Last night was apparently a shitshow. I say apparently because, as the parent of young children, I did not get to watch much of last night's debate. But from what little of the debate I saw, and from the reactions I've seen, my best guess is that Biden managed to confirm the worst fears of many of his supporters while Trump was given free rein from CNN to lie his ass off.
On the last part, CNN giving Trump free rein to lie his ass off, comes as no surprise. CNN has held a number of events with Trump, and has never fact-checked the man. Nor is it surprising Trump lied repeatedly about everything - his convictions in New York are based on fraud, he was found liable of slander (lying) on at least three separate occasions, cannot operate a charity in the State of New York due to fraud, was forced to pay 100 cents on the dollar in his "settlement" involving Trump University, and has been cited as being dishonest time and time again by EVERYONE.
And sadly, it's not surprising that Biden failed to perform well last night. On one hand, he can't well refute and retort what Trump said when Trump was in fantasy land. On the other hand, he proceeded to do the one thing that Biden absolutely cannot ever do - act OLD.
In my history of watching politics, there have been two major fuck-ups by Democratic candidates at this level that compare to what Biden did last night - Howard Dean screaming at a rally, and Kerry saying "I was for it before I was against it." In both instances, Dean and Kerry managed to amplify the negative narratives about them. Dean was thought to be a bit off his rocker (untrue), and Kerry's narrative was that he was a flip-flopper. Neither narrative was fair, but both existed.
Biden being old is equally an unfair narrative. After all Trump is almost as old as Biden, and is most likely incontinent (according to sources). Plus, there is no indication he has Alzheimer's (unlike Reagan, who did), and he's naturally delegating work, not doing all of it himself. But it is true that Biden is the oldest President we've ever had, and that makes the criticism somewhat fair.
In saying all that, the decision to give Trump a place on stage with Biden, and then let Trump lie his ass off without any fact-checking was one of the dumbest fucking strategies in modern history. It was never going to go well, and the fact that Biden actually chose to do this means he's still listening to Democratic political insiders - who are generally the dumbest fucking people ever.
With that said, should Biden drop out? That would be incredibly difficult at this stage, and likely a recipe for disaster. For one thing, the person replacing him would almost certainly be less well known than Biden. There's no liberal media in this country, just conservative media and corporate media, so even people like Gavin Newsom aren't known outside of certain circles. That's a huge problem when running against a celebrity in Donald Trump.
And second, there's not chance for the Party to have the kind of balancing act that every nominee goes through. After all, the Democratic Party doesn't have the messaging mechanism that the GOP has in Fox News/NewsMax/AM Radio/Sinclair Broadcasting. So, Democratic nominees have to go through a process of gathering support from all the factions of the Democratic Party. Biden is/was really good at this. Bernie Sanders is not (sorry to say).
And, of course, that leaves open the question of Kamala Harris. Why the hell would she be passed over when she's the sitting VP? At the same time, Harris is HATED by the DC media, disliked by some progressives due to her connection to law enforcement, is a woman, and is Black. These are all things that can be ironed out over the course of a primary, but that time has long since passed.
Now you might then ask, if all of this was known, why did Biden run for reelection? My wife asks this of me a fair bit. The answer is simple - despite Biden's age, he was in the best position to beat Donald Trump. He has 100% name ID - which only he, Bernie Sanders, Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton can claim - which again is important when running against a celebrity. Biden has also done a reasonably good job of cleaning up Trump's innumerable messes, while also dealing with the most reactionary Supreme Court in 100 years. So, he's not just the incumbent, but he's actually a fairly successful incumbent.
For those of you doubting my last statement, at this time four years ago, the entire country was shut down from COVID, there were riots in the streets of every major city in America (and several minor cities), and we were inundated with shortages of food, toliet paper, and other essential goods. We were wearing masks and gloves to go grocery shopping, for goodness sake! And for those of you who want to argue about taxes - Trump's tax cut caused my federal taxes to jump significantly because he put a limit on the SALT deductions to give more money to billionaires.
So, where do we go from here? I don't know. No one knows.
No comments:
Post a Comment