Elections that no one wants are upon us

Gail Collins: Hello Brett, we are already in 2024. Happy New Year. And the race is on! Next week, the Iowa caucuses. After Iowa…

Brett Stephens: Le Deluge (The Deluge).

Gail: OK, I want to hear your thoughts. Donald Trump is not the Republican candidate? Do you have a view of Nikki Haley?

Brett: Gail, my feelings about the Republican primaries are like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief. After the 2022 midterm elections, when Trump’s favorite candidates were more or less crushed and looked like complete losers, I was in complete denial that he could win. Then, when his position in the party didn’t evaporate as I had predicted, I got angry: “Shut it up,” I wrote. Then came the negotiations: I said I could be stopped if Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie and all the other Republicans dropped out of the race to support Haley.

Gail: Phase 4?

Brett: Now I am depressed. After he takes back the White House in November, I believe acceptance will have to follow. Is there a stage 6? What then comes eternal damnation?

Gail: I do not accept! Come on, I know Joe Biden isn’t the most electric candidate ever. We are all obsessed with their age. But he is not under collective indictment, accused of trying to subvert the democratic process or of spectacular personal financial collapse.

We could repeat this every week for the next 10 months, but I’m sticking to my Biden re-election prediction.

Brett: Saying Biden can win is like playing Russian roulette with three bullets in a revolver instead of the traditional one (with a single bullet). Maybe you are right. Or we end up like Christopher Walken at the end of “The Deer Hunter.”

Gail: Ewww.

Brett: Not that Trump is now ahead of Biden in the overall race, according to the RealClearPolitics poll average. It is ahead of Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin in states that matter. I don’t quite understand all the Democrats who say Trump is an existential threat to decency, democracy, and perhaps life on the planet and then insist they’re sticking with Biden instead of another candidate. It’s like denying a desperately ill child better medical care because the family doctor is a nice old man who might hurt his feelings if you leave his office.

At the very least, can we replace Kamala Harris with someone more believable? Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan? Or Wes Moore, Governor of Maryland? Come on, why not?

Gail: The correct answer is that Harris did nothing wrong. You can’t throw out a hard-working, loyal vice president who is also a woman and is in the minority because you think there might be someone better.

Brett: Saying Harris has done nothing wrong leaves two more important questions: What has he done right? And does it contribute to or detract from the candidacy’s electoral chances?

Gail: Let’s go back to Biden. We all know their problems. But he has done a good job. Economic recovery is well underway. Did you hear his speech on Friday? I know he’s not a great orator, but he made it clear that he’s going to campaign very, very hard against Trump.

Brett: Well, let’s hope it doesn’t kill him. Meanwhile, what do you think about the possibility of Trump being disqualified from running in Maine and Colorado?

Gail: While I like the idea that his role on January 6th turns him into a rebel who is constitutionally not allowed to run for president, I have to admit that the whole thing makes me very nervous.

Trump’s problem isn’t solved by kicking him out of the election. He has to be defeated, or it will be a rallying cry for many of his crazed supporters that could split the country in two.

Am I too pessimistic?

Brett: I couldn’t agree with you more. Decisions are guaranteed to be erroneous, fatal, misleading, presumptuous and adverse.

Gail: A great string of adjectives. keep going

Brett: If Eugene Debs could run in the 1920 presidential election from prison after being convicted of treason, why can’t Trump run for president without a conviction? If Trump can be booted from the ballot in blue states on a much-discussed finding of rebellion, what’s to stop red state judges or other officials from booting Biden on their own flimsy findings? And on what basis do liberals continue to argue that Trump or the Republicans represent a threat to democracy when they try to dissuade millions of voters from electing their president?

Gail: Speaking on behalf of liberals, I agree. But I also admire Biden for trying to turn Trump’s outrageous and dangerous behavior into a campaign issue on January 6.

Brett: The Supreme Court should quickly and unanimously overturn the Colorado court and let voters choose the next president. Maybe even Harvard, while we’re at it.

Gail: Hmm, can I spot a problem that really worries you? I have to admit that Claudine Gay’s problems at Harvard are not at the top of my list of obsessions. But are you ready to rant?

Brett: Yes, especially about a tweet sent out by the Associated Press the other day that captures a certain kind of insanity. It says: “Harvard president’s resignation highlights new conservative weapon against universities: plagiarism.” Perhaps this “weapon” wouldn’t have been so damaging to Gay if he hadn’t violated a major academic rule more than three dozen times or if he wasn’t at the top of an institution that upholds strict intellectual integrity.

I also think the episode is a good opportunity for universities to try to rethink what their core mission should be. For starters, they should re-read the 1967 Calvin Report of the University of Chicago and stop making any kind of political statements. They should encourage greater intellectual diversity among their faculties and students. And they must reduce and restrict their administrative side, especially the thought police in their Office of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion.

Gail: Let me highlight the point of agreement. This country has long had a crippled higher education system where children can easily get very expensive loans. Sometimes from uppity private lenders that had to close and sometimes from well-intentioned government-backed lenders. But in any case, ambitious young people were encouraged to borrow piles of money and were then left with a hopeless pile of debt.

And all this flow of money allowed universities to grow enormously, especially in areas like administration.

Brett: If we continue to agree this much, the world may end.

Gail: University leaders have many functions. Representation of inclusiveness is one of them. We are entering an era in which centers can no longer consider race as a factor in admissions. But they have to keep finding ways to make sure their student body isn’t completely dominated by rich white kids. One strategy is to hire high-level administrators and teachers who represent a good mix of race, background, special interests, etc.

Brett: Net.

Gail: Claudine Gay was an attractive option in that sense. Her performance at the congressional hearings on anti-Semitism was a disaster, I think because she was used to appearing in very different contexts and didn’t expect her generalizations about inclusivity to be attacked so hard. his mistake.

Brett: Part of the problem here is that diversity, equity and inclusion went from a set of worthy aspirations to a bureaucratic and self-interested apparatus with a very ideological, polarizing and often exclusionary concept in its own mission.

Gail: I think you are leaving me behind here. But keep going.

Brett: Another part of the problem is that, while diversity is a good goal, it should be in the service of the university’s core mission of intellectual challenge and excellence, not in conflict with it. My biggest problem with Gay wasn’t his plagiarism or his damning testimony before Congress. He had a meager academic record: 11 published articles and no books in 26 years. I hope that his successors will be a model of scholarship, regardless of race or gender.

But back to politics, Gail, give me your advice on how Biden should run his campaign.

Gail: Did you hear his speech on January 6, which I mentioned earlier? I thought it was pretty good. The best way for them to overcome the age problem is to be combative, to take on Trump. Make Donald angry, because when he’s angry, he sounds crazier than Biden at his worst.

Brett: “Give them a hard time, Harry” approach. I like it.

Gail: Our President should remind the country of all the good things that happened under his administration. including great economic reforms. And the country’s fight against that huge jump in the national debt created by Trump’s tax breaks for the wealthy.

Brett: Biden needs an ad campaign in the spirit of Ronald Reagan’s “There’s a Bear in the Woods.” In one ad, people were constantly woken up by jackhammers, chainsaws or car alarms, reminding them what it’s like to wake up at 2 a.m. to whatever Trump tweets. In another, parents have to deal with a bragging 12-year-old who constantly lies to them. In a third, Trump praised Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un, not mentioning Hezbollah.

At the end of each ad, a voice that sounds like Tommy Lee Jones will ask the question: “Some want four more years of this. and you?”