The Stephanopoulos Interview: Not Great, Not Terrible

Published at 20:22 on 5 July 2024

The good news is that Biden wasn’t totally out of it like he was at the debate last week. The bad news for Biden is that he needed to really hit it out of the park, and he didn’t. He still came off sounding like an old man.

Some were worried that Stephanopoulos would only ask softball questions. He didn’t. He asked numerous pointed questions and was quite persistent when Biden evaded answering them forthrightly.

Of particular note is that Biden admitted that he has not yet watched his debate performance. It as if deep inside, he knows the uncomfortable truth of how much he has aged, how this affects his fitness for the office, and that he does not want to face it.

It was not a live interview, which limits how convincing it can be. It is difficult to definitively refute accusations that some senior moments ended up on the cutting-room floor, although I suspect they did not, for the simple reason that Stephanopoulos has a stake in this: he is a lifelong Democrat, and has reason to be concerned about Biden’s electability. This is probably why he was also not shy about asking his interviewee pointed questions.

P.S. The more I think about it, the more that Biden has been unwilling to watch his own debate performance is revealing, and not in a good way. It means he has serious mental hangups about assessing his own competence. That is not something we want to see in a president.

Harris, the Democratic Party Establishment, Competence, and Conspiracy

Published at 17:48 on 2 July 2024

Have I told you recently just how much I despise the Democratic Party leadership clique? I don’t mean all Democrats (although I am to the left of that party), I mean the leadership clique. The people who decided Hillary Clinton was a viable candidate in 2016. The people who decided to coronate Biden as nominee instead of having a primary competition this cycle. Those people.

They have the unmitigated gall to smugly act as if they are the responsible adults in the room. This, despite blunder after overwhelming blunder.

This brings us to the Vice-President. Unlike the leadership clique, she is one of the party’s liberals, not one of its centrists. Biden, a centrist, nominated her because he had to nominate a liberal as a running mate in order to maximize his ticket’s appeal to the progressive base.

Now that Biden has demonstrated his unfitness for office, Harris is the logical choice for someone to fill his post. Because of course she is. Just read the United States Constitution.

Biden has to plain old resign. If he doesn’t resign, if he stays in office for the remainder of his term while trying to coronate a centrist replacement at a brokered convention, it is going to piss off Blacks and progressives and cost Biden votes. We know dirty pool when we see it.

That puts the leadership clique in a quandary. They don’t like Harris. They really don’t like Harris. She is not one of them, she is a heartbeat away from the presidency, and they can’t stand it. So many of them are saying that Biden can’t resign, because Harris is, in their words, “unelectable.”

Listen, you morons: Biden just blew a presidential debate worse than any candidate has ever blown such a debate in my lifetime. Quite possibly, he blew it worse than any candidate in any presidential debate in all of United States history. This is no exaggeration, it is cold, hard fact.

Yet somehow you think this disaster of a candidate, who has manifestly exhibited his unfitness for the office he occupies and seeks reelection to, is less of a lift to reelect than a Vice-President who is 59 years old, in good mental and physical health, but just happens to be a bit too far left for your personal political tastes?

Suck it up, buttercups. You don’t get to call all the shots all the time. Either a fascist goes to the White House or a liberal does. Your choice.

I don’t normally ascribe to conspiracy theories, but if there was one I would buy in to, it is that the Democratic Party exists primarily as a conspiracy to control, contain, and disempower the Left, and that those who run it know this and are deliberately in the game to do so. I will note that the current line on Kamala Harris fits this narrative like a glove.