UPDATE 1JULY2024: It occurred to me that Newsom and Harris are both from California. Under Art. II, Sec. 1 of the US Constitution and the 12th Amendment, Electors cannot vote for both a Prez and a Veep from their own state, thus nullifying California’s Electoral votes. They either have to keep Jurassic Joe, or toss Harris too. Deeper and deeper they dig…
It was bright and early my time and I was on cup 2 of my ritualistic 4-cup java infusion. Despite being wide awake and wholly unprepared to passively absorb the dog-and-pony show that is Merkin politics, I forced myself to watch the car wreck in slow motion that was the US Precedential [sic] “Debate” [sic sic].
It began with Joe Biden taking the stage waving to an audience that wasn’t there, all smiles and affability, unaware of the EMD SD70 series locomotive, specifically the SD70ACe model, bearing down on him.
Trump came next, wearing his now-customary scowl with unbuttoned jacket, looking like he just threw himself together after a hard day cracking rocks. His team did a masterful job of hiding the leg irons. Nevertheless, he had the air of someone who knew what was coming and was unsure he wanted to stand that close to an antimatter implosion.
Biden had won the “coin toss,” and led off the spectacle. Right off the bat, he sounded both like he had been backstage screaming at the top of his lungs to warm up, and like he needed a shot from the Tin Man’s oil can. He squeaked and croaked through his opening statement, which was unmemorable even seconds after he stopped squeaking.
Trump’s opening monologue, by contrast, sounded bored and even nonplussed. For a man with a reputation for incendiary rhetoric, he sounded oddly muted and reserved — dare I say rote?
The two droned on for an hour and a half, with two potty breaks and some Bolivian marching powder for Ole Joe. Even the so-called “moderators,” partisan baubleheads from a dying epoch, came off as almost human, without the usual bombastic pontificating characteristic of GeezerMedia for the last four decades. It was as if all four participants had been thoroughly flogged offstage and told to behave like civilized lap dogs.
Long story short, the “debate” [sic] was notable for what it didn’t have, more than its actual content. The biggest take-away was that either CNN is now producing “cheap fakes,” or Creepy Joe is really as cadaverous as everyone has believed for years, in spite of copious gaslit laudery. I can be persuaded either way, though my general impression was that I witnessed a real-life enactment of Edgar Allan Poe’s brilliant “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”.
What is far more interesting for our purposes here is the fallout from the “debate” [very sic indeed]. The sheer amount of air time and column inches devoted to GeezerMedia hand-wringing and Bumbledick apoplexy is…well, amazing. I don’t think I’ve seen this much sack cloth and ashes since the fall of Babylon. I expect to see the Heaven’s Gate kool-aid fest on a mass scale across the left-wing cult at any moment, from the sounds of things.
The truly delicious morsel of this unique moment in US politics is anticipating the clumsy ballet the Democrats will now execute in their desperate attempt to Swan Lake their way out of their conundrum. They are faced with a very real and existential problem — NOW WHAT?
Oh sure, it’s easy to predict that Biden will be replaced. That’s the part already decided, probably months ago. The delicate part is who and how?
Normally, they’d just gas Caesar in his sleep and let Caesarette take the reins. The hilarious quandary in this national sitcom is that Caesarette is even more dislikeable than Caesar. In their Keystone Kops routine to look Perverse, Insensate and Equine (PIE), the Dems placed Kamala Harris as Veep, figuring no one would try to get rid of Biden because she was the next in line. The Catch-22 here is that now the Dems themselves want to get rid of Biden and they can’t.
To make things all the more entertaining, black women are the last remaining die-hard constituency the Dems have. Everyone else is bailing out. Spoof on top of farce, the Dems have actually made Trump look like the better alternative. In marketing, this is called the Oops Moment, when your carefully laid plans send your customers fleeing for the competition. Notable examples include New Coke and Bud Light.
Obviously, the Deepsters need to gig Biden with the Poisoned Icicle of Destiny, and fast. Biden won’t step down without a big dust-up. Leeches can only be dislodged by chemically cooking them with salt. That much is plainly on display now. However, that puts Kamala Harris in the driver’s seat until November, which — if this is even possible — would be more disastrous for the Dems than the current situation. Saying the Cackling Queen of Cringe is unpopular is about as obvious as saying waltzing in a briar patch is a thorny proposition.
They have to replace Biden at the convention (probably with Gruesome Newsom) before they off Biden, so that Kamala can be faded away with the reward of being the first female president for two-and-a-half months. Regardless, the brand damage is only going to get worse the longer they pretend to back Malarkey Joe. The astounding self-destruction of black female pols in New York and Georgia in recent months makes it highly unlikely the DNC will play this gambit with their queen already in check.
Furthermore, the Dems have only one die-hard loyal demographic left: black women. If they snub Kamala, removing her from the New Improved Ticket, they risk alienating the Section Eighters. If they go with Newsom and leave Harris on the ticket, they risk hobbling him out of the gate. Either way, they risk turning a hemorrhage into a full-blown aortic blow-out with concomitant cerebral aneurysm during a bilateral subsoctal dissection.
If we were playing BlackJack with Vegas rules, the dealer is showing 16 and you have 15. Do you stay and hope he busts, or hit and pray it’s less than 7 but higher than 5?
The Dems were betting they could ride this pony till November and use their centuries-old standby of stacking the deck (i.e. ballot stuffing), then they could gas Biden and let Harris wrap up the dissolution of the Union. That rug just got pulled and like the cartoon coyote, they are momentarily suspended in mid-air over a vast and deep chasm holding an anvil.
The Dems have painted themselves into a corner, but like all feral animals when cornered, they no longer have anything to lose, and so anything goes.
We know from OKC, Waco, 9/11, and the current effort to launch World War 4 that these animals will stop at nothing to cling to power like silk socks to a cashmere sweater, even if it means destroying the entire world. The animals are the Deepsters, and they have no party loyalty. They simply back whichever party is willing to throw them the biggest bone. They have a visceral revulsion to Trump, who has already proved he will instead take away their bone.
What we can assume with a fair amount of certainty at this point, is that any major world-shaking military-political-medical event happening between now and November has been planned and executed for the sole purpose of finding a way out of the corner into which the feral animals have trapped themselves.
We are witnessing a magician whose greatest illusion has gone wildly awry, and he is frantically looking for a distraction to get him out of the Turn and into the Prestige before anyone notices.
I don’t feel sorry for Ole Joe. He has chosen to place himself on the global stage in his waning and infirm years, because like the leech, it is his nature to suck taxpayer blood and he knows no other way to exist. He is the rodeo clown distracting the bull while the rider jumps the fence, but sometimes the bull ignores the antics and leaps into the stands, goring and stamping the audience in its blind rage.
You folks down there in the arena seats might want to move up here to the nose-bleeders, just as a precaution of course.
Mangling metaphors on the Far Side:
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I didn't waste any time watching a debate between two candidates that I will never vote for.
"That rug just got pulled and like the cartoon coyote, they are momentarily suspended in mid-air over a vast and deep chasm holding an anvil."
I'd love to help. Let me know if they need another anvil.