Is there anyone I want to hear less from lecturing on overheated political rhetoric than this current iteration of elected made-themselves-high-profile Republican politicians? Josh Hawley. Yeah, sure. Throw out the fist as he walks out to the throngs on the nation’s capitol on January 6. I see the headline for Lindsey Graham on his Sunday morning junket. “Soul searching” time. Sure. Consult your statements from 2015 into 2016, consult the statements from right after January 6, compare to between those two points and after the second point, and heal thyself.

I stop at the 3 minute mark on of President Biden’s speech, wrapping my mind on how this will be viewed in partisan terms, a quick litany of flashpoints which skew heavily Republican and has as the central issue… in my mind the central issue on this election… January 6. It sits as the albatross, violent rhetoric leading in and leading out of it. And all we have besides is anyone restating Trump’s words with an upward inflection now in Josh Hawley’s line of… What are the liberal intellectual chattering classes teeming this … “Schosastic violence” or some such? Skip a few minutes further, the stumbling Biden has to stop himself before he says “make America Great Again”. He then speaks “getting out of our silos”, foreign actors pumping misinformation. I sense how this is going to read… Sliding out of a demand for both-siderism even as he really has no choice.

The convention of Republicans come tomorrow. They have Haley speaking now. There may be an interesting pivot, a sense that Trump has that he is this close. Marco Rubio just may be the meaningless vice presidential pick, someone to convince not liking Trump Republicans that if we can just hold on a little longer. Or maybe we will just let Haley fully embarrass herself further and call it a day.

I was wanting to return to the great debacle of a debate and pluck out something middlingly substantive from the wreckage. Just for giggles, mainly. I did tease out the funny thing on the Trump – Biden tariff policy splitting away from the Clinton – Bush – Obama policy, and the reality that Trump 2.0 is not Trump – Biden on this. No one much cares, but it is good to force high minded thoughts.I

I can say that the foreign policy press conference was maybe the most impressive pile of substance I have seen in my lifetime. I am not heading on a curve. There was one bothersome point that legitimately feeds the narrative, and the couple found that shouldn’t but get the attention. Maybe there is some Clinton presser over The Northern Irish Peace Accords I am missing, some thing of great import that has no electoral meaning in the States. The total effect is, upon reflection, a realization of just why the old man does not want to hand it over to Harris — International relations, too important, he is “uniquely situated’, though again electorally I don’t see the sell.

And Donald Trump joins Gabby Giffords and Steve Scailise. To be perfectly bi-partisan. Bring two of them for that purpose. What of Many Pelosi’s husband? Now I would need a Republican to off-set again. The former president is shot. Yes, this is where the dictum of “never read the bottom half of the Internet” comes in. Lately, in pursuing of various clips relating to Democrats and Biden, I can’t help but think what I see there is a pie of bs. Rosenberg, that Democratic Party optimist who “predicted there would be no red wave in 2022” . The darkly comic note you see is he had moved “The Democrats Can Win!” from his earlier ” advantageous position when all the chips are out forward. Rather be us than them!”. Some chips have been shoved forward, and the ball is fumbled. Nothing changes. The Russian bots, he says, are flooding the zone playing both sides on Biden. All furious on the other side in Democratic politics. It is kind of curious to see YouTube commenters — because, it is fathom some of them as being real. Things end up stilted. The problem, of course, is this is the nature of partisan politics. Fake! Real! All the same. Today I stumble on the “Trump goes up ten percent!”. Sure. ” MSNBC and CNN have some explaining”. Uh huh. The partisan rejoinder is obvious. Biden condemned political violence here. Trump — January 6 — the end — that is your split screen on that one. Even though last we saw Romney didn’t want to talk about that when going on with his Republican caucus to greet the man…

Partisan rejoinder on that is… Antifa (you know, the guys who smashed Multnomah Democratic Party headquarters post election 2020l, Floyd Protests (list of stories of people charged with crimes within it always ignored in these venues.)

There is one moment in the news clip that is disconcerting and scary. Flip the script and I cannot figure this gesture on behalf of a Democratic politician, or for that matter anyone but Trump. The crowd in the chaos of the scene, Trump offers reasonably a salutary fist raising. And some men in the crowd shoot into the camera frame. Stick out the middle finger. All right then.

I would want to venture into the conspiracy corner of things, but they are all in for Trump these days. Kind of ironically, the conspiracy Yahoos pre-Order assassination would have zero use for him. I wonder what it takes to do a 180 flip for anyone anything anywhere right now.

A very substantive press conference where the old man flubs a couple or a few — two of three maybe — things. They are clear what he is saying in context, and you are left with the sensation that a head of state will quickly correct him and they can be on the way. Vice president Putin. Yeah, sure, Trump is tweeting (or whatever his social media deal is) immediately, but that is an eyeroll.

There are a few other things that were more disconcerting — his not infrequent tic of quickly wrapping up a statement as he veered off course does show the problems of age beyond the performative.

I am trying to figure of the substance actually matters to those magical swing voters. Some elderly Reagan – Bush Republicans or Haley voters who cannot help notice Biden stands with that International order they once supported and Trump has some other International Order in mind. That is basically what any substance in the press conference comes down to. Them and maybe a broad swarth who want something more on the ball than Trump and unsure now if Biden represents six of one and half a dozen of the other in some after a bit too high minded for grappling details on — the great “ball being on” concern this comes down to.

Apparently the Republicans and Trump are thinking, dreaming of, “landslide”. Why — there is an outlier poll that has New York in play! They are, of course, high. At the other side, Chris Matthews has that weird rah rah evocation of Harry Truman. And you might as well evoke Rocky — the problem with Rocky is he lost.

Actually there is a contingent of conspiracy mongerers who will clip one thing out of the mouth of Biden — even less substantial and more unimportant than his “Vice President Putin” stumbling. The Great Not Great Communicator mishandled “Pandemic”. He said “Plandemic”. Robert F Kennedy Jr supporters are high-fiving righteously in a “see! It’s right there!” chorus.

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.