On Wednesday, former Secretary of State John Kerry savaged President Trump, arguing that he is undermining U.S. leadership in the world with catastrophic consequences for human rights, global stability, and American power—and that he risks a needless war by withdrawing from the Iran deal. “If your house is burning down, do you say to the fire department, ‘Don’t put the fire out, because it may burn down again in 15 years?’” he asked. “That’s where we were with Iran. We put out the fire. And Trump has lit the fire again.”
Still, when turning to electoral politics, Kerry proceeded to urge his fellow Democrats to stop focusing on Trump, or on defeating him in 2020, in favor of an overwhelming focus on what he regards as easily the number one political priority. “I don’t think 2020 matters today,” he said. “There’s one thing that matters today: winning control of the United States Congress in 2018.”
To do so, he told an audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival, co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, “we’ve got to stop the day-to-day bloviating over our dislike of the daily tweets and all the problems that we see and start connecting to Americans, so that it’s not just buzz words out there about the international order, or the post World War II global structures, which are critical—but if we don’t define to people how those make a difference to their lives, it’s not going to matter … We have to reconnect to the average life daily struggle of Americans who are finding that globalization or Congress doesn’t work for them.”