Tag Archives: Biden

Prove It Was Just “one bad night” Joe, and Do an Interview with Sean Hannity

Posted on by
How Far Will Sean Hannity Go? - The New York Times

Allow me to start with the bottom line and work back from there. This particular election is much bigger than Joe Biden. Much bigger. This would not be like losing to Mitt Romney. We, meaning Democrats, are not a cult. The feelings and ego of Dear Leader are inconsequential in this election.

Okay, back to the top.

I’ve consumed way more post-debate punditry than even I thought possible. Here (redundancy alert) is a feeling of the consensus.

Joe Biden has lost the confidence of the mainstream-to-liberal media, the political intelligentsia and, less certain here, the top tier donor class, post-debate fundraising claims withstanding. In order to regain that confidence he has to demonstrate in a public, unscripted way that last Thursday was just “a bad night”, to quote team Biden.

How to do that? Well, do this:

Consent to an interview with some prominent right wing personality. Like say Sean Hannity. And do it … this week. Biden’s utter, inexplicable failure contest any of the entirely predictable bullshit thrown up by Trump last week powerfully suggests he is not capable of prosecuting a case against the pervasive histrionic nonsense motivating Republicans today. So … prove to the consistent 70% of likely voters who think you’re too old that you can play mentally adroit hardball in this age of malignant Tik Tok glibness.

Spend an hour jousting with and rebutting a MAGA sycophant live on camera.

A taped and edited 15 minutes with Lesley Stahl is not the same thing.

Then … do it again … live … in a couple town halls open to any citizen who wants in.

One of the more revealing anecdotes I’ve heard in past few days was MSNBC regular John Heilemann discussing reactions from big time Hollywood donors after a Biden fund-raiser in some mogul’s no doubt palatial home. These would be people fully committed to Biden. People he should be utterly at ease among. The kind of audience were a confident politician happily back slaps, offers candid thoughts on important matters and has to be pulled away.

But, no, says Heilemann. According to his sources in the room, Biden arrived and spent 15 minutes … reading from a Teleprompter. Those in attendance were startled. Point being; Biden is so stage-managed by his handlers (his wife being foremost among them) that they don’t risk even standard issue politician camaraderie with his most devoted, trusted and lucrative audience.

(I’m eager to hear a similar report from the weekend’s bash out in the Hamptons on Long Island.)

Moreover, as we’re hearing from all corners largely muted until now, this is how its been since 2020. The clear inference being that the persistently incoherent Biden we saw Thursday night is a not an anomaly. He may be capable enough among advisors in the Oval Office, but he can not perform in the rude and routinely disrepectful modern political arena. What he projects is anything but reassuring and confidence-inspring.

As we speak the Biuden family is at Camp David having their picture taken by Annie Lebovitz and no doubt resolving to fight on, 70% of the voting public, once supportive media, intelligentsia and panicky donor class be damned.

His most loyal supporters, most of them close personal friends and hardened Democratic activists, are selling the line that bowing out and permitting a two month Hunger Games to select a new nominee would be a kind of death wish for the party against Trump in November. I could not disagree more. I don’t know about you but the sense I get from the public regarding this race is a strong, pervasive desire for … someone new. Someone young enough to know how to reboot a computer and confident enough they’d relish the opportunity to eviscerate a clown like Trump.

And my view, FWIW, is shared by no less than David Plouffe who ran Barack Obama’s two successful campaigns. In a podcast interview post-debate disaster Plouffe who until Thursday night believed firmly that Biden was the only game in town, said he believed a new Democratic candidate, not even discounting Kamala Harris, “would win a walk”. Why? Because the general public is so weary and unenthusiastic about both Biden and Trump.

Team Biden will try to string this current phase for as long as it can, narrowing the window for any option. That’s a cynical, wholly self-serving strategy that places him personally above the far greater interests of the country. A country (and world) facing the restoration of a lazy, corrupt fool.

So yeah, if Thursday was just “one bad night”, prove it to everyone Joe, including your wife, and sit down with an easily rebutted meathead like Sean Hannity and let’s see you take him apart.

If you can’t or won’t that firmly settles any questions we may have left.

Oh My God, Joe.

Posted on by

Well, that didn’t go well did it?

Rapt audience in NW Wisconsin …

“The most important 90 minutes in this campaign*,” pretty well confirmed what both critical “disinterested” voters and ferocious, Trump-fearing liberals feared most. Yes, Trump is as despicable a fraud and liar as he’s ever been, but Joe Biden, “our guy”, is plainly not up to the challenge of rebutting him.

Curious about how rural, white America would to the two performances I rolled in to my favorite northern Wisconsin road house for Taco Thursday with Trump and Joe. There were a dozen patrons, including four young women having a late happy hour. No one other than me paid any attention to the debate for the entire 90 minutes.

A cold Spotted Cow at hand, after 10 minutes the taco sauce was starting to curdle in my stomach.

Not only did Joe look every minute of 81 years, white and frail, he appeared completely unprepared for standard rally-issue Trump’s usual Niagara-like torrent of lies and bullshit. I mean, the look of stunned incredulity on Biden’s face as Trump lied about every issue in every question and called him every name in the book — except “alley cat” which Joe did manage to level at Trump — was demoralizing. There is no larger, fatter or riper target for easy evisceration on moral, ethical and competency grounds than Donald Trump and all Biden really had was indignation over “the idea” that Trump would say such things.

Trump is a known viral menace. Where was the attack, for chrissakes?

It is no doubt sage advice to give tonight’s lamentable performance a day or two or three to shake out. But it is very hard to see how this situation gets better. We live in an age where appearance carries at least equal weight to competence and Biden ‘s performance tonight very likely — very likely — confirmed exactly what people, from the low information to the high information types feared most.

So what happens now? I won’t make the Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott going to Nixon comparison, but I believe with 100% certainty that very senior Democrats, fund-raisers and influential party poobahs are already pulling the fire alarm and will soon, (very soon), begin the work of convincing Biden to step aside. Unless polling shows something I certainly don’t expect, he’ll have no choice but to listen and acknowledge reality. He, like everyone else, knows what a hideous threat Trump represents.

There’ll be a short window — seven weeks — to mount a frenzied, whirlwind campaign of possible successors, something unheard of in the past hundred years or so, LBJ in ’68 sort of withstanding. A fresh candidate — almost any candidate save Bernie again — will invigorate the remainder of the campaign.

We live in unprecedented times. But Donald Trump restoration is an apocalyptic fate none of us on this side of the aisle of competency and decorum can allow to happen.

What a goddam mess.

  • Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.

The High(est) Anxiety Debate Ever.

Posted on by
Debate questions they'll never ask Biden, Trump | Will Bunch Newsletter

Quite frankly, it is unsettling when someone like David Plouffe says he’s never felt a higher level of personal anxiety for a presidential debate than the one tonight. Plouffe, if you follow the news, is the man who led Barack Obama’s two campaigns and has been through more debate prep and spin than he cares to remember.

Plouffe was talking with his fellow Obama team colleague David Axelrod and long time Republican campaign operator turned ardent Never Trumper, Mike Murphy on their “Hacks on Tap” podcast yesterday.

To summarize his key points of concern/anxiety and strategy for Biden:

1: Biden has to be not just “ok” or “passable” in the eyes of the general, largely disinterested public. He has to be surprisingly good. While expectations for him are low, despite Team Trump lately trying to re-imagine sleepy and senile a veteran, polished debater jacked up on coke or Mountain Dew, the TV audience — a much larger audience than has paid attention to this race until now — has to leave the night nigh-on-to-startled by the Joe Biden they’ve just seen. Anything less and the balance of the race remains static or, given a Biden flop, collapses to a point of no return.

2: Biden has to attack early and often on the abortion/reproductive rights issue and the threat of more like that to come given that Trump will likely have two more Supreme Court seats to fill next term. (He also believes CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash have to press that issue.)

3: On the economy, Biden has to have a deft pivot on Trump’s assertions that inflation and the world in general is out of control and things were much cheaper and calmer when he was in office.

4: If Trump comes out of the debate perceived as the victor, largely as a result of Biden fitting the perception that he is too old and feeble, Plouffe expects Trump to pass on the second debate in late September. He’ll have made his point and see no reason to risk a re-match. Likewise, Plouffe thinks Biden should consider something similar if he far exceeds expectations. In other words, this could be the one and only face-to-face we see … in a race where the country is unequivocally exchanging competence for chaos and personal retribution.

5: There has never been a debate remotely comparable to this one. No debate ever with so stark a contrast between the two candidates. Biden has to make that contrast indelible in the minds of viewers. And he has to do it while maintaining the image and tenor of the adult in the room.

Good luck, Joe.

And The Odds Biden Pardons Trump Are What?

Posted on by
Florida Man Arrested: Trump Mug Shot

Now that we’ve all had a good, hard-earned laugh at the mug shot of Fulton County perp #P01135809, we should probably turn to a discussion of the unlikelihood that convicted or not that glowering fool will never see the inside of a prison cell. If you’ve followed the game of scandal-mired high-profile politicians you know as well as I do that there’s an industry around them to prevent them from enduring the indignities of justice that would befall you, me and any platinum-selling rap star.

But nefarious scheming withstanding, its possible to foresee a scenario where Joe Biden might agree to pardon Trump, for the simple reason of finally and fully excising a festering tumor from the public corpus.

Sounds crazy, I know. But hear me out.

I couldn’t bear to watch more than five minutes of Trump’s Twitter/X interview with Tucker Carlson. (Someone tell me if Carlson ever reminded Trump to his face how much he hated him.) But the snippet I endured showed me a tired, flabby, addled old man with no coherent thought in his head other than mewling — on and on — about how unfair everything and everyone has been to him. “Standard Trump”, you say. But the fatigue in his face and posture was what was striking. The guy is exhausted.

As many have said, Trump is running again purely to return to the Oval Office and pardon himself. He’s never had any policy goals, other than wreaking havoc on his enemies, so why assume now that he’s got some big “to do” list, you know “infrastructure week 7.0” or “repealing Obamacare” or … oh, hell, why even bother … he doesn’t care about anything other than self-preservation. And by that I mean not sharing cell bunk with Big Louie or some MS 13 gangster.

This then is where “The Art of the Deal”, to borrow a phrase, steps in. Given his unpardonable exposure in Georgia, Trump’s only true all-purpose Get Out of Jail Free card is a grand, overarching plea deal with … the Biden administration. A deal that pardons him for all his federal crimes, criminal and civil accrued to date and in the future, plus … plus … a coordinated arrangement with Fulton County/Georgia to waive detention in that case. All in exchange for dropping out of the 2024 race, never again running for public office and just basically shutting the f*ck up, under penalty of voiding the deal and reinstituting every sentence he faces if he screws up.

In other words, “Go back to one of your goddam golf clubs and disappear. And by that we mean don’t stick your jowly orange mug up over the privet hedges ever again.”

The viability in this idea rests in Trump taking seriously his attorneys’ counsel that he stands a near 100% likelihood of being convicted on at least one of the 91 counts against him. (Jesus Christ, man! 91!)

Conviction on something, and maybe a lot of somethings, is nigh on as likely as the sun rising tomorrow over ex-wife Ivanka’s unmowed grave. And conviction is far more likely and certain than him winning another election against Joe Biden.

No one seems to doubt Trump’s had the idea of a plea deal presented to him by one or more of the semi-legitimate lawyers who have passed through his gilded office doors.

But, you ask, “Why would Biden do this? His chances of reelection are far better facing Trump than just about anyone else currently in the race.”

And that’s true, if you accept conventional wisdom, which I do. Obviously, as a gift to the country, a deal that removes Trump and all his relentless bullshit from the media marketplace with the stroke of pen, is an unalloyed public good. But politics are politics. So the strategizing from Biden and the government is how and when to float the deal that best minimizes the ability of the Republicans to prop up an effective alternative.

That moment is certainly not now or any time before next spring’s primary season has run its course. But what about — just spitballing here — right after the Republicans anoint him anew in Milwaukee next summer?

More sage heads than mine will argue that the “excitement” of a new, fresh GOP nominee — perhaps an annoying, jabbering tech bro, a woman who is more weather vane than serious administrator, or a pious ex-talk show host-turned-veep who they tried to lynch a couple years ago, take your pick — would push anyone of them over the top against “Sleepy Joe” and his “crippling inflation” and “crime infested blue cities”. For that kind of thinking, the risk is too high.

But what percentage of the MAGA cult, deprived of their 6’3″ 215, Muhammed Ali-in-his-prime thought leader, might simply stay home? Would their evaporation out balance the “normie” suburban Republicans who’d come flowing back, relieved not to have to vote for an exhausting fat fraud/rapist/coup leader?

No one knows. But $50 says both camps, Trump’s and Biden’s have given thought to how to make this happen.

Biden’s “Junk Fee” Fight Should Include Broder’s Deli as Well as Las Vegas

Posted on by

Currently lost in all the excitement about Chinese spy balloons and Marjorie Taylor Greene discovering that the feds sent $5 billion to one Illinois elementary school to teach kids that being white is a bad thing is the announcement yesterday that Joe Biden is going after … junk fees … or zombie fees if you’re into the whole “Last of Us” thing.

I couldn’t say, “amen” any louder if I had Metallica’s sound system. There’s no end of things that can annoy the living bejesus out of you (if you let them), but this pervasive and ever-growing gaming of otherwise straightforward retail pricing is truly out of control. The Biden gang says specifically they’re after …

  • excessive online concert, sporting event and entertainment ticket fees
  • airline fees for families sitting together on flights
  • exorbitant early termination fees for TV, phone and internet services
  • surprise resort and destination fees

This is the kind of populist-oriented legislation you’d think would rally the masses and engender wide bi-partisan support. But I’m not going to get carried away with reckless hope. Lobbying pressure from the likes of Live Nation/Ticketmaster, Delta and United et al, Comcast and Las Vegas will likely convince those lawmakers perpetually giving lip service to “hard working Americans” that this idea will only suppress our great and wonderful entrepreneurial spirit, not to mention negatively impact shareholder value.

Simultaneous with reading about what they’re calling the Junk Fee Protection Act my wife was following a blow up on Next Door, the local community site usually overrun with stories of feral cats, porch pirates and baroque theories of gross mismanagement if not outright corruption by city administrators … in Edina, in our case. The kerfuffle was over mandatory, ill-defined fees creeping into the tabs at local restaurants. In other words, the zombie virus-like spread of “service fees” slapped on top of the cost of whatever you eat and drink … plus tip.

In our cozy corner of the world a restaurant/deli operation called Broders announced it was instituting a 15% “service and equity fee” on top of everyone’s order while still … you gotta love this … allowing patrons to tip another 15%, 18% or 25%. The Next Door trolls were not happy. And rightfully so.

However Broders and other venues want to ‘splain it, it’s tacky price gaming no different than that Vegas hotel you booked for $150 a night plus tax hitting you with a 30% “resort fee” as you hit the check out button. Or, to use another current example, Live Nation/Ticketmaster collecting an extra $20, $30, $40 in “service fees” on top of the $150 they’ve already charged you for booking that Kid Rock concert … via a computer.

What makes it all even more annoyingly laughable is the constant refrain that this fee-upon-fee-upon-tip scam is something they’re doing to benefit their overworked, underpaid staff in the back of the house. Because, you know, actually paying the busboys, salad choppers and dishwashers $18 – $20 an hour is an obligation that must fall upon the customer, not the restaurant’s owners.

And which it would under any rational, gaming-free system, where a business meets its cost of doing business, including compensation for employees, by … dare we say it out loud? … raising prices to cover all costs and show a profit. It’s an insane concept I concede. Likely a radical socialist conspiracy if Marjorie Taylor Greene gets wind of it. But until the private equity boys and hard-driving Type A business school grads picked and tossed their chump customers into the deep end of “fee world” pool it worked just fine.

Capitalism. Insane, I know.

Want a room in Vegas? Well, based on demand that’ll now cost you $180 a night. Don’t want to pay that? Fine. Stay out in Primm and drive in to catch the animatronic Grand Funk Railroad Tribute Band at the Sahara. Want a pound of prosciutto from Broder’s for your next elegant soiree? Well, based on the rising cost of hiring competent staff and everything, that’ll now cost you $16 instead of the $13 it was last year. If you want to tip the kid that wrapped it and rang you up another couple bucks, knock yourself out.

Just stop with the word salad explanations and the pretense that bullshit price gaming is the only fair way to sustain your business. And by that I mean gibberish like this from the owner of Broder’s: “We’re trying to create a compensation structure that looks different than it did before the pandemic … and strive for pay equity between front-of-house and back-of-house service members.”

To which I say, “No you’re not. You’re simply attaching yourself to an obnoxious trend that others have successfully got away with … until now.”

And What Does Biden Do if Trump Threatens Him with “The Deal?”

Posted on by

Tim Walz got off one of the better lines of the summer when he was told Donald Trump was thinking about making a stop at 38th and Chicago, at the George Floyd memorial, while in Minnesota rousing the rabble a week or so back.

Said Walz, “That is a really bad idea.”

The Governor of Wisconsin and the Mayor of Kenosha are saying the same thing today as Trump prepares to inflict himself into a roiling cauldron of rage tomorrow. After spending Sunday re-tweeting sympathizers of the 17 year-old wanna-be cop/Trumper who killed two people with his (illegal) AR-15, it’s not likely Trump is going to Wisconsin to defuse the race war bomb he’s been packing for the last four years.

He wants more rage. He needs more rage.

At this point it’s realistic, and not at all cynical to believe Team Trump is eager for video of protests and riot-like violence around him in Kenosha, especially if the protestors are black. The starting gun for the final stage of what we’ve all known will be the ugliest, most shameful and embarrassing presidential campaign in American history has been fired. And Trump’s strategy, maybe his last best strategy and his latest assault on common decency, is selling suburban America on the idea that inner city blacks are coming for their property.

And it will work to some extent.

For all the revulsion and disgust of Trump by college-educated suburban women, there are enough of them — 10%-15%, who knows — with a fragile enough sense of security, they will gamble that despite all evidence to the contrary, Donald Trump is the better bet to restore “law and order.” The better bet to keep scary-looking black people off their lovingly manicured lawns. Their husbands, polls tell us, will take even less convincing.

I still believe that given robust voter turn-out and ineffective meddling by Russia and other bad actors, Joe Biden will win. Or, to re-purpose Trump, “The only way I win is if it’s rigged.”

But prone as I am to dystopian fantasies I’ve spent too much time churning over scenarios like this:

Following several weeks of protest and counter-protests, (think this past weekend in Portland, Oregon muliplied a couple hundred times), with muddied results from mail-in ballots challenged at every turn by Trump/Barr lawyers and judges, a consensus finally emerges that Trump has in fact lost. He has to vacate the premises.

But … facing a future of ceaseless and financially ruinous criminal and civil indictments, he pitches Biden … The Deal.

“Either”, he says to the President-elect, “you grant me total immunity from any prosecution now or in the future, or I keep up this fight, this all-out culture war.” Essentially, Trump, who is far more important to Trump voters than the stale old Republican party, would be threatening to set up a separate government. A viral, media-driven insurgency, with himself as the wounded, legitimate leader driven from ofice by the “deep state” but supported and served, passionately and reflexively, by literally hundreds of thousands of wanna-be cops. People with an endless supply of bigotry, anger and bullets.

What does Biden do?

Does he take the deal and direct his Justice Department, the attorney general of New York and the SDNY to drop all investigations and prosecutions of Trump and his cronies? Or does he risk what he knows with absolute certainty Trump is willing to do to destabilize Biden’s new government?

Only an idiot would make any kind of deal with Trump expecting him to honor it. But the dilemma remains.

Biden will have to be making every move imaginable to finally get the pandemic under control, which could mean another tougher, nation-wide, mid-winter lockdown. Simultaneously, he will have to prove that genuine police reform has begun across the country. And … and … with Congressional support, he will have to quickly and successfully stimulate an economy all the way down to the bottom 20% to stave off mid-winter evictions, homelessness, rage, suicides … and on and on.

I know what I’d do. It’d be the American version of The Nuremberg Trials.

But that’s why no one’s electing me to anything.