Tuesday, July 12, 2022

Embrace the suck

As 2022 wears on talk of Gavin Newsom is in the air. Part of the reason is that he wants it there, of course. But also because 2024 looks to be a tough year for Democrats, and he's at least sort of new. Hell, there are Americans who look at Justin Trudeau and wish we had one of those. 

Almost needless to say, this kind of speculation is built on the conviction that the problem with Biden is Biden. That they have a dandy product but that he's screwing up the sale.


And sure, he has well-known weaknesses as a candidate. His mind isn't the sharpest, he had a dumbass plagiarism scandal in 1988, and his requisite embarrassing relative is more felonious than most. But their problems are broader and deeper.

Whatever bad ideas have been embraced by the Biden administration have been embraced by all of his potential rivals, usually in more concentrated form. This has happened because there's no big tent anymore. Just desperate pols trying to stay current. A loss might clear the party's head, or not. It's hard to see a win doing the trick.

2 comments:

susan said...

Ah yes, the insufferable nightmare that is Gavin Newsome. After the video he made telling Floridians to move to California the Babylon Bee posted the following:

"Listen, folks, it's simple really — in Florida, we believe in clean sidewalks, and shrinking the homeless problem — NOT growing it!" said Governor Ron DeSantis in his California statewide ad. "So to all the woke libs out there let me be clear: do not come to Florida. Stay in California and indoctrinate your own kids — that is if you actually have kids you haven't aborted." Viewers are then treated to a shot of DeSantis wrestling an alligator.

It really shouldn't be that easy.

It's interesting that you've come to the same conclusion about the Democrats Glenn Greenwald wrote about this week when he pointed out the sad state of the party and the fact that nothing will change so long as people continue to vote for them.

Since you mentioned Trudeau I thought you might like to see the video of him being questioned by the Conservative Finance Minister Pierre Poilievre when yet another scandal came to light two years ago. This one was about his family profiting from a charity the Liberals supported.

Lastly, if you have any energy left, here's Scott McKay of the Spectator who also makes some fair points about the Democratic Party and the major media. As you mentioned 'it's hard to see a win doing the trick' - plus they appear to be flat out of contenders of any substance.

Ben said...

Ah, the Babylon Bee. They're having fun with the situation, and more power to then.

Yeah, Greenwald has made that point a few times. Not just him, either. It's pretty basic social psychology, really. The person who will not walk away under any circumstances has no power. (Marriage in the Catholic Church and a few others at least tries to even things out by applying this expectation to both husband and wife.)

That Zoom (or something) interview is weird. Everyone involved looks like they've filtered their appearance into Uncanny Valley smoothness. But yeah, Trudeau comes off bad in other ways too. There was a character Martin Short did on SNL who sweated profusely and chain smoked under routine questioning. That's how Justin comes off.

The "breakfast taco" thing that McKay brings up was hard to believe. It's like they needed to stir up a bullshit scandal about themselves to distract from the real scandals. Not sure how well it worked. But yeah, they've been going in this direction for a while. That's not going to change with a slightly newer face.