In "Anyone but Trump? Not so Fast," the conservative Bret Stephens retrieves the gauntlet of an impossible challenge and, predictably, comes up short, since the challenge is indeed impossible. Perhaps Stephens merely means his Sunday column to be light intellectual exercise for the reader, or maybe as a series of straw men to be toppled, so that only a sturdier resolution can be left standing. Either way, it's impossible to responsibly argue that anyone but Trump could possibly be more catastrophic than Trump.
Stephens sets up his targets to be whacked, one-two-three, which we'll rearrange in presentation, one-three-two, for reasons soon to be demonstrated.
First, he writes, it is true that Trump is a "morally corrosive and corrupting force." But in actuality has he been as painful as he seems? In so many other words, Stephens argues the old quip that Wagner's music is better than it sounds. That is, notwithstanding this president's bluster, ignorance and monkeyshines, NATO remains intact, sanctions remain on Russia, our borders remain at least partially open.
"For the overwhelming majority of Americans," posits Stephens, "life is pretty much the same under Trump as it was under Obama." That's largely true only because Trump has fiddled very little with Obama's enormous gift to him: a bubbling economy, which Trump, of course, now claims is his doing.
Second — which is Stephens' third target — a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren presidency would be as politically uncompromising as Trump's has been; what's more, warns Stephens, "an assertively left-wing presidency would spark a right-wing backlash that would have all of the fear and rage of the left’s Resistance — but none of its restraint." An aside: How would we know if the right ramped up its fear and rage?
And third — which is to say, second — the anyone-but-Trump proposition "understates the radicalism of what Sanders and Warren propose," says Stephens. One researcher figures that, under a Sanders administration, the federal government would swell twice its present size, would employ half of all working Americans, would double its spending percentage of GDP, and, estimates the researcher, "total additional outlays would reach $97.5 trillion on top of the nearly $90 trillion the federal, state and local governments are projected to spend over the next decade."
As for a Warren administration, it too would spend trillions more — on her blizzard of plans — financed by a wealth tax.
Except it wouldn't. And here is the biggest hole in Stephens' argument. Our ultraconservative Supreme Court would shut down, as unconstitutional, Warren's source of financing in a Hayekian minute. Neither would Bernie spend trillions more on Medicare for all or any other programmatic innovation submitted to Congress. If internal squabbling didn't kill Liz or Bernie's big adventures first, a Republican minority in the Senate would permanently bottleneck any sizable progressive plans.
Thus, Stephens is wrong, just plain wrong, in arguing that even another four years of Trump might be better than those of Sanders or Warren. Either Democratic president would be nothing more than a placeholder, watching his or her progressive reforms get rudely shot down by either Congress or Court.
Stephens is correct, however, in ending his column with this: "Democrats can, and hopefully will, nominate a candidate capable of attracting middle-of-the-road support…. They can offer themselves as a sober alternative to a reckless president."