Don't Look Up! (The Sequel)

It's a surreal time to be alive and paying attention, isn't it?

Scene—The Oval Office. Seated at the Resolute Desk, President Joe Biden. To his right, leaning on the windowsills, First Lady Jill Biden and Hunter Biden. On a speaker phone: Rep. Jim Clyburn and Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison. Across from them on two sofas facing each other: Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and two astronomers, Kate Dibiasky and Professor Randall Mindy. Pacing behind them, senior White House aides Tom Donilon and Steve Richetti. Everyone waits quietly for the President to start the meeting. Biden slowly shuffles some papers on his desk and then looks up.

PRESIDENT BIDEN

Okay, I heard there’s something about an asteroid or a comet you don’t like the looks of. Tell me about it and then tell me why you’re telling me about it. You’ve got twenty minutes.

PELOSI

Twenty minutes?

Schumer looks nervously at Jeffries.

SCHUMER

That’s you, Hakeem. Go.

Jeffries is very nervous.

JEFFRIES

Okay... okay, um, Mr. President. Approximately, 36 hours ago PhD graduate student, Kate Dibiasky here... discovered a very large comet.

PRESIDENT BIDEN (to Dibiasky)

Oh! Good for you.

MINDY (interrupting)

A comet 5-10 kilometers across, that we estimate came from the Oort cloud, the outer part of the solar system. And uh, using Gauss’ method of orbital determination and the average astrometric uncertainty of 0.04 arcseconds...

PRESIDENT BIDEN

Whoah, whoah. Would you please put that in straight English?

HUNTER

I am so bored. Just tell us what it is.

JEFFRIES (cuts to the quick)

What Professor Mindy is trying to say is that there is a comet headed directly towards the United States.

Jeffries lays out the photos highlighting a blurry “streak” in space. The President and First Lady examine the pictures.

DIBIASKY

According to NASA’s computers this object will hit the Pacific Ocean a sixty-two miles due west off the coast of San Francisco.

PRESIDENT BIDEN

And then what happensuvinimina?

DIBIASKY

I’m sorry?

PRESIDENT BIDEN

My city Wilmington, Delaware, I-95 runs up through what used to be the black community, divided it, six lanes wide. We’re gonna make sure that the states want it, we’re gonna be able to pave over the top of that and still have the highway — connecting neighborhoods!

Everyone in the room blanches, confused.

PRESIDENT BIDEN

In America, we resolve our differences at the battle box.

JILL BIDEN (jumping in)

He’s asking what will happen. A tidal wave?

MINDY

No, it will be far more catastrophic. There will be mile-high tsunamis, fanning out all across the globe. If this comet makes impact, it will have the power of a billion Hiroshima bombs. There will be magnitude 10 or 11 earthquakes.

HUNTER

You’re stressing me out! You’re breathing weird. It’s just making me uncomfortable.

MINDY

I’m sorry. I’m just trying to articulate the science.

HUNTER

I know but it’s like sooo stressful. I’m like tryin’ to listen.

JEFFRIES

I don’t think you understand the gravity of this situation. These experts are trying to articulate it the best they can.

SCHUMER

Mr. President, this comet is what we call a planet killer.

President Biden takes this all in. His face freezes for an inordinately long time. Then he speaks in a whisper.

PRESIDENT BIDEN

So how certain is this?

PELOSI

There is basically 100% certainty of impact.

PRESIDENT BIDEN

Please don’t say 100%.

DONILON (from back of room)

Can we just call it a potentially significant event?

PELOSI

But it’s not “potentially” going to happen. It is going to happen. Civilization as we know it will be wiped out.

MINDY

Actually our data analysis says 99.78 percent to be exact.

RICHETTI

Oh, great! So it’s not 100%.

SCHUMER

Scientists never like to say 100%.

PRESIDENT BIDEN

I don’t believe those numbers. Call it 70% and let’s move on.

PELOSI

It’s not even close to seventy percent.

PRESIDENT BIDEN

You can’t go around to people telling them there’s a 100% chance something bad’s going to happen. And we should get our own people on this.

He leans toward the phone.

PRESIDENT BIDEN

Jim, what do you say about this?

CLYBURN

I’m riding with Biden. I’m riding with Biden. I’m riding with Biden.

PRESIDENT BIDEN

Look folks, let’s bottom line this. What is this gonna cost me? What’s the ask here?

PELOSI

There are plans in place. Actions we can take. There may be a way to keep this asteroid from hitting, but that will take extraordinary leadership from you, something unprecedented...

PRESIDENT BIDEN

Alright, alright, let me think here... Jaime, when is the convention?

HARRISON

Four weeks.

PRESIDENT BIDEN

Four weeks. If this breaks before then it will really hurt us in the polls and Congress won’t listen to me.  

HARRISON

We can speed up the roll call on your nomination to the end of July so there are no questions about your ability to lead us through this.

PRESIDENT BIDEN

Exactly, the timing...it’s atrocious. (takes a breath) At this exact moment...We need to get through the convention first. Here’s the deal--I say we sit tight and assess.

PELOSI

Sit tight and assess? Am I to understand correctly that with all the information you’ve received today, you’re making the decision to “sit tight and assess?”

PRESIDENT BIDEN

Stop with the malarkey. Do you know how many “the world is ending meetings” that we’ve had over the years? Economic collapse, loose nukes, car exhaust killing the atmosphere, rogue A.I.

PELOSI

This is different. We don’t have any time to waste.

PRESIDENT BIDEN

First of all, I think you’re dead wrong. Name me a foreign leader who thinks I’m not the most effective leader in the world on foreign policy. Tell me! Tell me who the hell that is! Tell me who put NATO back together! Tell me who enlarged NATO, tell me who did the Pacific basin! Things are in chaos, and I’m bringing some order to it. And again, find me a world leader who’s an ally of ours who doesn’t think I’m the most respected person they’ve ever—

PELOSI

None of this matters, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT BIDEN

On national security, nobody has been a better president than I’ve been. Name me one. Name me one! So I don’t want to hear this crap!

End scene. (With apologies to Adam McKay and David Sirota.)

A few things you can do to stave off despair

—There’s still a window open to get President Biden to pass the torch. Learn more here.

—Once that window closes, just remember that the November presidential election will probably be decided by just a few tens of thousands of votes in a few key states (MI, PA, WI), and focus your volunteer efforts there—and/or find the swing House race nearest to where you live and pitch in.

—Check out Oath.vote, a new(ish) platform that aims to help Democratic donors focus their campaign contributions where they can do the greatest good.

—Want to stretch and give to the organizations working to flip twenty House seats. Give via this People’s House list curated by Blue Tent.

—Or, give to the Movement Voter Project, a clearinghouse for supporting the national and state-level groups doing year-round voter organizing.

A note of warning

Like just about everyone else in America, I am relieved that former president Trump survived Saturday’s assassination attempt. The country dodged a bullet that day. It’s very important that we all speak out against normalizing any use of violence in politics; our willingness to settle our differences by voting rather than armed conflict is what makes everything else we take for granted possible. And experts say that despite polls suggesting that perhaps one of five partisans think violence may be justified against their opponents, the actual number of Americans who really hold such beliefs strongly is smaller, in the range of two/three percent. (This fresh-off-the-headlines conversation between Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Yascha Mounk is well worth reading or listening to, on that topic.)

That said, two or three percent is still millions of people. And there’s already been a lot of normalization of violent action and intimidation of political opponents, and most of it comes from the right. Trump himself mocked the Pelosi family after Paul, Nancy’s husband, was bludgeoned by a home invader. He has regularly welcomed violence against protestors at his rallies. The list goes on. And what we see is just the tip of the iceberg—many elected officials as well as election administrators and other public servants have reported receiving death threats and other forms of intimidation, going back to the first Trump administration.

Saturday’s events are having two effects on Trump’s base. First and most obviously, they are quite understandably celebrating his survival. Some, befitting the cult-like devotion he has inspired, are even interpreting his good fortune in turning his head exactly at the moment before the shooter’s bullet whizzed by his head as a sign of divine intervention.

But something much darker is also working its way through MAGA diehards: a suspicion that the deep state deliberately sought Trump’s assassination and somehow caused the Secret Service to fail in its basic mission to protect the president. The most benign version of this theory blames DEI policies for somehow turning the agency into a bunch of, what, softies? But uglier versions are very reminiscent of the conspiracizing around Lee Harvey Oswald. People are having a hard time believing that a twenty-year-old kid with an AR-15 could have truly been acting alone. We shouldn’t be surprised to see this among people who already believe the Q-Anon hoax, but if it spreads it will only increase the chances of Trump supporters rejecting any election result that doesn’t favor their man.

Which is yet another reason Biden ought to pass the torch—the worst possible outcome in November will be another close election.