this subject. Congress? I hope Democrats manage at least to hold the House because it will provide a check on Trump and keep the Jim Jordans of the world from being even more unbearable. It’s also an opportunity for Democrats to elevate some of their smarter members to leadership positions. I’m thinking of Ritchie Torres, Seth Moulton, Ro Khanna, Tom Suozzi and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez — the House Reality Check Caucus. John Fetterman and Michael Bennet are their Senate companions.
Who do you favor as the next Democratic leaders?
Gail: Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, if he wants to keep chugging along, should keep his job as minority leader. He’s experienced, a manic hard worker, smart and sensible.
Bret: And someone who completely misread the political moment.
Gail: In the House, Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, can be pretty electric when he’s fighting and he wants to stay in charge. So I can’t imagine an overthrow.
Overall, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens, but I’m hoping that on crucial issues, sensible middle-of-the-road Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski will have the power to hold off the crazy right — they have the talent for it, even though they haven’t always exercised it.
Bret: Final question, Gail. Say what you will about Trump, he just had the most incredible political comeback in American history. Anything, you know, nice to say about him?
Gail: Hmm. For many pols, this would be the point when I’d say something like “Well, he has a really nice pet spaniel.” But Trump, of course, hates dogs.
Think I’ll wait and see whether he rises about his destroy-all-enemies election night. What about you?
Bret: He’s resilient, intuitive, imaginative and saw political opportunities that I, like so many other supposedly smart people, wouldn’t or couldn’t see. Criticism? Later and plenty of it. For this week, respect and good will.
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