Thomas L. Friedman wrote about a "National Unity" ticket before I did. I swear I did not read it. Have I mentioned before...? Yes.
Frank Bruni's column today has a sub-lede about Biden needing to stay out of the "mud" with Trump. I read it. It is a concept I have written about several times previously, going back to the campaign before the Catastrophe. Bruni's column does not live up to the hype of the sub-lede. And well it might not. The advice if strongly articulated goes against a Presidential Politics 101 nostrum which, I believe, originated in Bill Clinton's campaigns: Never let an attack go unanswered in the same news cycle. Does that nostrum still apply in these times of Trump?
How many Presidential Politics 101 nostrums have survived these times? Trump has blown a bunch of them to smithereens. A national media outlet publishing an expose on any one of Trump's scandals would have torpedoed any other candidate's run for president, and the presidency of the person if elected. But that did not happen with Trump. I have argued repeatedly in the past that the national media has to be careful on reporting on Trump; that continuous, breathless, outraged reporting on Trump's every lie, every misstatement, every outrageous statement and tweet amplifies Trump's lies and outrages. I believe beyond a reasonable doubt that that has happened. Repetition also has the perverse effect on the Low Lifes of reinforcing their commitment to Trump. When every respectable newspaper in the country reports the same--true!--negative things about your candidate, even a normal person can see how that can make supporters dig in their heels. And, repetition deadens the sense of outrage among normal people. Everybody has Trump fatigue. So the above, to my mind, is inconsistent with the political nostrum of answering every attack in the same news cycle.
After Super Tuesday, David Brooks wrote lyrically of millions of Democrats turning as one to the example of South Carolina, to Joe Biden and away from Bernie Sanders. And I had the vision that Brooks had, that a paradigm shift had occurred, that almost miraculously the country had at last--all at once--seen what they wanted, Biden, that enabled them to break free of Trump's hold on the country. Joe Biden is a good man. He is genuine and genuinely good. He does not demonize people or degrade them or insult them. Everybody likes Joe Biden. Nobody hates him. Hate is the oxygen for the fire of Trump and the Low Lifes. Biden has spent half a century in national politics and he does not run down the Constitution, the country we were, the values that made that country--nor his political opponents. Biden got along with everybody in the Senate. He was the "McConnell Whisperer"; he gave a eulogy at Strom Thurmond's funeral. Strom Thurmond! You know why he gave the eulogy at segregationist Strom's funeral: because Biden saw humanity in Thurmond. During one of Biden's crises with plagiarism, Biden, mortified, called his committee members together and mea culpa'd and asked them if he should step down, that if they wanted him too, he would. The first voice to speak in the committee was Thurmond: "Absolutely not, you're my chairman." Absolutely not, you're my chairman. From segregationist Republican Strom Thurmond to young liberal Democrat Joe Biden. Biden has been beaten with an ugly stick for eulogizing Thurmond ever since--and I get the beating! He was excoriated by Kamala Harris in a debate for opposing busing, another searing moment in America's racial history. Now Harris has enthusiastically endorsed Biden. Biden unapologetically has defended his friendship with repulsive political foes as necessary to get things done in the Senate, and because he refuses to see only the bad in people.
So Frank Bruni's tentative advice to Biden to rise above it all with Trump, to avoid getting dragged into the mud, is consistent with who Joe Biden is as a person. If Biden were of a sudden in the general election campaign to morph into an angry, flame-throwing, earth-scorching Bernie Sanders, that would not be the genuine Joe Biden. Bruni argues compellingly to me that to the extent possible Biden should avoid repeating the obvious by full-throated attacks on Trump and the Low Lifes. Repeating the obvious is not what voters want. They want the genuine, decent Biden, that is contrast sufficient and enough. He should stay above it all to the extent he can. Bruni is not fully committed to this strategy and I get that! It violates political nostrums. But I think the attack-response nostrum is wrong this time. I am more convinced than Bruni appears to be that good ol' decent Joe should be good ol' decent Joe and nostrums be damned.
Bernie Sanders and Trump's echo chamber at Red Fox have said that Biden would not survive a debate with either Sanders or Trump. There is reason behind that sentiment but I don't think they are correct. Trump lost every debate against HRC. Reagan lost a debate on substance with Jimmy Carter. Reagan was non compos mentis in a debate with Fritz Mondale. Reagan routed both Carter and Mondale. Ezra Klein of Vox admits that Biden's debate performances "frustrate" him. But Klein had an epiphany of sorts also. Debates are intellectual exercises, they are followed by the cognos and pencils who tally up the debate points and decide who won. When has a debate turned an election? In 1960, the first. Not in 2016, not in the moment-of-debate-moments in 1988 when Lloyd Bentsen caused Dan Qualye to shit on stage when Bentsen said, "Senator, I knew Jack Kennedy, you Senator are no Jack Kennedy." Bush-Quayle easily won that election. Debates have a sketchy history indeed with voters. They matter little.
We live to some extent in a metamodern time. Verbal communication, especially the rarefied debates, are irresistible to cognos and intellectuals but we are to some extent a post-verbal society. Increasingly we take our cues from body language, from character insights, we want to feel good about the man we elect president; we want him to be a good man and to have a good, generous, genuine soul. I have concluded that Biden will do just fine in a debate against the uber-ideological Sanders and with the hateful Trump. I am convinced, but only to a standard of satisfying my conscience that Biden should deflect the attacks with "There you go again. The president has nothing good to say about anybody. President Trump, I don't hate you and I will not attack you. You're a human being as I am. I am fallible. You never are."
(Bill Kristol tweeted tonight after Trump's "I take no responsbility at all" statement for the lack of response to the Covid19 virus spread. Kristol reprinted a draft that General Eisenhower wrote in case D-Day had failed. Ike said the blame was all his, not on his soldiers and sailors. Trump does the opposite, the blame nor any part of it is never his, it is always his soldiers and sailors. We all know why. Trump is a coward. A reader responded to Kristol with the most powerful simple indictment of Trump I have ever read:
Craig From PA
@Craig5778
Replying to
@BillKristol
Because Eisenhower was a man. Trump is not.)
Joe Biden continuing in his debate with Trump:
"People know none of us are infallible, President Trump. People know who and what you are and what you are not. People know me and what I am and am not; they have known me for half a century. And I know them! I have their trust and they have mine. Some of them even like me. None of your attacks can shake the reciprocal personal trust and affection between me and them. So sir, you go on with what you were saying, I didn't mean to interrupt you."
I think the real Joe Biden will win a debate against Trump or Sanders.
The above is true, and it may get us out of the box that Trump has put our politics in and we with them. But this is uncharted territory. The political nostrums may still hold and all of this could blow our last best chance to reclaim our soul and our country. I am on the side, wobbling, of letting Joe be Joe and not what he is not. If he turns into Sanders or the Democratic Trump in the general election, I think that would be a mistake.
For these reasons I am rethinking the idea of "We Want a State!" I am squeamish about putting a firebrand like Elizabeth Warren on the ticket. Kamala Harris conveys cognitive dissonance next to Biden's political personality. She is such a great speaker, so charismatic and articulate. She is a contrast with Biden when I am more than half convinced we need another humble, decent person. And if you reject the National Unity or Emergency concept and prudently wish for a State in the veep candidate, Kamala Harris does not give us a state. California is in the bag. I cannot get Jim Clyburn out of my mind. Biden-Clyburn are multiple levels of Teflon and decency and gravitas and steadiness in crisis. I want Jim Clyburn. I am surely not going to get Jim Clyburn but that's who I want. I don't want Liz Warren and there is just something about Kamala Harris that rubs me wrong, I am not sure what all goes into it, it's just a feeling and we are in a metamodern world where feelings and soul, not words matter more in politics. I think.
Frank Bruni's column today has a sub-lede about Biden needing to stay out of the "mud" with Trump. I read it. It is a concept I have written about several times previously, going back to the campaign before the Catastrophe. Bruni's column does not live up to the hype of the sub-lede. And well it might not. The advice if strongly articulated goes against a Presidential Politics 101 nostrum which, I believe, originated in Bill Clinton's campaigns: Never let an attack go unanswered in the same news cycle. Does that nostrum still apply in these times of Trump?
How many Presidential Politics 101 nostrums have survived these times? Trump has blown a bunch of them to smithereens. A national media outlet publishing an expose on any one of Trump's scandals would have torpedoed any other candidate's run for president, and the presidency of the person if elected. But that did not happen with Trump. I have argued repeatedly in the past that the national media has to be careful on reporting on Trump; that continuous, breathless, outraged reporting on Trump's every lie, every misstatement, every outrageous statement and tweet amplifies Trump's lies and outrages. I believe beyond a reasonable doubt that that has happened. Repetition also has the perverse effect on the Low Lifes of reinforcing their commitment to Trump. When every respectable newspaper in the country reports the same--true!--negative things about your candidate, even a normal person can see how that can make supporters dig in their heels. And, repetition deadens the sense of outrage among normal people. Everybody has Trump fatigue. So the above, to my mind, is inconsistent with the political nostrum of answering every attack in the same news cycle.
After Super Tuesday, David Brooks wrote lyrically of millions of Democrats turning as one to the example of South Carolina, to Joe Biden and away from Bernie Sanders. And I had the vision that Brooks had, that a paradigm shift had occurred, that almost miraculously the country had at last--all at once--seen what they wanted, Biden, that enabled them to break free of Trump's hold on the country. Joe Biden is a good man. He is genuine and genuinely good. He does not demonize people or degrade them or insult them. Everybody likes Joe Biden. Nobody hates him. Hate is the oxygen for the fire of Trump and the Low Lifes. Biden has spent half a century in national politics and he does not run down the Constitution, the country we were, the values that made that country--nor his political opponents. Biden got along with everybody in the Senate. He was the "McConnell Whisperer"; he gave a eulogy at Strom Thurmond's funeral. Strom Thurmond! You know why he gave the eulogy at segregationist Strom's funeral: because Biden saw humanity in Thurmond. During one of Biden's crises with plagiarism, Biden, mortified, called his committee members together and mea culpa'd and asked them if he should step down, that if they wanted him too, he would. The first voice to speak in the committee was Thurmond: "Absolutely not, you're my chairman." Absolutely not, you're my chairman. From segregationist Republican Strom Thurmond to young liberal Democrat Joe Biden. Biden has been beaten with an ugly stick for eulogizing Thurmond ever since--and I get the beating! He was excoriated by Kamala Harris in a debate for opposing busing, another searing moment in America's racial history. Now Harris has enthusiastically endorsed Biden. Biden unapologetically has defended his friendship with repulsive political foes as necessary to get things done in the Senate, and because he refuses to see only the bad in people.
So Frank Bruni's tentative advice to Biden to rise above it all with Trump, to avoid getting dragged into the mud, is consistent with who Joe Biden is as a person. If Biden were of a sudden in the general election campaign to morph into an angry, flame-throwing, earth-scorching Bernie Sanders, that would not be the genuine Joe Biden. Bruni argues compellingly to me that to the extent possible Biden should avoid repeating the obvious by full-throated attacks on Trump and the Low Lifes. Repeating the obvious is not what voters want. They want the genuine, decent Biden, that is contrast sufficient and enough. He should stay above it all to the extent he can. Bruni is not fully committed to this strategy and I get that! It violates political nostrums. But I think the attack-response nostrum is wrong this time. I am more convinced than Bruni appears to be that good ol' decent Joe should be good ol' decent Joe and nostrums be damned.
Bernie Sanders and Trump's echo chamber at Red Fox have said that Biden would not survive a debate with either Sanders or Trump. There is reason behind that sentiment but I don't think they are correct. Trump lost every debate against HRC. Reagan lost a debate on substance with Jimmy Carter. Reagan was non compos mentis in a debate with Fritz Mondale. Reagan routed both Carter and Mondale. Ezra Klein of Vox admits that Biden's debate performances "frustrate" him. But Klein had an epiphany of sorts also. Debates are intellectual exercises, they are followed by the cognos and pencils who tally up the debate points and decide who won. When has a debate turned an election? In 1960, the first. Not in 2016, not in the moment-of-debate-moments in 1988 when Lloyd Bentsen caused Dan Qualye to shit on stage when Bentsen said, "Senator, I knew Jack Kennedy, you Senator are no Jack Kennedy." Bush-Quayle easily won that election. Debates have a sketchy history indeed with voters. They matter little.
We live to some extent in a metamodern time. Verbal communication, especially the rarefied debates, are irresistible to cognos and intellectuals but we are to some extent a post-verbal society. Increasingly we take our cues from body language, from character insights, we want to feel good about the man we elect president; we want him to be a good man and to have a good, generous, genuine soul. I have concluded that Biden will do just fine in a debate against the uber-ideological Sanders and with the hateful Trump. I am convinced, but only to a standard of satisfying my conscience that Biden should deflect the attacks with "There you go again. The president has nothing good to say about anybody. President Trump, I don't hate you and I will not attack you. You're a human being as I am. I am fallible. You never are."
(Bill Kristol tweeted tonight after Trump's "I take no responsbility at all" statement for the lack of response to the Covid19 virus spread. Kristol reprinted a draft that General Eisenhower wrote in case D-Day had failed. Ike said the blame was all his, not on his soldiers and sailors. Trump does the opposite, the blame nor any part of it is never his, it is always his soldiers and sailors. We all know why. Trump is a coward. A reader responded to Kristol with the most powerful simple indictment of Trump I have ever read:
Craig From PA
@Craig5778
Replying to
@BillKristol
Because Eisenhower was a man. Trump is not.)
Joe Biden continuing in his debate with Trump:
"People know none of us are infallible, President Trump. People know who and what you are and what you are not. People know me and what I am and am not; they have known me for half a century. And I know them! I have their trust and they have mine. Some of them even like me. None of your attacks can shake the reciprocal personal trust and affection between me and them. So sir, you go on with what you were saying, I didn't mean to interrupt you."
I think the real Joe Biden will win a debate against Trump or Sanders.
The above is true, and it may get us out of the box that Trump has put our politics in and we with them. But this is uncharted territory. The political nostrums may still hold and all of this could blow our last best chance to reclaim our soul and our country. I am on the side, wobbling, of letting Joe be Joe and not what he is not. If he turns into Sanders or the Democratic Trump in the general election, I think that would be a mistake.
For these reasons I am rethinking the idea of "We Want a State!" I am squeamish about putting a firebrand like Elizabeth Warren on the ticket. Kamala Harris conveys cognitive dissonance next to Biden's political personality. She is such a great speaker, so charismatic and articulate. She is a contrast with Biden when I am more than half convinced we need another humble, decent person. And if you reject the National Unity or Emergency concept and prudently wish for a State in the veep candidate, Kamala Harris does not give us a state. California is in the bag. I cannot get Jim Clyburn out of my mind. Biden-Clyburn are multiple levels of Teflon and decency and gravitas and steadiness in crisis. I want Jim Clyburn. I am surely not going to get Jim Clyburn but that's who I want. I don't want Liz Warren and there is just something about Kamala Harris that rubs me wrong, I am not sure what all goes into it, it's just a feeling and we are in a metamodern world where feelings and soul, not words matter more in politics. I think.
