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.

There is a clever thing which has cropped into the Trump stump speech, that whose dynamics seem to elude the Democrats who drop it into the litany of Trump “telling us who he is”. The quotation is along the lines of “I don’t care about any of you; I just want your vote.” It is the cynical awareness of much of most of Trump’s voters – – transactional politics. Arguably in the case of “public servants” and the high-minded manner politics has been discourses the premise is a double-digit sword — one person sticking their finger in the wind is another’s listening to the public. This is not precisely what is going on with Trump — here and there it is what you have on policies of pandering with just about another president and most politicians — but its hard edged double edged sword is still the same result.

The effect is that when Biden offers one bottom-line assessment on Trump, shown in the latest ads — “Trump’s only in it for himself” — which, to be sure, is a good line of attack — no other president in American history has as all encompassing a personalized ego-driver of purpose for governance — there is an eye-rolling response for it. Yeah. That’s what he said. And it is both kidding and serious, in the guise of both kidding and serious. Such is the logic of President Trump.

I guess the more honest lowest common denominator pitch, something agreeable to whatever dearth of 2020 Trump voters that Biden feels he needs to gain, and which more weird waverers of “Biden so old” youth and inflation gaspers could comprehend — then the “Something broke” line is that Trump has lost the script. Or. Mag a has lost the script. Thinking this in terms of the dark insight of Steve Bannon — giving his listeners and followers a mission, point, storyline to their lives. Think of it back to Trump’s 2016 campaign and the fatal flaw of Hillary Clinton’s bumper sticker and campaign slogan — “I’m with her”. Trump’s 2024 line is “I’m your retribution” — which is directionally correct — “I’m for you” not “you’re with me” — but a step beyond his old message, enough to wander back to Hillary’s slogan even if it binds some supporters into followers.

Think back to some legitimate issue that your JD Vances had as something ignored and somewhat propped up by the coastal elites into the downtrodden rural Americans. The Opoid epidemic. The medical establishment prescribes drugs off of a profit motive and hooks patients to this mind-number. You can do a flow chart and dwell however deeply you desire for conspiracy to wrap it into. But it fits a script that Trump 2016 can walk into. He is still for you. 8 years later, you are needing to write all the complications into the storyline. And the question — what is he fighting for anymore on your behalf? — is unanswerable. The cause is a personal vendetta against shared enemies, theoretically, but everyone knows why Judge Merchan is his enemy — why is he yours? Do you have a traffic infraction you need him to rectify?

So goes something Biden and Democrats ought pound. The script that has some sense to it in 2016 is incoherent now.

Today we have word that Biden wandered off to say “hi” to some soldiers at a G7 meeting. The soldiers cropped out in conservative media. And, well, you can say that Biden does look old in both the cropped and uncropped version of events, as German chancellor taps him on the shoulder — to get the photo done pronto.

The question I stare at considering the “Lowest Common Denominator” line pitch from the Biden campaign against Trump — the spate of ads that has it that “something snapped” in Trump after losing in 2020 — is “To what extent do I agree with it?”. Some. Some not. The metaphor is probably off even in the “some” case, as that would suggest a clearer demarcation than what we have and what is the problem of January 6 — it could only be true if there had not been a long set up before the election to declare victory on election night, and it could only be true if Hillary Clinton’s points in the 2016 debates on his refusal to accept the results of his Reality tv award non results were not something that happened. Continuations are not breaks.

It is a theory of an election. Latino and Black men and Youths are shading off from Biden. The younger cohort of Generation Alpha or Zoomers are more Republican than their older cohorts — Trump has always been the normalized for them never knowing how absurd this reality is, they became radicalized during civid playing video games, have a natural desire to rebel against their older siblings, the Democratic Party standard bearer looks his old age and is easily cropped to tik tok as in farcical ways to accentuate it, and they never experienced the Cult of Obama. The landing bridge off of a handful of 2020 Trump voters needs to be smooth. See too that the one splash of attention Biden gave during the big trial redirected attention to the case not coming — Robert De Niro was not about to dwell on something broadly viewable as “paid money to shut up a poem actress” — the seaminess a good shield from the crime, the crime of you want to bother with it a tad too white collar in nature.

The gamble of the election campaign line. Frankly, my gauge it is successful into November. But then the dumb question is — can, at long last, Trump go away, or be made to do so? I have my doubts. And we go through this stupid game yet again, with a few more of those undertones of the electorate make up exposed.