The Danger of "Horse Race" Politics

There's much more going on

Credit: Larisa Zorina

When you cover politics like a horse race, it becomes logical for Donald Trump to be the frontrunner for a third Republican presidential nomination.

A horse race confers an equivalence upon all candidates. The only detail that matters is who is going to win — not all that might be lost. To view America through that lens today is an exercise in the absurd, a practice stuck in the insular logic of the past. 

Trump is widely popular with a majority of Republicans because he has remade the party in his image. Or, perhaps more accurately, the party’s base was already waiting for a demagogue to follow. At any rate, it has long ago bent its will to him.

He has amassed a passionate and broad base of support that showers him with the adulation he deeply craves. To his legions of rabid believers, he is a martyr targeted by institutions they have been conditioned to hate: the Department of Justice, the “mainstream media,” scholars, celebrities, “elites” broadly delineated. The greater the chance Trump will finally face accountability, the more the MAGA world rallies around its leader. 

Thus far, Trump’s would-be challengers for the nomination have had less traction than bald tires on black ice. And that not only includes but is exemplified by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — a bully who is being out-bullied by the bully-in-chief. In Trumpland, there can be only one alpha. And in that race for dominance, DeSantis’s stock is sinking, no matter how much the Republican Party’s own “elites” wish it were otherwise. 

We can spend endless hours speculating about whether Trump or President Biden is stronger in the battleground states. We can compare how much money the candidates have raised. And we can analyze how Trump’s mounting legal troubles might shape turnout and voting behavior in a highly polarized electorate. 

But let us step back for a moment and consider the bigger picture. 

Trump is not a normal candidate. The state of the party he leads is unlike anything we have seen. And his legal troubles are not merely a variable to assess in relation to his polling. 

This is a man who has proven himself unfit for the presidency. He is a man of low moral character who lies with impunity and has been accused by dozens of women of sexual harassment and assault. The gravity of these personal failings is paired with the simple fact that he is a danger to the very survival of American democracy. 

We should never forget, let alone normalize, that as president, this man encouraged a violent mob to overturn the results of a free and fair election so that he might retain power in spite of the people's will. 

There is a word for such a system of government: dictatorship. And it represents all that the Founding Fathers most feared when they drafted the documents throwing off the yoke of British tyranny. Since that time, countless men and women have fought and sacrificed for freedom and justice. Trump is the antithesis of what America’s greatest heroes have embodied. 

Now, it goes far beyond Trump. In states with Republican supermajorities in state legislatures or control of the state supreme court, we are seeing a coordinated movement gleefully suppressing democracy through autocratic tactics — from the expulsion of young Black representatives in Tennessee to the ostracizing of a transgender voice of dissent in Montana to allowing extreme Republican gerrymandering in North Carolina. Then there are the various efforts underway to undermine the concept of public schools, the banning of books, laws designed to make it more difficult to vote — the list goes on and on. 

All these trendlines and many more collide at a moment of deep peril for the country. America is at risk, and you can’t capture that in a horse race.

We are in a battle for the essence of our country — one in which there have already been physical and societal casualties. Polls, prognostications, and punditry fuel an echo chamber of conventional wisdom. In the race for the presidency and countless other federal, state, and local elections, what will be on the ballot is much more than just a D and an R. 

Trump's current lead for the Republican nomination should not be reported as a story of campaign tactics, voter demographics, or even issues like the state of the economy. Every story that mentions his campaign should contextualize what he did as president, especially leading up to the appalling events of January 6.

One political party is actively trying to erode core elements of America’s democratic foundations. That same party is working to consolidate power through lies and divisiveness. And the leader of that party has already shown, while in the office he now seeks again, that he is a dangerous demagogue. 

With the situation we face, winning and losing isn’t just about who will have power to enact policies for a few years. Heck, the current Republican Party doesn’t seem interested in policy in the first place. Rather, this is about the health and future of our country. This is about our long run with free and fair elections. This is about truth, justice, and the America that the world has come to admire. 

To cover it as anything else is to miss the full story. This is much less a race and more a war of attrition. So much of what we hold dear hangs in the balance.

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