In Los Angeles, where I live, the rites of autumn can feel alien. Endless blue skies and afternoon highs near 90 degrees linger long after Griffith Park opens its Haunted Hayride. When the highs dip toward more seasonably appropriate numbers, they’ll be accompanied by one of California’s unfortunate traditions: wasted clean energy.

During the fall and spring, cloudless afternoons produce a spike in solar power at a time when milder temperatures necessitate less air-conditioning. When that happens, the state’s solar farms make more energy than the state can use, and some panels are simply turned off. This maddening problem—a result of what energy wonks call the “duck curve”—has been getting worse as the amount of available solar power outpaces the state’s ability to move that power around. In early 2017, just more than 3 percent of the state’s solar was wasted this way. The total reached 6 percent by 2022, according to California’s grid operator, and 15 percent in the early afternoons of March 2021. Wind power also can be wasted if the weather is especially breezy, and California’s combined curtailment of wind and solar set a new record this April.

Now the state has punted this dilemma to its residents. In December, the California Public Utilities Commission voted to slash the amount of money homeowners with new solar panels can make from “net metering,” the practice of selling your own extra solar back to the power company. Because the math for buying new panels is less favorable, fewer Californians are installing them, according to the Los Angeles Times. Many sunny rooftops that could generate clean energy simply won’t.

California is outpacing the rest of the country in the energy transition, but its misadventures in solar are going national. Moving away from fossil fuels requires a huge expansion of renewable energy in America. One government report estimated that meeting Joe Biden’s goal of supplying half of the country’s energy with solar would mean doubling America’s capacity annually until 2025—and then quadrupling it annually through 2030. But without better ways to transport that solar power or store it for later, California and several other states are already turning off perfectly good solar panels and clawing back incentives that entice Americans to install their own. Far more of America’s sunny potential is about to go to waste.

A little clean-energy wastage is inevitable, Carey King, the assistant director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute, told me. Such is the very imperfect nature of integrating unpredictable renewables onto a power grid built for the predictability of fossil fuels. Compared with an inflexible coal or gas plant, solar panels are easier to turn off and on, so they are first to be cut during times of energy surplus. Ideally, we could stash away sun power and use it to light up the skyline at night, but that would require a build-out of big batteries that is still in early stages. Excess solar can be moved to less sun-soaked places to help them burn fewer fossil fuels, but electricity doesn’t just teleport from sunny Palm Springs to drizzly Portland. Moving it across long distances requires heavy-duty power lines and navigating the bureaucracies of various agencies that operate them.

Take Texas: The state’s famously independent power grid has relatively few interconnections with neighboring systems to send spare renewable energy elsewhere. When Texas started making a big push toward renewables in the 2000s, King said, the state began turning off solar panels and wind turbines, and slowing the construction of new ones because it lacked enough so-called transmission lines capable of zipping renewable energy from windy West Texas to the big cities in the east. A state-mandated power-line expansion solved the problem then. Now, as Texas’s total wind-energy capacity leapt from 10 gigawatts in 2010 to 40 gigawatts by 2022, those new wires have reached their limit. In 2022, Texas wasted 5 percent of the wind and 9 percent of the solar energy it could have created. Without another big fix to the grid, those numbers could jump to 13 percent of wind and 19 percent of solar by 2035.

Across the country, clean energy is similarly hemmed in by the limits of transmission lines. Existing plants can’t get all their electricity where it needs to go, because there aren’t enough power lines for them to thrive, says Timothy Hade, the co-founder of Scale Microgrid Solutions, which builds clean-energy systems for homes and businesses. The Biden administration has pledged billions to modernize the grid and expand high-voltage transmission lines, but actually building them is very, very, very hard. As Robinson Meyer wrote in The Atlantic last year, “If you want to build new transmission, then you need to win the approval of every state, county, city, and in some cases, landowner along the proposed route.”

[Read: Unfortunately, I care about power lines now]

The Herculean task of building new transmission lines wasn’t such a pressing issue before the rise of renewable energy. But now solar power is so pervasive that parts of the country have no choice but to turn down the supply. Although that could take the form of fewer industrial-size wind and solar plants coming to fruition, the other option is giving a cold shoulder to people who have their own solar panels and sell it back to the power company through net metering. After all, net metering can create lots of power: California gets more than 15 percent of its energy from big solar farms and roughly 10 percent from residential rooftop panels, according to the EIA.

Like California, other states are choosing the second option. Indiana phased out net metering, and in North Carolina, solar advocates are now suing the state for allowing its giant utility, Duke Energy, to force a minimum monthly bill upon its customers and adjust net metering in a way the advocates say will reduce payouts. Arizona is considering cutting payments for homemade solar, as is Madison Gas and Electric in Wisconsin, according to Energy News Network. A few other close calls show the perilous state of net metering: This year, it has so far survived in New Hampshire, barely, when utilities backed the practice at the last moment. Last year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis vetoed a bill that would have ended the practice and hit home-solar users with extra fees.

That isn’t to say that the clampdown has happened everywhere. Texas, for example, has allowed Tesla to set up a “virtual power plant” so that people with Elon Musk’s solar panels and batteries can make gobs of money selling back energy whenever they have extra. And there are legitimate fears about using this method as a way to grow the country’s solar supply. Hade calls net metering a “blunt instrument”—too crude an approach for the complex energy system of the future. One major problem is that solar-panel owners tend to be far richer than the average American but don’t pay their fair share for the upkeep of the electrical grid, which is built into the price the power company charges everybody else. The more houses that have rooftop solar, the argument goes, the more that people without solar must pay to maintain all the infrastructure that everyone needs. “Net metering can’t be the end-all solution as we go forward,” King said. “It’s just going to create a little bit too much disparity.”

The growing backlash against net metering isn’t just a response to wasted solar power—it’s also about for-profit power companies wary of rooftop solar panels that don’t make them money. The idea of turning homes, apartment buildings, and businesses with solar panels into mini power plants is a potentially transformative one—and net metering is a big part of how people can afford solar panels in the first place. Solar panels can cost upwards of $10,000, and in California, the extra cash from net metering has helped residents recoup the expensive cost of panels in five to six years. Now it will take up to 15 years, according to one analysis.

In that way, America will end up squandering more potential clean energy down the line. Fewer than 10 percent of U.S. homes have installed solar panels so far. The rest constitutes an enormous swath of untapped real estate—billions of square meters of sun-drenched rectangles that could be making clean energy. Incentives for solar energy still exist from states and the federal government, but the result of slowing down net metering is that residents will put on smaller solar panels that make only enough energy for their own use, Hade told me, because they can’t make much money selling their bonus juice. Or they won’t get solar at all.

The squeeze on homemade solar is a missed opportunity in the making. A retreat from net metering makes solar-panel owners less like mini power plants and more like doomsday preppers, perhaps filling the backup battery in the basement with electricity to get through a blackout but adding nothing to the country’s clean-energy supply. With a more nuanced form of net metering to allow people to sell their surplus, or with the advent of “microgrids” that tie together communities and allow them to share energy, American rooftops could contribute gigawatts toward running the country on clean energy. Such a DIY approach would be a way around our inability to build new power lines, but it is deeply at odds with the way America has operated for a century, and will seemingly operate for many more years to come: The power company sends you the power, and you use it.

In this time of bipartisan acrimony, many on the left and on the right share one point of consensus: Shakespeare is a problem.

Admittedly, this consensus exists at the ends of the spectrum, and chiefly among the professional prudes and scolds who inhabit those extremities. After a season in which most of the hits Shakespeare took were from the education professionals on the cultural left (he was misogynist, racist, bigoted, colonializing, and Eurocentric), he has been taking some from the right (he was smutty, profane, dallied with homosexuality, and is too hard to read). The most recent sally of this kind was a kerfuffle in Florida over the summer when Hillsborough County teachers decided, or were told, to cut the sexy parts from Shakespeare to avoid falling afoul of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act. Then the Florida Department of Education jumped in and told teachers they can do full Shakespeare—for now.

[Adam Laats: The conservative war on education that failed]

To be fair, Shakespeare is hanging in there despite the sniping. The Common Core State Standards for English mention him nine times, requiring high-school students to read at least one of his plays. Mocking the pursed-lipped, humorless ideologues at both ends is easy. But I worry that despite programs like the National Endowment for the Arts’ modest Shakespeare in American Communities, we will forget why Shakespeare matters deeply, why he really is a universal author, and why he is worth reading even if he talks about sex, features unpleasant male behaviors, and uses words (a good 25,000 of them, some of which he invented) that we find hard to understand.

Shakespeare’s importance used to be universally accepted. W. E. B. Du Bois, a man at odds with much of the culture around him, wrote in The Souls of Black Folk, “I sit with Shakespeare, and he winces not.” For Nelson Mandela and his fellow inmates on Robben Island, in South Africa, Shakespeare represented freedom and civilization, a source of inspiration and not just an escape from reality. They signed their names next to favorite passages: Mandela affixed his signature to the passage from Julius Caesar, “Cowards die many times before their deaths / The valiant never taste of death but once.”

Teenagers, we can be quite certain, will think about sex and snicker at dirty jokes no matter what, so why not let them read in Romeo and Juliet that “the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon”? After all, many of them will be more like Mercutio than the sulky Romeo. And if some parts of Shakespeare are not merely uncomfortable but offensive, why not confront them? I went to an orthodox Hebrew day school, and we read Merchant of Venice in a spirited English class—and it did not only no harm but some real good. Shylock gets most of the best lines, and his “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech—including its chilling last line, “The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction”—gave us enough to occupy an entire class.

The supposed obscurity of Shakespeare’s language is much less of a problem than people may think. Laura Bates’s remarkable memoir of teaching Shakespeare in an Indiana supermax prison, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary With the Bard, should convince anyone of that. Many of the prisoners had minimal education and struggled with disabilities and traumas (and bloody crimes), and yet they, too, fell for Shakespeare. They could hear the music, although they did not understand all of the lyrics. For students facing fewer hurdles, having to tackle something big and hard but deeply rewarding, like one of Shakespeare’s plays—in their entirety, mind—is still a worthy challenge. It is a serving of steak in place of the thin gruel offered by timid pedagogues fearful of inquisitors searching for heretics.

The temptation to bowdlerize Shakespeare, or to edit out the icky parts, or to scramble for relevance by dressing him up, is not merely off-putting but utterly unnecessary. I once taught Coriolanus to a group of Johns Hopkins University undergraduates and graduate students. The play deals with a Roman general who is a brilliant and lethal soldier, a compelling if vituperative speaker, and a political dunce. After winning great victories, he is within reach of the final prize: the consulship in Rome. The plebians are willing to grant it to him, but they want one last thing. They want him to strip off his toga and show them his two dozen battle wounds.

Coriolanus explodes in fury: “Better it is to die, better to starve / Than crave the hire which first we do deserve.” Knowing that in my class I had half a dozen veterans of the wars of the first two decades of this century, I asked whether any of them would be willing to share with the rest of us whether they, too, had been asked to, as it were, show their wounds. The result was a revelation for the younger students of the bitterness of those who have seen and done terrible things when the rest of us approach them as voyeurs.

Like most classes, we approached Shakespeare chiefly through the written word, and indeed many great admirers of Shakespeare—Abraham Lincoln seems to have been one—thought him much better read and pondered than seen onstage. For my part, productions of Coriolanus that dress him up in a fascist-looking uniform or a modern camouflage battle dress seem distracting. There was a genius in the bare Shakespearean stage, with only a few props and actors dressed up in aristocratic cast-off clothing. Small wonder those traditional stages have made a comeback.

Of course, the price of immersion in Shakespeare can be reading too much of the contemporary world into him. Donald Trump, for example, is not Richard III, who (as portrayed by Shakespeare, not the historians) was brilliant, clever, and brave as well as a wounded, malignant narcissist and sociopath. Nor is Trump, as intimated by a production of Shakespeare in the Park, a kind of Julius Caesar ripe to be cut down by a Brutus in a blue business suit. He was and is his own uniquely problematic figure. If he resembles any Shakespearean character, it is probably Cloten in Cymbeline, a dangerous prince, a stupid, ambitious, would-be rapist whose courtiers mock him even as they enable his misadventures.

[From the October 1991 issue: The case for Shakespeare]

Shakespeare is of enduring value to us all. He reminds us of the extraordinary beauty and flexibility of the English language, and of rhetoric’s potential to inspire and to deceive. His characters—and he is all about character—are never as simple as they seem, and neither are the real human beings we encounter. The terrors and the joys of life mirror the ones that all of us, to a lesser or greater degree, experience. He takes some effort, but what good thing does not? He can only subvert those whose mind, having been firmly closed from without or within, has a gnawing doubt that something beyond a grovel to orthodoxy of any kind may be out there.

Eliot A. Cohen’s The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare on How Leaders Rise, Rule, and Fall has just been published by Basic Books.

For more than half a century, I have been studying the shifting relations between white and Black Americans. My first journal article, published in 1972, when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, was about Black political power in the industrial Midwest after the riots of the late 1960s. My own experience of race relations in America is even longer. I was born in the Mississippi Delta during World War II, in a cabin on what used to be a plantation, and then moved as a young boy to northern Indiana, where as a Black person in the early 1950s, I was constantly reminded of “my place,” and of the penalties for overstepping it. Seeing the image of Emmett Till’s dead body in Jet magazine in 1955 brought home vividly for my generation of Black kids that the consequences of failing to navigate carefully among white people could even be lethal.

For the past 16 years, I have been on the faculty of the sociology department at Yale, and in 2018 I was granted a Sterling Professorship, the highest academic rank the university bestows. I say this not to boast, but to illustrate that I have made my way from the bottom of American society to the top, from a sharecropper’s cabin to the pinnacle of the ivory tower. One might think that, as a decorated professor at an Ivy League university, I would have escaped the various indignities that being Black in traditionally white spaces exposes you to. And to be sure, I enjoy many of the privileges my white professional-class peers do. But the Black ghetto—a destitute and fearsome place in the popular imagination, though in reality it is home to legions of decent, hardworking families—remains so powerful that it attaches to all Black Americans, no matter where and how they live. Regardless of their wealth or professional status or years of law-abiding bourgeois decency, Black people simply cannot escape what I call the “iconic ghetto.”

I know I haven’t. Some years ago, I spent two weeks in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, a pleasant Cape Cod town full of upper-middle-class white vacationers and working-class white year-rounders. On my daily jog one morning, a white man in a pickup truck stopped in the middle of the road, yelling and gesticulating. “Go home!” he shouted.

Who was this man? Did he assume, because of my Black skin, that I was from the ghetto? Is that where he wanted me to “go home” to?

[From the May 1994 issue: Elijah Anderson on the code of the streets]

This was not an isolated incident. When I jog through upscale white neighborhoods near my home in Connecticut, white people tense up—unless I wear my Yale or University of Pennsylvania sweatshirts. When my jogging outfit associates me with an Ivy League university, it identifies me as a certain kind of Black person: a less scary one who has passed inspection under the “white gaze.” Strangers with dark skin are suspect until they can prove their trustworthiness, which is hard to do in fleeting public interactions. For this reason, Black students attending universities near inner cities know to wear college apparel, in hopes of avoiding racial profiling by the police or others.

I once accidentally ran a small social experiment about this. When I joined the Yale faculty in 2007, I bought about 20 university baseball caps to give to the young people at my family reunion that year. Later, my nieces and nephews reported to me that wearing the Yale insignia had transformed their casual interactions with white strangers: White people would now approach them to engage in friendly small talk.

But sometimes these signifiers of professional status and educated-class propriety are not enough. This can be true even in the most rarefied spaces. When I was hired at Yale, the chair of the sociology department invited me for dinner at the Yale Club of New York City. Clad in a blue blazer, I got to the club early and decided to go up to the fourth-floor library to read The New York Times. When the elevator arrived, a crush of people was waiting to get on it, so I entered and moved to the back to make room for others. Everyone except me was white.

As the car filled up, I politely asked a man of about 35, standing by the controls, to push the button for the library floor. He looked at me and—emboldened, I have to imagine, by drinks in the bar downstairs—said, “You can read?” The car fell silent. After a few tense moments, another man, seeking to defuse the tension, blurted, “I’ve never met a Yalie who couldn’t read.” All eyes turned to me. The car reached the fourth floor. I stepped off, held the door open, and turned back to the people in the elevator. “I’m not a Yalie,” I said. “I’m a new Yale professor.” And I went into the library to read the paper.

I tell these stories—and I’ve told them before—not to fault any particular institution (I’ve treasured my time at Yale), but to illustrate my personal experience of a recurring cultural phenomenon: Throughout American history, every moment of significant Black advancement has been met by a white backlash. After the Civil War, under the aegis of Reconstruction, Black people for a time became professionals and congressmen. But when federal troops left the former Confederate states in 1877, white politicians in the South tried to reconstitute slavery with the long rule of Jim Crow. Even the Black people who migrated north to escape this new servitude found themselves relegated to shantytowns on the edges of cities, precursors to the modern Black ghetto.

All of this reinforced what slavery had originally established: the Black body’s place at the bottom of the social order. This racist positioning became institutionalized in innumerable ways, and it persists today.

I want to emphasize that across the decades, many white Americans have encouraged racial equality, albeit sometimes under duress. In response to the riots of the 1960s, the federal government—led by the former segregationist Lyndon B. Johnson—passed far-reaching legislation that finally extended the full rights of citizenship to Black people, while targeting segregation. These legislative reforms—and, especially, affirmative action, which was implemented via LBJ’s executive order in 1965—combined with years of economic expansion to produce a long period of what I call “racial incorporation,” which substantially elevated the income of many Black people and brought them into previously white spaces. Yes, a lot of affirmative-action efforts stopped at mere tokenism. Even so, many of these “tokens” managed to succeed, and the result is the largest Black middle class in American history.

Over the past 50 years, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, the proportion of Black people who are low-income (less than $52,000 a year for a household of three) has fallen seven points, from 48 to 41 percent. The proportion who are middle-income ($52,000 to $156,000 a year) has risen by one point, to 47 percent. The proportion who are high-income (more than $156,000 a year) has risen the most dramatically, from 5 to 12 percent. Overall, Black poverty remains egregiously disproportionate to that of white and Asian Americans. But fewer Black Americans are poor than 50 years ago, and more than twice as many are rich. Substantial numbers now attend the best schools, pursue professions of their choosing, and occupy positions of power and prestige. Affirmative action worked.

But that very success has inflamed the inevitable white backlash. Notably, the only racial group more likely to be low-income now than 50 years ago is whites—and the only group less likely to be low-income is Blacks.

[Read: Five decades of white backlash]

For some white people displaced from their jobs by globalization and deindustrialization, the successful Black person with a good job is the embodiment of what’s wrong with America. The spectacle of Black doctors, CEOs, and college professors “out of their place” creates an uncomfortable dissonance, which white people deal with by mentally relegating successful Black people to the ghetto. That Black man who drives a new Lexus and sends his children to private school—he must be a drug kingpin, right?

In predominantly white professional spaces, this racial anxiety appears in subtler ways. Black people are all too familiar with a particular kind of interaction, in the guise of a casual watercooler conversation, the gist of which is a sort of interrogation: “Where did you come from?”; “How did you get here?”; and “Are you qualified to be here?” (The presumptive answer to the last question is clearly no; Black skin, evoking for white people the iconic ghetto, confers an automatic deficit of credibility.)

Black newcomers must signal quickly and clearly that they belong. Sometimes this requires something as simple as showing a company ID that white people are not asked for. Other times, a more elaborate dance is required, a performance in which the worker must demonstrate their propriety, their distance from the ghetto. This can involve dressing more formally than the job requires, speaking in a self-consciously educated way, and evincing a placid demeanor, especially in moments of disagreement.

[From the November 2018 issue: The personal cost of Black success]

As part of my ethnographic research, I once embedded in a major financial-services corporation in Philadelphia, where I spent six months observing and interviewing workers. One Black employee I spoke with, a senior vice president, said that people of color who wanted to climb the management ladder must wear the right “uniform” and work hard to perform respectability. “They’re never going to envision you as being a white male,” he told me, “but if you can dress the same and look a certain way and drive a conservative car and whatever else, they’ll say, ‘This guy has a similar attitude, similar values [to we white people]. He’s a team player.’ If you don’t dress with the uniform, obviously you’re on the wrong team.”

This need to constantly perform respectability for white people is a psychological drain, leaving Black people spent and demoralized. They typically keep this demoralization hidden from their white co-workers because they feel that they need to show they are not whiners. Having to pay a “Black tax” as they move through white areas deepens this demoralization. This tax is levied on people of color in nice restaurants and other public places, or simply while driving, when the fear of a lethal encounter with the police must always be in mind. The existential danger this kind of encounter poses is what necessitates “The Talk” that Black parents—fearful every time their kids go out the door that they might not come back alive—give to their children. The psychological effects of all of this accumulate gradually, sapping the spirit and engendering cynicism.

Even the most exalted members of the Black elite must live in two worlds. They understand the white elite’s mores and values, and embody them to a substantial extent—but they typically remain keenly conscious of their Blackness. They socialize with both white and Black people of their own professional standing, but also members of the Black middle and working classes with whom they feel more kinship, meeting them at the barbershop, in church, or at gatherings of long-standing friendship groups. The two worlds seldom overlap. This calls to mind W. E. B. Du Bois’ “double consciousness”—a term he used for the first time in this publication, in 1897—referring to the dual cultural mindsets that successful African Americans must simultaneously inhabit.

[From the August 1897 issue: W. E. B. Du Bois’ “Strivings of the Negro People”]

For middle-class Black people, a certain fluidity—abetted by family connections—enables them to feel a connection with those at the lower reaches of society. But that connection comes with a risk of contagion; they fear that, meritocratic status notwithstanding, they may be dragged down by their association with the hood.

When I worked at the University of Pennsylvania, some friends of mine and I mentored at-risk youth in West Philadelphia.

One of these kids, Kevin Robinson, who goes by KAYR (pronounced “K.R.”), grew up with six siblings in a single-parent household on public assistance. Two of his sisters got pregnant as teenagers, and for a while the whole family was homeless. But he did well in high school and was accepted to Bowdoin College, where he was one of five African Americans in a class of 440. He was then accepted to Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, where he was one of 10 or so African Americans in an M.B.A. class of roughly 180. He got into the analyst-training program at Goldman Sachs, where his cohort of 300 had five African Americans. And from there he ended up at a hedge fund, where he was the lone Black employee.

What’s striking about Robinson’s accomplishments is not just the steepness of his rise or the scantness of Black peers as he climbed, but the extent of cultural assimilation he felt he needed to achieve in order to fit in. He trimmed his Afro. He did a pre-college program before starting Bowdoin, where he had sushi for the first time and learned how to play tennis and golf. “Let me look at how these people live; let me see how they operate,” he recalls saying to himself. He decided to start reading The New Yorker and Time magazine, as they did, and to watch 60 Minutes. “I wanted people to see me more as their peer versus … someone from the hood. I wanted them to see me as, like, ‘Hey, look, he’s just another middle-class Black kid.’ ” When he was about to start at Goldman Sachs, a Latina woman who was mentoring him there told him not to wear a silver watch or prominent jewelry: “ ‘KAYR, go get a Timex with a black leather band. Keep it very simple … Fit in.’ ” My friends and I had given him similar advice earlier on.

All of this worked; he thrived professionally. Yet even as he occupied elite precincts of wealth and achievement, he was continually getting pulled back to support family in the ghetto, where he felt the need to code-switch, speaking and eating the ways his family did so as not to insult them.

The year he entered Bowdoin, one of his younger brothers was sent to prison for attempted murder, and a sister who had four children was shot in the face and died. Over the years he would pay for school supplies for his nieces and nephews, and for multiple family funerals—all while keeping his family background a secret from his professional colleagues. Even so, he would get subjected to the standard indignities—being asked to show ID when his white peers were not; enduring the (sometimes obliviously) racist comments from colleagues (“You don’t act like a regular Black”). He would report egregious offenses to HR but would usually just let things go, for fear that developing a reputation as a “race guy” would restrict his professional advancement.

Robinson’s is a remarkable success story. He is 40 now; he owns a property-management company and is a multimillionaire. But his experience makes clear that no matter what professional or financial heights you ascend to, if you are Black, you can never escape the iconic ghetto, and sometimes not even the actual one.

The most egregious intrusion of a Black person into white space was the election (and reelection) of Barack Obama as president. A Black man in the White House! For some white people, this was intolerable. Birthers, led by Donald Trump, said he was ineligible for the presidency, claiming falsely that he had been born in Kenya. The white backlash intensified; Republicans opposed Obama with more than the standard amount of partisan vigor. In 2013, at the beginning of Obama’s second term, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, which had protected the franchise for 50 years. Encouraged by this opening, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas moved forward with voter-suppression laws, setting a course that other states are now following. And this year, the Supreme Court outlawed affirmative action in college admissions. I want to tell a story that illustrates the social gains this puts at risk.

Many years ago, when I was a professor at Penn, my father came to visit me. Walking around campus, we bumped into various colleagues and students of mine, most of them white, who greeted us warmly. He watched me interact with my secretary and other department administrators. Afterward, Dad and I went back to my house to drink beer and listen to Muddy Waters.

“So you’re teaching at that white school?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“You work with white people. And you teach white students.”

“Yeah, but they actually come in all colors,” I responded. I got his point, though.

“Well, let me ask you one thing,” he said, furrowing his brow.

“What’s that, Dad?”

“Do they respect you?”

After thinking about his question a bit, I said, “Well, some do. And some don’t. But you know, Dad, it is hard to tell which is which sometimes.”

“Oh, I see,” he said.

He didn’t disbelieve me; it was just that what he’d witnessed on campus was at odds with his experience of the typical Black-white interaction, where the subordinate status of the Black person was automatically assumed by the white one. Growing up in the South, my dad understood that white people simply did not respect Black people. Observing the respectful treatment I received from my students and colleagues, my father had a hard time believing his own eyes. Could race relations have changed so much, so fast?

[Read: A 1999 interview with Elijah Anderson on his book Code of the Street]

They had—in large part because of what affirmative action, and the general processes of racial incorporation and Black economic improvement, had wrought. In the 1960s, the only Black people at the financial-services firm I studied would have been janitors, night watchmen, elevator operators, or secretaries; 30 years later, affirmative action had helped populate the firm with Black executives. Each beneficiary of affirmative action, each member of the growing Black middle class, helped normalize the presence of Black people in professional and other historically white spaces. All of this diminished, in some incremental way, the power of the symbolic ghetto to hold back people of color.

Too many people forget, if ever they knew it, what a profound cultural shift affirmative action effected. And they overlook affirmative action’s crucial role in forestalling social unrest.

Some years ago, I was invited to the College of the Atlantic, a small school in Maine, to give the commencement address. As I stood at the sink in the men’s room before the event, checking the mirror to make sure all my academic regalia was properly arrayed, an older white man came up to me and said, with no preamble, “What do you think of affirmative action?”

“I think it’s a form of reparations,” I said.

“Well, I think they need to be educated first,” he said, and then walked out.

I was so provoked by this that I scrambled back to my hotel room and rewrote my speech. I’d already been planning to talk about the benefits of affirmative action, but I sharpened and expanded my case, explaining that it not only had lifted many Black people out of the ghetto, but had been a weapon in the Cold War, when unaligned countries and former colonies were trying to decide which superpower to follow. Back then, Democrats and some Republicans were united in believing that affirmative action, by demonstrating the country’s commitment to racial justice and equality, helped project American greatness to the world.

Beyond that, I said to this almost entirely white audience, affirmative action had helped keep the racial unrest of the ’60s from flaring up again. When the kin—the mothers, fathers, cousins, nephews, sons, daughters, baby mamas, uncles, aunts—of ghetto residents secure middle-class livelihoods, those ghetto relatives hear about it. This gives the young people who live there a modicum of hope that they might do the same. Hope takes the edge off distress and desperation; it lessens the incentives for people to loot and burn. What opponents of affirmative action fail to understand is that without a ladder of upward mobility for Black Americans, and a general sense that justice will prevail, a powerful nurturer of social concord gets lost.

Yes, continuing to expand the Black professional and middle classes will lead to more instances of “the dance,” and the loaded interrogations, and the other awkward moments and indignities that people of color experience in white spaces. But the greater the number of affluent, successful Black people in such places, the faster this awkwardness will diminish, and the less power the recurrent waves of white reaction will have to set people of color back. I would like to believe that future generations of Black Americans will someday find themselves as pleasantly surprised as my dad once was by the new levels of racial respect and equality they discover.

This article appears in the November 2023 print edition with the headline “Black Success, White Backlash.”

Music fans and film buffs rejoice! You could own your very own piece of cultural history this November...

“I made history, didn’t I?” Kevin McCarthy was saying Tuesday night, a few hours after he in fact did, by becoming the first speaker of the House to ever be ousted from the job. History comes at you fast—and then it hurtles on. By yesterday morning, the race to replace him was fully in motion, even as the wooden Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy sign still hung outside his old office.

Washington loves a death watch, which is what McCarthy’s speakership provided from its first wee hours. He always had a strong short-timer aura about him. The gavel looked like a toy hammer in McCarthy’s hands, the way he held it up to show all of his friends when he was elected. He essentially gave his tormentors the weapon of his own demise: the ability of a single member of his conference to execute a “motion to vacate” at any time. Tuesday, as it turned out, is when the hammer fell: day 269 of Kevin held hostage.

McCarthy tried to put on a brave face during Tuesday’s roll call. But he mostly looked dazed as the bad votes came in, sitting cross-legged and staring at the ground through the back-and-forth of floor speeches, some in support, some in derision.

“This Republican majority has exceeded all expectations,” asserted Elise Stefanik of New York, cueing up an easy rejoinder from McCarthy’s chief scourge, Matt Gaetz of Florida: “If this House of Representatives has exceeded all expectations, then we definitely need higher expectations!”

Garret Graves of Louisiana hailed McCarthy as “the greatest speaker in modern history,” which brought an immediate hail of laughter from the minority side. Otherwise, Democrats were content to say little and follow the James Carville credo of “When your opponent is drowning, throw the son of a bitch an anvil.”

Mike Garcia of California urged his fellow Republicans to be “the no-drama option for America,” which did not seem to be going well. Andy Biggs of Arizona concluded, “This body is entrenched in a suboptimal path.”

[Ronald Brownstein: The only sin that Republicans can’t forgive]

By 5 p.m., that path had led to a 216–210 vote against McCarthy—and the shortest tenure of a House speaker since Michael C. Kerr of Indiana died of tuberculosis, in 1876.

How should history remember McCarthy’s speakership? Besides briefly? McCarthy was never much of an ideological warrior, a firebrand, or a big-ideas or verdict-of-history guy. He tended to scoff at suggestions of higher powers or lofty purposes.

Insomuch as McCarthy had any animating principle at all, it was always fully consistent with the prevailing local religion: self-perpetuation. Doing whatever was necessary to hang on for another day. Making whatever alliances he needed to. Could McCarthy be transactional at times? Well, yes, and welcome to Washington.

The tricky part is, if you’re constantly trying to placate an unruly coalition, it’s hard to know who your allies are, or when new enemies might reveal themselves. That became more apparent with every “yea” vote to oust McCarthy—Ken Buck of Colorado, Nancy Mace of South Carolina. At various points, McCarthy had considered those Republicans to be “friends.” And “you can never have too many friends,” McCarthy was always telling people. In the end, he could have used more.

“Kevin is a friend,” Marjorie Taylor Greene was saying outside the Capitol before Tuesday’s vote. She turned out to be steadfast. Reporters surrounded Greene like she was an old sage. “Matt is my friend,” Greene also said, referring to Gaetz. George Santos walked by behind the MTG press scrum, and three of the Greene reporters trailed after him. Lauren Boebert—whom Greene had once called a “little bitch” on the House floor (not a friend!)—followed Santos. Boebert wound up supporting McCarthy, sort of. “No, for now,” she said when her name came up in the voice vote.

[From the January/February 2023 issue: Why is Marjorie Taylor Greene like this?]

McCarthy always tried to convey the impression that he was having fun in his job, and was aggressively unbothered by critics who dismissed him as a lightweight backslapper, in contrast to his predecessors, Paul Ryan the “policy” guy and John Boehner the “institutionalist.” Back in April 2021, I was sitting with McCarthy, then the House minority leader, at an ice-cream parlor in his hometown of Bakersfield, California. He used to come in here—a place called Dewar’s—for Monday-night milkshakes after his high-school football practices. He kept saying hello to people he recognized and posing for photos with old friends who stopped by our table. At one point that night, McCarthy turned to me and indicated that being someone people wanted to meet was one of the main rewards of his job.

He was always something of a political fanboy at heart, hitting Super Bowls and Hollywood awards parties. He liked meeting celebrities. He showed me pictures on his phone of himself with Kobe Bryant, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Donald Trump. We had just eaten dinner at an Italian restaurant, Frugatti’s, which featured a signature dish named in his honor—Kevin’s Chicken Parmesan Pizza. (He had ordered a pasta bolognese.)

“I know the day I leave this job, the day I am not the leader anymore, people are not going to laugh at my jokes,” McCarthy told me then. “They’re not going to be excited to see me, and I know that.” This was something to savor, for as long as it lasted. And that basically became the game: take as many pictures and gather as many keepsakes as he could to prove the trip was real.

[Mark Leibovich: The most pathetic men in America]

“Keep dancing” became a favorite McCarthy mantra during his abbreviated time with the speaker’s gavel—as in, keep dancing out of the way of whatever “existential threat” to his authority came along next. McCarthy would contort himself in whatever direction was called for: promise this to get through the debt-ceiling fight, finesse that to keep the government open, zig with the zealots, zag with the moderates. Renege on deals, if need be; throw some bones; do an impeachment; order more pizza.

“Tonight, I want to talk directly to the American people,” McCarthy said on the morning of January 7. After being debased through 15 rounds of votes, he could finally deliver his “victory” speech as the newly (barely) elected speaker of the House. As a practical matter, it was after 1:15 a.m., and the American people were asleep. Everything about McCarthy’s big moment felt like an overgrown kid playacting. There he was with a souvenir hammer, after near-fisticuffs broke out between two of the crankier kids at the sleepover.

McCarthy would grab whatever sliver of a bully pulpit he could manage. “I never thought we’d get up here,” he said as he began his late-night acceptance speech. Immediately, everyone wondered how long he could possibly stay. And how it would end. This seemed to include McCarthy himself. “It just reminds me of what my father always told me,” he said. “It’s not how you start. It’s how you finish.”

McCarthy had moved into the speaker’s chambers a few days earlier, before it was officially his to move into. Why wait? He took a picture with his freshly engraved nameplate on the door. He invited his lieutenants over to check out his new office. Not bad for a kid from Bakersfield! He ordered more pizza. And Five Guys. Dancing requires fuel.

[Peter Wehner: Kevin McCarthy got what he deserved]

But throughout his tenure, McCarthy carried himself with a kind of desperate edge, which his critics sensed and held against him. “We need a speaker who will fight for something, anything, besides just staying or becoming speaker,” Bob Good of Virginia said in a floor speech on Tuesday.

This was late in the afternoon, when everyone still expected McCarthy to keep fighting. His supporters viewed his defeat as temporary. Gaetz stepped out onto the Capitol steps and was quickly engulfed by a scrum of boom mics, light poles, and onrushing reporters. Back inside, McCarthy grabbed the last word on the crazy spectacle.

“Judge me by my enemies,” the now–former speaker said, maybe trying to sound defiant.

No one alive has seen a race like the 2024 presidential election. For months, if not years, many people have expected a reprise of the 2020 election, a matchup between the sitting president and a former president.

But that hasn’t prevented a crowded primary. On the GOP side, more than a dozen candidates are ostensibly vying for the nomination. Donald Trump’s lead appears prohibitive, but then again, no candidate has ever won his party’s nomination while facing four (so far) separate felony indictments. (Then again, no one has ever lost his party’s nomination while facing four separate felony indictments either.) Ron DeSantis has not budged from his position as the leading challenger to Trump, but his support has weakened, encouraging a large field of Republicans who are hoping for a lucky break, a Trump collapse, a VP nomination, or maybe just some fun travel and a cable-news contract down the road.

[David A. Graham: The first debate is Ramaswamy and the rest]

On the other side, Democratic hesitations about a second Joe Biden term have either receded or dissolved into resignation that he’s running. But his age and the general lukewarm feeling among some voters have ensured that a decent-size shadow field still exists, just waiting in case Biden bows out for some reason.

Behind all this, the possibility of a serious third-party bid, led by either the group No Labels or some other candidate, continues to linger; Cornel West is already running and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is teasing a leap from the Democratic primary to an independent campaign. It adds up to a race that is simple on the surface but strangely confusing just below it. This guide to the candidates—who’s in, who’s out, and who’s somewhere in between—serves as a road map to navigate that. It will be updated as the campaign develops, so check in regularly.

REPUBLICANS (Joe Raedle / Getty) Donald Trump

Who is he?
You know him and you love him. Or hate him. Probably not much in between.

Is he running?
Yes. Trump announced his bid to return to the White House at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022.

Why does he want to run?
Revenge, boredom, rivalry, fear of prosecution, long-standing psychological hang-ups.

[Read: Trump begins the ‘retribution’ tour]

Who wants him to run?
A big tranche of the GOP is still all in on Trump, but it’s a little hard to tell how big. Polling shows that his support among Republicans is all over the place, but he’s clearly not a prohibitive front-runner.

Can he win the nomination?
Yes, but past results are no guarantee of future success.

What else do we know?
More than we could possibly want to.

(Joe Raedle / Getty) Ron DeSantis

Who is he?
The second-term governor of Florida, DeSantis was previously a U.S. representative.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his run in a trainwreck of an appearance with Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces on May 24.

Why does he want to run?
DeSantis offers the prospect of a synthesis of Trump-style culture warring and bullying and the conservative politics of the early-2010s Republican Party.

Who wants him to run?
From the advent of his campaign, DeSantis presented the prospect of a candidate with Trump’s policies but no Trump. But his fading polling suggests that not many Republicans are interested.

[From the March 2023 issue: How did America’s weirdest, most freedom-obsessed state fall for an authoritarian governor?]

Can he win the nomination?
He doesn’t look like the Trump-toppler today that he did several months ago, but it’s possible.

(Roy Rochlin / Getty) Nikki Haley

Who is she?
Haley, the daughter of immigrants, was governor of South Carolina and then ambassador to the United Nations under Trump.

Is she running?
Yes. She announced her campaign on February 14, saying, “Time for a new generation.”

Why does she want to run?
Haley has tried to steer a path that distances herself from Trump—pointing out his unpopularity—without openly attacking him. She may also be the top foreign-policy hawk in the field.

[Sarah Isgur: What Nikki Haley can learn from Carly Fiorina]

Who wants her to run?
Haley has lagged behind the first tier of candidates, but her strong performance in the first debate could help her.

Can she win the nomination?
Dubious.

(Dylan Hollingsworth / Bloomberg / Getty) Vivek Ramaswamy

Who is he?
A 38-year-old biotech millionaire with a sparkling résumé (Harvard, then Yale Law, where he became friends with Senator J. D. Vance), Ramaswamy has recently become prominent as a crusader against “wokeism” and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on February 21.

Why does he want to run?
“We’re in the middle of a national identity crisis,” Ramaswamy said in a somewhat-hectoring launch video. “Faith, patriotism, and hard work have disappeared, only to be replaced by new secular religions like COVIDism, climatism, and gender ideology.”

Who wants him to run?
Ramaswamy has come from nearly nowhere to poll surprisingly well—in national polls, he’s currently third (if distantly so) behind Trump and DeSantis, and he dominated the first debate.

Can he win the nomination?
Probably not. Ramaswamy no longer seems like a mere curiosity, but his slick shtick and questionable pronouncements will remain a drag on him.

(Alex Wong / Getty) Asa Hutchinson

Who is he?
Hutchinson, the formerly longtime member of Congress, just finished a stint as governor of Arkansas.

Is he running?
Yes. Hutchinson announced on April 2 that he is running. It would have been funnier to announce a day earlier, though.

Why does he want to run?
At one time, Hutchinson was a right-wing Republican—he was one of the managers of Bill Clinton’s impeachment—but as the party has changed, he finds himself closer to the center. He’s been very critical of Trump, saying that Trump disqualified himself with his attempts to steal the 2020 election. Hutchinson is also unique in the field for having called on Trump to drop out over his indictment in New York.

Who wants him to run?
Old-school, very conservative Republicans who also detest Trump.

Can he win the nomination?
Unlikely.

(David Becker / The Washington Post / Getty) Tim Scott

Who is he?
A South Carolinian, Scott is the only Black Republican senator.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign in North Charleston, South Carolina, on May 22.

Why does he want to run?
Unlike some of the others on this list, Scott doesn’t telegraph his ambition quite so plainly, but he’s built a record as a solid Republican. He was aligned with Trump, but never sycophantically attached.

Who wants him to run?
Scott’s Senate colleagues adore him. John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate minority whip, is his first highish-profile endorsement. As DeSantis stumbles, he’s gotten some attention as a possible likable Trump alternative.

Can he win the nomination?
Scott is solidly in the second tier; he’s perpetually said to be on the verge of breaking out but never quite there.

(Megan Varner / Getty) Mike Pence

Who is he?
The former vice president, he also served as the governor of Indiana and a U.S. representative.

Is he running?
Yes. He formally launched his campaign on June 7 with a video and an event in Iowa.

Why does he want to run?
Pence has long harbored White House dreams, and he has a strong conservative-Christian political agenda. His launch video is heavy on clichés and light on specifics beyond promising a kinder face for the Trump agenda.

Who wants him to run?
Conservative Christians and rabbit lovers, but not very many people overall.

[Read: Nobody likes Mike Pence]

Can he win the nomination?
It’s hard to see it happening.

(Ida Mae Astute / Getty) Chris Christie

Who is he?
What a journey this guy has had, from U.S. attorney to respected governor of New Jersey to traffic-jam laughingstock to Trump sidekick to Trump critic. Whew.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on June 6 in New Hampshire.

Why does he want to run?
Anyone who runs for president once and loses wants to run again—especially if he thinks the guy who beat him is an idiot, as Christie clearly thinks about Trump. Moreover, he seems agitated to see other Republicans trying to run without criticizing Trump.

Who wants him to run?
Trump-skeptical donors, liberal pundits.

Can he win the nomination?
Highly doubtful.

(Todd Williamson / Getty) Doug Burgum

Who is he?
Do you even pay attention to politics? Nah, just kidding. A self-made software billionaire, Burgum is serving his second term as the governor of North Dakota.

Is he running?
Apparently! He formally
launched his campaign on June 7 in Fargo.

Why does he want to run?
It’s tough to tell. His campaign-announcement video focuses so much on North Dakota that it seems more like a reelection push. He told a state newspaper that he thinks the “silent majority” of Americans wants candidates who aren’t on the extremes. (A wealthy outsider targeting the silent majority? Where have we heard that before?) He also really wants more domestic oil production.

Who wants him to run?
Lots of people expected a governor from the Dakotas to be a candidate in 2024, but they were looking at Kristi Noem of South Dakota. Burgum is very popular at home—he won more than three-quarters of the vote in 2020—but that still amounts to fewer people than the population of Toledo, Ohio.

Can he win the nomination?
“There’s a value to being underestimated all the time,” he has said. “That’s a competitive advantage.” But it’s even better to have a chance, which he doesn’t.

What else do we know?
He’s giving people $20 gift cards in return for donating to his campaign.

(Scott Olson / Getty) Will Hurd

Who is he?
A former CIA officer, Hurd served three terms in the House, representing a San Antonio–area district.

Is he running?
Yes. Hurd announced his campaign on June 22.

Why does he want to run?
Hurd says he has “commonsense” ideas and he is “pissed” that elected officials are dividing Americans. He’s also been an outspoken Trump critic.

Who wants him to run?
As a moderate, youngish Black Republican and someone who cares about defense, he is the sort of candidate whom the party establishment seemed to desire after the now-discarded 2012 GOP autopsy.

Can he win the nomination?
No.

(Mandel Ngan / Getty) Francis Suarez

Who is he?
Suarez is the popular second-term mayor of Miami and the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Is he running?
No. He suspended his campaign on August 29, less than three months after his June 15 entry.

Why did he want to run?
Suarez touted his youth—he’s 45—and said in October 2022, “I’m someone who believes in a positive aspirational message. I’m someone who has a track record of success and a formula for success.”

Who wanted him to run?
Is there really room for another moderate-ish Republican in the race? Apparently not! Despite dabbling in fundraising shenanigans, Suarez failed to make the first Republican debate (or any other splash).

Could he have won the nomination?
No way.

(Drew Angerer / Getty) Larry Hogan

Who is he?
Hogan left office this year, after serving two terms as governor of Maryland.

Is he running?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Hogan ruled himself out of the GOP race on March 5, saying he was worried it would help Trump win the nomination, but he is now rumored as a potential No Labels candidate, even though such a run might hand the presidency to … Trump.

Why does he want to run?
Hogan has argued that his experience of governing a very blue state as a Republican is a model: “We’ve been really successful outside of Washington, where everything appears to be broken and nothing but divisiveness and dysfunction.”

Who wants him to run?
Dead-ender centrists.

Could he win the nomination?
No.

(John Locher / AP) Chris Sununu

Who is he?
The governor of New Hampshire, he is the little brother of former Senator John E. Sununu and the son of former White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu.

Is he running?
No. On June 5, after weighing a campaign, he announced that he would not run. Warning about the dangers of a Trump reprise, he said, “Every candidate needs to understand the responsibility of getting out and getting out quickly if it’s not working.” Points for taking his own advice!

Why did he want to run?
Sununu seems disgusted by a lot of Washington politics and saw his success in New Hampshire, a purple-blue state, as a model for small-government conservatism. He is also a prominent Trump critic.

Who wanted him to run?
Trump-skeptical Republicans, old-school conservatives.

Could he have won the nomination?
No.

(Scott Olson / Getty) Mike Pompeo

Who is he?
Pompeo, a former member of Congress, led the CIA and was secretary of state under Trump.

Is he running?
No. On April 14, Pompeo announced that he wasn’t running. “This is not that time or that moment for me to seek elected office again,” he said.

Why did he want to run?
Pompeo has always been ambitious, and he seems to think he can combine MAGA proximity with a hawkish foreign-policy approach.

Who wanted him to run?
That’s not entirely clear.

Could he have won the nomination?
Maybe, but probably not.

(Misha Friedman / Getty) Glenn Youngkin

Who is he?
Youngkin, the former CEO of the private-equity Carlyle Group, was elected governor of Virginia in 2021.

Is he running?
Probably not. He said on May 1 that he wasn’t running “this year.” But he seems to be rethinking that as Ron DeSantis’s campaign sputters.

Why does he want to run?
Youngkin is a bit of a cipher; he ran largely on education issues, and has sought to tighten abortion laws in Virginia, so far to no avail.

Who wants him to run?
Rupert Murdoch, reportedly.

Can he win the nomination?
Certainly not if he isn’t running.

(Sam Wolfe / Bloomberg / Getty) Mike Rogers

Who is he?
Rogers is a congressman from Alabam—wait, no, sorry, that’s the other Representative Mike Rogers. This one is from Michigan and retired in 2015. He was previously an FBI agent and was head of the Intelligence Committee while on Capitol Hill.

Is he running?
No. He thought about it but announced in late August that he would run for U.S. Senate instead.

Why did he want to run?
He laid out some unassailably broad ideas for a campaign in an interview with Fox News, including a focus on innovation and civic education, but it’s hard to tell what exactly the goal is here. “This is not a vanity project for me,” he added, which, okay, sure.

Who wanted him to run?
It’s not clear that anyone even noticed he was running.

Could he have won the nomination?
Nope.

(Todd Williamson / Getty) Larry Elder

Who is he?
A longtime conservative radio host and columnist, he ran as a Republican in the unsuccessful 2021 attempt to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Is he running?
Allegedly, yes. He announced his campaign on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on April 20. He’s barely been heard from since.

Why does he want to run?
Glad you asked! “America is in decline, but this decline is not inevitable,” he tweeted. “We can enter a new American Golden Age, but we must choose a leader who can bring us there. That’s why I’m running for President.” We don’t have any idea what that means either.

Who wants him to run?
Impossible to say at this stage, but deep-blue California is a tough launching pad for any conservative, especially an unseasoned candidate. This recall campaign also dredged up various unflattering information about his past.

Can he win the nomination?
Having missed out on the first debate, any hope Elder had is gone.

(Todd Williamson / Getty) Rick Perry

Who is he?
Perry was a three-term governor of Texas before serving as energy secretary under Donald Trump. He’s also run for president three times: in 2012, 2016, and … I forget the third one. Oops.

Is he running?
Oh, right! The third one is 2024, maybe. He told CNN in May that he’s considering a run. Nothing’s been heard since.

Why does he want to run?
He didn’t say, but he’s struggled to articulate much of a compelling case to Republican voters beyond the fact that he’s from Texas, he looks good in a suit, and he wants to be president, gosh darn it.

Who wants him to run?
Probably no one. As Mike Pompeo already discovered, there’s not much of a market for a run-of-the-mill former Trump Cabinet member in the primary—especially one who had such a forgettable turn as secretary, mostly remembered for being dragged peripherally into both the first Trump impeachment and election subversion.

Can he win the nomination?
The third time would not be a charm.

(Joe Raedle / Getty) Rick Scott

Who is he?
Before his current gig as a U.S. senator from Florida, Scott was governor and chief executive of a health-care company that committed massive Medicare fraud.

Is he running?
The New York Times says he’s considering it, though an aide said Scott is running for reelection to the Senate. He’d be the fourth Floridian in the race.

Why does he want to run?
A Scott campaign would raise a fascinating question: What if you took Trump’s pose and ideology but removed all the charisma and, instead of promising to protect popular entitlement programs, aimed to demolish them?

Who wants him to run?
Not Mitch McConnell.

Can he win the nomination?
lol

DEMOCRATS (Joshua Roberts / Getty) Joe Biden

Who is he?
After decades of trying, Biden is the president of the United States.

Is he running?
Yes. Biden formally announced his run on April 25.

Why does he want to run?
Biden’s slogan is apparently “Let’s finish the job.” He centered his launch video on the theme of freedom, but underlying all of this is his apparent belief that he may be the only person who can defeat Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup.

[Read: The case for a primary challenge to Joe Biden]

Who wants him to run?
There’s the catch. Some prominent Democrats support his bid for a second term, but voters have consistently told pollsters that they don’t want him to run again.

Can he win the nomination?
Barring unforeseen catastrophe, yes. No incumbent president has lost the nomination in the modern era, and Biden has pushed through changes to the Democratic-primary process that make him an even more prohibitive favorite.

What else do we know?
Biden is already the oldest person to be elected president and to serve as president, so a second term would set more records.

(Bill Clark / Getty) Dean Phillips

Who is he?
Phillips, a mildly unorthodox and interesting figure, is a Minnesota moderate serving his third term in the House.

Is he running?
Who can even tell? In July, he said he was considering it. In an August 21 interview, he said he was unlikely to run, but would encourage other Democrats to do so. Now, after finding few other Democrats willing to run, he says he’s not ruling it out.

Why does he want to run?
Phillips, who at 54 passes for young in politics, has been publicly critical of superannuated Democrats sticking around too long, and he says Biden is too old to run again.

Who wants him to run?
Although it’s true that many Democrats think Biden is too old, that doesn’t mean they’re willing to do anything about it—or that Phillips is the man they want to replace him. Although Phillips claims he has “been overwhelmed with outreach and encouragement,” this looks more like a messaging move than a serious sprint at the moment.

Can he win the nomination?
Not in 2024.

What else do we know?
His grandmother was “Dear Abby.”

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty) Kamala Harris

Who is she?
Harris is the vice president of the United States.

Is she running?
No, but if Biden were to bow out, she’d be the immediate favorite.

Why does she want to run?
One problem with her 2020 presidential campaign was the lack of a clear answer to this question. Perhaps running on the Biden-Harris legacy would help fill in the blank.

Who wants her to run?
Some Democrats are excited about the prospect of nominating a woman of color, but generally Harris’s struggles as a candidate and in defining a role for herself (in the admittedly impossible position of VP) have resulted in nervousness about her as a standard-bearer.

Can she win the nomination?
Not right now.

(Matthew Cavanaugh / Getty) Pete Buttigieg

Who is he?
Mayor Pete is Secretary Pete now, overseeing the Department of Transportation.

Is he running?
No, but he would also be a likely candidate if Biden stepped away.

Why does he want to run?
Just as he was four years ago, Buttigieg is a young, ambitious politician with a moderate, technocratic vision of government.

Who wants him to run?
Buttigieg’s fans are passionate, and Biden showed that moderates remain a force in the party.

Can he win the nomination?
Not at this moment.

(Scott Olson / Getty) Bernie Sanders

Who is he?
The senator from Vermont is changeless, ageless, ever the same.

Is he running?
No, but if Biden dropped out, it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t seriously consider another go. A top adviser even says so.

Why does he want to run?
Sanders still wants to tax billionaires, level the economic playing field, and push a left-wing platform.

Who wants him to run?
Sanders continues to have the strong support of a large portion of the Democratic electorate, especially younger voters.

Can he win the nomination?
Two consecutive tries have shown that he’s formidable, but can’t close. Maybe the third time’s the charm?

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty) Gretchen Whitmer

Who is she?
Whitmer cruised to a second term as governor of Michigan in 2022.

Is she running?
No.

Why would she want to run?
It’s a little early to know, but her reelection campaign focused on abortion rights.

Who wants her to run?
Whitmer would check a lot of boxes for Democrats. She’s a fresh face, she’s a woman, and she’s proved she can win in the upper Midwest against a MAGA candidate.

Can she win the nomination?
Not if she isn’t running.

(Lucas Jackson / Reuters) Marianne Williamson

Who is she?
If you don’t know Williamson from her popular writing on spirituality, then you surely remember her somewhat woo-woo Democratic bid in 2020.

Is she running?
Yes. Williamson announced her campaign on March 4 in D.C.

Why does she want to run?
“It is our job to create a vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it will override the forces of hatred and injustice and fear,” she said at her campaign launch. She has also said that she wants to give voters a choice. “The question I ask myself is not ‘What is my path to victory?’ My question is ‘What is my path to radical truth-telling?’ There are some things that need to be said in this country.”

Who wants her to run?
Williamson has her fans, but she doesn’t have a clear political constituency. Also, her campaign is perpetually falling apart.

Can she win the nomination?
Nah.

(Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune / Getty) J. B. Pritzker

Who is he?
The governor of Illinois is both a scion of a wealthy family and a “nomadic warrior.”

Is he running?
No.

Why does he want to run?
After years of unfulfilled interest in elected office, Pritzker has established himself as a muscular proponent of progressivism in a Democratic stronghold.

Who wants him to run?
Improbably for a billionaire, Pritzker has become a darling of the Sanders-style left, as well as a memelord.

Can he win the nomination?
Not now.

THIRD-PARTY AND INDEPENDENT (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune / Getty) Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Who is he?
The son of a presidential candidate, the nephew of another, and the nephew of a president, Kennedy is a longtime environmental activist and also a chronic crank.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his run for the Democratic nomination on April 19, but many indications suggest he will soon announce he’s running as an independent instead.

Why does he want to run?
Running for president is a family tradition. He’s running a campaign arranged around his esoteric combination of left-wing interests (the environment, drug prices) and right-wing causes (vaccine skepticism, anger about social-media “deplatforming”), but tending toward extremely dark places.

Who wants him to run?
Soon after he announced his campaign, Kennedy reached double digits in polls against Biden—a sign of dissatisfaction with the president as well as Kennedy’s name recognition. It has since become clear that Democratic voters are not interested in anti-Semitic kookery, though some other fringe elements might be.

Can he win?
No. The relevant question is whether a third-party candidacy would help Biden, Trump, or neither. The short answer is no one knows, but he very well might boost the president’s chances.

(Tom Williams / Getty) Joe Manchin

Who is he?
A Democratic U.S. senator and former governor of West Virginia, he was the pivotal centrist vote for the first two years of Joe Biden’s term. I’ve described him as “a middle-of-the-road guy with good electoral instincts, decent intentions, and bad ideas.”

Is he running?
It’s very hard to tell how serious he is. He has visited Iowa, and is being courted by No Labels, the nonpartisan centrist organization, to carry its banner. He’s shown no signs of running, and would stand no chance, in the Democratic primary.

Why does he want to run?
Manchin would arguably have less power as a third-party president than he does as a crucial swing senator, but he faces perhaps the hardest reelection campaign of his life in 2024, as the last Democrat standing in a now solidly Republican state. He also periodically seems personally piqued at Biden and the Democrats over slights perceived or real.

Who wants him to run?
No Labels would love to have someone like him, a high-profile figure who’s willing to buck his party and has policies that would appeal to voters from either party. It’s hard to imagine he’d have much of an organic base of support, but Democrats are terrified he’d siphon off enough votes to hand Trump or another Republican the win in a three-way race.

Can he win?
“Make no mistake, I will win any race I enter,” he said in April. If that is true, do not expect to see him in the presidential race.

(Frederick M. Brown / Getty) Cornel West

Who is he?
West is a philosopher, a theologian, a professor, a preacher, a gadfly, a progressive activist, an actor, a spoken-word recording artist, an author … and we’re probably missing a few.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on the People’s Party ticket on June 5.

Why does he want to run?
“In these bleak times, I have decided to run for truth and justice, which takes the form of running for president of the United States,” he said in his announcement video. West is a fierce leftist who has described Trump as a “neo-fascist” and Biden as a “milquetoast neoliberal.”

Who wants him to run?
West was a high-profile backer of Bernie Sanders, and it’s easy to imagine him winning over some of Sanders’s fervent fans. The People’s Party is relatively new and unproven, and doesn’t have much of a base of its own.

Can he win?
Let’s hear from Brother West: “Do we have what it takes? We shall see,” he said. “But some of us are going to go down fighting, go down swinging, with style and a smile.” Sounds like a no, but it should be a lively, entertaining campaign.