THE NEW YORKER

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

- Andrew Marantz

COMMENT FEVER PITCH

As a rule, political candidates are not reliable historians of the present. In 2012, while in Minnesota campaigning for reëlection, President Barack Obama recounted his “tussles” with obstructionist Republicans in Congress before indulging in a bit of wishful thinking. “I believe that if we’re successful in this election,” he said, “the fever may break, because there’s a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that.” Not to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t been following along at home, but the fever did not break. Still, Joe Biden struck the same note in 2019, while campaigning in New Hampshire. “With Donald Trump out of the White House—not a joke—you will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends,” he said. But, as President, Biden started to see the light— or the dying of it. In September, he gave a speech, in Philadelphia, asserting that “equality and democracy are under assault.” Last Wednesday, he spoke again, a few blocks from the Capitol. “As I stand here today, there are candidates running for every level of office in America—for governor, Congress, attorney general, secretary of state—who won’t commit, they will not commit, to accepting the results of elections that they are running in,” he said. “This is a path to chaos in America.”