I have been pretty impressed by the reaction to the reaction to the release of the Republican special counsel’s report that smeared the president for being well-meaning but old.

A good number of pundits, liberals included, took it as occasion to argue that Joe Biden should drop out and let someone else become the Democratic Party’s nominee. Those arguments were dumb, foolish and profoundly impractical, and the reaction to them, from a variety of quarters, has been as thorough and persuasive as I could ask for. 

But, as my friend Alex Wise suggested recently, we shouldn’t leave it there. He and I were talking about the drop-out debate on his show, “Sea Change Radio.” At the end, he made this important observation:

“John and I are not saying Joe Biden is about to win 400 electoral votes. We’re in a very tight, bifurcated country. … We’re not thinking this is a slam dunk. It’s going to be close. People should get out there and volunteer, knock on doors, register voters, talk to people. There’s no perfect candidate, and Joe Biden is the best candidate, though.”

In other words, even though Biden is democracy’s best chance of beating Donald Trump, that doesn’t mean he’ll win. Victory will be determined, as I said in my reply to Alex, by normal partisan politics. 

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“We need to shift our expectations,” I added, “about what we think America should be toward what America really is, and what America really is is a contest between two very different candidates who have an equal chance of winning, and what’s going to determine things is, like you said, normal partisan politics, get-out-the-vote, raising hell.”

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“There are a bunch of Democrats who would say, ‘it shouldn’t be this close. Biden should be winning by a mile,’” I said. “I don’t know why anybody’s saying that. We live in this reality. A lot of people like Donald Trump. A lot of people in this democracy don’t like democracy. That’s just a fact, and it has been a fact since the founding of the republic. … 

“We need to shift our expectations,” I added, “about what we think America should be toward what America really is, and what America really is is a contest between two very different candidates who have an equal chance of winning, and what’s going to determine things is, like you said, normal partisan politics, get-out-the-vote, raising hell.”

Another thing about shifting expectations — it would help us understand why the race is this close. Though the candidates have an equal chance of winning, only one is getting assistance from a hostile foreign power. Trump needs the Russians to help him this year, just as they helped him in 2016. (Remember the Mueller report? It concluded “[t]he Russian government interfered … in sweeping and systematic fashion” and the Trump “campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”)

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But unlike last time, his entire party is complicit.

Contrary to 2016, when they were merely the passive recipients of Russian aid and comfort, in 2024, the GOP is consciously accepting it. They now know, if they did not already know, the key witness in their impeachment inquiry of the president is a Russian intelligence asset. As I said last week, the House Republicans are picking up where Trump left off in 2019, when he used a Kremlin lie to extort Ukraine’s president into an international conspiracy to smear Biden and defraud the American people. It didn’t work, but they’re trying for a second time.

The story, as press critic Dan Froomkin deftly put it, “is no longer whether Joe Biden committed high crimes and misdemeanors by maintaining relations with his ne’er-do-well son. In fact, there has never been any credible evidence to support that conclusion. 

“The real story,” Dan said, is “the ludicrous Republican impeachment investigation has now been exposed as a Russian intelligence op. This, even as Republicans do Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bidding by blocking support for Ukraine and only a few short years after Trump aides welcomed Russian moves to help the Trump campaign in 2016.”

Among other things, this means the race is tight.

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Here’s the tip jar. $10? Thanks!

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We need to shift our expectations to understand that this willingness to do anything to win – even if it means aligning with foreign despots, even if it means committing treason as a consequence – goes back decades. According to historian Heather Cox Richardson, it’s the “logical outgrowth of the process begun during the administration of President Richard Nixon, when his people deliberately appealed to voters’ emotions with a picture of traditional America under siege by antiwar student activists, people of color, and feminist women.”

Professor Richardson quotes Nixon speechwriter, and eventual Republican presidential candidate, Pat Buchanan: “We are in a contest over the soul of the country now and the decision will not be some middle compromise…. It will be their kind of society or ours.”

It will be “their kind of society or ours” – and I don’t know why anyone would say the election shouldn’t be this tight. The Republicans’ willingness to do anything to win is why it is. This is the country we live in. It’s not a place where opposing political leaders compete fairly on an even playing field. If that ever existed, it hasn’t at least in six decades. Joe Biden is the best candidate for this moment. But victory will depend on raising enough hell to overcome the Republican Party’s betrayal.