What the 2020 Election is all About

To hear the Democrats on the campaign trail you would think that the 2020 election is about Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and seemingly open borders. It is nothing of the sort. The 2020 election is not about remaking America, but rather it is about healing America.

What the next president has to do is to restore the idea of America as the land of the free and the home of the brave, not a witch’s brew of hostile identity groups. It means an America that lives up to E. Pluribus Unum, out of many one. It means forsaking the identity politics of both the Right and the Left to seek common ground. I know that will be a difficult task, but it has to be done.

The election will also be about restoring America’s position in the world where allies once again trust us. Who would ever thought that the U.S. president would have shouting match with Denmark, yet here we are. It also means that if we are going to have a trade dispute with China, we had better do it with allies. I would also note that most of the paragons of the global trading system we benefited from over the past 70 years were Democrats, namely Truman, Kennedy and Clinton. If only one Democratic candidate returned to those roots.

In 1920 after suffering from the disruption of World War I, the influenza epidemic, a rash of labor strikes and a “red scare” under the auspices of a Democratic president, Republican Warren Harding was elected on the slogan of “a return to normalcy.” Now 100 years later the Democratic nominee could do no worse than adopting a similar slogan after dealing with the chaos of Trump’s presidency.