in a whimper
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