The First Presidential Debacle

Last night was unfortunate, primarily because it was so completely unnecessary. The one hard fact about the choice for president this year is that there is no choice. On one side is the stupidest man to ever enter politics in U.S. history—and that’s saying something—an abject moron who couldn’t find his own monumental ass with two hands and a flashlight, a convicted criminal and con-man, a congenital defect of a human being, a compulsive liar, a deluded narcissist, and an amoral mass murderer: he told the citizens of this country to ignore Covid and therefore is directly responsible for killing over a million of them. On the other side is a man who has given his entire adult life to the service of the people: thirty-six years as a senator, eight years as vice-president, and a three-year stint as president that has helped the country to recover from the unmitigated disaster that was the previous administration. It’s not a choice, any more than it was in 2020. Biden’s four years older now, and it showed. But does that change the metric? Not one bit. And it’s important to remember that Trump’s changed, too. Not only has he been indicted for inciting an insurrection on January 6th, and for stealing classified documents and obstructing justice, but also twice for election interference. He was ultimately convicted of thirty-four counts of the latter in New York, though he’s unarguably guilty of all of it. The contrast, in fact, is even starker than it was four years ago.

What’s so disappointing about last night, however, is that it should never have come to pass. And most of the blame for that belongs to Biden’s team. They let him down—bigly. There was absolutely no reason whatsoever for Biden to get on stage with Tdump. None. Because there was absolutely nothing to gain. But even after deciding to go ahead with it, Biden’s team did him a real disservice. This was not a debate. And more importantly, it was never going to be. Why anyone on Biden’s team thought he should engage with Lie-GPT in any way, is political negligence. The ONLY things Biden should have been focused on last night were two specific tasks. One, getting his message across to the American people on whatever topics he was asked about. And two, calling out the idiot on the other side for the liar he is. That’s it. Biden should not have responded to the moron in any way, shape, or form. When asked a question Biden needed to tell the people what he has done and why he is the only choice, as well as why tRump is a liar and wants to destroy the country. Every answer needed to be a canned response, to the people, that made absolutely no direct reference to anything the convicted felon had to say in the moment. In fact, Biden should never even have looked at him the entire night.

Everyone knew what the seditionist-in-chief was going to do last night. Everyone, it seems, except Biden’s team. What the hell were they thinking? The former White House dunce uses words like good and bad, great and terrible, best and worst—which mean absolutely NOTHING when it comes to governance, and even less when they come out of Tdump’s mouth. He uses NO statistics, NO numbers, NO facts, and NO evidence in any of what could only be euphemistically called “arguments.” And that’s because there are none that even remotely back up his assertions. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is either and ad hominem attack on the other side, or a brag about himself. And they’re ALL LIES. He projects one hundred percent of the time, so every attack on the left is something he has already done, and every boast is something the left has done and the right has absolutely no intention of ever doing. Which means there’s absolutely no way to “debate” someone like that. Every time tRump’s lips moved last night, he lied. Lies are not arguments. So if the second debate ever comes off, his team needs to drum that into Biden’s brain. BE presidential—because you ARE the president—by not engaging him. Get your message across and ignore the addle-brained ranting of Fat Man and Little Hands.

The facts are beyond dispute. Trump wants to end democracy, to end civil rights, and end any corporate responsibility to the workers they employ. But all of that is just to placate his worshipers, his deluded followers who don’t realize he has every intention of punishing them right along with the rest of the country. The ONE THING Trump wants is to use the White House, once again, to enrich himself. That’s it. Full stop. Because he’s broke, the worst businessman in U.S. history, the only way he can stay afloat is to use the office of the president as a base of criminal operations to extort as much money as he can from whoever he can. Rich or poor, it doesn’t matter to him. He’ll first use the office to rid himself of all legal cases against him, then open for business by allowing the worst right-wing radicals to gut this country of every right the Constitution affords—if not the Constitution itself—as long as he gets a cut of the action. Fox “News” won’t have to lie about Biden’s performance last night. He came off as a tired, confused, doddering old man. But does that make him a worse choice than Trump? Are you kidding? Right now Jimmy Carter is a better choice than Trump. And Fox is going to have to lie its propagandistic ass off when it comes to their candidate, backing up and repeating his litany of untruths.

So, is this the end? Are we doomed? I don’t think so. Idiotic ideas like having Biden drop out of the race, however, don’t help things. That would be a suicide move by the Democrats, as it would assure a Trump victory. Even with someone like Gavin Newsom—as tempting as that would be—the optics would be so bad we would probably lose all of the swing states. And that’s not even factoring in what to do about Kamala. How do you ignore her? Right now, the Republicans are losing in every important metric in the campaign, despite the poll numbers. Abortion and civil rights top the list, but the economy and inflation are close on their heels, and the Republicans suck at making the case for their pro-wealthy, anti-democratic agenda. So it’s not time to panic. There are still over four months to go, a Democratic convention and perhaps another “debate,” that might be able to turn around the perception—which is all that needs to happen, because the reality is on our side. Unfortunately, voters on the right are living in an alternate reality in which they are being urged to vote for their own destruction, and seem perfectly willing to do it, taking the rest of us off the cliff with them. So it’s incumbent upon the rest of us to remember that presidential elections are NOT about the candidates. They are about ideology. Whether or not you “like” Biden is immaterial. In fact, it’s destructive thinking. Basing your vote on personality is what the other side is doing—and look how that turned out. If we want to keep our democracy, if we ever want to vote again, we MUST vote against the Maggot, whether Joe seems up for it or not. Because, in the end, it may be the last presidential choice you get to make.