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Say Anything, Joe. Anything at All.
I started the day gloomily thinking that last night’s debate was worse than useless. I’ve changed my mind.
Trump is Trump. He wins as Trump. He loses as Trump. If all his accomplishments (the astonishing progress made in bringing peace to the freakin’ Middle East?!) are not enough to persuade Never Trumpers, nothing Trump could’ve said or done last night would’ve done the trick. Had he conducted himself last night with peaceable, statesmanlike civility, he would have gained nothing but the startled alarm of viewers thinking they were watching a man having a stroke.
Trump should not try to appear to be other than he is and, anyhow, he can’t.
This is actually a huge advantage for the GOP, hard as that can be to remember. Pretending to be other than you are, even for a practiced liar, is hard work. Not only does Biden have to think carefully about which lies he is telling to what audience, his handlers have to monitor and remember too. They don’t just have to spin Biden’s gaffes, they often have to spin them in both directions at the same time.
“No, he’s not going to implement the Green New Deal/of course he’s going to implement the Green New Deal!” “Joe Biden loves America for all her flaws!/ Joe knows that this country is systemically racist!” et cetera, et-exhaustingly-cetera.
Contrary to popular belief, conservatives are a lot more tolerant than prog-lefties. Trump has latitude a Democrat could only dream of. Religious social conservatives cut him some slack on his sins, fiscal conservatives aren’t savagely attacking him for not tackling the deficit and, however much the Never Trumpers loathe Trump, he isn’t leading a party in which a significant minority has proven itself eager to, and I quote, “burn the system to the ground.” Expletives deleted.
Moderates mostly dislike Trump because Trump is Trump, and also because of abortion. This is why Never Trumpers get along so nicely with moderate Democrats; they basically are moderate Democrats. That’s not an insult–I was a moderate Democrat myself once. I get it.
The alt-left is very different. Disgruntled Bernie Bros, critical-theorists, identitarians, wanna-be dismantlers of Western culture, 1619 anti-racists … they have soaked the discursive landscape in gasoline and are standing by, matches lit, waiting for Biden to say the wrong thing. There are many, many wrong things.
The Biden campaign has obviously decided the best strategy is for him to avoid saying…anything. That way, voters can project onto him whatever they most want to believe. If you’re a rational, pragmatic moderate who longs for civility…so is Biden! If you’re AOC and Co., Biden’s just a puppet who, thanks to his own and Jill’s overweening ambition, can be manipulated into turning America into a Woke-Socialist Utopia.
There were some openings that, in my humble opinion, Trump missed. For instance, Biden’s “you’ve been in the bunker” jab (a golf thing) could so easily have been met with “Where have you been, Joe? You’ve been in the basement all summer long!” and then have called Chris Wallace to witness: “Chris, didn’t I talk with you, on the record, for two hours in the hot sun? Why hasn’t Joe done a two-hour interview with you?”
The “nobody goes to Biden’s events” was fine, but it’s not just that nobody goes to Biden’s campaign events; it’s that he doesn’t have them. Again, not (just) because he’s old, frail, gaffe-prone, and incoherent, though he’s all of that and more, but also because the campaign can’t afford to have him saying anything. To anyone.
It’s not (just) that Biden is a liar. Of course, he is. His problem–the Democrat’s problem–is that his candidacy consists of one truth and two lies. “I’m not Trump” (true), plus lies that not only directly contradict each other, but must somehow be told, convincingly, to two groups who share the same metaphorical and sometimes physical space: moderate, longing-for-normalcy Democrats, and the Alt-Left.
Of the two major factions, the moderates are marginally more flexible. They find Biden’s old shtick–“working-class Joe”–comforting. The alt-left? Well, “working-class Joe” doesn’t fly with people who don’t even know what a “lunch bucket” is, and for whom the term “working man” conjures privileged, oppressive white male construction workers (which is to say, ick).
The alt-left is not interested in The Workers, only in The Marginalized. In their worldview, there is no room for compromise and no grace for error. Joe Biden is already a Rich Old White Male. He can be useful…but he is despised. And if he strays too far from what the Alt-Left considers to be The Truth, they will abandon him and his expedient strategy of [temporary! Only temporary!] accommodation, and burn the system to the ground, or at least singe it around the edges.
Given all of that, the best thing that happened last night was that Biden was forced to say something–anything. He had to say something about the Green New Deal. He did not endorse it. Biden was forced to say something about law enforcement. He expressed lukewarm, ineffectual support.
Ironically or perhaps poetically, given that the left has made all speech, all debate, all dialectic dangerous … it is Biden, not Trump, who has to walk on eggshells. It is dangerous for Biden to speak. At all. Everyone in the Democratic coalition has good reason to be deeply suspicious of Biden, and to be alert for signs that he will betray them (which he will, in an arhythmic heartbeat).
In a just and rational world, Chris Wallace would’ve asked Biden when he completed a program in anti-racism training and what he learned. That’s not going to happen, but the next time Biden brings up anything to do with race (which he shall), Trump should ask Biden this. Or even just ask Biden if he–Biden–is a racist. As in “Joe, you’re a rich old white guy just like me. Are you racist?” Then he should (if he can) close his mouth and let Biden talk.
He can’t say anything. Even if his brain was working properly, it would not be able to produce the right answer because there isn’t one.
The debates aren’t about policies and plans. The debates are about debate–about who gets to have and express an opinion and why. Race, privilege, speech itself…these aren’t land mines in the ground, they are the ground, plowed, cultivated, planted, and guarded by the people who will…or won’t...vote for Biden. Not only for the sake of his campaign, but for the sake of the country, Trump should force Biden onto that ground, keep him there, and keep him talking.
Published in Elections
Yeah, I thought the same thing myself. But the rest is spot-on.
When Bob Dole ran for President he tried to be someone he wasn’t. Thus, he came across as stuffy & boring. After he lost I watched him on The Tonight Show. He was funny, entertaining, even lovable. I remember thinking, if he had only been himself during the campaign he would have own.
I don’t get it. There are members of a credentialed elite who suspect that their credentials don’t meant all that much “in the arena”. That’s a form of insecurity that Trump — according to the author — exploits. Seems to fit the words from wikipedia link, specifically these: is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments or talents and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”.
For me, the problem with the article was that it reminded me of all the claims that Trump plays 4-D chess.
Imposter syndrome is where the “journalists” secretly know they are frauds and are afraid of being caught.
This is the opposite – they’re frauds, but they’re absolutely convinced that they’re not.
Plausible, but I think you give them too much credit. I think they know they are frauds in the sense that they know they are not reporters but rather are engaged in what is called “advocacy journalism” and they are afraid that Trump is exposing them.
Right. That’s what crossed my mind. They actually think they’re doing good work, when everyone knows they’re just stupid children with laptops.
How reporters see themselves:
How they really are:
I watch His Girl Friday at least once a year. Real commentary and Rosalind Russell. Sweet.
It came out of the feminism studies departments, and it originally referred to women who had all the credentials but still felt that they didn’t belong at the level of their profession they were at. They were qualified but felt unqualified. The business world women adopted it to describe the frequently occurring phenomena of women who were promoted and didn’t feel they deserved it or belonged there and were chronically uncomfortable in their new position.
The people in Washington seem to have the opposite problem–they think their credentials mean they know everything about everything and no one else has right to an opinion.
Is it possible that Trump was already in the beginning stages of the China Flu infection? I love when Trump fights back, but he must wait for the clear time and space so that people can understand and see his jabs. Otherwise, it does become mumbled jibberish. That is why people who read the transcript, as @michaelkennedy points out,have a much different impression of the debate then those who only listened.
Trump was in a debate structured for him to respond and address questions. There is no “fighting” to be done. At best he was rude, at worst a bully.
I would really love it if he would do the job of president of the entire country.
I do not agree. Debates happen when people discuss issues. Trump was in a fight set up by Chris Wallace’s instigation.
P.S.
You are not the only person that can isolate a phrase out of someone’s statement with the purpose of distorting their meaning. Not all that clever.
He is that, and you don’t like it.
If you mean you wish everybody loved him, you might want to think more carefully about what that would mean.
Ari Fleisher pointed out that Slow Joe interrupted first. The President refused to go quietly as Paul Ryan did years ago. There is nothing more to it than that. Well, Wallace was biased and incompetent.
Trump is the president as he was elected. He is not doing the job. He has identified good states and bad states, and people love him because he fights. His job is to lead.
You seem to have missed a lot of what he’s accomplished.
Here’s a nice list. Here’s another.
Do you think he did all that just for the “good states”?
Ending wars in the middle east and negotiating peace — just for the “good states”?
Bringing jobs back from overseas, big boost to manufacturing — just for the “good states”?
There’s so much more. Just because the “bad states” are too bitter to accept the good doesn’t mean he’s only working for the “good states.”
There are in fact badly run states. California is arguably one of them and it went 2 to 1 for Clinton in 2016. Yet Governor Newsom has consistently praised the President for his support to California. Did you not get the memo?
Perhaps. It’s a little difficult to know, at the moment, because whatever Trump could be or do, Biden is also Biden and always has been. And the left is the left…and always has been. So what we end up with is Trump, and a debate in which one of the contenders is Trump being Trump, and the other contender is…well, Biden. Being Biden. Tell all your proglefty friends: if Trump wins this time around, then for 2024 can you please, please someone who isn’t a nasty, repulsive, corrupt human being? Maybe someone who has done something other than politics?
Of all people, proglefty activist and author Shaun King has a piece in his newsletter about Biden’s, um, flexible relationship with truth.
https://shaunking.substack.com/p/2-truths-and-31-lies-joe-biden-has Current and former elected officials in Delaware told me that it is an open secret among them that Joe Biden is a serial pathological liar when it comes to his “work” in the Civil Rights Movement and that he has told such lies, for so long, so many times, that it is an unwritten rule in Delaware that one must hold their nose and go along with them or risk being ostracized in such a small, close-knit political community. He is a legend there – and crossing him is akin to political suicide.
Are you upset that Trump isn’t the authoritarian dictator you thought he would be?
He is doing the job he was elected to do. Imperfectly, but he’s doing it. I suspect that if you got more specific you would see the flaws in your blanket statements and would modify them somewhat.