Trump again was stupid self-promoting Trump. How else can we explain why he jumped at his first unprecedented debate with Biden BEFORE the convention. Had he waited to debate until after the convention it would have been much harder to replace Biden. Trump once again played right into the Democrats' hands.
Substantively the Democrats started to lose Oct. 7, 2023. Gaza is what's sinking them, and will continue to sink them. If ONE of the constituents of their fringe coalition starts to bleed they're cooked. It's the only explanation for their lunatic hard lurch to the left since then. They're going to have to shoot Trump to keep him out of the White House.
I don’t entirely agree with your explanation. The lunatic lurch is because they let the fringe in: they are not just constituents, they are at the top levels of the party apparatus. Only an internecine party bloodbath can save them, and only then does your scenario come to pass.
Hasn't helped much in California. In the general election, the 2 Democratic canidates recieved combined 2 to 3 million votes LESS than the combined votes for Hillary and Trump.
I seemed to be the only person in the whole state that noticed this.
I'm confused: I wrote about primaries, and you brought up the general election as a counterpoint. Without more info I can't see where you are headed (other than the fact that California has too many kooks, a fact that no electoral reform will fix).
There is a longer history to primaries. Until the early 20th century, party regulars met and nominated a candidate, there were no primaries. That was OK as long as their was fluidity to parties -- when the old parties were out of touch, new parties emerged, and voters had choices, like the Republican Party in 1860. But, when those doors were closed and the "Two Party System" was engineered to make sure the GOP would be the last insurgent third party to actually reach a position of power and influence and electoral success, voters began to worry that they had no voice in who their choices would be. So progressive reformers began instituting primaries. The point was to take nomination out of smoke filled rooms and let the people decide. When it comes to presidential politics, in particular, only a handful of states had primaries, and some of those were non-binding "beauty contests," while others had laws requiring delegates to vote on the first round for the candidate who won the primary. It wasn't until the 1970s and 1980s that most states held primaries. Since these were generally first past the post, and, in most states voters had to register a party affiliation to vote in a primary, this meant that, e.g., Donald Trump could win about a third of the vote in a series of states and come to a convention with an overwhelming majority of pledged delegates. That is the problem JonF is pointing to. This is all complicated by back and forth litigation in the courts about whether political parties are private associations with the right to set their own rules. I agree that a wide open primary in which everyone can vote for anyone, combined with order of preference voting or a top two or three runoff, or both, would come close to representing the will of the people.
Don't you think that each party got the candidate they wanted in this election? As much as I (like Mr. Dreher) would have preferred DeSantis, he's not who Republicans wanted. No tweaking of any system would have changed that.
Substantively the Democrats started to lose Oct. 7, 2023. Gaza is what's sinking them, and will continue to sink them.
Foreign policy is never crucial to elections except in situations where American troops are fighting and dying. People care about the price of gas, and the like. Very few people without direct personal connections to overseas fracases are going to let the antics of a bunch of feuding foreigners halfway around the world decide their vote.
It's not antisemitic to oppose the Netanyahu regime. And it's an old tactic to tar an entire party with the rhetoric of some crazy pants activists-- the Democrats did it to the GOP for years with old Fred Phelps and his band. But I don't think elections are decided by that.
Most Americans don't care about these gotcha games, which work better as confirmation bias for those whose minds are already made up. They'll vote according to the usual factors (e.g., "It's the economy stupid") and now Joe Biden's mental fitness will likely prove a factor too. As may unforeseen events between now and November.
In the 60s there were anti-Vietnam protesters who went around chanting Ho Chih Minh's name and even waved Mao's little red book. Were they pro-Communist? Or just going over the top in their opposition to the war?
Yeah even before the debate, Biden was being criticized by Jewish Democrats for not being pro Israel enough & by Arab & Muslim voters for being too pro Israel.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that in my opinion. The Jews are the indigenous people of Israel & the Arabs are the Johnny come latelies & colonizers. So Zionism is just the belief that the Jews need a homeland. So in that sense, I’m a Zionist. But there’s a difference in believing Israel has a right to exist versus being down with Bibi & the settlers. The people criticizing Biden & siding with Trump are the Bibi crowd.
Trump moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem & said Israel should “finish the job” in Gaza. Biden has been calling for a ceasefire. So there is a difference.
Re: The Jews are the indigenous people of Israel & the Arabs are the Johnny come latelies & colonizers.
Palestinians are not "Arabs". They are the distant descendants of the people who have lived in the region since the Bronze Age-- in other words they descend from the ancient Jews too.
A lot of Muslims supported George W. Bush in 2000, because of moral issues like abortion and gay marriage. They swung hard to the Dems because of Bush's "crusade" as he ineptly put it. Not that they supported Al Qaeda, but the pretextual invasion of Iraq, when Saddam Hussein was an avowed enemy of bin Laden and vice versa, really spooked them. Where they'll go now is anyone's guess.
Biden will not step down, and they cannot force him out. Also, they chose the format. Which played to Trump's strengths and took the edge off his weaknesses. They played themselves.
I'm waiting for the announcement that Biden has died. Then they don't have to deal with any controversy, and whomever gets appointed will get the sympathy vote, and the left can admonish Trump any time he says something negative because shame shame, how dare you disrespect the deceased President.
If they do the 25th amendment thing does Biden have a choice?
I was very suspicious last night as the reactions to Biden were so uniform, so devastating and so widespread that they seemed coordinated. They have to have a clear plan going forward. And that clear plan could be to have Harris coordinate a 25th amendment response for the good of the country. This would make her look like a good leader in a crisis which might be enough for her to beat Trump. In this scenario she could actually run against Biden’s record too.
The 25th Amendment is actually a little complicated. A short version is that Vice-President Harris and a majority of the cabinet can remove President Biden. However Biden can challenge his removal. The challenge is voted on by Congress with a two-thirds majority in each house required to maintain Biden's removal. Otherwise Biden is back. Hypothetically, here is how it would go.
1. Vice-President Harris and a majority of the Cabinet would sign a letter asserting that President Biden is unable to discharge the duties of President. The letter would be sent to the Speaker of the House and the President Pro-Tempore of the Senate. At that point, Vice-President Harris becomes Acting President and assumes the duties of the President.
2. However, President Biden could challenge this action. He would sign a letter asserting that he is now able to resume the duties of the President and send it to the Speaker of the House and the President Pro-Tempore of the Senate.
3. Vice-President Harris and a majority of the Cabinet would then have four days to dispute this assertion by again sending a letter asserting that President Biden is unable to discharge the duties of President to the Speaker of the House and the President Pro-Tempore of the Senate.
4. The dispute of President Biden's assertion of competence then goes to Congress. The Senate and the House have 21 days to vote on the dispute. A two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress is required to keep Vice-President Harris as Acting President. Otherwise, President Biden resumes the duties of President.
Also, Biden is not limited to one challenge. If he loses his first challenge, he can challenge again . . . and again . . . and again.
Hmm. We could start a conspiracy theory. "They" drugged Biden before the debate to get rid of him. No, I don;t mean that seriously-- but it is odd that the very next day he seemed fine when giving a campaign speech. We all have our bad days, even in our youth (though alcohol and all-nighters may play a role at that age), but is it normal for someone to swing so wildly? I live with an 87 year old cousin and she's on pretty even keel, with an allowance for different energy levels.
And then we've got Harris, who by my best guess is hooked on benzos (sort of like drunk, but not quite)? This will be fantastic; the Dems have no bench.
A majority of the cabinet, the vice president, and a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress would be required to remove an unwilling Biden via the 25th.
Meh, Biden was so bad it doesn't matter. When literally the entire Democratic establishment is freaking out and either calling to replace Biden or saying (as I heard this morning) "You have to understand you're electing and ADMINISTRATION when you vote for President..." Biden is toast.
Or they might have come up with some way to put off or alter the debate. Maybe after the court ruling the democrats could have said Biden had no need to speak to a convicted criminal or something.
Hitting the debate right now was the best idea, it basically takes all the heat off the new york case shenanigans and gets people panicking about Biden's dementia
"Stuff" happens, and I wouldn't be surprised by anything happening. I won't elaborate, but it isn't beyond the bounds of possibility that neither candidate will be on the ballot when we go to vote in November.
Exactly right if you believe the debate was an insider effort to force Biden off the ballot in November. There's never been a presidential debate this early in the season. After Biden's pathetic performance, there's now a 30 percent chance Biden will not be the nominee in November. Biden and Harris are probably the only two Democrats Trump can beat. But Trump wanted TV time so he agreed to the debate.
The problem is that the Democrats have allowed themselves to become a Politburo of sorts, a gerontocracy that is sclerotic and dedicated largely to preserving its own power and wealth. Joe Biden is the perfect example of this and is now showing how broken the Democratic Party is as well. The nation is ill, but there is no leadership to handle what is coming up. I don’t think Biden is going to be replaced. It is too late into the election season, and the reality is that these problems have been known for a while. The big question is how the failing regime will respond to the next coming crisis.
They should have known better than to expect "Its Hillary's turn now" to play after Obama won the nomination in 2008. Unfortunately, Obama himself was complicit in that play.
"Can anybody not all-in on the Trump personality cult really believe that the garrulous braggart who helped Biden demolish himself last night is the best we can do?"
Was Franklin Pierce? Rutherford Hayes? Warren Harding? Harry Truman? George W. Bush?
Oh, I don’t know…Trump has been ahead in the polls for months. I don’t know how you define “politically competent”, but he’s got the GOP, even McConnell, in the bag. Plus a bunch of swing voters out in the provinces that matter.
He's had a slight lead in some polls, but within the margin for error. Biden had been eroding that to the point that a few polls were giving him a slight kead. Really, it's been neck and neck.
Trump in his first term was clueless as to how to work with even a GOP Congress. His one attempt at making an immigration deal was torpedoed by that shrill harridan, Ann Coulter- you'd think he could at least have blown her right off.
Trump lacks the competence. He blows an errant thought out of his mouth every five minutes, having no connection to the last errant thought, and substitutes larding his sentences with random adjectives for familiarity with relevant facts.
Trump also got us closer to energy independence than we ever were. He also nominated 3 solid Supreme Court justices. And as a businessman, he understands Econ 101. I wanted De Santis, but I'm glad to be able to vote for Trump against our Potemkin president.
I thought Truman did a good job handling the huge burden that fell on him especially since FDR didn’t keep him in the loop. Talk about history repeating itself! By 1944, FDR was a very sick man & he should not have run for a 4th term. The Axis powers were substantially defeated by November 1944. FDR let Stalin roll him because he was just too ill to stand up to him.
Caligula was crazy, but I've always thought he was in one of his lucid moments when he appointed his horse, Incintatus, to the Roman Senate, for it was an act of contempt rather than madness, showing how little he respected any authority other than his own.
Biden has been the elites' horse; we weren't supposed to notice, or care if we did, that his presidency has been an exercise in the elder abuse of a man in very useful cognitive decline; he doesn't get in the way. Now, they've ridden that broken-down horse as far as it will take them, so it's off to the knacker for Ol' Joe to join Animal Farm's Boxer.
Problem is, they cannot make him step down. He and DOCTOR Jill are going to hang on by their wretched fingernails. Dems made this bed, now they get to lay in it.
Look for the Dems to do everything they can to make Jill an 'offer she can't refuse' to have Joe step aside. If the Bidens refuse nonetheless, it will be fascinating to see what crooks and hooks come out to effect Joe's removal because I think they will try. Whether they succeed is another question, but I think they'll find a way.
The Dems are not nearly the all powerful cabal they pose as. They have not the wisdom, intellect or wit. The world they seek to create and the policy they execute is proof. I think there may be some flailings, but it won't be good for much more than comedy. Those the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
Yes I think I'm with you on that one. I'm not buying the "Trump fell into the diabolic Democrat's trap! Now they can get rid of Biden and nominate someone who will beat Trump!" (And if they did think that it's a remarkably stupid plan for reasons I outlined elsewhere, essentially kicking the checkerboard when you think you're going to lose)
What would need to happen would be for a majority (or at least a large percentage) of the Biden delegates at the convention to buck and declare that they are not supporting Biden. That is, I believe, against the "rules", at least for pledged delegates. So it would be kind of a rules crisis.
The Democrats have superdelegates (insiders) who are all unpledged, but there are not enough of them to determine the outcome unless the pledged delegates break the rules (assuming Biden doesn't withdraw -- if he withdraws, his pledged delegates are free to vote for whomever).
My understanding is that in the first vote, pledged delegates *must* vote for Biden. After that, they're free. Biden has enough to assure selection, so if the powers that be are hell bent on removing him, they will have to get creative.
Right -- unless they break the rules, which would create a rules crisis. Those are party rules (each party has its own rules). I could imagine a vote to suspend the rules due to a state of emergency, or some such thing, at the convention.
It used to be considered a breach of etiquette to flash around a non medical doctorate outside of academic circles. Signing a hotel register for example as Dr. could waste valuable time in an emergency if someone needed medical assistance. She is really a piece of work.
Or within. At neither my undergraduate nor graduate schools did any of the faculty use their PhDs as honorifics. And these were people with PhDs from Harvard etc., in many cases.
Exactly, I have a PhD. For about 3 months after getting it, I started styling myself "Dr.", and then thought better of it. It took me about 20 years to get the bank, etc., to take "Dr." off my address, and people who saw my letters used to react with surprise!
When Senator Carter Glass of Virginia learned that Louisiana had sent Huey Long to the Senate, he remarked that "At least Caligula sent the whole horse."
I actually wonder if this debate was a humiliation ritual because Biden pissed off some donors behind the scenes.
Knowing his mental state, they could have had him quietly step down much earlier. Instead they put his Swiss cheese brain in front of the entire world to see
Here’s where the comparison of the US to the Soviet Union- while perhaps exaggerated- becomes apt: A supine, propagandist media covering up for a senile leadership.
Exactly. The idea that the media has now done us a favor by exposing Biden’s mental incapacity is three, four years too late. They are fully complicit in this state of affairs.
Re: I think it might have been the case that Democratic Party elites pushed this early debate because they knew how it would go, and they wanted to give themselves time to implement a Plan B.
I thought this update from Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit was interesting fly in the ointment:
UPDATE: A friend comments: “You know what’s really hilarious here is that ORDINARILY they might be able to replace him at the DNC. But they held the phony “virtual” DNC a few days back so as to make the Ohio ballot. He’s locked in! They nominated him! He’s their guy! They’re riding the bomb down like Slim Pickens on Wing Attack Plan R!”
I’m sure they’ll come up with some not-really-legal scheme that will nonetheless be upheld in court.
It looks like the update from Instapundit is likely incorrect. Did some digging and it looks like the DNC held a virtual meeting on whether to formally nominate Biden and voted to do this, but it has not yet held the virtual vote to formally nominate Biden. But the Ohio legislature passed a law to extend the time frame to accommodate the DNC, so the virtual vote to formally nominate Biden is unnecessary. Confused yet? Me too.
The DNC virtual meeting that voted to approve a virtual vote to officially nominate Biden was held a few days ago... so that may be what the Instapundit commenter mistook for the official nomination? And who knows if my info or the commenter's info is correct? Sheesh! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“If American liberal democracy has brought us to last night’s debate, between two candidates of that caliber, then people aren’t wrong to wonder if the system is still fit for purpose.”
That observation echoes the chilling question that Anton Chiguhr asked Carson Wells in “No Country for Old Men”: “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”
I think the Coen Brothers (or maybe Cormac McCarthy?) were being a little ironic with that scene (as with the title of that film!) but your point is well taken - there is a “dismal tide”.
Incidentally I think Tommy Lee Jones’ portrayal of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is one of his finest performances. The last scene in the film is one of the most moving I have seen.
My 14-year-old son surprisingly wanted to watch the debate with me. After it was over I put my arm on his shoulder and said, "I'm sorry to leave you with a country like this"
Reality always snaps back. And when it does, it snaps back hard. We're witnessing it in real time.
Full disclosure: I'm a lot more forgiving of Trump than many of you folks here. We'll always be in his debt for keeping Hillary Clinton out of the Oval Office.
If Hilary had been elected, we'd have had the signal pleasure (if that's the word) of hearing Bill Clinton tell some ambitious, sweet young thing, "Hey sugar cookie. Nothing I do is an impeachable offense anymore."
Futurama would have accurately predicted the future.
If she's willing to do it she's hiding it really well. Her past comments about being annoyed about changing her life for her husband being president were unnecessarily strong if not honest. She claimed she hated him for 10 years of their marriage, more or less I think that would be working parent stress morphing into being in the public eye stress. She noted in retrospect that the press was unfair to her on her school lunch initiatives and what she wore on vacation. The annoyance seemed honest.
You are right. I used to be friends with a Democratic Party inside. He said Michelle Obama hates politics. And now she and her husband are worth at least $100 million. She can live a life of luxury and not be bothered of the thousands of iritances that go with being president.
Anyone but Trump would have beat her in a landslide. Anyone but Hillary would have beat Trump in a landslide. Yes, that includes Bernie Sanders. Trump's margin in some northern states was provided by people who had voted twice for Obama, then for Sanders, but couldn't stomach Clinton.
Wish Rod understood that. He remains blinded by his own version of TDS. One doesn't have to be "a MAGA cultist" to see that. While I'd have preferred De Santis, I'm glad for the opportunity to vote for Trump against our Potemkin president.
I was really looking forward to your analyis on this today, checking my inbox every half an hour or so, and it didn't disappoint.
Just one thing I would like to say. Everyone, who wasn't a Democrat, already knew about Biden's cognitive decline and let's face it, senility. This is especially true in Europe, where people have more of an outside view on US politics. But, there is actually a problem with a sort of conspiratorial thinking on the Left, which isn't new, the Soviets were also susceptible to it.
It is simply the belief that the truth is a right-wing conspiracy theory.
So, for instance, whenever something bad happened in the Soviet system, it was always denied first and labelled a western or fascist conspiracy. Only when the truth became overwhelming and could not be denied any more, were the authorities and media outlets that spread their propaganda, forced to admit that the so-called conspiracy was the truth all along. This happened a lot with industrial accidents, such as Chernobyl, or even natural disasters. It's still something that China does to a ridiculous degree, suppressing all bad news and calling it Western or reactionary / fascist, etc... propaganda, until the truth can no longer be denied, which rarely happens due to the tight hold the party has on events.
I see a lot of parallels with the Democratic party establishment, obviously they are not on the level of the CCP, but they use a lot of the same shaming tactics and labelling everyone they don't like fascist or a conspiracy theorist. We certainly had a good taste of this in Hungary until 1991.
But, this is the problem, this sort of leftist conspiratorial thinking is its own worst enemy as people who are under its spell are simply unable to see obvious truths until it hits them right in the face. Biden's dementia is just the latest example, but we could go through the list from immigration, through crime, to the economy. The blinders are on and it takes events like this to bring a semblance of common sense into brainwashed people's thinking.
And yes, I know, the right also has an equivalent, but the right is not currently in power and conspiratorial thinking on the left is currently the bigger problem, impeding the normal functioning of democracy, the electoral process and the functioning of the government and media.
Most people nowadays don't form their own opinions anyway. They read a headline which tells them what to think and go on from there.
That's why you'll notice do many liberals suddenly realizing Biden is decrepit--none of the years of video evidence mattered. They needed their signaling from the news headlines to change their view
The Right is largely just reactionary. And it’s reacting to obvious stupidities in many cases. The Right therefore tends to avoid the problem of trying to justify a faulty program of positive measures. It’s when the Right also begins to pursue ideological programs—as W did in Iraq—that it gets into similar problems. One could also describe indiscriminate free trade, even with potential adversaries like China, as similar ideological stupidity. Had U.S. trade policy kept its free trade impulses contained within the portion of the world that doesn’t employ slave labor or harvest organs from Uighurs, we might be able to supply our military with enough ammunition today.
My take is that party insiders pushed for the early debate in order to take things to a head: either Biden would dispel concerns about his viability, or he would fail to do so, but early enough to allow support for an alternative to coalesce. A risky strategy but perhaps the only one available to them in the face of a weak candidate who refuses to withdraw -- it creates a ton of pressure for him to do just that, that didn't exist 24 hours ago.
The pressure being brought to bear on the White House this morning by "friendly" media is nearly overwhelming. Biden is stubborn and he may just give everyone the finger anyway (quite possible that he does that), but the insiders had to at least try -- because they know (and certainly quite a few people in the WH itself would know) that Biden is cognitively cooked.
Sure, there are lots of practical difficulties with fielding a replacement. It remains to be seen what the party could do about those, but we shouldn't assume that they are insurmountable in theory or in practice. It's a high risk approach, but not a completely unreasonable one in the face of an unviable candidate who refuses to recuse himself.
In any case, if Biden does withdraw, this would not be good for the Republicans, necessarily. It would be a new situation, with new risks, for both sides, and it would be hard to predict what would happen there without knowing who the replacement is, the reaction of the party to them, and so on.
I was going to skip the debate until I read how poorly Biden was doing. Wow.
As for the back-and-forth on "worst president" and then golf game, what was striking was how much Biden couldn't let these things go, and I wonder if Trump threw them in there to hijack Biden's train of thought or get him off script. Yeah, Trump gets hijacked with the "petty" as well, but he's still with it. Biden seemed to get confused as to how much of a lie he was trying to yell (6 or 8).
As the philosophers say, Trump is not a liar, he is a bullshitter. Liars know the truth and avoid it, whereas bullshitters say whatever they wanna say, without the concept of truth ever even entering their heads. They might sometimes tell the truth by sheer inadvertence, since they don't care either way.
And honestly, I find Trump's commitment to bullshit to be very impressive, at an aesthetic level; it's almost beautiful. He's in his own league, there. He's more loyal to bullshit than he's ever been to his wives.
He's also ignorant of history unless it is about himself. So Trump can say idiot things like he's the most popular Republican president amongst blacks ever because he doesn't know that blacks voted uniformly for Republicans until 1930. Even Nixon in 1960 won about one-third of the black vote.
Again, though, I think the sheer lack of care for truth is his defining characteristic. You're still thinking like a rational human being and pointing out things like "facts", whereas he just really doesn't give a damn. He might tell the truth sometimes by accident, sort of like how if you throw darts blind, you'll hit the target every now and again.
Yes - it was weird how much Biden couldn’t let the golf thing go.
All I could keep thinking is that golf is a rich man’s game.
In the end, That was the least important thing in the debate, yet it was like the light finally came on in Biden’s head. The whole exchange was weird. I knew Biden had been declining, but -wow-the lights really aren’t on in there. It’s way worse than I thought and I thought it was pretty bad going into it. And he gets animated over golf. At a time when most people can barely keep up with their grocery bill. I don’t want Biden near a golf cart, let alone the nuclear codes.
Biden always was the corrupt incompetent stooge for the Establishment. That is why Obama picked him for VP and why the Dems picked him in 2020. They should have dumped him as the candidate and handpicked their next puppet, but there just wasn't anyone good enough, at least one they knew they could control.
Their best bet is RFK, Jr., but he opposes a number of Establishment issues and likely isn't controllable. Maybe they just throw in the towel, and just ride it out with Biden, and revert to full "destroy Trump presidency" mode.
They should just accept the loss and adopt the "let Trump self-destruct" mode. Stop opposing Trump and he will screw things up himself.
And, unbelievably, SCOTUS also decided rightly to overturn the use of a law enacted to address ENRON document shredding to apply "obstruction of an official proceeding" to J6 defendants.
There is no way that anyone thinking clearly would apply this. And this application also resulted in significantly lengthening (what I see as absurd in most cases) prison sentences.
Violent folks yes, but those just protesting Heck no.
Nope. The judiciary simply transferred the regulatory from unelected bureaucrats to unelected judges, including themselves. A power grab in defense of powerful corporations and one that shall make reforming ourselves much more difficult if not impossible absent actual revolution.
Actually the power goes back to the legislature where it belongs. The project of restoring separation of power won't be one in a few decisions, but Roberts reasoning was clear. Not power for administrative judges nor for appointed judges.
If only Congress won't write their own legislation, clearly, rather than delegating it to lobbyists. But then the huge $$ bonuses available to these supposed "experts" would be diminished. And they don't want that.
You are very wrong about this. First off, Congress always had the power to override any bureaucratic decisions by passing an update to whatever regulation that was based on. It did not need a Court decision for that to be true. But the recent Court decision says in effect "Bring any disagreements with the regulatory agencies to the courts." This is a recipe for chaos and confusion on a mass scale. And for further aggrandizement of the judiciary over the elected branches of government, An elitist result much beloved in corporate boardrooms.
The best treatment on this subject was a book written 30 or more years ago: “The Litigation Explosion,“ by Walter K. Olson. The book alleged that Congress writes vaguely worded laws on purpose. By doing so, the individual candidates avoid making the hard choices that would tie themselves to explicit positions that would hurt people. Instead, they get to campaign on headlines and slogans advertising their empty accomplishments while maintaining plausible deniability when Americans butt up against their laws. The details are left for litigation to decide. If the decision of the courts become unpopular, well then, the same politicians can claim that they’re coming to the rescue.
Courts and bureaucrats serve as political cover. We need to wake up to this and hold the feet of politicians to the fire.
This is NOT what is happening in practice at all. You are misrepresenting the opinion, but then again, it appears you know more than the SCOTUS justices.
Think Arnold in California. The Democrats opposed him, but then decided to flatter him. Arnold ditched his conservative policies and passed a bunch of left-wing garbage trying to be popular. Much of the current issues in California result from Arnold selling out.
The Dems could do the same to Trump and did with the Kardashian prison reform, which let out drug kingpins. As long as Trump got a few issues, he would give in on a bunch of others.
As I remember, this was the worry some had about Trump's first term. But the visceral disgust the Democrat Party faithful have for the man seemed to put a stake right through the heart of any chance of this. I'm sure you've seen these people—they can't sit through five seconds of hearing Trump speak. So, while there may be some "bipartisanship" on the margins, I don't really worry too much about him going to the dark side.
I was just saying that last night. Trump often is as nonsensical as Biden & he’s 78, eats a terrible diet, doesn’t exercise, & is overweight. No matter who wins, I think the chances of the winner serving out 4 years are about 50-50 with Trump & 30-70 with Biden. 25th Amendment or dying in office.
There's a video out of Tucker Carlson speaking on Australia recently. After raking journalists over the coals in his speech about how they are trying to impress each other, not seek out truth, one of the journalists at the end was so "out there", it sounded like the Jordan Peterson BBC interview from a few years back.
I think there's grave doubt as to whether a sufficient number of Americans know or care enough about the constitutional system to keep it functioning as it should and could. We may be reverting to what may be the intrinsic desire of people for a king. The problem crosses party and ideological lines. Here's something I wrote about it a few years ago:
Rob, yes, I was surprised by that, too. And it's actually six months older than that (July 2022), as I had originally written it at the beginning of the year
Trump again was stupid self-promoting Trump. How else can we explain why he jumped at his first unprecedented debate with Biden BEFORE the convention. Had he waited to debate until after the convention it would have been much harder to replace Biden. Trump once again played right into the Democrats' hands.
Substantively the Democrats started to lose Oct. 7, 2023. Gaza is what's sinking them, and will continue to sink them. If ONE of the constituents of their fringe coalition starts to bleed they're cooked. It's the only explanation for their lunatic hard lurch to the left since then. They're going to have to shoot Trump to keep him out of the White House.
I don’t entirely agree with your explanation. The lunatic lurch is because they let the fringe in: they are not just constituents, they are at the top levels of the party apparatus. Only an internecine party bloodbath can save them, and only then does your scenario come to pass.
I just noted in a comment the primary system allows the crazies and the single-issue axe-grinders to run the show.
I have long agreed with this. IMO only ending closed primaries can save the Republic.
Hasn't helped much in California. In the general election, the 2 Democratic canidates recieved combined 2 to 3 million votes LESS than the combined votes for Hillary and Trump.
I seemed to be the only person in the whole state that noticed this.
I casted a blank.vote myself.
I'm confused: I wrote about primaries, and you brought up the general election as a counterpoint. Without more info I can't see where you are headed (other than the fact that California has too many kooks, a fact that no electoral reform will fix).
There is a longer history to primaries. Until the early 20th century, party regulars met and nominated a candidate, there were no primaries. That was OK as long as their was fluidity to parties -- when the old parties were out of touch, new parties emerged, and voters had choices, like the Republican Party in 1860. But, when those doors were closed and the "Two Party System" was engineered to make sure the GOP would be the last insurgent third party to actually reach a position of power and influence and electoral success, voters began to worry that they had no voice in who their choices would be. So progressive reformers began instituting primaries. The point was to take nomination out of smoke filled rooms and let the people decide. When it comes to presidential politics, in particular, only a handful of states had primaries, and some of those were non-binding "beauty contests," while others had laws requiring delegates to vote on the first round for the candidate who won the primary. It wasn't until the 1970s and 1980s that most states held primaries. Since these were generally first past the post, and, in most states voters had to register a party affiliation to vote in a primary, this meant that, e.g., Donald Trump could win about a third of the vote in a series of states and come to a convention with an overwhelming majority of pledged delegates. That is the problem JonF is pointing to. This is all complicated by back and forth litigation in the courts about whether political parties are private associations with the right to set their own rules. I agree that a wide open primary in which everyone can vote for anyone, combined with order of preference voting or a top two or three runoff, or both, would come close to representing the will of the people.
Don't you think that each party got the candidate they wanted in this election? As much as I (like Mr. Dreher) would have preferred DeSantis, he's not who Republicans wanted. No tweaking of any system would have changed that.
Substantively the Democrats started to lose Oct. 7, 2023. Gaza is what's sinking them, and will continue to sink them.
Foreign policy is never crucial to elections except in situations where American troops are fighting and dying. People care about the price of gas, and the like. Very few people without direct personal connections to overseas fracases are going to let the antics of a bunch of feuding foreigners halfway around the world decide their vote.
It’s not about foreign policy. It’s about antisemitism.
It's not antisemitic to oppose the Netanyahu regime. And it's an old tactic to tar an entire party with the rhetoric of some crazy pants activists-- the Democrats did it to the GOP for years with old Fred Phelps and his band. But I don't think elections are decided by that.
Most Americans don't care about these gotcha games, which work better as confirmation bias for those whose minds are already made up. They'll vote according to the usual factors (e.g., "It's the economy stupid") and now Joe Biden's mental fitness will likely prove a factor too. As may unforeseen events between now and November.
Opposing Netanyahu isn't anti-semitic, but once you start flying the flag of Hamas (as has been widely done) I think you've crossed a line.
In the 60s there were anti-Vietnam protesters who went around chanting Ho Chih Minh's name and even waved Mao's little red book. Were they pro-Communist? Or just going over the top in their opposition to the war?
Netanyahu funded Hamas though
Have you seen the "protestors"?
I very much doubt enough Jews will desert them Dems to make a difference. But enough BIPOCs may stay at home. It doesn't matter Biden is cooked.
BIPOCs? What, are the protesters dressed in KKK robes?
Yeah even before the debate, Biden was being criticized by Jewish Democrats for not being pro Israel enough & by Arab & Muslim voters for being too pro Israel.
It's hurting him bad.
When it comes to Israel, there is no difference between Biden and Trump. Both are Zionists.
Not according to the donors.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that in my opinion. The Jews are the indigenous people of Israel & the Arabs are the Johnny come latelies & colonizers. So Zionism is just the belief that the Jews need a homeland. So in that sense, I’m a Zionist. But there’s a difference in believing Israel has a right to exist versus being down with Bibi & the settlers. The people criticizing Biden & siding with Trump are the Bibi crowd.
Trump moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem & said Israel should “finish the job” in Gaza. Biden has been calling for a ceasefire. So there is a difference.
Re: The Jews are the indigenous people of Israel & the Arabs are the Johnny come latelies & colonizers.
Palestinians are not "Arabs". They are the distant descendants of the people who have lived in the region since the Bronze Age-- in other words they descend from the ancient Jews too.
A lot of Muslims supported George W. Bush in 2000, because of moral issues like abortion and gay marriage. They swung hard to the Dems because of Bush's "crusade" as he ineptly put it. Not that they supported Al Qaeda, but the pretextual invasion of Iraq, when Saddam Hussein was an avowed enemy of bin Laden and vice versa, really spooked them. Where they'll go now is anyone's guess.
My guess is they’ll stay home. Can’t see them voting for Trump.
That no one in the entire government realized what the word “crusade” meant, especially after 9-11, spoke volumes about American ignorance.
To be sure.
Gaza will be the death of Biden this cycle. He has no.good answer to this trying to.please both.sides.
Yes. That’s it. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Americans do not vote on foreign policy grounds as long as American soldiers are not dying.
Usually true, but this issue divides important elements of the Democract party.
It divides the GOP too.
But it's not a top issue for almost anyone.
Thanks Jon.
Biden will not step down, and they cannot force him out. Also, they chose the format. Which played to Trump's strengths and took the edge off his weaknesses. They played themselves.
I disagree. Watch: the media will start grooming us for the invocation of the 25th amendment. Biden could be gone in a month.
I'm waiting for the announcement that Biden has died. Then they don't have to deal with any controversy, and whomever gets appointed will get the sympathy vote, and the left can admonish Trump any time he says something negative because shame shame, how dare you disrespect the deceased President.
A wise take I hadn’t thought of. Thanks
That means Kamala becomes president.
And maybe that's who becomes the nominee then...
And she is already polling worse than Biden against Trump. California doesn't play in Peoria -- which means Gavin Newsome is a non-starter too.
This is the play I’ve been expecting for a while. If the D’S cared about governance they would have invoked the 25th a while ago.
Kamala Harris will be "appointed".
If Biden dies, it's Kamala.
If they do the 25th amendment thing does Biden have a choice?
I was very suspicious last night as the reactions to Biden were so uniform, so devastating and so widespread that they seemed coordinated. They have to have a clear plan going forward. And that clear plan could be to have Harris coordinate a 25th amendment response for the good of the country. This would make her look like a good leader in a crisis which might be enough for her to beat Trump. In this scenario she could actually run against Biden’s record too.
You seem to have thos idea they are this well oiled machine. I don't see it.
Ever see an engine with a blown gasket? It, too, is a "well oiled" machine.
True.
Took me a minute to get that.
True. A well oiled machine would have have rallied behind Biden as they have in the first place.
I really hope they’re just buffoons.
No Biden is out if he is declared incapacitated under the 25th Amendment. I agree with you on Harris.
No amount of "makeover" can hide Kamala's flaws but, yes, she smells blood and is circling the waters like a shark.
The 25th Amendment is actually a little complicated. A short version is that Vice-President Harris and a majority of the cabinet can remove President Biden. However Biden can challenge his removal. The challenge is voted on by Congress with a two-thirds majority in each house required to maintain Biden's removal. Otherwise Biden is back. Hypothetically, here is how it would go.
1. Vice-President Harris and a majority of the Cabinet would sign a letter asserting that President Biden is unable to discharge the duties of President. The letter would be sent to the Speaker of the House and the President Pro-Tempore of the Senate. At that point, Vice-President Harris becomes Acting President and assumes the duties of the President.
2. However, President Biden could challenge this action. He would sign a letter asserting that he is now able to resume the duties of the President and send it to the Speaker of the House and the President Pro-Tempore of the Senate.
3. Vice-President Harris and a majority of the Cabinet would then have four days to dispute this assertion by again sending a letter asserting that President Biden is unable to discharge the duties of President to the Speaker of the House and the President Pro-Tempore of the Senate.
4. The dispute of President Biden's assertion of competence then goes to Congress. The Senate and the House have 21 days to vote on the dispute. A two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress is required to keep Vice-President Harris as Acting President. Otherwise, President Biden resumes the duties of President.
Also, Biden is not limited to one challenge. If he loses his first challenge, he can challenge again . . . and again . . . and again.
Perhaps Mitch McConnell might ride to the defense of Biden and fight any 25th Amendment attack on Biden, his friend.
Hmm. We could start a conspiracy theory. "They" drugged Biden before the debate to get rid of him. No, I don;t mean that seriously-- but it is odd that the very next day he seemed fine when giving a campaign speech. We all have our bad days, even in our youth (though alcohol and all-nighters may play a role at that age), but is it normal for someone to swing so wildly? I live with an 87 year old cousin and she's on pretty even keel, with an allowance for different energy levels.
Bet.
Ok! What was the currency on Triskelion?
Quadloos. Whoever wins buys the winner a year sub to this forum
And then we've got Harris, who by my best guess is hooked on benzos (sort of like drunk, but not quite)? This will be fantastic; the Dems have no bench.
Look at the bright side: having Harris on the ticket will keep Gary ‘mommy-killer’ Newsom and every other crazy Californian off it.
Aren't you forgetting that she is also a crazy Californian?
Nope, I didn’t forget. That’s why I wrote ‘other’. 😁
A majority of the cabinet, the vice president, and a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress would be required to remove an unwilling Biden via the 25th.
Highly unlikely.
You think the Republicans will be able to keep Biden in after saying he's not competent? That's highly unlikely.
The outcome really depends on what the media decides.
Of course. It only takes a few.
Republicans would vote that he is indeed well qualified and capable, the way Democrats voted to sustain the current Speaker of the House.
Bingo. Or perhaps Obama, Schumer and Pelosi visiting the White House to implore Biden to hang it up.
Meh, Biden was so bad it doesn't matter. When literally the entire Democratic establishment is freaking out and either calling to replace Biden or saying (as I heard this morning) "You have to understand you're electing and ADMINISTRATION when you vote for President..." Biden is toast.
Exactly
The administration is far worse than the candidate.
Or they might have come up with some way to put off or alter the debate. Maybe after the court ruling the democrats could have said Biden had no need to speak to a convicted criminal or something.
Hitting the debate right now was the best idea, it basically takes all the heat off the new york case shenanigans and gets people panicking about Biden's dementia
honestly the Dems created this clusterfuck. there is nothing that can save them now IMHO.
"Stuff" happens, and I wouldn't be surprised by anything happening. I won't elaborate, but it isn't beyond the bounds of possibility that neither candidate will be on the ballot when we go to vote in November.
Exactly right if you believe the debate was an insider effort to force Biden off the ballot in November. There's never been a presidential debate this early in the season. After Biden's pathetic performance, there's now a 30 percent chance Biden will not be the nominee in November. Biden and Harris are probably the only two Democrats Trump can beat. But Trump wanted TV time so he agreed to the debate.
The problem is that the Democrats have allowed themselves to become a Politburo of sorts, a gerontocracy that is sclerotic and dedicated largely to preserving its own power and wealth. Joe Biden is the perfect example of this and is now showing how broken the Democratic Party is as well. The nation is ill, but there is no leadership to handle what is coming up. I don’t think Biden is going to be replaced. It is too late into the election season, and the reality is that these problems have been known for a while. The big question is how the failing regime will respond to the next coming crisis.
They should have known better than to expect "Its Hillary's turn now" to play after Obama won the nomination in 2008. Unfortunately, Obama himself was complicit in that play.
"Can anybody not all-in on the Trump personality cult really believe that the garrulous braggart who helped Biden demolish himself last night is the best we can do?"
Was Franklin Pierce? Rutherford Hayes? Warren Harding? Harry Truman? George W. Bush?
Anyone of those guys, yes even Bush, was Trump's superior in multiple ways. whatever their follies they were fundamentally decent men.
Not Bush. I've seen Bush's policies, as opposed to Trump. Being "fundamentally decent" doesn't matter if you suck as president.
Carter, by all accounts, was really smart and really nice.
Exactly
Exactly. And a disaster.
And terrible presidents. I'd rather have an executive like Nixon or Trump with a massive ego and also a competence to match
Nixon had a paranoia problem, but he was politically highly competent. Trump is anything but.
Oh, I don’t know…Trump has been ahead in the polls for months. I don’t know how you define “politically competent”, but he’s got the GOP, even McConnell, in the bag. Plus a bunch of swing voters out in the provinces that matter.
He's had a slight lead in some polls, but within the margin for error. Biden had been eroding that to the point that a few polls were giving him a slight kead. Really, it's been neck and neck.
Trump in his first term was clueless as to how to work with even a GOP Congress. His one attempt at making an immigration deal was torpedoed by that shrill harridan, Ann Coulter- you'd think he could at least have blown her right off.
Or it was a GOP Congress that didn't want to make a difference.
Nobody has a majority in any polls, which says more than splitting hairs about who has the biggest minority.
Nixon was highly intelligent but I don't think he was politically all that competent. And he wanted John Connelly to replace him.
Trump lacks the competence. He blows an errant thought out of his mouth every five minutes, having no connection to the last errant thought, and substitutes larding his sentences with random adjectives for familiarity with relevant facts.
No wars, secure border. President Trump better.
I see no connection at all between those two sentences.
Trump also got us closer to energy independence than we ever were. He also nominated 3 solid Supreme Court justices. And as a businessman, he understands Econ 101. I wanted De Santis, but I'm glad to be able to vote for Trump against our Potemkin president.
I thought Truman did a good job handling the huge burden that fell on him especially since FDR didn’t keep him in the loop. Talk about history repeating itself! By 1944, FDR was a very sick man & he should not have run for a 4th term. The Axis powers were substantially defeated by November 1944. FDR let Stalin roll him because he was just too ill to stand up to him.
Truman had only been in office for a few months as VP. He presumably would have been read-in eventually.
Truman was one of our better presidents. He had a lot on his plate when he became president in 1945.
How dare you, sir. Warren Harding is the most underrated president in American history.
Caligula was crazy, but I've always thought he was in one of his lucid moments when he appointed his horse, Incintatus, to the Roman Senate, for it was an act of contempt rather than madness, showing how little he respected any authority other than his own.
Biden has been the elites' horse; we weren't supposed to notice, or care if we did, that his presidency has been an exercise in the elder abuse of a man in very useful cognitive decline; he doesn't get in the way. Now, they've ridden that broken-down horse as far as it will take them, so it's off to the knacker for Ol' Joe to join Animal Farm's Boxer.
Matt Labash said in the NYT today that Biden came off like he was "auditioning for the glue factory"
Well, it is a political horse race after all .... first past the post and all that.
From Frum:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/06/debate-trump-platform-january-6/678818/
I am convinced that Frum is a pathological liar. I didn't have to read the rest of the Atlantic column to get the gist.
Problem is, they cannot make him step down. He and DOCTOR Jill are going to hang on by their wretched fingernails. Dems made this bed, now they get to lay in it.
Look for the Dems to do everything they can to make Jill an 'offer she can't refuse' to have Joe step aside. If the Bidens refuse nonetheless, it will be fascinating to see what crooks and hooks come out to effect Joe's removal because I think they will try. Whether they succeed is another question, but I think they'll find a way.
The Dems are not nearly the all powerful cabal they pose as. They have not the wisdom, intellect or wit. The world they seek to create and the policy they execute is proof. I think there may be some flailings, but it won't be good for much more than comedy. Those the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
Yes I think I'm with you on that one. I'm not buying the "Trump fell into the diabolic Democrat's trap! Now they can get rid of Biden and nominate someone who will beat Trump!" (And if they did think that it's a remarkably stupid plan for reasons I outlined elsewhere, essentially kicking the checkerboard when you think you're going to lose)
What would need to happen would be for a majority (or at least a large percentage) of the Biden delegates at the convention to buck and declare that they are not supporting Biden. That is, I believe, against the "rules", at least for pledged delegates. So it would be kind of a rules crisis.
The Democrats have superdelegates (insiders) who are all unpledged, but there are not enough of them to determine the outcome unless the pledged delegates break the rules (assuming Biden doesn't withdraw -- if he withdraws, his pledged delegates are free to vote for whomever).
My understanding is that in the first vote, pledged delegates *must* vote for Biden. After that, they're free. Biden has enough to assure selection, so if the powers that be are hell bent on removing him, they will have to get creative.
Right -- unless they break the rules, which would create a rules crisis. Those are party rules (each party has its own rules). I could imagine a vote to suspend the rules due to a state of emergency, or some such thing, at the convention.
That will definitely happen if President Harris is already sworn in.
Rules? Rules?? Rules??? Before money and power? You break me up!
Rules are meant to be broken.
The bylaws specifically state that delegates can't do that. Biden has won 3900 of the 4000 delegates, and there are no take-backs.
Right. I am well aware it would be against the rules, as I said. These are party rules, though, not laws. The party ultimately enforces them.
No, I'm pretty sure these bylaws are enforced via some sort of contract. you can break a Democratic party rule, but not a contract.
Even if they are laws, the Democrats would not let themselves be bound by them.
Right. If Schumer, Pelosi, Obama, Taylor Swift, Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar came out to dump Joe Biden, he will be dumped.
They will get their media allies to start the drumroll, and in a few weeks dumping Joe will be seen as inevitable.
Keep in mind that Jill Biden is not a physician. She's an, um, "doctor" of education
Yes. Rod. Hence, the mockery. Usually, those who have docorates in her field who pretentiously wave around their degrees are mediocre douchbags
Also the EdD is not a real doctoral credential; it's more akin to a master's degree.
It used to be considered a breach of etiquette to flash around a non medical doctorate outside of academic circles. Signing a hotel register for example as Dr. could waste valuable time in an emergency if someone needed medical assistance. She is really a piece of work.
Some people are obsessed with titles, usually worthless ones. And those same people are the ones who place their pronouns beneath the online degrees.
I know someone who has the title "Honourable", being the grandson of a duke. It's only his mates in the pub who call him that, though!
Academic titles have become our titles of nobility.
Or within. At neither my undergraduate nor graduate schools did any of the faculty use their PhDs as honorifics. And these were people with PhDs from Harvard etc., in many cases.
But they go quietly up the salary scale.
Exactly, I have a PhD. For about 3 months after getting it, I started styling myself "Dr.", and then thought better of it. It took me about 20 years to get the bank, etc., to take "Dr." off my address, and people who saw my letters used to react with surprise!
So she's not even qualified to pull out a splinter?
Well, Wilson's wife and chief of staff set a precedent of sorts... of course that was near the end of Wilson's second term...
When Senator Carter Glass of Virginia learned that Louisiana had sent Huey Long to the Senate, he remarked that "At least Caligula sent the whole horse."
I actually wonder if this debate was a humiliation ritual because Biden pissed off some donors behind the scenes.
Knowing his mental state, they could have had him quietly step down much earlier. Instead they put his Swiss cheese brain in front of the entire world to see
Never underestimate the Israeli lobby and their willingness to backstab or worse...
Honestly was my first thought too. I noticed a definite turn when Biden didn't immediately bend the knee to Likud
No. It was an effort to get Biden off the ballot.
Here’s where the comparison of the US to the Soviet Union- while perhaps exaggerated- becomes apt: A supine, propagandist media covering up for a senile leadership.
Exactly. The idea that the media has now done us a favor by exposing Biden’s mental incapacity is three, four years too late. They are fully complicit in this state of affairs.
The difference is that our supine, propagandist media is voluntary, which is far worse.
Re: I think it might have been the case that Democratic Party elites pushed this early debate because they knew how it would go, and they wanted to give themselves time to implement a Plan B.
I thought this update from Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit was interesting fly in the ointment:
UPDATE: A friend comments: “You know what’s really hilarious here is that ORDINARILY they might be able to replace him at the DNC. But they held the phony “virtual” DNC a few days back so as to make the Ohio ballot. He’s locked in! They nominated him! He’s their guy! They’re riding the bomb down like Slim Pickens on Wing Attack Plan R!”
I’m sure they’ll come up with some not-really-legal scheme that will nonetheless be upheld in court.
“They’re riding the bomb down like Slim Pickens on Wing Attack Plan R!”
Yikes!
“I’m sure they’ll come up with some not-really-legal scheme that will nonetheless be upheld in court.”
My expectation exactly
Not going to happen. He's in. This is their just desserts. And lets see them choke on it.
It looks like the update from Instapundit is likely incorrect. Did some digging and it looks like the DNC held a virtual meeting on whether to formally nominate Biden and voted to do this, but it has not yet held the virtual vote to formally nominate Biden. But the Ohio legislature passed a law to extend the time frame to accommodate the DNC, so the virtual vote to formally nominate Biden is unnecessary. Confused yet? Me too.
The DNC virtual meeting that voted to approve a virtual vote to officially nominate Biden was held a few days ago... so that may be what the Instapundit commenter mistook for the official nomination? And who knows if my info or the commenter's info is correct? Sheesh! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Another option is that no one is steering the ship, and we're seeing the results of a party being led by geriatrics, the worst of which being Biden.
They will probably try some trick to pull another candidate I'm, but at this point I doubt it's highly coordinated
“If American liberal democracy has brought us to last night’s debate, between two candidates of that caliber, then people aren’t wrong to wonder if the system is still fit for purpose.”
That observation echoes the chilling question that Anton Chiguhr asked Carson Wells in “No Country for Old Men”: “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”
https://youtu.be/xIRbBF0lLto?si=PXizb7HpeEHzCM-d
"It's the dismal tide. It's not the one thing."
I think the Coen Brothers (or maybe Cormac McCarthy?) were being a little ironic with that scene (as with the title of that film!) but your point is well taken - there is a “dismal tide”.
Incidentally I think Tommy Lee Jones’ portrayal of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is one of his finest performances. The last scene in the film is one of the most moving I have seen.
i couldn't agree more! the last scene is just perfect. No Country is a movie i watch a couple of times a year.
My 14-year-old son surprisingly wanted to watch the debate with me. After it was over I put my arm on his shoulder and said, "I'm sorry to leave you with a country like this"
The main question is the last point! Who is running the country?! Should the 25th amendment be invoked? Lots of questions. What a mess!
Leaning on the true King to get me through this as there is only one Truth, and we need to embrace Him now!
No matter who’s President, Jesus is King.
But King Jesus never disputed that this world is Satan's kingdom.
Absolutely. Amid all the yammering about how to replace Biden is there anyone that actually cares about our country among the Democrat party?
"Reality will always re-assert itself"
Reality always snaps back. And when it does, it snaps back hard. We're witnessing it in real time.
Full disclosure: I'm a lot more forgiving of Trump than many of you folks here. We'll always be in his debt for keeping Hillary Clinton out of the Oval Office.
"We'll always be in his debt for keeping Hillary Clinton out of the Oval Office."
Amen, and I feel that way about Obama in BOTH elections (though for different reasons)
Oh, I don't know.
If Hilary had been elected, we'd have had the signal pleasure (if that's the word) of hearing Bill Clinton tell some ambitious, sweet young thing, "Hey sugar cookie. Nothing I do is an impeachable offense anymore."
Futurama would have accurately predicted the future.
Unless poor old Bill met with an "accident".
Until Mrs Obama appears at the last minute.
If she's willing to do it she's hiding it really well. Her past comments about being annoyed about changing her life for her husband being president were unnecessarily strong if not honest. She claimed she hated him for 10 years of their marriage, more or less I think that would be working parent stress morphing into being in the public eye stress. She noted in retrospect that the press was unfair to her on her school lunch initiatives and what she wore on vacation. The annoyance seemed honest.
You are right. I used to be friends with a Democratic Party inside. He said Michelle Obama hates politics. And now she and her husband are worth at least $100 million. She can live a life of luxury and not be bothered of the thousands of iritances that go with being president.
“Reality always snaps back. And when it does, it snaps back hard. We're witnessing it in real time.”
But as T.S. Eliot observed, drawing on a major theme in both ancient Greek literature and the Scriptures, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
Reality is a dirty word for God, huh?
No - just for fallen humanity
Anyone but Trump would have beat her in a landslide. Anyone but Hillary would have beat Trump in a landslide. Yes, that includes Bernie Sanders. Trump's margin in some northern states was provided by people who had voted twice for Obama, then for Sanders, but couldn't stomach Clinton.
Wish Rod understood that. He remains blinded by his own version of TDS. One doesn't have to be "a MAGA cultist" to see that. While I'd have preferred De Santis, I'm glad for the opportunity to vote for Trump against our Potemkin president.
Great one, Rod!
I was really looking forward to your analyis on this today, checking my inbox every half an hour or so, and it didn't disappoint.
Just one thing I would like to say. Everyone, who wasn't a Democrat, already knew about Biden's cognitive decline and let's face it, senility. This is especially true in Europe, where people have more of an outside view on US politics. But, there is actually a problem with a sort of conspiratorial thinking on the Left, which isn't new, the Soviets were also susceptible to it.
It is simply the belief that the truth is a right-wing conspiracy theory.
So, for instance, whenever something bad happened in the Soviet system, it was always denied first and labelled a western or fascist conspiracy. Only when the truth became overwhelming and could not be denied any more, were the authorities and media outlets that spread their propaganda, forced to admit that the so-called conspiracy was the truth all along. This happened a lot with industrial accidents, such as Chernobyl, or even natural disasters. It's still something that China does to a ridiculous degree, suppressing all bad news and calling it Western or reactionary / fascist, etc... propaganda, until the truth can no longer be denied, which rarely happens due to the tight hold the party has on events.
I see a lot of parallels with the Democratic party establishment, obviously they are not on the level of the CCP, but they use a lot of the same shaming tactics and labelling everyone they don't like fascist or a conspiracy theorist. We certainly had a good taste of this in Hungary until 1991.
But, this is the problem, this sort of leftist conspiratorial thinking is its own worst enemy as people who are under its spell are simply unable to see obvious truths until it hits them right in the face. Biden's dementia is just the latest example, but we could go through the list from immigration, through crime, to the economy. The blinders are on and it takes events like this to bring a semblance of common sense into brainwashed people's thinking.
And yes, I know, the right also has an equivalent, but the right is not currently in power and conspiratorial thinking on the left is currently the bigger problem, impeding the normal functioning of democracy, the electoral process and the functioning of the government and media.
Most people nowadays don't form their own opinions anyway. They read a headline which tells them what to think and go on from there.
That's why you'll notice do many liberals suddenly realizing Biden is decrepit--none of the years of video evidence mattered. They needed their signaling from the news headlines to change their view
The Right is largely just reactionary. And it’s reacting to obvious stupidities in many cases. The Right therefore tends to avoid the problem of trying to justify a faulty program of positive measures. It’s when the Right also begins to pursue ideological programs—as W did in Iraq—that it gets into similar problems. One could also describe indiscriminate free trade, even with potential adversaries like China, as similar ideological stupidity. Had U.S. trade policy kept its free trade impulses contained within the portion of the world that doesn’t employ slave labor or harvest organs from Uighurs, we might be able to supply our military with enough ammunition today.
My take is that party insiders pushed for the early debate in order to take things to a head: either Biden would dispel concerns about his viability, or he would fail to do so, but early enough to allow support for an alternative to coalesce. A risky strategy but perhaps the only one available to them in the face of a weak candidate who refuses to withdraw -- it creates a ton of pressure for him to do just that, that didn't exist 24 hours ago.
The pressure being brought to bear on the White House this morning by "friendly" media is nearly overwhelming. Biden is stubborn and he may just give everyone the finger anyway (quite possible that he does that), but the insiders had to at least try -- because they know (and certainly quite a few people in the WH itself would know) that Biden is cognitively cooked.
Sure, there are lots of practical difficulties with fielding a replacement. It remains to be seen what the party could do about those, but we shouldn't assume that they are insurmountable in theory or in practice. It's a high risk approach, but not a completely unreasonable one in the face of an unviable candidate who refuses to recuse himself.
In any case, if Biden does withdraw, this would not be good for the Republicans, necessarily. It would be a new situation, with new risks, for both sides, and it would be hard to predict what would happen there without knowing who the replacement is, the reaction of the party to them, and so on.
A Biden middle finger just might invoke the 25th amendment
And he can give them another middle finger if they do that.
It would take a 2/3 majority in the House AND the Senate to remove Biden via the 25th.
It's not out of the question. Far from it, if the media storm is strong enough.
I was going to skip the debate until I read how poorly Biden was doing. Wow.
As for the back-and-forth on "worst president" and then golf game, what was striking was how much Biden couldn't let these things go, and I wonder if Trump threw them in there to hijack Biden's train of thought or get him off script. Yeah, Trump gets hijacked with the "petty" as well, but he's still with it. Biden seemed to get confused as to how much of a lie he was trying to yell (6 or 8).
As the philosophers say, Trump is not a liar, he is a bullshitter. Liars know the truth and avoid it, whereas bullshitters say whatever they wanna say, without the concept of truth ever even entering their heads. They might sometimes tell the truth by sheer inadvertence, since they don't care either way.
And honestly, I find Trump's commitment to bullshit to be very impressive, at an aesthetic level; it's almost beautiful. He's in his own league, there. He's more loyal to bullshit than he's ever been to his wives.
Hits the nail on the head.
He's also ignorant of history unless it is about himself. So Trump can say idiot things like he's the most popular Republican president amongst blacks ever because he doesn't know that blacks voted uniformly for Republicans until 1930. Even Nixon in 1960 won about one-third of the black vote.
Again, though, I think the sheer lack of care for truth is his defining characteristic. You're still thinking like a rational human being and pointing out things like "facts", whereas he just really doesn't give a damn. He might tell the truth sometimes by accident, sort of like how if you throw darts blind, you'll hit the target every now and again.
Puffery. You're gonna love it, I guarantee.
Yes - it was weird how much Biden couldn’t let the golf thing go.
All I could keep thinking is that golf is a rich man’s game.
In the end, That was the least important thing in the debate, yet it was like the light finally came on in Biden’s head. The whole exchange was weird. I knew Biden had been declining, but -wow-the lights really aren’t on in there. It’s way worse than I thought and I thought it was pretty bad going into it. And he gets animated over golf. At a time when most people can barely keep up with their grocery bill. I don’t want Biden near a golf cart, let alone the nuclear codes.
It does show his competitive nature. Which may be why he continues in the election race.
Biden always was the corrupt incompetent stooge for the Establishment. That is why Obama picked him for VP and why the Dems picked him in 2020. They should have dumped him as the candidate and handpicked their next puppet, but there just wasn't anyone good enough, at least one they knew they could control.
Their best bet is RFK, Jr., but he opposes a number of Establishment issues and likely isn't controllable. Maybe they just throw in the towel, and just ride it out with Biden, and revert to full "destroy Trump presidency" mode.
They should just accept the loss and adopt the "let Trump self-destruct" mode. Stop opposing Trump and he will screw things up himself.
We've seen four years of TRump policy. It was not a "screw up" presidency in policy terms.
No kidding. Look at the recent SCOTUS opinions. Overruling Chevron deference is a BIG deal and good for freedom and the USA.
Right?
And, unbelievably, SCOTUS also decided rightly to overturn the use of a law enacted to address ENRON document shredding to apply "obstruction of an official proceeding" to J6 defendants.
There is no way that anyone thinking clearly would apply this. And this application also resulted in significantly lengthening (what I see as absurd in most cases) prison sentences.
Violent folks yes, but those just protesting Heck no.
Nope. The judiciary simply transferred the regulatory from unelected bureaucrats to unelected judges, including themselves. A power grab in defense of powerful corporations and one that shall make reforming ourselves much more difficult if not impossible absent actual revolution.
Jon,
Actually the power goes back to the legislature where it belongs. The project of restoring separation of power won't be one in a few decisions, but Roberts reasoning was clear. Not power for administrative judges nor for appointed judges.
If only Congress won't write their own legislation, clearly, rather than delegating it to lobbyists. But then the huge $$ bonuses available to these supposed "experts" would be diminished. And they don't want that.
You are very wrong about this. First off, Congress always had the power to override any bureaucratic decisions by passing an update to whatever regulation that was based on. It did not need a Court decision for that to be true. But the recent Court decision says in effect "Bring any disagreements with the regulatory agencies to the courts." This is a recipe for chaos and confusion on a mass scale. And for further aggrandizement of the judiciary over the elected branches of government, An elitist result much beloved in corporate boardrooms.
The best treatment on this subject was a book written 30 or more years ago: “The Litigation Explosion,“ by Walter K. Olson. The book alleged that Congress writes vaguely worded laws on purpose. By doing so, the individual candidates avoid making the hard choices that would tie themselves to explicit positions that would hurt people. Instead, they get to campaign on headlines and slogans advertising their empty accomplishments while maintaining plausible deniability when Americans butt up against their laws. The details are left for litigation to decide. If the decision of the courts become unpopular, well then, the same politicians can claim that they’re coming to the rescue.
Courts and bureaucrats serve as political cover. We need to wake up to this and hold the feet of politicians to the fire.
Jon,
This is NOT what is happening in practice at all. You are misrepresenting the opinion, but then again, it appears you know more than the SCOTUS justices.
Well I was interested in RFK Jr till I found out that a worm ate part of his brain, he’s a conspiracy nut & he drove his first wife to suicide.
He appeals to enough casual voters that the Dems could use him to win. If they just want to stay in power, it is the best option.
Pretty good reasons not to vote for Bobby Jr.
The problem is there may be a lot of collateral damage in Trump's self-immolation.
I'm a "plague on both houses" kind of guy- but plagues tend to spread.
How exactly do you imagine Trump will screw things up?
And since I'm a policy voter, I won't vote for pro abortion and pro-climate hysteira RFK.
That and I'd rather be shot dead (heh) than vote for a Kennedy
Think Arnold in California. The Democrats opposed him, but then decided to flatter him. Arnold ditched his conservative policies and passed a bunch of left-wing garbage trying to be popular. Much of the current issues in California result from Arnold selling out.
The Dems could do the same to Trump and did with the Kardashian prison reform, which let out drug kingpins. As long as Trump got a few issues, he would give in on a bunch of others.
As I remember, this was the worry some had about Trump's first term. But the visceral disgust the Democrat Party faithful have for the man seemed to put a stake right through the heart of any chance of this. I'm sure you've seen these people—they can't sit through five seconds of hearing Trump speak. So, while there may be some "bipartisanship" on the margins, I don't really worry too much about him going to the dark side.
This will be the most consequential selection of a vice presidential candidate since Truman.
I was just saying that last night. Trump often is as nonsensical as Biden & he’s 78, eats a terrible diet, doesn’t exercise, & is overweight. No matter who wins, I think the chances of the winner serving out 4 years are about 50-50 with Trump & 30-70 with Biden. 25th Amendment or dying in office.
I think your odds are about right.
There's a video out of Tucker Carlson speaking on Australia recently. After raking journalists over the coals in his speech about how they are trying to impress each other, not seek out truth, one of the journalists at the end was so "out there", it sounded like the Jordan Peterson BBC interview from a few years back.
I enjoyed these clips too
I think there's grave doubt as to whether a sufficient number of Americans know or care enough about the constitutional system to keep it functioning as it should and could. We may be reverting to what may be the intrinsic desire of people for a king. The problem crosses party and ideological lines. Here's something I wrote about it a few years ago:
https://www.lightondarkwater.com/2022/07/a-republic-if-we-want-it.html
I remember this discussion, Mac. Hard to believe it was almost two years ago.
I missed it back then, but have just now interrupted my reading here to read that there. It's a great post and a fine exchange.
Thank you.
Rob, yes, I was surprised by that, too. And it's actually six months older than that (July 2022), as I had originally written it at the beginning of the year