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Day 114: COVID-19 Bill Kristol’s Fevered Dream
One of the most fearful aspects of COVID-19 is whether it could really deliver the presidency into the hands of Nancy Pelosi. This isn’t as farfetched as I truly wish it to be; both the President and the Vice President at ages 73 and 60 respectively are in an age range at higher risk. Both men’s vitality is evident so even if infected would not in and of itself trigger Bill Kristol’s fantasy. And this is just Kristol’s latest ploy. Earlier he was fantasizing about the 25th Amendment removal of Trump:
But Mike Pence has been stubbornly loyal, so now it is up to COVID-19 to make Bill Kristol’s dreams come true. No, an infection is insufficient, it has to be a full-blown case that renders both Trump and Pence truly done. Maybe that is why Nancy is carefully keeping herself outside of Washington. She can only dream her dark dreams from her redoubt in Napa. At 80 she is significantly more at risk of a very bad case of COVID-19 should she become infected.
But let’s step back and examine another route to the presidency for Nancy. Well, not the one who holds one hand and places the other on the Bible and takes the President’s oath, but the power behind the throne. Does anyone think that Biden will be doing anything should he succeed in taking up residence in the White House. I don’t, and I think 99.9% of Democrats don’t either. Do they take comfort that it would be Nancy pulling the strings? (I am assuming that if Biden wins the Presidency, the Democrats will hold the House.)
You say, what about Chuck Schumer? Has anyone else noticed that Nancy, not Chuck, is managing the Democratic caucus in the Senate? And even if the Democrats took over the Senate, Chuck will still be walking 5 paces behind Nancy. So in the Biden-Pelosi-Schumer trinity, Nancy rules supreme.
But what about that strong woman (of color?) that Biden has promised to pick as his VP? Won’t she have something to say about Nancy ruling the roost? After all, isn’t that gender-appropriate VP nominee the Democrat “insurance policy” for the November election lest voters worry about dottering Joe? Well, pretty much all the high profile women not named Michelle have already crashed and burned. Some of them have already lost to Joe meaning they have tested public acceptance and have been found wanting. Does Nancy even care who the Vice President is, if it isn’t Michelle? I don’t think so. She feels quite secure that she can manage anything she deigns important whatever Democrat sits in the Oval Office, so long as her name isn’t Michelle.
But what if Andrew Cuomo or some other Democrat governor becomes the presidential nominee after Sleepy Joe is pushed persuaded to step aside? That could be a problem for Nancy, and one of the reasons that I think Nancy will do everything to ensure that Joe stays on the ticket. Because it is her ticket if the COVID-19 crisis works out the way Nancy wants it to; not with Trump and Pence sidelined, but that the Democrats can depress the economy to get their 270 electoral votes.
That seems all right with Bill Kristol, even though he would prefer Nancy to accede to the presidency at an earlier date.
But Bill should remember that the dystopian future that he would abet, may not be kind to him. Becoming a made man in Nancy’s kingdom can be fraught with danger:
[Note: Links to all my COVID-19 posts can be found here.]
Published in General
He’s just puckish. If you like fat Pucks. Whether you like your labiodental consonants fricative or plosive.
I don’t regret that at all. It was clearly needed to have a check on Trump. The next thing that is going to happen is that the Dems are going to take the Senate.
In 2018, we lost women, the college educated, the young and the suburbs.
Now we are losing the elderly. In the 2016 election, Trump won voters over the age of 65 by 7 points, 52% to 45%. Trump is now losing with voters over the age of 65 by 15 points, 57% to 42%! That is a 22 point swing, as the elderly perceive that Trump will sacrifice their health in his headlong rush to open at any cost.
Sooner or later, the Republican Party will rid itself of the Trump menace. But until then, the American people will reject the Republican Party.
Vance,
You have stated the essence of this. We should call this “The Richards Political Exclusion Principle”. Write it up, maybe we can get it published in Nature.
Regards,
Jim
I’d still be interested to know what the post-election strategy of Kristol and others at The Bulwark in general is, in terms of having any relevancy in the 2024 or future election cycles.
If they were to get their wish — President Biden — they’d be made to own anything a Biden Administration does, including the appointment of Supreme Court justices. That would leave them either having to support wacky-but-lovable Uncle Joe and his gang of progressive rapscallions, which would then make it a bit hard to spearhead a run against him in ’24; or they’d have to act shocked and appalled that the guy they backed in 2020, who pandered to the progressive wing of his party during the campaign, is now pandering to the progressive wing of his part as president.
That wouldn’t show really great judgment, and I seriously doubt too many GOP voters will accept the excuse “We only supported Biden because Trump made us do it.” Their best course would have been to shut their Twitter pie-holes for the 2020 election cycle while trying to find a candidate they could support who could bridge the gap between their (at best) decorum conservatism and the Trump style in 2024. Instead, they’ve doubled down on their Trump hatred, and likely have borrowed the plan of South Park’s Underpants Gnomes on how this is all going to work out perfectly for them:
Correct on both counts. But Bill Kristol is no longer a man of the right. Not when he promotes a corrupt Biden who would take the United States into socialism over a man whom, however flawed, had carried the conservative agenda further than any President than Reagan. I know there are lot of former conservatives who pretend otherwise, but supporting Biden supports socialism.
Also, a lot of the stuff advocates verges on conspiracy theory – including this tweet. The CoC has something to say about that.
You mean like they did in California on Tuesday?
For every dollar you send to The Lincoln Project, 92 cents of it goes directly into the pockets of its members.
The other eight cents is spent on these poorly-designed, nearly unreadable billboards. (Made by Angela in MS Word!)
Or Wisconsin on Tuesday?
At best, Kristol’s tweet if you think it through calls for Trump and Pence to become comatose or at the very least, so mentally and physically disabled by COVID they’re crippled for life.
At worst, he wants them both dead.
If you asked him, he’d probably do the old Jon Stewart “Clown nose on/clown nose off” bit and say the tweet was just a joke if he was called out on it. But even among the ‘soft’ #NeverTrump crowd, Bill’s become if not a pariah, then someone they don’t want to get to close to, less they get tarred with some of his crazier statements over the past three years.
C’mon! You gotta have some sympathy for Cap’n Bill! His Cruise Ship business is floundering due to the Commie Flu!
My god, that looks likes some of the unintelligible protest signs angry left-wingers used to carry around during the Vietnam era, where you had to get within two feet of the sign and study it for five minutes to figure out exactly what they’re trying to say. At this rate, the Lincoln Project people will be protesting in the streets of Charlotte with giant paper mache puppet heads of deformed Donald Trump by convention time.
I don’t think they cared much about the quality of their product, as much as the quantity of their donations.
The amount of graft would make a Mafia Don blush.
He’s making a joke, y’all. Let’s not lose our sense of humor.
The Wrath of Kristol.
Problem is he’s been tossing out knee-slappers like this one for the better part of three years, where the punch line goes against all the things he said he supported, and all the people he supposedly opposed, until Trump came around….
Now we are losing the elderly.
Funny how they keep getting intubated.
He is a joke, y’all. Let’s not pretend Kristol has anything positive to contribute to conservatism.
The Wisconsin seat was a hold and not a flip – which means never-Trumpers will say that was “just to be expected.” They cannot use that excuse in California.
It’s an interesting part of the lawyer/political class in that the Constitution (and law in general) is merely something to be manipulated in order to get what one wants. It’s been a four year nonstop public performance of wishcasting and what-ifs.
The only thing that makes our democracy work is the idea that once voters have expressed their opinion at the ballot box then the losers agree to accept the results. While the anti-Trump forces prattle on about the damage POTUS is allegedly doing to “the norms,” these people wallow in blissful ignorance of the damage they are perpetuating. Because removal and replacement, especially one that involves shifting power from one party to the other, goes beyond being “the loyal opposition.”
True. Although when Duffy won originally it was a flip. Nobody thought the 7th District would ever turn Red. Obey held that seat for 40 years. So Democrats assumed they could get it back. I think they’re surprised that the shift toward the Republican Party appears to be permanent.
I also suspect that a big motivation in the 7th District was sticking a thumb in Gov. Tony Evers’ eye. The rural 7th District has few cases of the Commie Flu, yet was as locked down as the rest of the state, and the economy of the 7th District relies on having booming summer business to get through the winter.
Curious how in Kristol’s scenario there’s no question of Pelosi self-quarantining. Does COVID-19 only infect Republicans?
Sort of true. Normally when you have an old bull of the House leave, the seat often changes to the other party and stays with the other party. That is because the voters know having a powerful member of Congress represent them is a good thing. But once the Representative leaves, they choose someone of their preference. A good example was Jerry Ford’s house seat which went Democrat in the special election after he became Vice President or Martin Frost’s seat in Texas. Both flipped to the other party (Democrat for Ford, Republican for Frost) after long being in the other party.
Generally the constituency has been shifting to the other party for years, but they keep the dog they know.
CA-25 was held by Buck McKeon and Steve Knight for years, until the Dems won with Hill in 2018. That race went from being talked about as a sign of whether or not the 2018 Blue wave was still in effect to being a sign of nothing in particular after Garcia won by double digits on Tuesday, because that was not in the forecast — the prognosticators were calling for a narrow GOP win, while holding out hope that Smith might somehow pull out a victory.
Yeah, we sound kind of silly when we rail against someone who is clearly speaking in jest. Even if you don’t like Kristol, and you disagree with his stance on Trump, just roll your eyes and move along.
You can be critical of Trump without endorsing Pelosi e.g. Jonah Goldberg.
Indeed, one can also be critical of a President without fantasising about (admittedly constitutional) scenarios for removing that President from office without the need for an election or an impeachment trial. It’s an admission that you have zero faith in the voters, and maybe even in legitimate representative governance at all.
It wasn’t generally well-received when prominent conservatives/Republicans would muse publicly about ways to remove President Obama from office without an election, and I can’t think of any prominent conservatives/Republicans musing about fantasy scenarios where they could do it without impeachment (although unconstitutional methods were certainly was mused about by various fringe nobodies on the Interwebz).
It’s true, Kristol really has become one of those personalities who utterly depends on his detractors to maintain his pageviews.
Hammer,
Normally, I would agree with you. However, when someone has a very odd sense of humor once in a while you can just dismiss it. However, when someone over and over seems to be attacking somebody gratuitously, even if it’s humorously, and is completely tone-deaf to the gross deficiencies of the other side of the coin, you start to really wonder. We’ve had 3.5 years of Bill’s problem with Trump. Somehow he doesn’t really think that the long train of conspiratorial abuses by Pelosi and the Dems requires him to condemn them. Only if he can take a cheap shot at Trump in the same paragraph will he gently put them in their place (their place after the last 3.5 years should really be about the 5th rank of Hell.)
So I can’t agree with you.
Regards,
Jim
Bill Kristol has no fixed principles except worship of the almighty dollar. For a time it served his financial interests to give lip service to conservative views. The Weakly Standard was simply his brochure for selling cruises to the dupes like some kind of Beltway travel agent. When that folded, he had to find another way to part the gullible from their money. He noticed that many of the Very Wealthy DC Establishment Types didn’t like President Trump, and he decided to use TDS as a means for making money.
It’s working, I guess. There are still enough gullible people out there. But this can’t last. It’s anyone’s guess what fake “principles” he’ll settle on next to make a few bucks, and get himself booked on the news channels as their pet “Good Republican,” but it’s time for people to wake up and see him for the grifter he is.
The sad part is that there are too many just like him operating in the swamp. No principles at all except what will make them some money.
I want Nancy Pelosi to be president of Bill Kristol’s homeowners association. Gotta problem with that?