I know, this was just a moment. We all have bad moments. But Joe Biden was campaigning in New Hampshire tonight and got a question from a 21-year-old female about why we should believe he can win the election after he finished so poorly in the Iowa Caucuses. (Legitimate question.)
Biden: 'It's a good question. Number One – Iowa is a Democratic caucus. You ever been to a caucus?'
(Student nods yes.)
Biden: ”No you haven't. You're a lying dog-faced pony soldier.”
This article says he’s used the phrase before … so, it wasn’t just a moment. He apparently thinks this is okay. To make it even worse, he said before that he was quoting a John Wayne movie from 1952. Apparently, it wasn’t. It was a quote from a 1952 Tyrone Power movie.
Tyrone Power. I thought he might be old enough to have appeared in silent films, but I was wrong. He started acting in the 30s.
You can watch here:
Yeah, he was trying to make a joke. The girl laughed. The audience laughed, but you know it wasn’t that they really thought it was funny. It was more like — We don’t really know what’s going on or what he said or what he meant, and we’re uncomfortable, so we’ll laugh a little bit. What the hell did he say?
1. Does he not know how out of touch he seems when he quotes a John Wayne movie from 1952? Anything from 1952. Much less any Tyrone Power movie.
It was 68 years ago. It just reminds everybody how damned old he is. It makes you wonder how much he could possibly understand about the lives of people in their 20s, 30s, 40s.
2. You don’t call voters liars. Maybe if they get up and say Trump is a hero or the whole Russia/Impeachment thing was a plot or Trump isn’t running up the deficit.
Other than that, no liars. You want these people to like you and vote for you.
3. You never call a woman dog-faced. Never. They’re already pissed Hillary isn’t president, that we weren’t spared this whole Trump fiasco. And if you’re a man campaigning in 2020, they probably wish you were a woman.
Just don’t call them dog-faced.
In fact, don’t call anyone dog-faced. We’ve endured three years of a President who calls important people by childish nicknames, like he’s four-years old and bad-tempered. No more childish names or childish insults. We’re sick of that.
4. It’s a minuscule moment of unforced error and gibberish and he-said-what? Which shouldn’t matter much, but Trump has given us so many cringe-worthy moments over the past three years, we’re really ready for a president who doesn’t make us cringe. We want to be able to go to sleep and not wonder what kind of stupid stuff he’s said by the time we wake up.
A lot of people wonder if Trump has Alzheimer’s or is on drugs, because he says a lot of crazy stuff. We want to be able to draw a sharp contrast between Trump and our nominee.
5. That girl is going to think he’s doing that pat-the-kid-on-the-head thing and be totally dismissive of her, that he’s not taking her seriously because she’s so young, maybe because she’s a young female.
Women are really tired of this bullshit. Young people are really tired of older people screwing up the world. We don’t want a candidate who plays into either of those groups’ perceptions and reinforces them.
6. None of this is hard stuff. It should never be hard, especially for someone who has as much experience campaigning as Joe Biden.
7. This is the kind of thing that’s so stupid and odd, people who don't pay a lot of attention to politics hear about it. They couldn’t tell you the differences in the candidates plans for Medicare for all vs. Medicare for all who want it, but they remember stupid, cringe-worthy moments.
I don’t dislike Joe Biden. I swear, I don’t. I’m not thrilled at the idea of President Joe Biden. I think his day has passed, but I know he’d be a much better President than any Republican and I’d vote for him.
But he comes into 2020 with every advantage, and it seems like he’s just fumbling along, not wowing anybody, not inspiring anybody.
This is not working. It’s just not.
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In case you missed it, here it is -- Trump in super orange-face this weekend returning to the White House after a rally:
There’s another version where he looks even more orange, and people are arguing over whether it’s photoshopped or not. I don’t know. It’s all a play on light or playing up the red tones in photo editing software.
Who cares. He’s orange. He’s always been orange, and it’s not the first time we’ve seen the sloppy application of make-up where he doesn’t even try to blend the orange into his normal skin tones, so he gets the mask effect.
This is what we’re fighting — this ridiculousness. He wears fake-orange-tan make-up, and he doesn’t even blend it in. The wind was blowing his hair back. There it is. Orange-face.
We don’t need to add to ridiculousness on our side.
