De Gea, Democrats, And Being Stuck In The Past

On How To Avoid A Bad 2022

"Mush doesn't look good on you, man."

When the Europa League Final went to penalties, I knew Manchester United had lost, and said as much in a group chat with a couple of friends. That quote was one of their responses, assuming that I was just trying to get some good karma for my boys in Red, to which I insisted I was serious. And I was, unfortunately, proven correct, because David De Gea went 0/11 saving penalties, and 0/1 scoring them, to cost us the Final. De Gea had an entirely bad night - failing to stop Villarreal's only goal in regulation, too, and not making a single save all night, between the 120 minutes of play and the penalties - and it should be an ignominious end to a successful United career for the Spaniard. I say should be, because the end of his career should have been here already, but here we were.

De Gea is a United legend whose time has passed, and he is now not the best keeper at United. That title is Dean Henderson's, but there is scuttlebutt that Henderson - who is younger, better, and cheaper - will not be given the starting job next season out of a quixotic loyalty to De Gea. Henderson should have started this game, he should be our starter moving forward, and it is utterly infuriating that the geniuses at United cost us a trophy - our best chance for one since 2017 - because they had their heads up their asses, and are stuck in the past. It is maddening that the club made this obvious, knowable error, and it is even more infuriating that De Gea was allowed to cost us in a game he shouldn't have even started.

And yet, somewhere in the drunken fog, I remember what this anger feels like. It felt like the anger I felt when Mahoning, Ohio, flipped to the GOP on election night, because I realized the same thing then that I am now relearning - everyone is so scared of the past that they're unable to see the future. And if Democrats don't adjust to this, they'll blow a winnable midterm.

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I'm not here to argue about the second half of that statement, because if you still don't appreciate that I disagree with the historical priors being valuable here you won't care at the end of yet another column, so let's talk about how Democrats blew it in 2020. The Chicago Tribune tracked Presidential and Vice Presidential campaign stops in 2020, and Biden/Harris made 5 stops in Ohio and 13 in Florida - states with no Senate race or winnable down ballot priorities, and in the case of Ohio, no case for being the tipping point - while only going to North Carolina 7 times, Georgia 4 times, Iowa only once, and Maine a grand total of *checks notes* 0 times. (The Ohio count does not include the Presidential debate held there.) If you broaden it out to include former President Obama, who camped out the final weekend in Miami, you see a pattern - of a party not knowing where the battleground was, and of making strategically extremely suboptimal decisions.

The focus on Ohio and Florida were examples of the party not knowing what they were doing, but the focus on Ohio - remember, a final Monday visit was extended there - is the real kicker. Why did they go to Ohio? Because that's where you go in a Presidential election, because it's a state that matters. The fact that Ohio was solely a vanity project didn't matter to the Biden camp, because there were no particularly good House targets there, no Senate seat, no chance to flip a State House or State Senate, no chance of it being a tipping point state. They went there out of instinct, out of reflex, out of comfort. They prioritized Ohio and Florida, both states which, even as Florida had a plausible-based-on-2016 case to being a path to 270, were trending right and being less essential for the Electoral College, and ignored Georgia and Arizona, where the ticket went 4 times each. Maine and Iowa, key Senate targets, were ignored, and even North Carolina, which had the right combination of Senate seat and tipping point potential, was visited about half as frequently as Florida.

You can see the same instincts now, as people talk about how Democrats need to make sure they are bipartisan and decent, while the GOP keep a member with an addiction to bad Holocaust comparisons in their caucus. The instincts to Clinton or Obama era moderation are being suppressed so far, but the instincts are still there, and you see it across politics. Would Val Demings make a good Senator? I mean, she'd be a damn sight better than Marco, which isn't saying much, but she also isn't going to be a Senator, I'm sorry to say. And yet, there are many in Democratic politics rushing to promote her campaign and donate to her cause. The rush to make Tim Ryan a national star after his House speech on the need for a Commission into January 6th feels like the same performative bullshit that so many of us did for Jaime Harrison in South Carolina last year, and the cynic - and the metric ton of whiskey - in me says it probably ends the same. The questions about Iowa or Missouri could decide the majority (they won't), the freakouts about whether Biden either giving up too much in an infrastructure deal with the GOP or not getting a deal at all with the GOP might hurt him in 2022 (it won't), they all feel very old and stuck in the past. They feel of a different age, and they are. The problem is, nobody seems to get it.

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David De Gea was the first United player I fell in love with, my maestro between the pipes who bailed out mediocre backlines for the first few years of my fandom of the club. Now, he's just a stale reminder of what used to be, a lingering presence stopping the best of the new guard from taking hold of the team. Maguire, Cavani, Bruno … they feel like a new look United, deserving of Dean Henderson behind them. It is on the team to not let past glory get in the way of the present and the future, and United let a trophy slip away today because they couldn't figure out what I could.

The Democratic Party will have to make a similar decision in the coming weeks and months - about whether to take a chance, be bold, and run a series of campaigns that actually allows us to win the House, expand our Senate Majority, and get through more of our priorities. If Democrats embrace the bold vision and a forward thinking approach, they will be rewarded by the electorate and able to govern for the whole country. If they don't - if they listen to the old hands, if they play the game the old way, if they fight the last war - then they will leave their voters feeling the way Manchester United left me, and millions of others, feeling tonight - with the sinking feeling that the only reason we lost was cowardice and devotion to the past.