There’s been a lot of news, but I want to focus today on an argument made by Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan that I think is worth exploring for its complete and total wrongness.
Hogan is a pretty remarkable politician — a Republican popular in a blue state, he has not been afraid to call out the Trump administration.
He’s got a new book out about his fight with cancer and in it, he describes Trump administration Cabinet members (he doesn’t say which ones) suggesting he should run against President Donald Trump this year. He considered it but didn’t, ultimately.
Who does he support for president? But what I want to address here is how Hogan is treating the question of whether he’ll support Trump this fall. He’s done variations of this in a few interviews, including with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday.
TAPPER: You didn’t vote for President Trump in 2016. You have consistently criticized his approach to governing. A few days ago, you told “The Dispatch” podcast you probably will not endorse him before the election. Who do you think is a better person to lead the US through this very difficult time, Joe Biden or Donald Trump?
HOGAN: Well, I think I’m just going to let the American people make that decision. The election is 100 days away. I think early voting starts in 60 days or less. So we’re getting very close for the American people to make that decision. I think, quite frankly, a lot of people, like me, are frustrated with the divisiveness and dysfunction on both sides and don’t feel like we have two great choices.
That idea is true. A lot of Democrats who supported other people in their primaries probably aren’t too excited about Joe Biden. And a lot of Americans are probably concerned that Democrats are moving too far to the left even as they’re frightened by Trump.
But Hogan went a bit further in an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt:
“I mean, there’s, there are other choices. I didn’t make that choice between Hillary and Donald Trump the first time. I did a write-in for my dad, who I had a lot of respect for and who we could probably touch on with your Nixon background there. But, you know, it’s, it’s not a black or white decision.”
Technically speaking, he’s correct. You can write someone in or pick one of the other presidential candidates who will likely appear on your ballot. The Green Party has Howie Hawkins. The Libertarians have Jo Jorgensen. Neither of them is going to be president.
But he’s also totally wrong. And this is where Hogan veers into politician-speak silliness. Your 2020 vote is entirely a black-and-white decision.
If you support Trump, he needs your help. A series of CNN battleground state polls out this weekend shows the President trailing in three states he won in 2016, including Florida, which no successful Republican presidential candidate has lost in 96 years. Since Calvin Coolidge.
If you don’t support Trump, you’d better vote that way. Because he’s on the ballot and despite those polls, you might end up with four more years of him.
That’s about as binary a decision as it’s possible to have. Barring unforeseen calamity, either Donald Trump or Joe Biden will take the oath of office on January 20 at noon. It will not be Larry Hogan’s father, who died in 1975.
The subtext of Hogan, a Republican, not vocally supporting Trump is that he opposes Trump but he doesn’t want to turn off all the Republicans who do. Hogan has this luxury since he’s the governor of a state that will almost certainly cast its electoral votes for Biden. And he’ll be reminding everyone of that if he runs for president in 2024!
But the effect of Hogan’s words is the idea that it doesn’t matter which candidate wins and that another option is worth considering. The time for other options, in the electoral system that’s grown up around us, was during primary season.
There are plenty of people arguing the US electoral system needs changes. Those aren’t going to happen before November 3.
R or D for 150 years. It is a fact of American life that the two parties have held a death grip on the White House since the Civil War. And they’ll keep it unless or until the entire system is changed.
The parties have beaten back Populists, Progressives, Socialists, Dixiecrats and Independents. They’ve humbled Teddy Roosevelt, Eugene Debs, Strom Thurmond, George Wallace and Ross Perot. Would-be moderate independent Howard Schultz’s campaign never even formally launched this year.
The last non-major-party electoral votes were a very long time ago. Despite offering frustrating options, the major parties have only gotten more dominant. Nobody but a Republican or a Democrat has gotten any electoral votes at all in more than 50 years, since Wallace, promising to keep segregation, won five Southern states in 1968.
Change agents run in party primaries. The power the parties hold over the US system is why Bernie Sanders, who isn’t a Democrat, ran as a Democrat two times. It’s why Ron Paul ran as a Republican twice. It’s why Trump, who hasn’t always been a Republican, ran as a Republican in 2016. Recall that he dabbled with a Reform Party run in 2000 only to realize there was no path to victory.
In November, until the country changes the system, it’s R or D at the presidential level.
A bad year for a protest vote. Presidential candidates try to sell every presidential election as the most important one ever, but this certainly carries some real-time importance.
Set aside the more political divisions of Trump’s presidency:
- He was impeached but kept the office thanks to his political majority in the Senate
- He intentionally withdrew the US from a position of world leadership
- He busted numerous treaties and trade agreements
- He tried to divide the country based on racial prejudice
Focusing only on his stewardship of the country in the midst of pandemic:
- He pushed false remedies for Covid-19
- He encouraged a premature reopening that allowed the outbreak to get worse
- He refused to encourage Americans to wear face masks, and so bears some responsibility for the loss of American life
Americans have seen, under Trump and during the pandemic, that who sits in the Oval Office actually does have a bearing on daily life. And for that reason, in 2020, there are no other choices.
