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by ian bremmer
I have little doubt that President Joe Biden’s belated but essential decision to bow out of the 2024 presidential election on Sunday will go down in history as a patriotic act.
Following his infamous debate performance on June 27, an overwhelming majority of Americans – including two-thirds of Democrats – came to the conclusion that the president was no longer physically and mentally fit to serve another four-year term in office. As things stood last Saturday, Donald Trump – fresh off a failed assassination attempt and a triumphant Republican convention – looked set to retake the White House and likely control both houses of Congress, with little an ailing Biden could do to turn things around.
By finally agreeing to step down when his term ends in January, Biden jolted the race 100 days out and gave his party a fighting chance to protect the country – and the world – from what he sees as the existential threat of an unrestrained Trump. Only he had the power to do that, and when push came to shove (and there was plenty of shoving), he met the moment. It was a fitting capstone to a lifetime of public service.
This is what leadership looks like. Contrary to what many are claiming, there was nothing inevitable about Biden’s decision to withdraw. Yes, he was under immense pressure from his party and the media to step down. Yes, all evidence pointed toward near-certain disaster in November if he stayed on. Yes, his legacy was on the line. And yet … he still had a choice. His exit was not preordained. No one forced his hand – in fact, no one could force his hand. It was entirely up to Joe Biden, and Joe Biden alone, to do the right thing. This couldn’t have been easy – if it was, everyone would do it. And we know for a fact that not everyone would’ve made the same choice – least of all Trump, a man who is constitutionally incapable of putting party and country above himself.
Did Biden come to his decision reluctantly, and only after weeks spent in anger and denial? No doubt. It’s hard enough for anyone to voluntarily give up power, but it’s even harder for a person with Biden’s life history who’s also coming to terms with his own mortality. Should he have withdrawn much sooner? Absolutely – I never thought he should have run for reelection in the first place, and I said so publicly many times. Will this delay end up costing Democrats the election? It’s possible, though we may never know.
But we shouldn’t forget the “better” in “better late than never.” What matters most is that he finally got there. Biden could’ve held on until the bitter end, consequences be damned. Instead, he chose to put America first. It was a decision worthy of a leader. Not a winner, but a leader. He deserves credit for it – as does the Democratic Party, which has shown itself to be a much healthier and more functional institution than anyone thought. Can anyone seriously imagine today’s GOP launching a coordinated pressure campaign to depose Trump, even though so many Republicans privately criticize him as unfit and believe him to be an electoral drag?
It gives me a little hope in a country where politicians don’t often do the right thing, and where political parties all too easily bend to the will of their leaders even when it becomes clear they serve only themselves.
Harris or bust. Shortly after announcing his withdrawal, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the nomination. The entire Democratic establishment – with the notable exception of Barack Obama – quickly followed suit and rallied behind her. Within 24 hours, Harris had been endorsed by every viable potential challenger as well as an overwhelming majority of Democratic governors, members of Congress, and state party chairs. By Monday evening, her campaign had raised $150 million from major donors and $81 million from small donors, and she had secured more than enough pledged delegates to become the party’s presumptive nominee.
Although an ostensibly competitive and democratically legitimate nomination process would have ultimately benefitted Democrats by ensuring the winner had what it takes to take on Trump and appeal to a broad swath of voters, the speed with which the party coalesced around Harris ensures next month’s convention in Chicago will be little more than a coronation ceremony. With only 54 delegates currently undecided and a minimum of 300 needed for any would-be nominee to compete, it’s impossible to imagine a challenger not named Marianne Williamson or Dean Phillips emerging.
And that’s … not a disaster for the Democrats. Harris may not have been the best possible candidate Democrats could’ve put forward a year (or four) ago, but she was the most viable candidate to replace Biden, unite the party, and avoid a down-ballot bloodbath at this late stage.
What can be, unburdened by what has been? The question now is not whether there was a better Democratic candidate than Harris, but whether Harris can beat Trump. And on that front, the jury is still out. We simply don’t have enough recent polling data on this matchup yet to get a decent idea of where things stand today.
Here’s what we do know: This is an incredibly tough environment for an incumbent’s successor, with a majority of voters telling pollsters they are unhappy with the state of the country. And Harris is no Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, or Ronald Reagan – a generational talent with the charisma and vision to work political miracles. So she starts as the underdog accordingly. But off the bat, she has dramatically better odds than Biden because she solves the president’s biggest electability challenge: his age. And she has more upside than Trump, who remains a historically unpopular candidate with a hard ceiling of 45% of national support. By contrast, nearly 10% of Americans don’t even have an opinion of her yet, so she has room to define herself.
Can Harris break above Trump’s ceiling? She’s neither a proven national candidate nor a distinguished campaigner, having fizzled out before reaching the Iowa caucus during the 2020 presidential primaries. She has plenty of weaknesses for Republicans to exploit, including unpopular Biden administration policies (notably on the border) for which voters may blame her. And there’s a chance she could lose more older, white, and moderate working-class voters relative to Biden than she picks up young, nonwhite, and progressive ones.
But at 59, Harris is able to string together full sentences, give cogent stump speeches, campaign vigorously, and effectively deliver the abortion and democracy messages that worked well for Democrats in 2022. She can also play offense on Trump’s age – he’s 78 – and mental fitness, now an exclusively Republican liability that 50% of all voters found disqualifying in the former president nary a week ago.
How this will all net out in November, no one knows yet. Think about all that’s happened in the last two weeks, and imagine all that could change in the next 100 days. That’s an eternity in US politics – certainly longer than entire general election campaigns normally take in most other democracies.
All we can say for sure is Biden has given the Democrats a fighting chance and made the election both more competitive and more uncertain than it was a week ago.
Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump gestures with a bloodied face as multiple shots rang out during a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show in Butler, Pennsylvania, U.S., July 13, 2024.
The United States came within a hair’s breadth of serious civil instability last weekend when former President Donald Trump narrowly survived assassination at a campaign rally near Butler, PA. The attempt on Trump’s life, which killed one audience member and critically injured two others, marked the first time in over four decades that a sitting or former US president was shot at.
While the worst-case scenario was thankfully avoided, the attack was no one-off, both coming at and adding to one of the most volatile times in modern American history. As I warned in Eurasia Group’s Top Risk #1 for 2024, “The United States vs. itself,” extreme levels of polarization, record-low trust in democratic institutions, algorithmically boosted disinformation, and foreign and domestic weaponization of outrage has made political violence in the United States “nearly inevitable.”
Something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. Too many Americans across the spectrum have been primed to see their political rivals as mortal enemies out to destroy US democracy in every election. A national survey last year found that roughly 75% of Americans believe that US democracy is at risk in November (although they disagree on which side of the aisle the threat comes from), and 25% agree that patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save the country. Add to that the mental health and drug-use crises plaguing our society and the fact that the US has more (and deadlier) guns per capita than any other country in the world save Yemen (which is having a civil war), and the only surprise is that something like this didn’t happen sooner.
To be clear, we still don’t know what caused 20-year-old gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks to shoot Trump, and we may never find out. He could’ve been a severely ill man with easy access to a weapon and no agenda other than to commit suicide by cop in the highest profile way possible. But regardless of whether Saturday’s assassination attempt was politically motivated, nothing changes the fact that the United States is a country ripe for political violence.
American democracy is in crisis. The United States is still the most powerful country on the planet. Its economy and military remain the envy of the world, as do its technology companies and research universities. But the US is also the only major democracy in the world whose political system is in serious crisis. Elsewhere, elections are taking place normally and peacefully. Here, not so much. When I was a kid, we were the “shining city on a hill.” Most Americans no longer believe that their democracy is healthy or functional. No one around the world looks at America anymore and thinks, “I want my political system to work like that.” US allies are deeply troubled by this, and US adversaries see a generational opportunity.
Trump’s front-runner status gets a shot in the arm. The picture of a bloodied Trump defiantly raising his fist and yelling “Fight! Fight! Fight!” as Secret Service agents tried to hold him down and an American flag waved behind him will be the defining image of the presidential race. The attack solidifies Trump’s already strong grip on the Republican Party and cult status among the MAGA faithful while taking media focus off President Joe Biden’s issues and reducing internal Democratic pressure on him to drop out, making it less likely that he cedes the nomination to someone with a better chance of defeating Trump.
At the same time, Trump’s extraordinary physical response to being shot draws a more powerful contrast with Biden’s age and frailty than any debate performance or press conference could, making Trump marginally likelier to beat him in November. To top things off, the attempt makes it harder for Democrats to campaign on Trump as a threat to democracy without being accused of inciting violence against the former president. This neutralizes one of their most effective attack lines and further depresses Biden’s reelection odds. If I didn’t think Trump was the odds-on favorite before, I sure do now.
Trump has an opportunity to unite the country. As the victim of the assassination attempt and our likely next president, Trump is in a unique position to rally the entire nation together. Maybe, just maybe, could this be the moment when Trump decides to take the high road and finally Becomes President™ before he’s even elected? Don’t bet on it.
Unfortunately, nothing about his history suggests that he will do that. In fact, every impulse and instinct moves him in the exact opposite direction – to make this about his grievances against his political enemies, about dividing us vs. them, about getting retribution, about winning. That’s just who he is: a winner, not a leader. Someone who will do absolutely everything he can to get to the finish line first, no matter who he knocks down along the way. It’s how he made his billions, how he became famous, and how he became president.
Would a man who believes he has been wrongly persecuted, impeached, indicted, convicted, and nearly killed by his political enemies let them get away with it for the sake of the country? Or would he use all the tools at his disposal to do what he does best: win? I would love Trump to prove me wrong … but his selection of Ohio Sen. JD Vance – who on Saturday accused the Biden campaign of inciting the assassination attempt – as his VP pick and his latest rhetoric suggest he won’t.
Could any good come from this tragedy? Is the crisis big enough to shake us out of our complacency?I’m also skeptical. The weaponization of dangerous and divisive rhetoric has become too profitable and politically useful, and there are not enough people in positions of power who are willing to sacrifice their own ambitions, careers, and pocketbooks for the public good. This latter point speaks to a greater sickness afflicting the US: We are becoming a nation of winners but not of leaders. Trump is its purest, most unbridled expression, but the rot runs much deeper than him.
In this environment, I expect that the response to the near assassination will look less like the unifying, rally-around-the-flag response to 9/11 and more like the divisive and politicized response to Jan. 6, tearing the country further apart and presaging more, rather than less, violence and social instability to come. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.Walmart is helping veterans and military families live better. At Walmart, veterans can access resources and benefits to help them apply their skills and build fulfilling careers. Since 2013, Walmart has hired over 430,000 veterans and in the last year alone the company has promoted over 5,000 veterans into positions of higher pay and greater responsibility. Learn more about Walmart’s commitment to the military community.
Incumbents in trouble, Putin’s bet, Conservative Canada, and more: Your questions, answered
Another heat wave, another mailbag.
Thank you to all who’ve sent questions. The response to last week’s edition was overwhelmingly positive, so please keep ‘em coming. If you want a chance to have your questions answered, shoot me an email here or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Threads, and look out for future AMAs. The only questions that are off-limits are boring ones.
Looking at the elections in France, the UK, and the US, would you agree that 2024 might be shaping up to be the year of anti-incumbents?
Funny you should ask – my latest Quick Take tackles that exact question. Long story short: Yes, this is a deeply challenging time to be an incumbent, and the massively underrated reason why is that people all over the world are still reeling from the aftereffects of the pandemic.
There are, of course, plenty of local and idiosyncratic reasons why the French, the Brits, the Indians, the South Africans, and so many others were unhappy with their leadership. But the one thing incumbents everywhere had in common is voters blamed them for all the unprecedented disruption they’ve experienced since COVID-19, from lockdowns and vaccine mandates to supply chain disruptions, inflation, migration, and crime. In this environment, if the Republican candidate in the United States was anyone other than the historically unpopular Donald Trump, we’d be looking at a GOP landslide – and that’s against anyone that the Democrats put up, let alone a debate/age-diminished Joe Biden.
What US election result is Putin hoping for?
Putin clearly prefers Trump – a more transactional president who admires strongmen, shuns traditional US allies, and believes “common values” are irrelevant to international relations. Trump dislikes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and has expressed a desire to engage with Putin directly and unilaterally to end the war on terms more favorable to Russia. Putin also benefits from more chaos in the US political system and stands to benefit from a contested US election outcome that turns Americans more inward, against each other, and away from international leadership in diplomatic, economic, and – especially – security matters.
If Trump is elected and turns his back on Ukraine, how likely is it that Western Europe will crank up its own war machine and get the job done?
They’ll certainly try to do more. That’s especially true of NATO’s frontline states: Poland, the Baltics, and the Nordics. But France, one of Europe’s leading proponents of common defense capabilities and support for Ukraine under President Emmanuel Macron, may not be in a position to do more given the result of its recent parliamentary election. Germany, the continent’s largest economy, may be reluctant to lean in given the fiscal troubles facing the government’s weak and fractious coalition. And some other countries like Viktor Orban’s Hungary and Robert Fico’s Slovakia will align themselves more with Trump, dividing what has hitherto been a strongly unified Europe on the issue.
Where do you see breaking points for the Russian and Ukrainian people in this war?
It’s much closer for Ukraine. Kyiv is running low on valuable young men who can be mobilized, trained, and sent to the front to fight. Ukrainian support for the war has eroded accordingly. That matters more than it would if the same were happening in Russia because Ukraine remains a democracy, however imperfect.
A little over a year after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted coup, I don’t see any near-term breaking points for the Russian people. Though large-scale casualties are certainly making the war less popular among the population at large, the Kremlin is able to sustain its “meat grinder” campaign by drawing from a pool of disenfranchised convicts, ethnic minorities, and mercenaries. Not that “ordinary” Russians are substantially more enfranchised …
What will it take for the Chinese to give up on Putin? What can America do to hasten the process?
There’s no reason for them to do so. After all, India – a key strategic partner of the United States and the West more broadly – has also significantly increased its trade with Russia, with no adverse consequences for Delhi. If the US were to start imposing significant secondary sanctions on Chinese companies or banks over expanded dual-use exports to Russia, that’d probably get Beijing to reduce its exposure to the Kremlin’s war machine at the margins. But there’s nothing the US is likely to do in the near future (under Biden or Trump) that could completely break the China-Russia relationship.
How would a Trump presidency strengthen China?
Trump and Biden have similar China policies. The biggest difference is the extent of tariffs Trump is prepared to impose, which would have a more significant negative impact on both the Chinese and the US economy (unless Beijing was prepared to cut a significant and unexpected deal). China’s biggest strategic opportunity in that environment would be to divide and conquer: Exploit concerns from US allies that find themselves constrained or undermined by a more unilateralist Trump administration to improve its relations with them and potentially drive a wedge between them and the Americans.
What’s the biggest geopolitical risk in the world today?
The biggest risk is still “the United States vs. itself”: A presidential election in the world’s most divided and dysfunctional advanced industrial democracy that will do untold damage to America’s social fabric, political institutions, and international standing no matter who wins. Have a look at the full list of Top 10 Risks we put out in January. I really wish they weren’t standing up as well as they are …
How do the leaders of other countries feel about a potential Conservative government coming to power in Canada?
At the risk of sounding harsh, most world leaders aren’t thinking about Canada at all – and for good reason. The stakes of the country’s upcoming election may feel existential to my liberal friends up north who are about to lose power after nine years in office, but the reality is that Canada’s democracy isn’t in crisis like America’s is.
Despite his right-wing populist rhetoric, when it comes to policy substance, Conservative leader and likely next prime minister Pierre Poilievre is closer to Mitch McConnell’s brand of Koch-friendly conservatism than to the nativist, authoritarian, protectionist Trumpism that ruffles feathers in foreign capitals. Sure, a Conservative government will lead to closer alignment with the US in a Trump administration, but either way it would remain a very friendly and stable relationship. It will also lower taxes, lean more strongly into energy and related infrastructure development, and promote other pro-business policies. Critically, agree or disagree with his rather conventional platform, Poilievre has done nothing to suggest he’d undermine the legitimacy of Canada’s democracy. Must be nice, eh?
Do you think the AfD will win the next German election?
No. Despite the party’s meteoric decade-long rise, Germany’s coalition politics are designed to deliver centrist outcomes at the national level, and the Alternative for Germany is still seen as way too radical, Nazi-coded, and incompetent. But it’s certainly plausible that they’ll eventually be part of a government. After all, most of the structural elements that made the AfD a force are still in place: unchecked migration, a weak economy, deep discontent in Germany’s east, and plenty of space to the right of the decidedly moderate and pro-European Christian Democratic Union, aka CDU, for them to exploit.
Can RFK Jr. win?
Win … back his reputation? It’s hard to say. He’s better known now and seems to have a fair number of committed online fans (I say “seems to” because I can’t be sure how many are real vs. bots). I could see him selling merchandise, writing a book, and going on the public speaking circuit. If you’re earnestly asking about the 2024 election, I’d say he has a better chance of winning the lottery than he does of carrying a single state.
Does either of the major US parties have a realistic plan to bring down the deficit?
No. Both presidential candidates’ platforms and track records show little concern for fiscal deficits or pro-cyclical government spending (though Trump added more to the national debt in his first term than Biden has). This is not ideal at a time when interest rates are high and debt servicing costs are rising as a share of the federal budget.
I'm not saying that all deficit spending is bad or equally bad. When we look at companies, we always consider both sides of the balance sheet: liabilities and assets. The same should be true for sovereigns. That’s why I generally support deficit spending that can reasonably be expected to lead to asymmetric increases in the nation’s long-term asset base (e.g., any positive-return investment in education, health care, infrastructure, decarbonization, etc.). Trillions of dollars on failed wars … not so much.
The circumstances and timing matter greatly, too. Fiscal stimulus – even of the not-so-productive variety – is the right thing to do during recessions, when aggregate demand needs a kick in the ass, interest rates are low, and the spending pays for itself many times over with growth. Conversely, the right time for the government to tighten its belt is during the boom … now.
How big a business is Eurasia Group? Is it relatively large, medium, or small/boutique compared to its peers?
We’re almost 250 employees – pretty small for an organization that helps people understand the world. Our principal competitive challenge is employing enough senior leadership to take on all the new opportunities we’re lucky to have. We have a lot of talent, but it’s a big world out there, and it’s not getting any less challenging.
Elections in Europe, Biden’s choice, who I’m voting for, and more: Your questions, answered
As the weather heats up here on the East Coast, it’s that time of the year again when I take your best questions on everything political, geopolitical, and personal. Want to know what I think about Biden vs. Trump? The war in Gaza? Cats vs. dogs? The meaning of life? Kendrick vs. Drake? Nothing is off-limits.
Over the weekend, you flooded my inbox with hundreds (!) of excellent questions spanning all continents and cutting through the most pressing issues of our time. From the US debate fallout to the political shifts in Europe to tensions in the Middle East and Asia, your curiosity is impressively wide-ranging.
So grab your favorite summer beverage and let’s dive into this first batch of questions (some of which have been slightly edited for clarity). If you don’t see yours below, don’t worry – it may be coming in the next couple of weeks. As always, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Threads, and be sure to send me your questions here for future mailbags.
With Keir Starmer looking almost certain to win the UK election, will relations with Europe improve under his leadership?
Starmer has spent the past year hard at work building a strong relationship with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – soon to be reelected to another five-year term at Europe’s helm – in the hopes of resetting ties with the EU by massively expanding foreign policy cooperation. In the near term, he plans to propose a wide-ranging UK-EU security pact as well as bilateral defense agreements with Germany and France. Longer term, he wants to return to something akin to a customs union in all but name. This will be much easier to do if the now centrist-dominated Labour gets a large majority that sets the party up for a solid decade in power, as looks likely.
What implications will arise for the EU if Le Pen wins big in France?
Marine Le Pen did win big; the only remaining question is whether she’ll be able to win a governing majority this Sunday, putting her and Jordan Bardella’s government on a direct collision course with Brussels. They’d withhold part of France’s financial contribution to the EU budget. They’d subsidize French business and agriculture in ways that would violate the single market’s rules. They’d abolish President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform and execute a fiscal policy that would completely overrun the EU’s fiscal rules. They’d crack down on migration in ways that would infringe on the European Convention on Human Rights. And then there’s Ukraine, whose EU membership they’d oppose. They’d also block any new major aid packages to Ukraine requiring national parliamentary approval.
By the way, Le Pen doesn’t need to win a majority to undermine Europe and Ukraine. Even in a hung parliament scenario – my current base case – the far right would prevent Macron from being able to fix France’s finances, lead Europe, and support Ukraine, at a time when Trump looks increasingly likely to come back to power. The G-Zero just keeps getting stronger and stronger …
What do you think about the presidential elections in Iran now that there are two candidates heading to the second round?
It’s not surprising that the first round failed to produce a clear winner given the divided conservative field, though it is notable just how few people voted (39%, the lowest turnout of any presidential election in Iran’s history). A majority of Iranians consider the regime to be illegitimate and see elections as sham affairs. This will continue to be true no matter who wins tomorrow’s low-turnout runoff between the (relative) reformist Masoud Pezeshkian and the arch-hardliner Saeed Jalili, where Jalili has a slight edge.
How likely is an Israeli invasion of Lebanon?
If by invasion you mean an IDF ground incursion into Lebanese territory, I think that’s quite likely, especially as Israel’s Rafah offensive comes to an end. After all, nearly 100,000 Israelis continue to be displaced from their homes along Israel’s northern border, evacuated in response to Hezbollah rocket attacks since Oct. 7. Returning them before the start of the school year in September is a political imperative for the Israeli leadership, but that can’t be done without first degrading Hezbollah’s capabilities, pushing back their forces beyond the Litani River, and convincing them to stand down their missile attacks.
The key questions in my mind are how limited the Israeli operation and Hezbollah’s response to it would be. Israeli military leaders say they intend only for a short and targeted blitzkrieg to reestablish deterrence and create a buffer zone in the border area, which seems reasonable. But the potential for miscalculation is high (remember Israel’s Damascus strike?). An escalatory spiral with Hezbollah would pose a much more serious threat to Israeli security (and US troops, and regional/global stability) than the war with Hamas given the difference in capabilities and Iranian support between the two proxy groups.
Is a conflict between China and the Philippines more likely than between China and Taiwan?
In the near term, yes. Tensions have been rising steadily between Beijing and Manila under Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s tenure over the fate of the Sierra Madre, a ship home to a small contingent of Filipino marines that has served as a symbolic outpost of Philippine sovereignty since it was run aground in the disputed Second Thomas Shoal in 1999. Chinese coast guard vessels have repeatedly interdicted Philippine efforts to deliver reconstruction materials to the rusting ship to prevent it from sinking. We’ve already seen some small incidents leading to injured Filipino servicemen, so it’s probably only a matter of time before a direct showdown between the two navies causes casualties. The conflict between China and Taiwan runs deeper and is infinitely more consequential for global peace and prosperity … but that makes both sides much more careful in managing it.
Can BRICS be a game-changer?
As an expanding grouping of some of the most powerful developing countries, you can see how BRICS could aspire to eventually become a counterweight to the US-led G7 and West. But there are a few reasons why they’re not.
The first is that India, which is on track to be the world’s largest economy by 2028 and is the presumptive leader of the Global South, is absolutely trying to build a strong bridge with the West in opposition to China. Second, the fact that the Gulf states are strategically/militarily aligned with the US (against archnemesis and fellow BRICS member Iran) even if they are increasingly doing business with China also undermines the bloc. And third, the fact that China itself is not really a member of the Global South but rather is the leading creditor of most of these countries and is embroiled in all sorts of trade wars and sovereignty disputes with them weakens the case for Chinese leadership of the bloc and makes institutional coherence and consensus a reach.
All that said, I think BRICS is a low-stakes forum for these countries to meet and talk about common grievances that the US and the West should pay at least slightly more attention to.
What do you see as the best way forward for the Democrats right now?
If I thought that Biden’s debate performance, as disastrous as it was, had been a blip that could be well managed going forward, I’d probably tell the president to stay in the race because on balance I think it’s too late to change horses without doing significant damage to the party’s odds. Alas, I don’t believe Biden just had one bad night. I’ve certainly had the sense that this has been going on for a while from a lot of the recent meetings he’s attended with foreign leaders like the G7 in Italy. And I think it is likely that this is going to get worse over time.
To the extent that is true, and with the election still five months away – which is a long time for a lot to happen – I think the party and ultimately the nation would be better off if the president were to step aside. That means Vice President Kamala Harris becomes the nominee – I don’t see an open convention as desirable or plausible.
Are you still voting for Biden, someone we all acknowledge is mentally unfit for office?
I would under no circumstances vote for Trump. I’ve made this clear on many occasions. His personal corruption, authoritarianism, and incompetence make him the most unfit political leader I’ve ever encountered in the United States (and yes, I felt this way when he was a Democrat, too). His efforts to disrupt a free and fair transition of power are the ultimate disqualifier in my eyes, more significant than any others (skill, age, health, politics, policy, you name it). If Biden is the other candidate – and I’d prefer he wasn’t – I’ll swallow my publicly stated reservations and vote for him as the much lesser of two bad, but not equivalent, options.
What does the Supreme Court’s immunity decision mean for Trump and the future of presidential power?
For Trump, it means the Jan. 6 federal election interference case is pretty much a dead letter, punted until after the election if Biden wins and buried if Trump does. For presidential power, the decision’s failure to set a clear standard for “official” vs. “unofficial” acts – SCOTUS ruled the president is immune for the former but not the latter – spells trouble, as future presidents could be broadly incented to claim that everything they do while in office, no matter how obviously criminal, treasonous, or corrupt, counts as “official” and therefore is immune from prosecution. Justice Sonia Sotomayor believes that’s a possibility and she said so in her dissent, in quite colorful terms. Not all jurists accept that view, but nonetheless, this is a very significant decision by the court.
Do you feel forced to balance real opinions with “establishment-friendly” opinions to continue to have access?
I don’t think so. I work very hard to check my feelings at the door whenever I have to write or talk about a person I like who has made a bad decision (and vice versa, but praising an “adversary” is cheaper/more rewarding than criticizing a “friend”).
I’d like to think that most global leaders engage with me because they know I’m not looking for money, government contracts, or cushy ambassadorships and therefore understand that I’m being honest with them even when they don’t want to hear it. I can’t say everyone always feels that way, but I think that’s generally the case. I do think many of the people that I’m closest to – like Chris Coons and Mitt Romney in the US or Antonio Guterres and Christine Lagarde on the global stage – happen to be fundamentally decent people who are also most appreciative of that kind of balls-and-strikes perspective.
Le Penn and Macron
French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call snap parliamentary elections on June 9 has misfired. A mere four days before voters head to the polls for the first of two rounds of voting this Sunday, the momentum is firmly with Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, aka RN, party and the left-wing New Popular Front coalition.
As things stand, by the time the second round is over on July 7, France will be plunged into a prolonged period of political deadlock and disarray, with potentially massive implications for the future of Europe and Ukraine.
What was Macron thinking?
Macron surprised even his closest allies by calling early legislative elections moments after his camp’s 17-point defeat to Le Pen’s far right in this month’s European Parliament elections. This was a serious gamble for the president to take from a position of weakness, putting his own legacy as well as the stability of France – and Europe – on the line.
The gambit was probably based on several calculations.
First, Macron – who’d lost his parliamentary majority in the 2022 legislative elections – was likely to be forced into calling early elections later this fall in any case, when a flurry of censure motions was expected in the National Assembly on the 2025 deficit-cutting budget and other reforms. If Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, a Macronist, lost one or more of these motions, the president would have been pressured to dissolve the Assembly anyway. By doing it himself now instead, Macron figured he could own the Gaullist choice to take notice of the “will of the people,” seize the narrative, and control the timing to his advantage.
Second, Macron sought to call the electorate’s bluff by raising the stakes of the contest (or forcing a “moment of clarification,” as he called it). The president hoped that the far right’s record-high support at the EU level represented a protest vote that would collapse once the future of France itself was on the ballot, the far right’s incompetence and incoherent policies were under scrutiny, and moderates who stayed home on June 9 turned out. A national election was less structurally favorable to the far right than a European campaign, at least in theory.
Third, Macron was banking on the French left remaining hopelessly divided, after months of vicious infighting over the Ukraine and Gaza wars ended with a refusal to unite for the European elections. A fragmented left would have splintered one of the two political extremes and made Macron’s centrist alliance the only home for moderate left voters looking to thwart the radical right.
Even Napoleon had his Waterloo
Alas, it seems Macron miscalculated – badly.
Critically, the four main parties on the left – the Socialist Party, France Unbowed, the Greens, and the Communist Party – quickly derailed one of the president’s central assumptions by uniting to run a single campaign under the banner of the “New Popular Front,” aka NFP. While the NFP is a ramshackle alliance of opportunity that may well break down when confronted with real-world choices of government, it has nonetheless provided moderate leftists with an alternative way to block Le Pen that doesn’t require supporting Macron.
Macron’s confidence, despite poor opinion polling and personal approval ratings, that votes for the far right would dwindle and support for his centrist alliance would surge at the national ballot box, also looks to have been misplaced. Already the biggest opposition party in parliament and on the back of its best-ever electoral performance, Le Pen’s RN is currently leading the French polls with around 35-38% of the vote, followed by the newly assembled NFP leftist coalition at 28-31%. Macron’s centrist Ensemble alliance trails behind both in third place at 20-22% and falling.
As a final coup de grâce, Macron may now face a possible two-way squeeze from the center in the final stretch of the campaign. Moderate leftists who had remained with Macron may vote for the NFP if they think it has a better chance than the president’s camp of blocking a far-right government. Moderate right voters who’d normally shy away from Le Pen, meanwhile, may vote for the RN if they think it has a better chance than the president’s camp of blocking an even more frightful radical left government. The pro-European, reformist center Macron set out to build in 2017 risks being reduced to a puny 100 or fewer deputies from its current 250.
What happens next?
While converting predicted vote shares into National Assembly seats is tricky due to France’s complicated two-round system, most polls point to an irredeemably blocked National Assembly, with the far right winning the largest number of seats (likely up to 260) but probably falling short of an outright majority (289 of 577). This matters because Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s protegee and RN’s candidate for prime minister, has said that he will refuse to form a government unless he has a clear majority to shelter him from instant ejection from office by censure motions.
Which in turn means that the most likely outcome to emerge from the rubble on July 7 is a hung parliament where there’s no majority in the National Assembly to sustain any government, setting up an unprecedented impasse in modern French politics.
The lame duck Macron, who will remain president until 2027 short of a surprise resignation (a possible, if unlikely, way to break the deadlock by triggering fresh legislative elections), would then have two options.
The first would be to appoint a “caretaker” government of national unity with a prime minister from outside politics, ideally someone who might attract widespread support from the moderate left, moderate right, and what remains of Macronism (aka a unicorn). More realistically, whoever Macron appointed would face and lose immediate censure motions from opposition deputies in the Assembly, but they could still carry on in a caretaker role for up to a year as there’d be no alternative governments possible and Macron is constitutionally barred from calling new elections until June 2025.
The second option would be for Macron to extend Prime Minister Attal’s outgoing Macronist government for another year, turning it into a caretaker administration. The government would lose censure motions but remain in place with reduced powers until new legislative elections were held.
A caretaker government would be unable to propose legislation or govern by decree, facing sure political and constitutional challenges if it tried to do anything other than manage events in ways that everyone generally agreed on. The only areas where it might have some latitude are defense and fiscal policy. A caretaker government would lack popular legitimacy, encounter significant opposition in an already ungovernable Assembly, and be exploited by the political extremes to stir unrest.
As things stand, then, France faces the prospect of a lengthy period of political paralysis that will prevent the country from meeting its promises to cut its fiscal deficit, constructively engaging in the EU, and supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia.
And that’s the good scenario (!).
What if Le Pen wins a majority?
According to current polling, the second most likely outcome on July 7 after a deadlocked parliament is a narrow National Rally majority that sets up an unprecedently adversarial “cohabitation” between President Macron and a government led by Le Pen’s prime minister-designate Bardella.
Once again, this would be uncharted territory for France. While there have been three previous cohabitations between presidents and governments of different political stripes in the past, none have been between politicians so ideologically opposed as Macron and Le Pen/Bardella.
These two camps have irreconcilable differences that the French system is simply not designed to deal with. To name a few: Macron is the biggest champion of more common borrowing for EU security and defense, while Le Pen favors not only withholding part of France’s financial contribution to the EU but moving toward fewer common policies. Macron is a staunch supporter of everything Ukraine, while Le Pen (whose party once took a loan from a Kremlin-linked bank) has excused Russia’s invasion, criticized French aid to Kyiv, and opposes Ukrainian membership of either NATO or the EU. Macron is committed to getting France’s budget deficit on track, while Le Pen ran on a fiscal policy that would overrun EU fiscal rules. Macron adheres to the fundamental principles of EU governance, while Le Pen wants to toughen migration policy in ways that would infringe the European Convention on Human Rights and would subsidize French business and agriculture in ways that would violate the EU’s single market rules.
Under the Fifth Republic Constitution, the president has a right to shape foreign, European, and defense policy, while a prime minister with a parliamentary majority can impose their will on purely domestic policy. But although the president has no veto power over legislation, an adversarial prime minister can undermine the president’s agenda because any European initiative of magnitude requires parliamentary ratification back home. Moreover, while only the president sits in the European Council, it’s the government’s ministers who represent the country in all the European Council formations, allowing them to block the president’s EU political and legislative agenda.
As a result, in a matter of weeks, France could find itself led by a populist Euroskeptic government bent on actively undermining French support for the EU and Ukraine at a time when it is most needed, with a powerless Macron unable to do much about it. It would be ironic if the man most devoted to building a strong France, Europe, and Ukraine ended up being responsible for weakening all three.
Gantz and Bibi in front of suffering in Gaza
Last Sunday, Israeli war cabinet member and ex-Defense Minister Benny Gantz announced he was stepping down from Israel’s emergency government, returning to the role he played before Hamas launched its brutal attack on Oct. 7: chief political rival to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Gantz was joined by war cabinet observer Gadi Eisenkot. Their resignations followed Netanyahu’s failure to outline a strategy to end the war in Gaza and think through the territory’s post-war governance after Gantz had given him an ultimatum and three weeks to comply.
Moderates generally aligned with the Biden administration but by no means doves (both are retired generals who served as IDF chief of staff), Gantz and Eisenkot had pushed for a deal that allowed for the return of the 120 Israeli hostages that remain in Gaza (about a third of whom are presumed dead) – as well as a “day after” plan to replace Hamas as the enclave’s governing authority. Frustrated by the prime minister’s refusal to work toward these goals, they quit.
So what happens next?
Gantz’s departure won’t topple Bibi. Polling shows that most Israelis want early elections and that Gantz and his centrist National Unity party would handily defeat Netanyahu and his Likud party if they were held today. However, on its own, Gantz’s exit from the wartime government isn’t enough to bring about that outcome. Based on the results of the last election in November 2022, Netanyahu’s original hard-right coalition still commands a narrow, 64-seat majority (out of 120 seats) in the Knesset. While he may be disliked by most of the Israeli public, so long as he retains a majority in parliament, Bibi won’t be forced to face the music until elections are due in October 2026.
To trigger an early ballot and have a shot at ousting Netanyahu before then, Gantz and other leading opposition figures (including Yair Lapid, Avigdor Lieberman, and Gideon Sa’ar) would need to put up a united front and convince at least five Knesset members to defect from the ruling coalition and join them in a vote to dissolve the parliament. Gantz’s move could inspire some of Likud’s more centrist lawmakers to rebel, bring intra-coalition tensions to the fore, and increase public pressure to call for new elections, making this scenario possible. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
Israel’s extremists will be empowered. With the moderates gone and the unity government formed in the aftermath of Oct. 7 effectively over, Netanyahu is now entirely dependent on his ultranationalist, religious, and far-right coalition partners for his continued political survival. That means their influence on the war effort – which Gantz and Eisenkot had joined the war cabinet to moderate in the first place – is about to grow considerably.
Led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, these radical factions are opposed to cutting any deals with Hamas, believing that only “total defeat” by military means will do – no matter the humanitarian toll and even if it means sacrificing the remaining hostages. They reject the prospect of Palestinian self-governance of Gaza after the war, instead advocating Israeli resettlement and reoccupation of the Strip – something the majority of Israelis, including most of Netanyahu’s own Likud party, oppose. And they demand that Israel open a dangerous second front in Lebanon against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia that’s been raining down missiles on northern Israel and caused the ongoing displacement of some 60,000 Israelis from their homes.
In practice, the hard-liners’ newfound clout has two immediate consequences, both of which go against everything Gantz worked hard to achieve.
First, it renders the cease-fire and hostage-for-prisoners exchange deal presented by US President Joe Biden and approved by the UN Security Council less likely to come together, even though most Israelis support it and Netanyahu initially backed it. Not that Hamas has agreed to it – it hasn’t, despite reports to the contrary, and it may never. More on that below. But even if it did, Netanyahu is now less likely to accept it than he was a week ago because his far-right partners have vowed to bring down his government if he signs off on any truce that leaves Hamas in control of Gaza (or, more generally, that Hamas is prepared to accept). The war will accordingly go on, deepening Israel’s international isolation, widening Netanyahu’s rift with the Biden administration, and galvanizing the anti-government protests that have only been growing in recent weeks.
Second, it increases the risk of a full-fledged war against Hezbollah in Lebanon that could inflict serious damage, draw in other pro-Iranian forces, and even force Tehran to intervene directly to defend the crown jewel of its proxy network. The risk-averse Netanyahu knows how dangerous such an escalatory spiral would be, as does the IDF top brass. The problem is that with Gantz and Eisenkot gone, so is his ability to use them as a foil against Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s demands to escalate the campaign on the northern border in response to Hezbollah’s provocations. From now on, he will own any decision to not escalate, whether that’s in Lebanon, Gaza, or Iran – an unenviable predicament for Netanyahu to be in. Add to that the fact that prolonging the war would likely extend his hold on power and stave off his well-deserved public reckoning, and you start to understand why he might be willing to take such a risk.
Sinwar the kingslayer? Perhaps the one person who could single-handedly bring down Netanyahu is Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s military chief in Gaza, who has the final say on any agreements that bind the militant group. If Sinwar were to unequivocally and unconditionally accept a future cease-fire and hostage release deal, Bibi would be faced with a difficult choice: Either accept it to save the remaining Israeli captives but risk government collapse, or reject it to keep his far-right partners from bolting but face massive public protests over having abandoned the hostages and risk intra-coalition defections, a vote of no confidence, and an even more tarnished legacy than he already has.
Fortunately for Netanyahu (and unfortunately for Israelis and Palestinians), it’s hard to imagine that Sinwar will agree to any deal that releases all the hostages and gives away his leverage at a time when he believes Israel is on the back foot and Hamas is winning the information war. The way he sees it from the safety of Gaza’s underground tunnels, the longer the war goes on and the more civilians die, the more Israel’s position will worsen and Hamas’s will improve – innocent Palestinians (let alone Israelis) be damned. Just like he intended all along.
So long as that’s the case, an agreement will remain far off, and Netanyahu’s best hope for political survival will lie with Israel’s worst enemy.
Trump in handcuffs.
You knew it, I knew it, everybody knew it. But now it’s on the record: Donald Trump is officially a crook.
Last Thursday, after two days of deliberations, a jury of his peers unanimously found the former president and 2024 Republican presumptive nominee guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the hush money criminal case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Bragg charged Trump with cooking the books to hide a $130,000 payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels – with whom he’d allegedly had an affair – from voters during the 2016 election campaign by disguising it as legal fees to his then-lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.
Falsifying business records is normally a misdemeanor, but Bragg, an elected Democrat in deep-blue Manhattan, had campaigned on putting Trump in cuffs. To upgrade the charges to felonies, he drew on a controversial legal theory to claim that the records were falsified in an attempt to commit or conceal an underlying federal crime of the jury’s choice. Judging by the outcome, the gambit worked – although it also helped further politicize and delegitimize the case and could make the conviction vulnerable to reversal on appeal.
The verdict marks a watershed moment for American democracy. Trump is the first-ever former American president convicted of a crime. He is also the first major-party candidate to run for the White House as a felon. Of course, these are far from the only unprecedented things happening in the US political system. From Trump’s two impeachments and acquittals to chronic Congressional gridlock to recurring House Speaker succession drama to the Jan. 6 insurrection, we’re living through an era of exceptional yet increasingly normalized political dysfunction that is fraying our social fabric and eroding the legitimacy of our democracy. At some point, something’s going to break, and it’s not going to be pretty.
The legal consequences for Trump will be minimal. He will appeal his conviction. This will probably take years to resolve, and it may well succeed given the dubious legal theory used to prosecute him.
But before an appeal can be filed, Judge Juan Merchan is set to decide on sentencing on July 11. While each count carries a maximum of 4 years in prison, even a single day in jail is probably not in the cards for a first-time nonviolent offender like him, with house arrest or small fines more likely punishments. And even if he were sentenced to prison, he would not be remanded until the last of his appeals were exhausted, which would not happen until well after the election.
Notably, the New York trial was by far the weakest and least serious of all the criminal cases Trump faced. The three that remain – the Fulton County election interference case, the federal election interference case, and the federal classified documents case – are orders of magnitude more consequential, but none is expected to start before September if at all this year. Should he win in November, he won’t be able to pardon himself of the New York convictions, but he will be able to quash the two federal indictments and at least postpone the Georgia trial until he’s out of office.
Odds are that the 34 guilty verdicts will be the only legal accountability Trump will see before the election – and perhaps ever.
What about the impact on the election itself? First things first: The conviction won’t affect Trump’s ability to run for or serve as president, even on the off chance that he was put behind bars. Nor will it stop him from voting (for himself), unless he is incarcerated by Election Day. But will it make it less likely that Trump wins in November? Probably, but only just a little.
The reason it might dent Trump’s chances at the margin is that a non-negligible share of independent voters had consistently said they would be less likely to vote for Trump if he was convicted of a crime. And presidential elections in our highly polarized country are increasingly decided by a few tens of thousands of them in a handful of states. Even small losses among this group can end up being pivotal.
That said, there are reasons why this may not end up mattering much.
First, the election is still five months away. Think about all that can happen between now and then. If the first half of the year is anything to go by, I suspect the 34 guilty verdicts are going to feel like a distant memory by the time voters go to the ballot.
Second, the conviction will rally Republicans around Trump and mobilize Democrats to some extent (i.e., partisans are gonna partisan), but the number of undecided voters among whom this particular issue will actually move the needle in November is small. Most Americans are more focused on pocketbook issues, immigration, abortion, and President Joe Biden’s age than on Trump’s legal issues or the threat he poses to US democracy. This is true today and will likely be true in November.
Third, independents who were open to voting for Trump before last Thursday will probably learn to grow comfortable with a criminal conviction the same way they got over the Access Hollywood tape, the Stormy Daniels affair, the Charlottesville rally, and the “Stop the Steal” movement. If these Trump-leaning voters were willing to forgive so many sordid transgressions, there’s little reason to believe a guilty verdict on trumped-up white-collar charges is going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Although the guilty verdicts are bad news for the former president, this remains a very close race that Trump is still slightly favored to win against a historically unpopular incumbent. But in a game of inches, any headwinds could be enough to make a difference.