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David French
By David French
Opinion Columnist
Last Wednesday, a day before he delivered a rousing State of the Union address, Joe Biden issued an invitation to the roughly 30 percent of Republican primary voters who had voted for Nikki Haley in the G.O.P. presidential primaries before she dropped out. The message was simple: Donald Trump doesn’t want you, but we do. After all, Trump said on Truth Social that anyone who made a “contribution” to Haley would be “permanently barred from the MAGA camp.” Biden, by contrast, acknowledged differences of opinion with Haley voters but argued that agreement on democracy, decency, the rule of law and support for NATO should unite Haley voters against Trump.
Is Biden correct? Is there an argument that could persuade a meaningful number of Haley conservatives to vote for Biden? In ordinary times the answer would be no. It still may be no. Negative polarization is the dominant fact of American political life. Asking a person to change political teams is like asking him or her to disrupt friendships and family relationships, to move from the beloved “us” to the hated “them.” They’re going to do it only as a last resort, when they truly understand and feel the same way about the Republican Party that Ronald Reagan felt when he departed the Democratic Party: He didn’t leave the party. The party left him.
Now, however, it’s the G.O.P. that is sprinting away from Reagan — and from Haley Republicans — as fast as MAGA can carry it. The right is not just mad at Republican dissenters for defying Trump; it has such profound policy disagreements with Reagan and Haley Republicans that it’s hard to imagine the two factions coexisting for much longer. Given the power imbalance in a Trump G.O.P., that means that for the foreseeable future traditional conservatives will face a choice: conform or leave.
It’s likely that most people will conform. But they ought to leave. If a political party is a shared enterprise for advancing policies and ideas with the hope of achieving concrete outcomes, then there are key ways in which a second Biden term would be a better fit for Reagan Republicans than Round 2 of Trump.
Take national security. Even apart from his self-evident disregard for democracy, Trump’s weakness in the Ukraine conflict and his hostility to American alliances may represent the most dangerous aspects of a second term, with potential world-historic consequences similar to those of American isolationism before World War II.
Biden’s continuing support for NATO, by contrast, has made America stronger. The accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO has added their potent militaries to the Western alliance. The strategic Baltic Sea is now a “NATO lake.” Biden was smart to start his State of the Union address by contrasting Reagan’s demand to Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall with Trump’s invitation to Vladimir Putin’s Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries who “don’t pay.”
There is no fiscal conservative in the race. Trump had a higher deficit each successive year he was in office, for example. But Biden’s economic stewardship has been sound. Inflation is easing, the stock market has reached record highs, unemployment is below 4 percent, and the median net worth of the American family increased by 37 percent between 2019 and 2022, even controlling for inflation.
The record is even better in a global context. To the extent America has struggled, we’ve struggled less than our peer competitors. Last year, The Economist published a comprehensive economic analysis demonstrating that “on a whole range of measures American dominance remains striking. And relative to its rich-world peers its lead is increasing.”
Let’s also look at the rule of law. Trump took office promising to end “American carnage,” but it skyrocketed on his watch. Between 2019 and 2020, America experienced the “largest single-year increase” in the murder rate in “more than a century.” Under Biden, by contrast, in 2023, “The number of murders in U.S. cities fell by more than 12 percent,” a number that would represent “the biggest national decline on record,” as my colleague German Lopez reported earlier this year. Violent crime “is near its lowest level in 50 years.”
Moreover, the Biden administration didn’t defund the police, but MAGA might. Last Wednesday, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, promised to “cut 3 percent from D.O.J., 7 percent from the ATF, 6 percent from the F.B.I., and 10 percent from the E.P.A.,” and, he said, “that’s just a start.” He claims that these cuts are due to federal “overreach,” but that’s also the justification for left-wing defunding efforts. MAGA likewise believes that law enforcement has abused its authority.
The most fraught issue for many conservatives considering crossing the aisle is abortion. That’s certainly the most difficult issue for me. But while Trump nominated the justices who helped reverse Roe v. Wade, he also failed on the most important metric of all: the number of abortions performed in America. Although Barack Obama was very much a pro-choice president, the abortion rate decreased by a remarkable 28 percent during his two terms, with 338,270 fewer abortions performed in 2016 than in 2008. By contrast, there were 56,080 more abortions by the end of Trump’s presidency in 2020 than there had been in 2016, and the abortion rate rose for three consecutive years, in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Compounding the problem for anti-abortion conservatives, the MAGA-dominated G.O.P. has been an electoral disaster. The anti-abortion position is failing even in red states. The MAGA ethos of corruption and cruelty is a poor fit for a movement that’s supposed to be dedicated to loving the most vulnerable among us.
I raise these issues not to argue that Reagan Republicans have a true home in a Biden-led Democratic Party. Of course profound differences remain, and the far left may prove implacably hostile to any conservatives in the Democratic tent. But Reagan (and Haley) Republicans also have such profound differences with MAGA that it is genuinely debatable which party now better advances their preferred policies.
But here’s what’s not debatable: While the ideological alignments of the two parties are in a state of flux, only one party is nominating a man who’s been impeached twice, indicted in four criminal cases, found liable for systemic financial fraud, and found liable for sexual abuse and for defaming his victim. He is a man who inspired and gave at least tacit support to a violent assault on the Capitol in an effort to overturn an American election.
It’s plain, however, that the corruption argument alone isn’t pulling sufficient numbers from Trump. Reagan conservatives don’t just need reasons to vote against Trump. They also plainly need reasons to vote for Joe Biden. In 2024, we have two presidential records to compare. And this time it’s the Democrat who can say that he’s tougher on Russia and better on crime, and overseeing an economy that’s the envy of the world. That’s a case for conservatives. The question is whether it’s a case they’re willing to hear.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
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David French is an Opinion columnist, writing about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator. His most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” You can follow him on Threads (@davidfrenchjag).
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