David Frum, writer for The Atlantic magazine and pro-Israel commentator, says Palestinian statehood is not the solution.

The Band of Brothers and Wish You Were Here director died on Christmas Eve aged 82.

The sooner President Joe Biden acknowledges that Americans will likely be drawn into a fight to protect shipping traffic through the Suez Canal, the more time the U.S. military has to plan, and the less severe the harm will be to the global economy. For months, ever since a deadly Hamas incursion into Israel triggered a massive Israeli military campaign in Gaza, the United States has sought to deter Israel’s enemies, most notably Iran and its proxy Hezbollah, from spreading the conflict to other fronts in the Middle East.

The administration’s fears are warranted but also moot. The war is already expanding in a way that endangers the global economy—specifically, through attacks by Iranian-backed forces on the crucial shipping lane from the Indian Ocean through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean Sea. Whereas the U.S. military need not play any substantial role in the war in Israel and Gaza, keeping the path to Suez open and safe is a global priority, and no other country can lead that effort.

[Read: Americans have no idea what the supply chain really is]

Late last month, the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in northern Yemen began targeting commercial ships in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which connects the southern end of the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. The Houthis claim that they are doing it to support the Palestinians as Israel and Hamas wage war. The Houthis’ first target was the Galaxy Leader, a Japanese-operated cargo ship reportedly owned in part by an Israeli investor. The attackers were able to capture the vessel.

This week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced a 10-country coalition, led by the United States, to protect the Suez route. The initial plan is to park warships close to the coast of Yemen and use them to defend against any Houthi attack. But more may be required of the American military, including naval escorts for vulnerable ships and air strikes against Houthi military infrastructure.

About 12 percent of global trade, and 30 percent of the world’s container shipping, passes through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, the quickest route between Asia and Europe. Subsequent missile attacks have so far caused shipping companies to divert more than 100 vessels from the Suez route, redirecting them around the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern tip of Africa—where the waters are so treacherous that the area is called the “Graveyard of Ships.” That response adds 6,000 nautical miles and perhaps three to four weeks to the journey, thus tying up vessels and disrupting shipping all around the world. Past disruptions in Suez—including an eight-year stoppage after the 1967 Six-Day War and the 2021 stranding of a large vessel that blocked others from passing—show both that shippers can do without Suez and that doing so involves enormous cost and risk.

[David A. Graham: Why ships keep crashing]

The mission to protect ships on the Suez route is called Operation Prosperity Guardian—a provocation, arguably, to Western progressives who bristle at the use of military force to protect economic interests. But framing the mission purely as a defense of global commerce is wise. Safeguarding the seas is essential to countries far less wealthy and powerful than the U.S., and denying a small band of rebels the power to choke off a crucial shipping lane is a long-term investment in global security. Until the maritime industry is convinced that the Suez route is safe, the rest of the world will suffer, meaning the United States and its allies will have to strike harder.

The Houthis and, by extension, their Iranian sponsors have had the ability to attack global shipping for years, but presumably refrained for fear of provoking a military response from the United States. Their bet seems to be that the war in Gaza has given them more freedom of action in the Red Sea because Washington is nervous about stepping in.

The Houthis are unlikely to be dissuaded by a perfunctory U.S. effort now. Why would they be? The group thrives at a choke point for the global economy, and for relatively little investment, the Houthis have given themselves leverage in diplomatic talks to end Yemen’s civil war.

Any U.S. strikes on Houthi launchpads in Yemen would carry some possibility of direct conflict with Iran, but the risk is probably overstated. Iran is, after all, already engaged against the interests of the United States and allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. “Compared to the risk of increased engagement between Israel and Iran through Hezbelloh in Lebanon, we aren’t likely to go to war with Iran over U.S. offensive strikes against Houthi launch sites in Yemen,” Eric Rosenbach, a former Pentagon chief of staff during the Obama administration, told me. “The risk is far outweighed by the need to end this nonsense fast.”

Right now a rebel group is dragging down a global economy. A maritime conflict has begun, and the U.S. has little choice but to fight.

David Moyes, who guided West Ham to their first major trophy in 43 years, continues to divide opinion among the club's supporters.

Sean Durkin’s first film, Martha Marcy May Marlene, was about the complex aftermath of one woman’s escape from a modern Manson-esque “family” centered around sex and drug use. His second, 2020’s The Nest, looked at a high-society couple in 1980s Britain who buy a mansion and are subsequently haunted by the decision, struggling to stay above water as the property sucks up all of their money. Both movies were immersed in an atmosphere of gloom and anxiety that somehow didn’t overwhelm either; even as Durkin tormented his characters, he had real, obvious love for them.

That’s exactly what makes his newest work, the wrestling drama The Iron Claw, such a triumph. The Iron Claw is, like many films released in the lead-up to the Oscar nominations, based on a true story. It chronicles the lives of the Von Erich brothers, professional wrestlers who were mentored by their tough-love father, rose to fame in 1980s Texas, and were eventually plagued by tragedy. Usually, these biographical movies lean into the drama, exaggerating the shocking stuff for the big screen. The story of the Von Erich family is almost unbelievably tragic, however, as five out of six brothers met an early death, several by suicide. Durkin even removed one of the real-life brothers from his script, deciding (correctly) that one more death would be too much for audiences to take.

I realize that doesn’t make The Iron Claw sound like a tempting choice this Christmas season. But it is the kind of big, weepy, macho film that just doesn’t get made much anymore, a soaring power ballad that should prompt a lot of loud sniffling in the theater. Durkin is a somewhat challenging, arty filmmaker whose prior films left many things unspoken; The Iron Claw is more broadly appealing without losing anything that makes his work so unique. It’s rich with feeling, shrouded in darkness, but not despairing as it digs into the trials the Von Erichs faced, without merely dismissing the family as cursed.

The notion of a family curse is baked into the brothers’ lives from birth. Their father, Fritz Von Erich (played by Holt McCallany, a walking cinder block sporting a permanent scowl), was named Jack Adkisson in real life but took the “Von Erich” pseudonym because his initial wrestling character was a villainous Nazi, an easy figure for postwar audiences to boo. When the film opens, in the late ’70s, Fritz has already lost his first son at the age of 6 in a freak accident; his second son, Kevin (a beefed-up Zac Efron), is thus expected to follow his dad into the family business, and quickly becomes something of a local legend around Dallas.

[Read: A gory amalgam of truth and spectacle]

Fritz is fond of informing his sons which of them is his current favorite, running down his list at the breakfast table while reminding them, “The rankings can always change.” Durkin summons a grunting alpha nightmare environment, a hothouse of muscle-bound teens and 20-somethings all vying for the attention of their stony father and icy, remote mother, Doris (a magnificent Maura Tierney). Along with Kevin, there’s Kerry (Jeremy Allen White), a potential Olympic discus thrower who gets diverted to the family business after the American boycott of the 1980 Games; David (Harris Dickinson), who has a particular flair for the sport’s showy dramatics; and Mike (Stanley Simons), a moon-eyed musician who is roped in out of sheer familial obligation.

To wrestling nerds, the Von Erichs have a titanic legacy, and Durkin does his best to represent that by exploring the sport’s crunchy, amateurish pre-corporate age, when regional live events were the big moneymakers and television was largely ignored. Yes, the fights are scripted, but the athleticism is real and punishing. More important, as Kevin reminds the audience early on, a fighter could only succeed in the ring if the audience (and, by extension, Fritz) loved what they were doing. The Iron Claw manages a tricky balance, depicting the ups and downs of everyone’s careers and acknowledging the required showmanship, but without getting too much into the behind-the-scenes politics.

The real drama of The Iron Claw, obviously, is the awful fates of the Von Erich children, a swirling combination of bad luck, possible substance abuse, likely undiagnosed depression, and very, very lousy parenting. Although Dickinson is effortlessly charming and White brings the fiery intensity viewers will associate with his performance in The Bear, it’s Efron, as the ostensible top dog Kevin, who is burdened with the film’s big dramatic arc. Kevin is not the brightest and possibly not even the most talented of the Von Erichs, but he is the most well adjusted, and Durkin charts his difficult journey to realizing the poisonous circumstances of his upbringing.

Efron is very talented given the right material—he’s a charming doofus in the Neighbors films, and appropriately emo in the DJ dramedy We Are Your Friends. His work in The Iron Claw feels like a major leap forward, or at least a perfect match of skill and plot. As Kevin’s life drags on and his brothers’ lives are cut sadly short, Efron powerfully demonstrates the character’s perseverance and eventual acceptance that, no, he is not fated to a similarly destructive end. Durkin might be the feel-bad filmmaker of the decade, and I mean that in the best way possible: He can depict tragedy with sensitivity and grace, and somehow not let his films be overwhelmed by their darkest moments.

Landmark that provided healing for traumatised children in the West Bank has been ransacked, directors arrested.

The White House and Senate continue to work frantically toward a deal to supply Ukraine before Congress recesses for Christmas. Supposedly, all leaders of Congress are united in their commitment to Ukraine—so the new speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, insists. Yet somehow this allegedly united commitment is not translating into action. Why not?

The notional answer is that Republicans must have a border-security deal as the price for Ukraine aid. But who on earth sets a price that could stymie something they affirmatively want to do? Republicans have not conditioned their support for Social Security on getting a border deal. They would never say that tax cuts must wait until after the border is secure. Only Ukraine is treated as something to be bartered, as if at a county fair. How did that happen?  

Ukraine’s expendability to congressional Republicans originates in the sinister special relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Pre-Trump, Republicans expressed much more hawkish views on Russia than Democrats did. Russia invaded eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea in spring 2014. In a Pew Research survey in March of that year, 58 percent of Republicans complained that President Barack Obama’s response was “not tough enough,” compared with just 22 percent of Democrats. After the annexation, Republicans were more than twice as likely as Democrats to describe Russia as “an adversary” of the United States: 42 percent to 19 percent. As for Putin personally, his rule was condemned by overwhelming majorities of both parties. Only about 20 percent of Democrats expressed confidence in Putin in a 2015 Pew survey, and 17 percent of Republicans.

Trump changed all that—with a lot of help from pro-Putin voices on Fox News and right-wing social media.

At the beginning of Trump’s ascendancy in the GOP, even his future allies in Congress distrusted his pro-Russian affinities. Kevin McCarthy, a future House speaker, was inadvertently recorded in a June 2016 meeting with other Republican congressional leaders, saying, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” Some in the room laughed. McCarthy responded, “Swear to God.” (Dana Rohrabacher was a Republican House member from California, a notorious Putin apologist, and a joke figure among his caucus colleagues; despite almost 30 years’ seniority in the House, he was kept away from major committee assignments.)

If Trump had not caught a lucky bounce in the Electoral College in November 2016, he’d have gotten the Rohrabacher treatment too. After the Access Hollywood tape leaked, many prominent Republicans, including then-Speaker Paul Ryan, distanced themselves from Trump. In the election, Republicans lost two seats in the Senate and six in the House. Trump himself received a shade over 46 percent of the popular vote—a slightly larger share than John McCain got amid the economic catastrophe of 2008, but less than Mitt Romney in 2012, John Kerry in 2004, and Al Gore in 2000.

[Anne Applebaum: The American face of authoritarian propaganda]

Even if Trump had lost, there would still have been an enlarged constituency for American Putinism among far-right ideologues and social-media influencers. As early as 2013, the prominent social conservative Pat Buchanan had written a column that seemed to hail Putin as “one of us,” an ally in the fight against abortion and homosexuality. Buchanan-style reactionary nationalism exercised a strong influence on many of the next generation of rightist writers and talkers.

By the mid-2010s, groups such as the National Rifle Association were susceptible to infiltration by Russian-intelligence assets. High-profile conservatives accepted free trips and speaking fees from organizations linked to the Russian government pre-Trump. A lucrative online marketplace for pro-Moscow messages and conspiracy theories already existed. White nationalists had acclaimed Putin as a savior of Christian civilization for years before the Trump campaign began.

But back then, none of this ideological or opportunistic pro-Putinism was all that connected to the world of electoral politics or mainstream conservative thought. The future Fox News star Tucker Carlson—soon to be Russia’s preeminent champion in U.S. mass media—publicly avowed his sympathy for Putin only after Trump’s election.

But once Trump became the GOP leader, he tangled the whole party in his pro-Russia ties. A telling indicator came in January 2017, when Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, denied—under oath, yet falsely—that he had held two meetings with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, during the 2016 campaign. This lie made little sense: As a senator on the Armed Services Committee, Sessions met with foreign ambassadors all the time, and he was never in the slightest implicated in any Trump-Russia impropriety. Why not tell the truth?

The answer seems to be that Sessions had somehow intuited that the Trump campaign was hiding some damaging secret about Russia. Without knowing what that secret was, he presumably wanted to put some distance between himself and it.

The urge to align with the party’s new pro-Russian leader reshaped attitudes among Republican Party loyalists. From 2015 to 2017, Republican opinion shifted markedly in a pro-Russia and pro-Putin direction. In 2017, more than a third of surveyed Republicans expressed favorable views of Putin. By 2019, Carlson—who had risen to the top place among Fox News hosts—was regularly promoting pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian messages to his conservative audience. His success inspired imitators among many other conservative would-be media stars.

[David A. Graham: Republicans are playing house]

For Republican elected officials, however, the decisive shift seemed to come during Trump’s first impeachment. Trump withheld from Ukraine promised weapons in order to pressure Kyiv to announce a criminal investigation of his likely election rival, Joe Biden.

After the impeachment trial, 51 percent of Republicans surveyed by Pew said that Trump had done nothing wrong. The key to understanding how they could believe that is the concept of “undernews.” During the Obama presidency, more extreme conservative media trafficked in rumors that Obama was secretly gay and having an affair with a male aide, or else that Michelle Obama was secretly transgender. This rubbish was too lurid, offensive, and stupid ever to be repeated on Fox News itself. But Fox hosts regularly made jokes and references that only made sense to viewers who had absorbed the undernews from other sources.

Undernews made itself felt during the first Trump impeachment too. The official defense of Trump, the one articulated by more high-toned hosts, was that the extortion of Ukraine did not rise to the level of impeachment. After all, Ukraine got its weapons in the end: no harm, no foul. In the undernews, however, this defense was backed by an elaborate fantasy that Trump had been right to act as he did.

In this fantasy, Ukraine became the center of a global criminal enterprise masterminded by the Biden family. Trump, the myth went, had heroically acted to reveal the plot—only to be thwarted by the Deep State’s machinations in Washington and Kyiv. Believers in the undernews reimagined Ukraine as a pro-Biden mafia state that had cruelly victimized Trump. They burned to inflict payback on Ukraine for the indignity of Trump’s first impeachment.

This delusory narrative was seldom articulated in venues where nonbelievers might hear it. But the delusion shaped the opinion of believers—and the behavior of those who sought votes from those believers: congressional Republicans.

At first, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 appalled almost all elected officials in Washington. A congressman named Mike Johnson, then a Republican backbencher, spoke for many: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine’s sovereign territory threatens the greatest destabilization of the world order since WWII and constitutes a national security threat to the entire West,” he said in a statement published on the invasion’s first day.

Johnson voted for the first aid package to Ukraine a month later. Then, in May of that year, Johnson reversed himself, joining 56 other Republican House members to vote against a $40 billion package. This was Johnson’s explanation for his coat-turning on Ukraine:

We should not be sending another $40 billion abroad when our own border is in chaos, American mothers are struggling to find baby formula, gas prices are at record highs, and American families are struggling to make ends meet, without sufficient oversight over where the money will go.

These excuses did not make much sense in 2022. They make even less sense in 2023.

The current aid request for Ukraine proposes $14 billion for U.S. border security, including funding for some 2,000 new asylum officers and judges. Because the great majority of asylum claims are rejected, more officers means faster removals and less incentive for border-crossers to arrive in the first place.

As for the baby-formula problem that Johnson cited, that was long ago solved. Gas prices have dropped below $3.20 a gallon nationwide (and to just $2.75 in Johnson’s Louisiana). Wages are once again rising faster than inflation, while Americans’ purchasing power (adjusted for inflation) is erasing the losses it suffered during the pandemic. The complaint about oversight was always untrue, even silly, because almost all funds for aiding Kyiv are actually spent in the U.S. to make and ship the supplies Ukraine needs.

So long as Kevin McCarthy led the House Republicans, the relationship between their leadership and Trump was one of fear and submission. Once Johnson replaced McCarthy, the relationship between the speaker and Trump shifted to active collaboration. McCarthy helped Ukraine as much as he dared; Johnson helps Ukraine as little as he can. Johnson still talks about resisting Russia, but when it comes time to act, he does as Trump wants.

[David Frum: Why the GOP doesn’t really want a deal on Ukraine and the border]

A majority of the House Republican caucus still rejects attempts to cut off Ukraine. A test vote on September 28 counted 126 pro-Ukraine Republicans versus 93 anti. Three-quarters of the whole House favors Ukraine aid. But Johnson and his team now control the schedule and the sequence of events. That group responds to the steady beat of the undernews: Ukraine = enemy of Trump; abandoning Ukraine = proof of loyalty to Trump.

As Trump nears renomination by his party in 2024, the displays of loyalty to him have become ever more obligatory for Republicans. Solidarity with Ukraine has faltered as support for Trump has consolidated. Make no mistake: If Republicans in Congress abandon Ukraine to Russian aggression, they do so to please Trump. Every other excuse is a fiction or a lie.

* Photo-collage image sources: Scott Olson / Getty; Juan Medina / Getty; Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times / Getty; Justin Sullivan / Getty.

David Beckham recalls his fondest memories from Sports Personality of the Year, having won the main award in 2001 before going on to win the Lifetime Achievement award in 2010.

Over the past few weeks, warnings about the threat posed by Donald Trump’s potential reelection have grown louder, including in a series of articles in The Atlantic. This alarm-raising is justified and appropriate, given the looming danger of authoritarianism in American politics. But amid all of the worrying, we might be losing sight of the most important fact: Trump’s chances of winning are slim.

Some look at Trump’s long list of flaws and understandably see reasons to worry about him winning. I see reasons to think he almost certainly won’t.

Yes, recent polls appear to favor him. Yes, Joe Biden is an imperfect opponent. And yes, much could change over the next 11 months, potentially in Trump’s favor. But if Biden’s health holds, he is very likely to be reelected next year. It’s hard to imagine any Republican candidate galvanizing Democrats, independents, and even some Republicans to vote for the current president in the way that Trump will.

I’m not arguing that anyone who wants President Biden to win—and, more important, anyone who wants Trump to lose—should relax. To the contrary, Democrats, and any other sensible voters who oppose Trump, need to forcefully remind the American people about how disastrous he was as president and inform them of how much worse a second term would be. Thankfully, that is not a hard case to make.

[David Frum: The coming Biden blowout]

The former president enjoys some clear advantages. About a third of Republicans are fiercely loyal to him, meaning that he has the unwavering support of a small but potent segment of the broader electorate. Once he is presumably crowned the Republican nominee, which seems inevitable and will probably occur by Super Tuesday, the GOP’s electoral and fundraising machine will whir into motion on his behalf. In all likelihood, the leaders in his party will unite behind him. Large numbers of Americans will vote for anyone running as a Republican against a Democrat.

Trump’s media supporters, above all at Fox News, will offer support, propagating a set of myths about his record in office, particularly the supposedly great economy over which he presided. Trump will be able to run as both an incumbent, because he’s a former president, and an “outsider,” as in 2016, because he is out of office. That will make his attacks on the “deep state” and his own persecution narrative more convincing. Trump intends to use his various criminal and civil trials as proof that “they”—the Biden administration—are going after him because he represents “us”—his voters. A certain segment of the public will buy into these messages.

Trump might also enjoy a relative advantage in the Electoral College because of the counter-majoritarian aspects of the U.S. political system. He soundly lost the popular vote in both 2016 and 2020, and almost no one expects him to win a majority of votes in 2024 either. But if the race is close enough in the right places, the undue power of rural voters in smaller or less populated states could tilt the outcome in his favor.

Finally, Biden is not the candidate Trump ran against four years ago. He is older, his approval rating is suffering, and, during his four years in office, he has given certain segments of the public reasons to be dissatisfied with him. That’s reflected in the current polling, where he appears to be losing support among key groups, including Black and Latino voters.

All of that notwithstanding, when the general election gets under way, and presuming that Americans are faced with a binary choice between Trump and Biden, Trump’s chances will start to look much worse. Even if most Republicans unite behind him, a significant portion of both Republicans and independents will have a hard time pulling the lever for him. Some Republican voters might well stay home.

Trump’s flaws look far worse today than they did eight years ago. To take one example that should concern conservative voters: his behavior toward and views of service members. In the 2016 campaign, Trump’s attacks on Senator John McCain and on the Gold Star Khan family were bad enough. Now we have a litany of testimonies that he expressed contempt and disgust for wounded veterans—demanding that he not be seen in public with them—and that he debased fallen soldiers, describing them as “suckers” and marveling, “What was in it for them?” According to an Atlantic report, when he was scheduled to visit a World War I–era American cemetery in France in 2018, Trump complained, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” Trump has always posed as a patriot, but he has proved himself unpatriotic, anti-military, and ignorant of the meaning of sacrifice.

[From the November 2023 issue: The patriot]

Similarly, in 2016, Trump’s campaign was briefly rocked by the Access Hollywood videotape in which he boasted about grabbing women by the genitalia. He survived, in large part because many voters chose to accept his comments as “locker room” bluster. Several women accused him of sexual misconduct, but Trump fended off their allegations too. Now he has been held civilly liable by a New York jury for sexually abusing the advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996. A federal judge has said that the jury concluded that what Trump did to Carroll was rape in the common sense of the term. Some Americans will shrug that off, but many won’t be able to.

Trump hopes that his legal troubles will prove a boon to his campaign, allowing him to paint both law enforcement and the judicial system as part of a massive conspiracy against him. He has even requested that his federal trial regarding efforts to overturn the 2020-election results be televised. That’s unlikely, but the more airtime these prosecutions get, the better. Among Republicans, Trump’s polling has improved since his indictments, but many other Americans simply won’t be impressed, inspired, or persuaded by someone who faces 91 felony counts, in addition to civil cases. Trump already has been found liable for fraud and sexual abuse in New York. To that may well be added a criminal conviction at the federal level. Even if none of the trials has concluded by next fall, much of the evidence that prosecutors have accumulated is already in the public record and will be powerful fodder for anti-Trump attack ads. And Democrats will benefit from the attention Trump draws to the election-subversion cases. Even many of Trump’s most ardent supporters are tired of relitigating 2020; voters would prefer to focus on the future, not the past.

[David A. Graham: A guide to the cases against Trump]

On top of all this, Trump has a strong record of electoral losses, with his 2016 upset, which apparently surprised even him, as the lone exception. His party suffered the standard midterm defeat in 2018. Then he lost the 2020 election. Then Republicans lost control of the Senate after Georgia’s runoff in early 2021. Then his party was denied the standard midterm victory in 2022, barely eking out a four-vote House majority thanks in large part to his own handpicked, election-denying candidates, almost all of whom lost in competitive races. There is no obvious reason that 2024 should constitute a sudden break from this pattern of MAGA defeat.

Presidential elections are usually decided by a relatively small group of swing voters in six or seven swing states. The most important are independent voters and suburban voters, two groups that appear to have turned away from Trump since 2016. He hasn’t done anything to win them back since 2020, instead running in recent months on a platform that’s more radical, extreme, and openly authoritarian than ever (except on the issue of abortion, where he is less extreme than his Republican-primary competitors). With Trump promising vengeance, retribution, and dictatorship, at least on “day one,” as he recently told Sean Hannity, will these swing voters be wooed back into his camp? Are Americans so fed up that they will want to elect someone who has advocated for the “termination” of the Constitution in order to keep himself in power?

Recent polling suggests that Biden is in real trouble, including with a number of core Democratic constituencies, which is leading many Democrats to yearn for a different candidate or to despair that Trump will be reelected. In fact, Biden has a strong record to run on. In his first two years, with a tiny House majority and only a tiebreaker in the Senate, he managed to pass more progressive, consequential economic legislation than, arguably, any president since Lyndon B. Johnson. Unemployment is low, and inflation is cooling. Perhaps the public has not fully felt these positive developments yet, but they will almost certainly have registered by next November.

Americans have reported to pollsters that although they believe that the economy is bad for others, they themselves feel economically secure. Biden should ask voters Ronald Reagan’s classic question: Are you better off today than you were four years ago? The answer can only be yes, given the dire situation the nation found itself in during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic (to say nothing of the general sense of chaos throughout Trump’s presidency). But Biden and Democrats need to make this case. Without prompting, voters might not readily remember how challenging a time 2020 was.

[Derek Thompson: ‘Everything is terrible, but I’m fine’]

The abortion issue, opened up by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, has consistently played in Democrats’ favor, and that’s unlikely to change next November. If the Republican nominee were former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, women might not rally so powerfully to the Democratic side. But Trump claims responsibility for the decision overturning Roe by virtue of his Supreme Court appointees. That, plus Trump’s treatment of women, gives Biden a huge opportunity with female voters.

Biden’s pro-Israel policies during the ongoing war in Gaza might cost him support from Arab and Muslim Americans, but probably not enough for him to lose Michigan, for example, to Trump. Voters in those groups seem unlikely to support the author of the “Muslim ban,” who is threatening to reimpose similar restrictions, and the “Peace to Prosperity” Israeli-Palestinian proposal that invited Israel to annex 30 percent of the occupied West Bank. Some will stay home—a potential danger for Biden—but many will, perhaps reluctantly, turn out for him despite what they say now.

The 2024 election will be a referendum on democracy, with both candidates claiming to stand for freedom and American values. On this matter, Biden’s claims are obviously stronger: He has been governing as a traditional president, whereas Trump promises authoritarianism and openly says he wants to be dictator for a day to accomplish certain policies, namely restricting immigration. But what if his plans take more than a day? What if his one-day dictatorship extends to a year and then never ends? Americans know that strongmen don’t keep their promises.

Biden is old, but so is Trump. Biden has grown unpopular, but so has Trump. Biden has liabilities, but Trump’s are considerably worse. Biden has lost the backing of plenty of voters, but the results of the past few elections suggest that Trump has lost more. Meanwhile, Trump’s record as president and since—January 6, the devastating testimony from his former senior officials, the ongoing trials, and whatever additional self-inflicted wounds he delivers—will contrast very poorly with Biden’s track record and steady leadership. By November, enough Americans will surely understand that they aren’t voting for Biden over Trump so much as voting for the Constitution over a would-be authoritarian.

The case against Trump’s reelection is obvious and damning. As long as his opponents prosecute that case—and they will—Trump isn’t going to win.

Caroline Willis says her life has been ruined since David fell into an industrial shredder in 2018.