Hey everyone,

Bill Clinton famously said elections are about the future. In other words an ideal scenario would be that the parties contesting an election would debate the merits of a 'future A vs future B vs future C', each with the hope that their vision of tomorrow gets more votes than their opponent(s). As I said - ideal scenario.

The Vice President of the United States has been making a different pitch. She argues the 2024 election for president is a contest between the future (her vision) and the past (her opponent's).

Her opponent wants to 'make America great again' (MAGA). The word 'again' does all the heavy lifting in that phrase. It implies a return to a preferred yesterday. Said yesterday is never defined - by year or decade. That seems a deliberate choice. Their fellow travelers likely understand the code. The crucial question remains however - if America's best years are behind her should we just close our eyes at night, and hope to wake up in that halcyon past? What then do we do with tomorrow? Do we set up psychic roadblocks to prevent its arrival?

The very idea that American greatness is sequestered in a vault of musty memory, is well, unAmerican. It gets worse though. The MAGA people believe the heirs of said greatness are predetermined by blood or heritable privilege. They use such language as 'our opponents are "poisoning the blood" of the nation'. Students of history can hear the echoes of 1930s Germany in that framing. The candidate often claims plausible deniability.

This conversation could get really granular, but I want to broaden the scope here to include the other binary aspects of the election.

My take - the 2024 election is most definitely a contest between, on the one hand, seizing tomorrow - and, on the other, the covenant with yesterday.

It is also:

men versus women;

older versus younger;

white versus non-white;

college education versus no college education;

immigrant versus US-born;

swing states versus the rest;

democracy versus autocracy;

and

rule of law versus the cult of personality.

Stark.

Binary.

Immensely consequential, whether or not the American voter realizes - or cares to admit - it.

21 days to Decision Day. Is your ballot ready?

Have a good week!

BST

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