The Democrats need a made for TV candidate to win. Gavin Newsom fits the bill as a "Jeb" Bartlet clone.
While there's no doubt that Kamala Harris is well qualified to be president she's not an Elizabath McCord, the fictional presdient from "Madame Secretary" who went from being a high profile Secretary of State to being elected the first woman president. Biden, to his discredit especially considering his age, kept her in the background for his entire presidency. He should have known from the gitgo that a health issue could arise so he wouldn't be able to run again. Had he done this, Harris could have become like Elizabeth McCord and be well positioned to be the elected to be next president.
Now we have a politically wounded 81 year old president who if he was 10 years younger could easily run on his accomplishments even without comparing himself to an opponent who is a fat ranting profane 78 year old with signs of dementia who aspires to be a dictator.
Today's Joe Biden is no Josiah Edward "Jed" Bartlet , from "The West Wing" which ran for seven years. In terms of looking liking a TV or movie president, despite all his accomplishments, Biden never would have be cast to play a vigorous president saving the country or the world on a weekly basis on television today. Four years have taken a toll on him:
People age. As years pass they will look older. It is inevitable. No amount of plastic surgery or Botox will change this. There's no Egyptian cat statue with supposed magical powers like in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" which will age in the attic while you stay young.
Donald Trump never would have been elected had he not convinced voters that the fictional real estate genius he played on "The Apprentice" was real. At least the TV and movie star Ronald Reagan used his celebrity to become the Governor of California, a position he held for eight years.
There are enough Americans who will vote for someone who fits their pop culture inspired image of what a president should look like both in appearance and in how they speak to swing a close election like the one about to decide the fate of the nation. In 2020 you could say that Joe Biden looked more like Keifer Sutherland from the great president who saved the country in the series "Designated Survivor."
Above, Biden in 2020.
Unfortunately four years has taken a toll on President Biden. He was always good at being the president. He was never good at playing the president. He never will be. In order to defeat Trump we need someone who is really, really good at playing the president. Such a person is waiting in the wings in the same state where Ronald Reagan, the first show biz president, came from. His name, of course, is Gavin Newsom.
Biden should drop out without endorsing Kamala Harris. He should leave it to the convention to decide who the candidate most likely to defeat Trump is. If they are wise they will chose Newsom. He not only has star quality but has a great name. Gavin is a masculine name derived from Gawain, a medieval form of an Arthurian legend character. His last name, Newsom, suggests that he is new. Gretchen Whitmer would make an excellent vice presidential choice.
You can read this and previous blogs on two websites. One may look better than the other because of how the platforms present the page.
For me the most important and illuminating thing President Biden said in the interview with George Stephanopolous was when he was asked whether he watched the debate at some time afterwards and he said that he hadn't.
This came at the very beginning of the interview. It was the third question. Here's the context:
STEPHANOPOULOS: And — and I know you’ve said that before as well, but you came — and you did have a tough month. But you came home from Europe about 11 or 12 days before the debate, spent six days in Camp David. Why wasn’t that enough rest time, enough recovery time?
BIDEN: Because I was sick. I was feeling terrible. Matter of fact, the docs with me, I asked if they did a Covid test because they’re trying to figure out what was wrong. They did a test to see whether or not I had some infection, you know, a virus. I didn’t. I just had a really bad cold.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And — did you ever watch the debate afterwards?
BIDEN: I don’t think I did, no.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, what I’m try — what I want to get at is, what were you experiencing as you were going through the debate? Did you know how badly it was going?
BIDEN: Yeah, look. The whole way I prepared, nobody’s fault, mine. Nobody’s fault but mine. I, uh — I prepared what I usually would do, sitting down as I did come back with foreign leaders or National Security Council for explicit detail. And I realized — about partway through that, you know, all — I get quoted, The New York Times had me down at 10 points before the debate, nine now, or whatever the hell it is. The fact of the matter is, what I looked at is that he also lied 28 times. I couldn’t — I mean, the way the debate ran, not — my fault, no one else’s fault, no one else’s fault.
Before Biden answered this question he paused for a split second as if he was searching his memory, but this couldn't be what he was doing. It is crucial to break down his five word response into two parts. First he said "I don't think I did" before he said "no."
How could he not immediately know whether or not he watched a rerun of the debate? How is it he had to say "I don't think I did?" It makes more sense to believe that in this moment he was wondering if this was a gotcha question. In fact, it really was or should have been, but Stephanopolous never followed up on it. Anyone with any self-critical inclination would want to watch a recording of something that was leading to the furor about their cognitive ability that this debate was for Biden.
Put yourself in his place. If you gave a widely panned perfomance that could hurt your career, one that even those who usually praised you were highly critical of, and had the chance to see a replay of the perfomance, wouldn't you want to see what everyone was talking about? Add to this that your performance was leading friends and foes alike to question whether or not you had lost your usual mental acuity, or worse, had dementia, wouldn't you want to see why they were saying this?
Stephanopolous should have confronted him on this by asking something like "why, Mr. President, wouldn't you want to see the debate to gain insight and self-understanding about yourself?"
Depending on the answer a follow-up could have included asking whether he watched recordings of the shows on friendly networks like MSNBC and more balanced networks where his usual allies were showing clips of the debate and expressing shock at his bad performance and speculations as to what had caused it.
I think that any self-aware and self critical president would have aides recording all the post debate television coverage. If I was Biden I'd want to see what Rachel Maddow was saying about the debate.
Someone on Facebook alerted me to this post-debate coverage. It was much more analytical than the coverage on MSNBC which had Ali Velchi without the A team I'd expect.
Stephanopolous pursued the question about what the debate perfomance meant throughout the interview even going as far as to ask whether he'd have a cognitive test and neurological examination:
STEPHANOPOULOS: I — I know your doctor said he consulted with a neurologist. I — I guess I’m asking — a slightly different question. Have you had the specific cognitive tests, and have you had a neurologist, a specialist, do an examination?
BIDEN: No. No one said I had to. No one said. They said I’m good.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Would you be willing to undergo an independent medical evaluation that included neurological and cognit — cognitive tests and release the results to the American people?
BIDEN: Look. I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I have that test. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world. Not — and that’s not hi— sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world.
The answer I highlighted is crucial and if not a lie, it is not true. Many people said Biden wasn't good in this regard. Stephanopolous should have jumped on this response. He should have followed up with asking Biden to name who the "they" who said he was good actually were. After all, there was a chorus of people we assume Biden respects suggesting he have a neurological examination and was not good in this way.
Throughout the interview Biden parried every question about his cognitive ability with examples of all his accomplshments. This was a total deflection from the issue as to whether he might have either a significantly aging brain, or worse, early dementia.
Here's another example of his not answering a question about cognition by trying to be flippant:
Stephanopoulos asked. “Do you dispute that there have been more lapses, especially in the last several months?”
“Can I run the 110? No. But I’m still in good shape,” Biden replied.
Stephanopolous should have schooled himself thoroughly in the diagnostic critera for early dementia vs the mental slowing down many people experience when they are Biden's age. Whenever Biden touted his cognitive ability by describing his accomplishments as president and the work he was still doing, Stephanopolous should have zeroed in on asking about things like forgetfulness, losing his train of thought, misplacing items, confusing names, and blanking out for brief periods. Instead he allowed Biden to make mini-campaign speeches about how effective a president he was and assuring that he would continue to be able to do this for four more years.
A tough question would have been about the statistics which show that a minority of people, 22%, his age have or will get dementia between the ages of 85 and 89 (reference). Stephanopolous could have asked whether he thought it was fair to the country to take the chance that he would be one of these people.
The fact that the debate was held during the day and not at night is significant. People with dementia often present their symptoms at night. This is called sundowning. The debate was held at 9:00 PM. The interview should have been conducted at the same time. Even if Biden doesn't have dementia why not have an interview at a time of day when he isn't at his best? A president can be called upon at any time day or night to deal with a crisis.
Not to to get into the weeds about this, but people of any age may have problems adjusting to long distance travel across times zones. This is probably more difficult with elders. It makes sense that a younger president is better suited to deal with world leaders at international meetings.
The question as to whether or not Biden has dementia was not answered for me in the interview. While I didn't see indications of cognitive impairment or dementia what I did see was someone who was like many people with or without early dementia who are afraid or unable to look candidly at themselves to see if they might have this dreadful disease.
Someone can be self-aware and able to look unflinchingly at themselves and their weakness and foibles in many ways but they may have blind spots. Thinking about your own death can be such a blind spot.
As one enters their senior years some people may resist looking at their mortality. At the age of 80 someone like me, with no life threatening conditions who is in good health, still knows they at the end of their life. I try to live my life to its fullest, but I know I am one medical appointment, one blood test, away from being told I have some terminal disease.
Not everyone wants to think about this. Looking into the abyss isn't for the faint of heart.
“This is a pretty incoherent answer including a non-sequitur [complaining] about a New York Times poll, which he incorrectly claims had him down 10 points before the debate,” Silver wrote on X, sharing a clip of the interview. He added that The New York Times survey only had Biden down 3 or 4 points.
He also wrote "During the interview, Biden refused to take a cognitive test. Silver said that this decision was “disqualifying on its own.” The article concludes: “At this point it’s only like their 4th most important problem but the fact that the White House has drunk the Kool-Aid on the poll denialism stuff all cycle long isn’t helping matters.”
The rift Trump's advisers want to hide from view stems from Evangelical's mounting calls to add antiabortion language to the U. S. Constitution in the lead-up to the Republican National Convention, which begins on July 15, the Post reports.
"The escalating behind-the-scenes disagreement over the abortion language has become so tense and acrimonious in recent weeks that some social conservative leaders have issued public warnings of a coming split within Trump’s coalition," the Post reports.
This election is going to be so close the winner can be determined by just one special interest group or a single issue. The ages of the candidates are the one topic being covered extensively since the debate. There is a growing chorus of voices saying that Biden is too old to run. This comes not only from Democrats who have gone on the record but from independents who are being interviewed by reporters. One of them just reported that he went to a town where no independents he interviewed thought Biden should stay in the race because of his age. What they saw was his cognitive decline.
Abortion is an issue that won't disappear because Trump wishes it so. If Trump actually believed in God and the power of prayer he'd be praying for the issue to go away:
There's no way that the Evangelicals will accept Trump answering direct questions about where he stands on abortion as he has so far, that is, that he wants to leave it to the states. They are very familiar with this map :
These evangelicals want a straight-forward promise from Donald Trump that he will assure that there is a nation-wide ban on all abortion at any stage of fetal development. They don't want any quibling on whether life starts at four or six weeks. They want abortion banned at conception.
The Evangelicals no doubt want Trump to come out against the Supreme Court ruling allowing the use of mifepristone.
Whether it's Biden or another Democrat in the second debate (assuming there is one) if the moderators don't pin Trump down on his stance on abortion, the Democratic Party candidate should. If he persists in saying this should be left to the states it could cost him the election.
“He just quit, you know—he’s quitting the race,” Trump says, sitting in a golf cart. “I got him out of the—and that means we have Kamala.”
Later in the clip, he fawns over Chinese President Xi Jinping, calling him “a fierce man, very tough guy” whom Biden may be unable to handle.
It was not immediately clear where or when exactly the footage was covertly filmed.
In the video, the former president asks the person holding the camera what they thought of his own debate performance. As he’s told he did “fantastic” and “amazing,” Trump blusters on flatly, “Look at that old, broken down pile of crap.
“It’s a bad guy,” he says, seemingly referring to Biden. After announcing that the president is quitting and handing the baton to Kamala Harris, Trump continues, “I think she’s gonna be better” as an opponent.
“She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic,” he adds, plucking at his gloves, then appears to say, “She’s so fucking bad.”
Trump then switches back to Biden, asking, “Can you imagine that guy dealing with Putin? And the president of China—who’s a fierce person. He’s a fierce man, very tough guy. And they see him.”
Before driving off, the former president reiterates, “But they just announced he’s probably quitting. Just keep knocking him out, huh?”
Trump has two basic modes of expressing what's going through his mind when he's not reading a teleprompter, unfiltered and more unfiltered. You see the former in his rallies and whenever he knows there's a camera, and we just had a chance to see the later when, presumably, he didn't know there was a camera.
Consider that there's something missing from the video that would be there if he was president. It's the "football" carried by a miliary aide which would enable him to launch a nuclear attack. If rerelected Trump will have the unfettered ability to wage nuclear war,” said Joseph Cirincione at The Ploughshares Fund, an anti-nuclear organization. “He can launch one weapon or a thousand weapons, and no one can stop him, outside of mutiny by the armed forces.”
Above: Trump with a military aide carrying the nuclear football
Beginning on January 20, President-elect Donald Trump will be accompanied at all times by a military aide carrying the nuclear “football,” enabling him to order a nuclear strike at a moment’s notice.
Just like his predecessors, whether he is at the White House, in a motorcade, aboard Air Force One or on a trip overseas, he will never be more than an arm’s reach away from the aide and his satchel.
“You have to be ready anytime, for any moment,” said Pete Metzger, who often carried the nuclear launch suitcase during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. “The time is so short between alert and execution.”
The article went on to say:
“How can you trust him with the nuclear codes?” Obama said at a rally in Durham, North Carolina, earlier this month. “You can’t do it.”
And Bruce Blair, a former nuclear missile launch officer who supported Hillary Clinton, says his concerns about Trump persist.
“He has proved himself over and over again to be quick-tempered, defensive, prone to lash out,” he wrote in Politico. If a nuclear crisis arises, “Trump’s erratic and volatile personality makes for low confidence in his ability to reach the right decision.”
A president’s order could only be stopped by mutiny, according to Kingston Reif at the Arms Control Association, and only if more than one person were to disobey the president’s orders.
“The president has supreme authority to decide whether to use America’s nuclear weapons, period,” he said. “Full stop.”
With all the legitimate consternation about how the Supreme Court ruling gives a president the powers of a king let's not forget that a president already has the ability to launch nuclear missiles.
Now let's consider the scenario that those sounding alarm bells are making about the president being able to order SEAL Team Six to kill a political opponent in light of this paragraph:
A president’s order could only be stopped by mutiny, according to Kingston Reif at the Arms Control Association, and only if more than one person were to disobey the president’s orders.
What would happen if Trump issued such an order as Commander-in-Chief? It would clearly be both unconstituional and against the Military Code of Justice.
The question arose recently when U.S. Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer resigned from his post after saying that he felt an obligation to disobey an order from his commander-in-chief, President Donald Trump.
The issue involved a Navy SEAL, Eddie Gallagher, whose demotion for posing for a photo with a combatant's corpse was reversed by Trump on Nov. 15.
That action prompted Spencer to send Trump a resignation letter on Nov. 24 in which he stated, "I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I believe violates the sacred oath I took in the presence of my family, my flag and my faith to support and defend the Constitution of the United States."
So, can a person in the military simply refuse to follow an order if they don't like it?
The answer is yes — if they consider the order itself to be illegal or unconstitutional.
It's generally called a "duty to disobey," and is empowered by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The UCMJ is more concerned about the need to obey orders, but specifies the conditions when military personnel may feel justified in not following them:
If the order is "contrary to the constitution" or "the laws of the United States."
If the order is "patently illegal, ... such as one that directs the commission of a crime."
Back to the SEAL Team 6 question: it is not only possible the order to commit an illegal act would be disobeyed but that once the fact that Trump issued this order made it's way up to the top of the command structure the generals and admirals could decide they had a renegade and dangerous president and commander-in-chief and decide to mount a coup and install a temporary military officer to run the country who would order Trump's arrest and a new election.
What about Biden and the briefcase?
It is only fair to consider how President Biden would handle the power to launch a nuclear attack. For one thing, we know Biden isn't an impulsive malignant narcissist. He may, however, be congitively diminished during certain parts of the day or night. If there was a crisis where a nuclear response was an option when he wasn't at his best he'd be either among top civilian and military aides either in the White House Situation Room, on Air Force One, or have them nearby.
He could be trusted not to act precipitously. He'd listen to the advice and recommendations of the experts. He wouldn't have surrounded himself with advisors selected because of their loyalty to him rather than for their competence.
You can read this and previous blogs on two websites. One may look better than the other because of how the platforms present the page.
The RawStory article "A dark world': Ivanka Trump spills on why she dropped out of politics" got me to thinking about how Trump, if he wins, could declare himself president for life and how since his most intelligent adult kid may not want to take his place when he dies or is too old to rule we'd probably end up with Donald Jr. as the next dictator. Donald Jr. is the man who gets a thrill out of shooting exotic animals with a high powered rife and posing along with his dumber brother with their lifeless bodies. For the MAGA masses he's a perfect choice to inherit the MAGA throne.
By the time Donald Jr. took over the country would have become full-on NAZI, only it would be MAGA. Instead of the NAZI Party we'd have the MAGA Party. If one was a card carrying member they would not only be the privileged class, they would be the only citizens will full rights.
By the end of four years of Trump rule there won't be much, if any, independent media left because, like Putin and, before him Hitler and Mao, the goverment will totally control the dissemination of information. RawStory which published this article will be gone and it's staff sent to reeducation camps, or worse. Those of us who, like me, post comments on websites like RawStory, The New York Times, and The Washinton Post would be on the MAGA gestapo hit list too. Those who like me subscribe to proessive websites will be at risk. In fact, anyone with an online presence from Facebook or having a blog like mine could easily be checked out to see if they are should be added to the MAGA gestapo hit list. Hitler did this without the internet.
Once you were identified as being against MAGA not only would your freedom be at risk, but you could have all of your rights as a citizen taken away. If you have Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or food stamps these benefits could be cut.
MAGA Party members would have ID cards but others would be at the mercy of the overlords. If you're reading this, that's you
MAGA will control almost every aspect of the lives of those living in the United States. I have to phrase it this way because the word "citizen" won't apply anymore. Only MAGAs will have full citizenship.
The Second Amendment, so precious to the Right, would apply only to MAGA Party members. Not only would they be the only ones to be able to purchase firearms but ownship of firearms by non-MAGAs would probably be made a capital crime.
If you think prohibiting abortion is abhorrent consider how MAGA could veer into Handmaid's Tale territory. They could make it difficult for non-MAGAs to have children by denying prenatal care and in hosptial delivery. The children non-MAGAs did have could be taken away at birth to be raised by MAGAs. Also, there would be no child income tax deduction for non-MAGAs.
Non-MAGAs might need vouchers or special currency to buy all the necessities of living.
Let's not forget that the education of children would be controlled starting with kindergarten which might well be renamed MAGAgarten.
Anything which now is called woke would be illegal. Working with the Department of Justice (they would keep that name but it would be the MAGA gestapo) would be the Department of Compliance. These MAGAs would spend their time scouring the internet for anyone who goes against the regime and are identified as enemies of the state. This would include anyone identified as what comes under the rubrik of woke. Facebook and Instagram would be a treasure trove for them as millions of people share information about their personal lives there.
Millions of ordinary Americans would have a tremendious incentive to go along to get along and would join the MAGA Party. Some would turn in "deviant" neighbors to incur favor with the leaders, and perhaps be rewarded in various ways.
Only certain non-MAGAs would be required to wear something like this that identified them as deviants or undesirables. The ordinary non-MAGA could be identified because Party members would be issued official pins like these so they could easily be identified. A non-MAGA wearing one of these pins would risk being asked to for their "papers" (today it would be a holographic photo ID like a drivers license) and if they were trying to "pass" they'd be arrested.
The horror is that there are tens of millions of Americans who are not just fine with the country I have described here, they want this to to be "their" country. There are others who think those who make NAZI comparisons are engaing in hand-wringing hyperbole. Among the later group are many politicians and possibly the Supreme Court justices who just ruled on presidential immunity.
I think it is very possible that decades from now historians in countries where they are allowed to write about it will look at the Project 2025 manifesto as the 21st century Mein Kampf.
Footnote:
Project 2025 includes a 920-page plan devised to entirely remake the U.S. government and turn America into a Christian nationalist, authoritarian, and some say fascist nation run by an all-powerful president. Critics say it would obliterate separation of church and state, the rule of law, the social safety net, and civil rights advances including reproductive rights and rights for LGBTQ Americans secured over the past sixty years.
"The plan calls for a nationwide system of school vouchers, severe restrictions on reproductive freedom and LGBTQ+ rights, and maintains that the federal government should 'maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family,' which it refers to as 'heterosexual, intact marriage,'" Church & State magazine reports. Reference.
Update:
This is from Axios: As far as I'm concerned 1, 2, and 3 far outweigh 4, 5, and 6.
What to watch: To hear Trump and his allies tell it, this is how early 2025 would unfold if he wins:
1. A re-elected Trump would quickly set up vast camps and deport millions of people in the U.S. illegally. He could invoke the Insurrection Act and use troops to lock down the southern border.
2. In Washington, Trump would move to fire potentially tens of thousands of civil servants using a controversial interpretation of law and procedure. He'd replace many of them with pre-vetted loyalists.
3. He'd centralize power over the Justice Department, historically an independent check on presidential power. He plans to nominate a trusted loyalist for attorney general, and has threatened to target and even imprison critics. He could demand the federal cases against him cease immediately.
4. Many of the Jan. 6 convicts could be pardoned — a promise Trump has made at campaign rallies, where he hails them as patriots, not criminals. Investigations of the Bidens would begin.
5. Trump says he'd slap 10% tariffs on most imported goods, igniting a possible trade war and risking short-term inflation. He argues this would give him leverage to create better trade terms to benefit consumers.
6. Conversation would intensify about when Justices Clarence Thomas, 76, and Sam Alito, 74, would retire.
