That palace intrigue, of sorts, on the personality figures and their subordinates of the Democratic Party. I understand Biden has a personal animus with David Axelrod, so goes the most notable and amusing moment in his call-in to Morning Joe. Beyond him comes a Team Obama which begins with the man himself and falls outward — and there you have a complicated relationship. A certain barely coded 2015 article in the New York about anonymous sources on background fretting about Joseph Biden would embarrass himself of he runs — I imagine Biden reading, knowing full well who each and every unnamed person was. And after all that, a 2020 drop-in to end Bernie’s possibility and coalesce around the default man after no one else in that field could pull themselves forward — comes 2024. Bill Clinton and Obama prepared for star studded affairs with Biden — a show of force, a show of unity — leak things to the press, late night talk show hosts flattered and then primed for their late night show duty. Flash forward yesterday. George Clooney has an editorial. Clooney speaks for himself. And he speaks for Obama. Or Obama speaks through him. Strange feeling of a dynamic, but it is what spokes of pundit class have latched on to.

I am not sure you can refer to Tim Kaine as something out of Clinton Land. Clinton Land died with Terry McAuliffe’s defeat — now we just stare at vestiges that abound. Kaine stares at poll numbers, alongside Senator Bennet in Colorado — and decide they have to cut this one off. On the House side, Pelosi — her last call from the unofficial head of the Democratic House — threads a needle to cut Biden out. It took a bit to get there, and she still sits at just enough plausible deniability to walk into the DNC Convention cheerfully as Biden releases no delegates.

Y’know. That Lichtman guy. The man hawking a book. 14 Keys, or whatever. Some things on his list appear subjective enough that we can redefine the terms with a different outcome to arrive at his magical six keys that will shoot out the Incumbent. Hell! We can redefine who the Incumbent is. Not to mention the contours of party division mass.

The weird piles of lunacy which will most likely evaporate into noise. But. Maybe not. Everyone is going to have to vote for the corpse. The comedic element is, of course, that we now get the comparisons with Trump. It is all very asymmetrical, that. Kind of begins with a phone call to the morning show of DNC cable officialdom, MSNBC’s Morning Joe. It is like hearing Trump on Fox and Friends, compare the levels of obsequitiousness at your leisure — I guess Joe and his co-host are a tad more hard-hitting, able to quickly draw up a board relating the list of high-profiles telling him to drop out, allowing Biden to chuckle at David Axelrod. But overall, Biden parlays against the elite opinion, and insists everyone on the ground he is meeting with, huge crowds, are with him. Scarborough eggs him on, a tweet jestfully parlaying his new status as “Outsider”, though I imagine the reference on “Hollywood” with a few celebrities weighing in — is a throwback to his conservative Republican roots. And now comes the line of the day. The Democrats are saying in private what few date say in public. But everyone cowers before Trump or Biden,and you don’t want to be like all the other party was under Trump, do you?

Dribs and drabs of commentary have always come off as a tad off in this sense. The citation of every Republican loss post Trump. It skips some Republican wins — the biggest election for 2021 went Republican, Virginia Governorship. 2018 they realigned the Senate. And they did pick up the House in 2022. More to the point, where did the Democrats end up through eight years of Clinton and then eight years of Obama? Lots of party losses — they happen. Of course, current party losses are going on in the next administration and with the other party in charge.

Puzzle over the headline. Pelosi is working to expand Biden’s decision making time past that point he has indicated a decision?

I watched this Better man interview. It maybe I watched him at a show with Biden. I do not think he understands that concept of “right for the moment” in the statement about how absurd a qualification along the lines of “best president of my life, but” — not the contradiction he thinks it is. More to the point — I can’t figure out what dusty brick building he is holding forth in here.

You know, I always had the sense when Kitzhaber was re-elected Oregon governor that he immediately planned his exit. His second second inaugural speevh was very perfunctory and lifeless. The Republicans just put up someone lousy against him in this blue state — though, to be sure, he did win a stateside election later. Kamala Harris is running either way, isn’t say? I suppose the main thing on Biden is a chaos factor emerges, and you have to let everyone swinging whatever direction know — it is not as much chaos as you think, and it pales to Trump’s (who I guess has an idea of rebranding at the RNC convention, or tapping off Abortion, laugh off Project 2025, introduce us to Rubio.)

It would appear the old man is running. I largely prefer he not, but pride, stubbornness, and personal history drag him to this point, as too possibly a sober assessment on Kamala Harris’s electoral prospects and his further extrapolation on a thing I believe — he was the only guy beating Trump in 2020 — which leads him to a sense of “indispensable man” — even still, even now.

The totality is that the majority of the punditry has been wasting our time. At best we can glean some personal odds and ends out of a number of hand-wringers.

By most accounts, the polling remain just something of a deadlock. Biden ends up benefiting from being out and about, even as the internal political bickering and drags him down. He is losing polling support from upper middle class progressives, who will ultimately come back to him. And he is winning swing state independents. This gets ironic in a hurry. He has been out on the hustlings, visible, having to forcefully make a case. Trump has been borrowed in Mar a Lago, content to watch Biden supposedly self destruct right now.

And I actually overheard someone ask someone “Did you watch Biden’s big ABC interview last night?”. Of course they didn’t. The big take away appears to be that it was not enough to assuage concerns. Of course — how the Hell an it be? There is nothing that can dislodge the issue — dude’s old, he stumbled beyond what you can dismiss, he will be older still moving forward. Four years ago I thought he would be good for four years, but unfortunately The system is not really set up for a committed one termer. Less than partisans will have a worse assessment than I on that score. The effect should be somewhat liberating. That one about “affable old man” freeing him that one legal issue? Biden will have to win off that. That and the issues. Those and Trump. Cool mix of dark comedy, isn’t it?

On that score, the cries, calls, “we need to see more”. Some things unscripted. And no we don’t. Because the big media take-away from the ABC interview was Biden’s answer to the question, “what will you think of you lose?”. No winning answer answering that question. Ditto the one was effectively ” your approval rating sucks” –again, no real winning, even as the real answer is “hey! so does his!” . Off of these two moments, a chattering class with firmly fixed priors declare “see how out of touch he is.” Michael Moore tacks everything to his advisors. Sam Seder yells about Boomer Democrats clinging desperately to power. So, really, Biden needs to run around in highly scripted settings, not veering off of text, fumble his words mightily, toss in one of his incoherent stories for old time’s sake. Because, you know, if he springs through whatever the chattering class demand – – he will likely screw up.somewhat anyway, and even if he doesn’t — they will say he did.

Guy has handwritten sign he waves at camera. “Pass the torch, Joe”. Woman next to him leans over to obstruct it with official “Biden / Harris” sign. Next the guy folds the sign up. Was the message delivered?

I guess the speech convinced him, because after he was holding that Biden / Harris placard.

The “all right. How did Lord Binface do?” pops in when I see the exciting British elections, and its Labour Party landslide, is happening right now. It is a polite joke that has lost any bite – – it is fun to see the YouTube clip of the Lord Buckethead in the line-up announcing a Margaret Thatcher victory, but really only as an ingredient to a bigger piece — we are watching him bowing to his vote tally, but only in context of a batch of hecklers shouting “Fascist!” when Thatcher gives her victory speech. The thing takes on a tad more in being derived from a movie starring Chris Elliott — the reason the name had to be switched over to “Count Binface”, though a Lord Buckethead was involved in a post – Brexit “Remain” campaign, according to The Spectator article declaring Lord Binface not funny.

Disappointingly, this one loses the script. He had run for London mayor — biding time for the standard run against the Conservative Party leader, probably tending to what counts as his hip urban fanbase. But in this run — why care? Margaret Thatcher was the dominant figure people liked to shout “fascist” at. What does Binface add to the scene of Rishi Final glumly taking in the horrors of his election results? Hopefully after this pointlessness our joke candidate can see to it to just retire from the scene, let someone else come in — hopefully organically, though, it did take a while for the copyright claim to stomp over Lord Buckethead and it is hard to picture in today’s age how someone can take off with an obscure movie reference and not get clamped down more quickly.

I was thinking of poking at the big debate and proferring a great policy analysis and comparison out of it. Trade and tariffs. It is maybe a little amusing that Biden’s policy on this is closer — indeed, as Trump pointed out the same — to Trump’s than to the Clinton — Obama free trade consensus. The Trump line that Biden just kept his policies, they were that good, does strike against a line that he came in and dismantled all those great things he did. It also misses a point in policy — Trump’s proposed tariffs for his term 2 — which proceeds to use them in replacement of the income tax — is an entirely different policy than the Trump term 1 / Biden tariffs, and subject to the criticism from — in this case more so than every time Trump brought the phrase up — “all of the” economists, every one of them calling it disastrous — now we move into Smoot / Hartley. “Whole massive tariffs are not the same as some” should be an easy concept to understand –never mind that Al Gore raising the spectre of Smoot and Hartley in his Larry King Show debate against Perot on behalf of NAFTA. I think I can point to this as plausibly the most erudite and coherent piece of the show — a thing in which we now experience an asymmetrical party response in regards to this lunacy.

It is darkly amusing to notice the advanced age of the two Democratic surrogates popping up on behalf of Biden, two figures who were in place as party leaders from the time of the Democratic triumph of 2006 on to the reshuffle of 2022. Pelosi and Clyburn, veering to the end of their careers. To be sure the hedging comes in — but it is 80 year olds propping up an 80 year old, the authorities of the Democratic Party.

Second terms stink in general. At best you can sneak into foreign policy, I guess — arguably based on his state of the union speech Biden’s trajectory of importance. I have been pondering the nineteenth century figures of James K Polk, Rutherford Hayes, and Chester Arthur — three presidents who waved away any seemingly a second term by their own volition. Truth be told, the model for Biden ought have been Arthur — as it does appear the perimeters of the presidency require moving through the motions of being up for re-election — and within the system Chester Arthur had he pretended to do so. Polk was effective (whether you care for his goals or not beside the point):despite declaring his intentions — may show the falsifying of the system’s norms happening even in the nineteenth century. Because my funny assessment is I think Biden is as president okay, even right now, but I am hard pressed to say that is the case too much longer — a team will have to take up more slack in the second term. In terms of winning — this is frankly a hard pull for swing vote Wisconsite. There is this guy making the rounds on cnn, with an oh so scientific approach presidential elections, the only one he ever got wrong, you see, that one in 2000. He says the Dems should stick with Biden, basing this on his oh so scientific numbers. Essentially Biden’s incumbency is worth some point or two, and lose that and the number dips. Sure. For all I know he’s right. But the formula works until it doesn’t. No one who makes a cap their campaign gimmick was ever going to win either. The reason for the pieces of the formula are not the pieces of the formula but what they represent. New variables pop in that work against the always firmly established variables. But The guy continues forth, history and political laws are fixed. It is the same with the great reminder of a convention fight, which at any rate is not liable to happen with this one. The year was 1968, and don’t you remember that? Sure. But LBJ was scrubbed away for any mention at that one. This one — Biden will be given a coronation and basically declared the Greatest President since FDR. Also, last I checked there really aren’t any yippies about outside except for a few cos-playing re-enactors. The thing this represents is not there. On the political numbers of Harris — who was Biden’s choice four years ago and the delegates are Biden / Harris — like it or not, There is a great extent in which they are going to run her this time anyway even if Biden is there — the nature of an 80something physically halting man who flubbed a debate beyond the excusable stuttering problem and who won because a significant part of the electorate thought “he will be fine for a term” — even as they never saw the next hoped part of the equation in having Republicans fold Trump away.

I have no clue what I am supposed to do with a poll question on “who won the debate?”. This is not Obama – – Romney, and even there an assessment does not particularly hold meaning. Sure. Romney was on his game in debate 1 where Obama was not. I guess Obama had other things on his mind than dropping any tightly focus grouped statement that could get clipped properly in newscasts. The problem right now is that in a same world, the hand wringing explosion in the Democratic Party would be mutual to the hand wringing explosion in the Republican Party. Trump was horrible, period. So on sixty-five percent saying Trump “won” this “debate”, it is a — yeah, I agree — he played the part of a pro wrestling heel better than Biden played his part.

Too cute by half, some Pennsylvania newspaper dropping an editorial saying Trump should drop out. There is a frame of reference I cannot quite get past a bubble with — something that comes out like in the second month of the Obama presidency the whole Fox News crew declaring Obama a man. “Way over his head” who we are the “mainstream media” “failed to vet”. Something like around 2004 trying to drop the name Judith Miller alongside the name Jayson Blair in NY Times scandals. They could not get that to stick; we could not get that to stick.

Lawrence O’Donnell casually suggested, in a longer screed, what would have happened had Biden had struck out to a concept of not running for re-election, sticking to one term — a concept implied by his running as a “bridge” with so many great Democratic Party leaders coming up in the next generation. Effectiveness would be zil. There is a problem, a sclerotic ossification problem alongside that of how impractical any money transfer would be to get to a late in the game shift of candidates. Yes. The example of June a “gotta dump this guy” hand wringing was Bill Clinton in 1992, and the example of a later one was Trump in 2016. Had no real reason for that in 1992 — Clinton just happened to be third in the polls in a party that won one fluke of a presidential election in the last six tries. Trump poses a more interesting question — one where you want to ask Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Mitt Romney in 2016 in those Access Hollywood days– if we could process-wise swap Pence in for Trump, would you take it? For that matter, lose the question for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — and give funny odds to them … 33 percent chance Trump wins, 50 percent Pence does. Frankly, I think Hillary is cynical enough to take the better odds with Trump.

Most indications are full speed ahead. The only slight counter-weight is the headline that “Biden is meeting with his family”, which is the first headline you would get For the purely hypothetical. With that, score, it is worth pointing out Trump did give Biden stuff to work with here. Yes, Biden wants to pivot off his debate (or put the word in quotes). But in order to do so you have to slide into it. If I were forBidden campaign, I would blanket the swing states with a tv ad, using footage from the big debate show. Trump saying some things. The Biden “malarky” attempted catch phrase. A “what the Hell are you talking about?”. You do have to use your paid media to put in a different narrative than the media. Don’t you?

Daniel Boorstein coined, or promulgated, the term “pseudo-event” on the 1960 Presidential debate. A contrived artiface because we need something to cover. Distorts the actual needs and reality of governing in its disconnect from anything. I think if we shuffled him into 2024 and had him view the big debate he would just shout himself and be done with it.

I am seventy-five percent of the opinion that Biden was the only person who was beating Trump in 2020. The problem and dilemma is it was a top tightly constructed majority, apt to fall apart and needing something else to step in. But the logic of his 2024 campaign stems from this sentiment. His political weaknesses are performative — he is too old for the performance aspect of the presidency, in a bizarre way may have benefited him and his party in putting him aside so the party could win some elections in the meantime. A failure of imagination abounds from two directions here. History will never forgive Mitch McConnell when he had the chance to axe Trump and uneasily but surely move on from him after the long set of Trump coordinated events that ended in the January 6 storming of the capitol. And the partisan logic should be sound, the basic premise that Lindsey Graham expressed: Trump was right in 2016, the man he needed to get things done, but isn’t now. He did a bad thing right now that tarnishes his great legacy, and we have to move on. But, taking a pulse that this does cause a rupture in the Republicans right then hopped up on Newsmax and getting swarmed over by Steve Bannon — he punted and rationalized that the courts will deal with it. Understand, politically it would have been rupture that would be taken care of by itself in short order. In gazing over Fox News coverage, it dawned on me that its Trump world coverage was no different from the first Bush term’s coverage for that man. Whatever you think of the dynamics, it points to a clean post Trump Republican future, possibly for Mitch one that’d be centered around some guy with fewer foreign policy objections than his who will “stand up to Russia”.

Biden’s stuttering got the best of him. Overwhelmed by misstatememts. I frequently knew what he meant and saw that he had progressed too far to successfully back up to clarify. In the realm of politics you are stuck having to view things in a lense of great swing state vote figures. And what I saw was a hurdle in performance Biden needed to cross in order to shove aside the coming constant cropped “vacant lost” image ads. Yes, Bush and Obama’s first debate sucked too — but there was no narrative for its meaning.

The basic hope lands on what has always been something I view as a bizarre strength from Biden’s weakness. The reason Democrats could win elections with Biden’s low approval ratings. For our great undecided in Wisconsin. Vote Trump in and he, and what you saw from him last night (isolate it away from Biden, and trust me, you did not like it), will be in your face constantly another four years. Biden, who you also did not like hearing, will largely disappear into the background. This was always the base argument anyways, though it easier with a better debate performance.

Never going to be able to forgive Mitch

Muttering to myself over the weekend a “what is this bullshit?”. The funny thing is the story is the Oklahoma legislator is taking up the bill of requiring the 10 Commandments get posted on all publically funded classrooms, K-university. They’ll get to privately funded institutes later, I assume. Walk into the Auto Shop garage, and you have to pin the 10 Commandments up there? At first I think “you got the state wrong. It was Louisiana.”. But then, Looking deeper – – no, it multiplies. Louisiana did it first. Texas and Oklahoma jump in from there. Every other red state will follow, I assume.

I watch a CNN or MSNBC segment. James Carville for the Democrats. I do not know who the Southern Republican is. He expresses an indifference which I find disingenuous. “I find it funny”. I think he is setting up a dichotomy — liberals have set up and pushing their agenda in the schools! “. Somewhere a school has that “Gender Queer” graphic novel that has an image of a penis — so to counteract that we gotta get this to get a better Overton Window.
For an argument the person lobs this is not religious – it is a historically important document. I am actually stuck on a simple question. Is it? Really? I am not sure it can be said to be that. I suppose History classes can toss up a poster on Code of Hammurabi next to one for The Magna Carta and on to the Treaty of Westphilia and the Declaration of Independence (which I think the 10-Commandment-heads stop at “their creator. See! It’s right there!”). Notwithstanding that the rules in the 10 Commandments are lousy ajudicating laws — not an issue in this frame of reference as the Code of Hummurabi is not anything we in the modern world wish to follow. But. Was this any legal guide-post of any variety for the governing authorities of Midevial Europe? No? So what is the flimsy rationalization on this? Why am I walking into Auto Shop class in Louisiana and needing to see the 10 Commandments next to a poster tacked up diagramming ignition parts?

Touring himself as the top rated late night show host — and in the current climate it does strike me that a weird advantage Republicans have in a double-edged sword manner is that the fixtures of late night talk show tv, Kimmel and Colbert, are way too easily sortable into Democratic fundraisers — I had a misguided long leash benefit of the doubt assessment on Greg Gutfeld. The problem I came up to was that the liberal sphere of the Internet, your Huffington Posts and Media Matters, on multiple occasions posted and alerted “outrageous” comments from him that were (1) not particularly partisan and (2) in a jocular vein, not particularly outrageous. Maybe if we make any steps in policy directions, you would have to modify it into some things more serious, but for the moment having to be earnest in all things in all times is not a way to live.

The second reason I had in punting toward a defense and assuming he is not just wrapped up as the bottom of the Fox News commentary machine was a kind of glib commentary on just how godawful conservative is, as represented by this show and especially graphics. I have gone through this in the band’s with the Babylon Bee, a sense that the only thing maybe unfunnier than it — if indeed the case — is this endless cries of just how unfunny it is and it violates these precepts of rules of funniness. In other words, it has a right to be unfunny, and be successful as something not funny, so what are the stakes here?

I had only watched 2 segments of his show. One had stupid analysis on the Republicans’ inability to get their Speaker in but whose stupidity was basically stupid in the way a Huffington Post article I saw at the time was. The Huffington Post article was that “Republicans need to do what women have always had to do — settle!” Half Clever if I squint, but just having any relationship to the situation at hand – – It was Marjorie Taylor Greene and a few others blowing the party leadership up, there was nowhere to “settle”. I can’t even recall what Gutfeld and crew were saying, but it has no foundation for analysis. The other segment I watched was a relatively well known in small circles horse shoe theory of a leftist reading off a “[this industry] gives [number] amount to Democrats, while only giving [amount minus however million] to Republicans, so I should vote Republican. [this industry] gives [number] amount to Republicans , while only giving [amount minus however million] to Democrats, so I should vote Democrat” list. I later watched him on YouTube going over his Ticket Carlson appearance, suggesting that at the tail end he friendly brought up a point of contention, though watching it I could not figure out the point in a gentle manner that allowed Carlson to wave away concern for the poor as “and it is just used as a political prop.” He is a convenient guy for Republicans to have on their shows.

In the past few days, I do see Gutfeld go over the bend and establish himself as just the partisan hack and back end of the Fox News message machine. He has on the G8 footage of Biden, wandering off, the full footage cropped. He rails on, that the Democrats should hope he — “that” — doesn’t win because because of by “shenanigans” Biden wins, how is anyone going to believe that “that” won? The answer is multitudinous. Enough people saw other things as well. The State of the Union speech. The contradictory message of the drugs Biden needs that will allow him to not doze to sleep in the debate. And somehow Gutfeld, sitting there in New York City, fails to see all the people who don’t like Trump. Gutfield sits on a rigorously scientific number of sixty-five percent that someone (Real Clear Politics) has of Trump winning, thinking it both irrefutable and more like one hundred percent. Today I see on YouTube an image I did not click on where the man is going to scoff at criticisms he has –there is a cringe-worthy enough phrase “adjective-fake” to situate the existence of cropped photos and out of context media. And maybe he does go to the full image in this one but suggest that it does not matter because God damned Biden looks old. But I am mostly struck by the unpleasant image he projects on this thumbnail. He really does look humorless, unpleasant, and unhappy. Different from dishonest, but now I see he is that as well.