Who's the scandal?
Well, another day has passed in this in interminable waiting game we’re playing about President Joe Biden. It was fairly busy today, at least on the side that has been pushing rather than pulling. Someone said about Nancy Pelosi’s appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning, that between the lines of saying that it’s up to Joe Biden whether he stays in the race, she left plenty of air for anyone to read into it anything they want. I rather thought she was simple and direct: It is up to Biden, because it’s not up to the naysayer chorus among the TwitterX-stained wretches of the media.
Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, however, would beg to differ. He announced on CNN that because of his many years in politics — he was appointed to the Senate to fill a vacant seat in 2009 and was elected in 2010 and reelected twice — he knows something none of the rest of us yet know, that Donald Trump is going to win the election in November if Joe Biden is his opponent. “Donald Trump is on track, I think, to win this election and maybe win it by a landslide and take with him the Senate and the House,” Bennet said on CNN. “So for me, this isn’t a question about polling, it’s not a question of politics. It’s a moral question about the future of our country, and I think it’s critically important for us to come to grips with what we face if, together, we put this country on the path of electing Donald Trump again.”
Isn’t it nice that Senator Bennet has that all figured out? So have six…or is it 8…or maybe it’s now 10…members of the House, who have all come out over the last few days and told the world that they, too, know who’s going to win in November unless Joe Biden gives up his run for the presidency and someone — anyone — else steps in and runs against Trump in his place.
This is what we’ve been doing for the last week and a half since Biden’s halting and lackluster performance in his debate with Donald Trump in Atlanta: marveling at the flapping wings of the punditocracy as they flutter about trying to outdo each other with clever lines Peter Baker of the New York Times deployed after the debate, barely waiting for Biden to walk off the stage before he quoted “a veteran Democratic strategist who has staunchly backed Mr. Biden publicly”: “Biden is about to face a crescendo of calls to step aside. Joe had a deep well of affection among Democrats. It has run dry.”
Not to be outdone, Puck published a conversation between their two big heavy hitters, Peter Hamby and John Heilman the very next day. “Minutes after the CNN presidential debate on Thursday night,” the Puck piece began, Hamby and Heilman recorded their insta-punditry for the ages by sitting down before a couple of microphones and going through tweets they had received during the debate. Not after, during.
Hamby got the ball rolling with this one: “I’ll read one. He has to drop out. He should have fucking dropped out a long time ago when every fucking person said that he should have. That was 30 minutes into the debate. Then the conversation moved to whether he should drop out before the convention, whether he should freeze delegates committed to him from the primaries. And then: What if it’s Kamala? Kamala can’t win. There’s a total rabbit hole of panic among Democratic professionals.”
Then it was Heilman’s turn. He wanted everyone to know that he didn’t have just one strategist in his Twitter feed. He had lots:
“Tonight in my text messages, a very senior strategist said the panic will start tomorrow. And I texted that to another very senior strategist, who texted back, Wrong, the panic is starting now. I texted one of the richest people in America, a huge Biden supporter, who has had Biden to his house relatively recently. I asked, How many Democrats, elected Democrats or people in your category of wealth, are texting you tonight talking about needing another nominee? And he said, Everyone. It’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen before. I’m on the floor. If we don’t change the nominee, the race is over. Now, you can say that’s hair on fire. But I have at least a half-dozen Democratic senators in my text threads, and about 15 members of the House, and a bunch of really, really rich Democratic donors, and all of them are asking, What options do we have? How would this work? This is a complete calamity.”
Well, that’s it then. It’s over. When you’ve got “one of the richest people in America” whispering in your ear, and when you’ve got “at least a half-dozen” Senators you can tap-tap-tap into your phone to get comments during the debate, shit man, it was over before the debate had even started. These insider media-mongers were so all-over-it, they didn’t have to actually watch the debate. They could just check their TwitterX feed to see what their friend thought. That was good enough for them.
All that was less than 24 hours after the debate. Incredibly, it kept up like this for the next 12 days. By this morning, it was Mark Leibovich’s turn. The former tea leaf reader for the D.C. bureau of the New York Times, currently picking up his paycheck at The Atlantic, Leibovich wrote a insolent piece for his magazine called, “C’mon, Man,” using Biden’s now-famous riposte to Trump in his first debate in 2020 as he took a pundit-dump on the President. “Never underestimate the destructive power of a stubborn old narcissist with something to prove,” wrote Leibovich, wielding his youthful narcissism with rapier-like skill. “President Joe Biden, 81, is acting like one of history’s most negligent and pigheaded leaders at a crucial moment,” he continued, giving the rapier a twist, just in case we missed his youthful brilliance in his first line.
I could go on like this for another couple thousand words, quoting the Media Political Establishment as they have picked over what they now see as the carcass of our sitting Democratic President.
But instead of doing that, let’s let Joe Biden speak for himself, and compare him to his opponent, Donald Trump, about whom we have heard barely a peep from the pundit class over the past week and a half. So without further ado, here is President Joe Biden speaking to members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in Harrisburg, PA, on Sunday:
Just for the hell of it, let’s contrast Biden’s remarks in Harrisburg to what Donald Trump had to say last night at a rally held at one of his golf clubs in Doral, Florida, yesterday. The photo below was taken at the rally.
Below are posted some of Trump’s remarks as compiled by the indispensable Aaron Rupar, along with links to clips he posted on TwitterX:
"A waitress came over, beautiful waitress, and I never like talking about physical. She's beautiful inside. Because you never talk about a person's look. Ever. You never mention it. The other day I got very angry. Some man called Chris Christie fat. And I said, 'sir!' And then he said he was a pig. I said, 'sir! Chris Christie is not a fat pig. Please remember that.'"
"But when people who love our country protest on January 6 in Washington, they become hostages unfairly imprisoned for long periods of time. But fortunately, the Supreme Court has just ruled and they should be out soon."
"Mothers will never again be forced to watch their children overdosing and hosp--lee. And we will never allow mothers to watch their child hopelessly dying in their arms, screaming, 'What can I do? What can I do? Help me God, what can I do?' We are a nation whose once revered airports are a dirty, crowded mess."
"We will take over the horribly run capital of our country in Washington DC ... right now if you leave Florida -- 'oh, let's go darling, let's look at the Jefferson Memorial' ... and you end up getting shot, mugged, raped. We're gonna take over our capital and we're gonna run it tough and smart."
So, with that, I’ll leave it up to you. Who’s the scandal here? The man all the pundits thought should pull out of the race ten minutes into the debate on June 27? Or the convicted felon whom practically none of the pundits have called on to retire his candidacy, Donald Trump? Who is the unhinged blathering one? Who is the scandal?
And then I watched Lawrence O'Donnell tonight and got 'the rest of the story'. Biden's meeting with labor in the midst of the NATO summit and giving a great no teleprompter talk - making sense unlike P01135890. And the full interview unedited with Nancy Pelosi....where she didn't say what the pundits say she said. Goddammit.
The president did an excellent job with the NATO conference, and his AFL/CIO speech was amazing – – without a Teleprompter. Meanwhile, Trump had one of his little fascist rallies in which he was an absolute, complete, total, sweaty mess. The most interesting part – – as in the old curse, “ May you live in interesting times “– – was when Trump gave a shout out to Don Junior, remarking, apropos of nothing, that junior has “a beautiful wife. “The problem there, of course, is that Don Junior is not married. He has been engaged for a long time, but he is definitely not married. Trump then compounded this astounding error by referring to junior’s non-existent wife as “Lara” — which is, of course, the name of Eric’s wife. If President Biden did something like that, the New York Times would be running banner headlines on the order of “Dewey Defeats Truman” and screaming for the 25th amendment.
Wow. Just, wow. We need to hang together and keep Trump as far away from the White House as we possibly can.