proceed with cautious anandon
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?