Just when it was safe to go back into the water, Joe Biden walked onstage in Atlanta and lost the election to Teflon Don. Something happened in the few minutes we had when the bad dream was over before it turned into reality. The Gillmor Gang was mired in another endless political morass when this recording was made. Keith recalled his college days and visions of Labour and Conservatives or Tories. The Supreme Court vacated the Watergate unanimous opinion that led to Nixon’s downfall. All Trump lies were rebranded “Partially true.”
The MSNBC press corps rolled over immediately. Rachel Maddow said she really did not expect this. I didn’t either, but Rachel makes millions answering the tough questions so now what? All of these guys sputtered that the rule of law would hold. It didn’t.
It’s time to stop listening to experts on both sides of the media. There’s wrong, and also wrong. Trump is not the problem. The problem is the Democrats and particularly the candidate. If we can’t get someone who is not scared, we need someone who doesn’t exude scared. In 2020 he won; since then, not. We need not a Supreme Court ruling speech from Biden. We need a Joe Biden who admits he’s scared and then releases his delegates. He refuses. If Trump is the problem then Biden refuses to act. He’s in violation of his oath of office. Time to impeach him if he doesn’t take steps to slow Congress down. Next, stack the court.
When we were last recording the show, the conversation was a lot like a hallucinating LLM. I was the worst: uninformed, mired in a losing political environment where nothing mattered except Trump and his march back into the White House. Worst of all, it was no fun. And then the President pulled the plug. He made it impossible to put lipstick on the pig any longer.
We’re trying to conjure up rationales for a Biden win, and nobody can get their arms around it. Biden is stonewalling the troops, and the more he blusters, the more he seals his fate. It’s a lot like the Trumpers holding out for salvation, but now the Democrats are never-Bidens and that ain’t gonna work until it doesn’t. Pray for a pathetic convention in Chicago, the last chance for the country to slip the noose.
The Gang, or me, is doing a shit job of fighting back. Keith’s contribution is to talk dying dynasties. I don’t know enough about Tories or whatever to see the validation he poses for a grievance-driven right wing. He may well be right, but for me it feels like an elaborate rationale that has little to do with what will happen. The Supreme Court is actually doing the Democrats a favor by wiping out the Trump legal dead-end before voting makes it moot. If the polls refuse to do anything good for the trials, then the voters are stuck with actually making their votes count. I doubt that. And then what? The Democrats cry foul, saying the election was stolen? That’s the problem with pinning all your hopes on the death of democracy. Trump’s biggest problem is winning; it removes his fundraising apparatus.
Listening to the show or following along with the transcript will continue not to go well. The Blue Tsunami didn’t happen because the Commander in Chief shit the bed. The Democrats correctly realized that the only answer to “are you frail” is nolo contendre. They also realize that the one thing they can do to put Trump on the defensive is to take the age issue off the ballot. Biden says no. That would even the contest: I may be old, but you’re crazy. When Biden refuses to concede the obvious, he comes across as deluded.
I remain undecided about the value of the show while we wait for Biden to quit. When I reject drama for drama’s sake, it’s because it is so easy to do poorly. When Biden says he’s not going to answer the question in a last ditch answer-any-question interview, he’s giving up the microphone to the faceless staff who control him. When he refuses to take a competency test, it’s like refusing the Breathalyzer. Guilty. When Trump refuses to answer the question, he’s fundraising.
Eventually the Democrats will have to move to the VP, and when is before the convention. We will likely hear some of the mechanics in play in the next two weeks, when the full damage of losing the Senate becomes real. At that point the Electoral College becomes the battleground, and the Senate becomes the way to shift Biden to giving way to Harris. Not to win at first the big job, but to open up a direct attack on Trump’s cloak of invisibility. Even if he wins the White House, he still has to fight off an energized opposition bent on flipping the Supreme Court and establishing a Blue State wall around the core swing states, filibusters, and abortion rights. Biden cannot lead that fight, but an economic boycott of MAGA led by the big tech companies and work from anywhere CostCo/electric vehicle/Vision Pro collaboration/insurance reform/ and climate change activism sets the stage for the midterms and 2028.
Hey Joe