Donkeys don’t Trump-et. Tuskers don’t bray. On penalty of being diagnosed with mad elephant disease should a Dem even begin to evince, say, the insularity of the MAGA-presaging, eventual friend of Donald Trump, Richard “Not A Crook” Nixon.
Oops. Under the aegis, it seems, of President Biden’s chief handler Mike Donilon, we now see confirmation that the Oval Office’s electoral strategizing has been limited to a small claque of evidently ineffectual, arguably feckless think-alikes. (See “Top aides shielded Biden, but couldn’t hide the debate,” Axios, 6/30.)
This is no small beer. In a rarefied, rational realm (which no political arena has ever come close to resembling), in debating the motormouthed, forked-tongued, felonious, fundamentally seditious Trump, Mr. Biden should have had his way. Had a field day. What have you.
Instead, he was had. In thrall to his insular, self-satisfied ‘brain trust’ (and over-coached by stadiums of wonks who left him barely recalling his own name), a bad outcome was a foregone conclusion. Before, during, and after the CNN-foisted (sans fact checking!) charade, the man who (for the nonce) saved our country from Trump’s cult effectively ceded his hard-won, potentially nation-saving bully pulpit. (Sad.)
No doubt any number of brainy (but tough minded) folks could have reminded Mr. Biden of Thomas Szasz’s dictum “define or be defined.” Or of Drew Westen’s resolve that, from playgrounds to halls of power, the one response to bullying that can be relied on to change a perp’s behavior is a literal or figurative blow to the face. But to do so, they would have needed to be let into the loop. (Oh, well.)
On we go. As if to twist the knife, the admittedly Capone-like Trump came away from last Thursday’s fiasco smearing Mr. Biden as “crooked.” (Ouch. The sea may as well peg the desert all wet.)
Absent fact checking, any normal grade schooler should have been able to foresee CNN’s fine looking (yet fib-friendly) rostrums giving the ogre without portfolio a HUGE leg up. That is to say, helping the Lord of the Lies waft still further above the reality he’s long since shredded. (Ugh.)
Like it or not, report it or not, we’re down to one non-despotic major party. (Spoiler alert: it’s not Trump’s.) Disclosure: cheering for Mr. Biden to doff the gloves, don the brass knucks, and start scrapping, I’ve gone the extra light year- to the point of exhausting every atom of decorous, polite, business-as-usual civility I can hope to muster (or stand). (See “Bully for Biden [Let’s Go, Joe]!”, Daily Kos, 6/27.)
Staying the course augurs seizing still more defeat from the jaws of victory. To tweak Einstein’s terms, it bodes throwing the same slop against the wall over and over and over (while expecting better results).
Enough. As Commander-in-Chief Lincoln once said of General Grant, “he fights.” From now on, whoever shall lead our nation’s sole broad-based bastion of vote-legitimized governance must pull out the stops and pull no punches to deliver us from sheer, distilled evil- while making no bones about razing our “enemies… domestic.”
Proverbially, the best time to plant a tree was umpteen years ago. Like it or not, the next best time is now. Better late than never, let’s grow and throw some serious shade- while we still can.