The Navy SEALs have a rule, “the only easy day was yesterday.” If yesterday, February 8, 2024 was in fact an easy day, we are so screwed. And we are screwed in any event. A few notable things have taken place in the past twenty four hours. Let’s take them one at a time and see how they interact and relate to the sheer awfulness that is politics in America right now. We are in desperate straits and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
First of all, Tucker Carlson had a ludicrous interview with Vladimir Putin. The right-wing of the Republican party (which is basically all of them, with the exception of the emeritus grise of Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, et al.) is eating it up with a spoon. They are, if you can believe this, touting Putin’s mental acuity and purportedly breathtaking grasp of history and world affairs, over Joe Biden. Yes, a Russian dictator is being touted as the better man over an American president. At least when Reagan was in office we acknowledged that Russia was the enemy. So much for that. Putin is the hero of the GOP. I guess we should be grateful that they’re no longer hiding it.
If you like fake history. The Putin Fan Club still retains a few members after that debacle from the “America First Patriots.” pic.twitter.com/l85aVbpM2C
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) February 9, 2024
The way the MAGA bros are creaming themselves over this fucking despot is pathetic.
— Jo (@JoJoFromJerz) February 9, 2024
This is real. To me, this is the stuff of dark political satire, of black comedy at its finest, but no, this is real world, pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming, stuff. The guy who made the second comment is the editor of the Daily Wire, a MAGA publication par excellence. Reagan must be rolling in his grave over this.
Then we had the debacle of of Elise Stefanik jumping with both feet into the election denier quagmire. This is significant because she knows it’s bullshit. She’s too smart, she’s not a bimbo like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert. She went to fine schools and has a good mind. What is significant about this incident is that it’s just one more example of the sell out of the intelligentsia (what’s left of them) in the GOP. They are all conspiracy theorists now. Stefanik is vying to be Trump’s next vice president, apparently oblivious to the fact that he tried to get his last vice president killed.
Tom Joscelyn: “The mob goes down there, to the Capitol and chants, ‘Hang Mike Pence!’ And they actually build a gallows out in front of the Capitol, I mean, they meant it.
Charlie Sykes: “ I can only imagine what Mike Pence must have thought when the full weight of the betrayal… pic.twitter.com/UZgxVG8upH
— Blue Georgia (@BlueATLGeorgia) February 6, 2024
Never forget that there was a gallows built in the Capitol. Never forget that the Secret Service agents were texting family members saying goodbye, because they feared they might not make it home that night. And don’t think that Stefanik signing onto this is a ho hum moment. It’s a proclamation that the entire GOP, even people thought to be the best and the brightest of the upcoming crop, is morally bankrupt. They are immersed in conspiracy theory and lies. They’re not in favor of a constitutional democracy, they’re in favor of taking power and keeping it.
Lastly, we had the debacle of the special counsel trashing Joe Biden as an elderly man with a bad memory. And that, friends, leads us to what we’re going to be facing for the next nine months until the November election. The Bulwark:
We’re going Big Dark today.
First, I want you to get out of your head any ideas of truth, morality, or fairness. We’re only going to talk about reality.1
And the reality is that yesterday was bad for Biden and gave us a look at the worst-case scenario for the next several months.
So far as I can tell, the only issue that matters for Biden is age. I know what the polling says on the various policy approval numbers, but I suspect that everything is downstream from age. Most voters—even many of the people who will vote for Biden—want him to be younger.
He can’t do that, but he can appear “vigorous.”2
And how did Biden do last night in his press conference attempting to appear vigorous? It was a Rorschach.
If you like Biden, then you saw a guy who was fired up and with it enough to be off-the-cuff funny. (Peter Doocy: “How bad is your memory and can you continue as president?” Biden: “My memory is so bad that I let you speak.”)
If you have doubts about Biden, then all you saw was him referring to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the president of Mexico.
And that’s why the next nine months are so perilous: It doesn’t matter how well Biden does in public. He can be great for 90 minutes, but if he makes one mental slip it becomes confirmation for voters that their biggest concern about him is true. He has to be perfect. Every day. For nine months.
That’s not going to happen. Bill Clinton in his prime didn’t bat 1.000.
The danger is that the groundwater has been poisoned against Biden so that when a thing that will regularly happen to him occurs, it will reinforce voter perceptions of his biggest weakness. And when this same thing happens to Trump on the reg, it will have no effect.
Again: Don’t tell me about fair. I get it. But we’re dealing with reality. So you should prepare for it and not try to wish it away. It doesn’t matter if the language in the special counsel’s report published yesterday was partisan or uncalled for. It doesn’t matter if things are taken out of context. It doesn’t matter that the New York Times ran multiple banner headlines about it while ignoring Trump’s clear cognitive problems.
This will be a recurring story, all campaign long, because The People have made it a story—because they care about it.
This is the state of affairs in the second week of February, 2024. It is not a promising one. As a matter of fact, it’s downright depressing.
Trump’s gaffes are legion but they will go unrecognized against any gaffe of Biden’s. It’s always been that way to some extent, It’s Okay If You’re A Republican. So what do we have then? Old v. Old? No, in point of fact Old v. Evil is what we have in this election. Good v. Evil. America v. Autocracy. Those are the brushstrokes. I only hope there are more of us than of them. That is my devout prayer.
Gee, the ratfuckers are out from under their rocks now, too. Even Nixon is rolling over in his … cave…
We look so bad in the eyes of the world. I don’t know if we’re ever going to live this one down. The GOP started looking bad with the Dubya years. The world was looking at us side-eyed then. But with Trump? And now the GOP melting down? We are ripe for a takeover. Ask Vladimir, he knows.
RW are obviously getting nervous about Biden’s wins in the 1st elections! The “Telegraph” is a KNOWN RW rag! Yep, RW Media are ganging-up on this WINNER….. won’t do them any good, we have “seen” what danger & death, Trump has caused. We have yet to see what CHAOS, Trump’s theft of our “classified Document” files NOT found or returned, will CAUSE! Don’t believe any RW Media, they LIE to hold on to their Anti-American power!
Until the orange scrotum became the high priest of the GOP, it way Reagan, who in his last few years of his second term was barreling into dementia. And that was kept hidden for years.
The GOP hypocrisy has been around a long, long time. Ignore scrotum’s mental decline, which is on display every time he opens his mouth, and nit pick Biden for his verbal (not mental) gaffes.
Eisenhower was the last decent R president and he warned about the military industrial machine and he was right – we spent the next 50 years in wars that made a lot of people rich and a lot of people dead, and the GOP wants to keep it that way.
Funny how our culture reveres Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and the others who picked up weapons to fight the tyranny of the king. We revere Lincoln, Grant, and the others who picked up weapons to fight the evil of the Conferderates. We revere the soliders and the leaders like Eisenhower, Patton and the others who picked up weapons to stop fascism from taking over Europe. If we, as a nation, do not wake up to this danger and give this evil tyrant and his evil party the reins of our government, the choice seems either to go along passively and watch everything good about this life destroyed, or follow the leaders we have built monuments to that are located in our nation’s capital. I have read many factual Pulitzer prize winning books about those conflicts. At no point did I see where those heros WANTED TO FIGHT. They felt they had no choice. Somehow we are deluded enough to think we do. VOTE or there won’t be another time to worry about it. Then it will be decision time to fight or give in and join the nazis.
Im a 70 year old who is stunned by what I am seeing. Im shocked by the state this country is in. I would have said that none of this could happen but here we are.
I have always sat on the sidelines never given money to the Democrats or worked for the party. Im running scared and that has changed. Im about to make my first donation to the Biden campaign and volunteer to do what ever is needed for the campaign.
Where did all these people will no conscience no morals no standards come from. it’s like we have been invaded by another species of human. PLEASE VOTE DEMOCRATS