We Learned A Lot This Week
It's not a "binary choice" now, nor was it ever.
About a month ago I decided to mostly get off of Facebook for the rest of the year. Multiple lines of thought fed that decision, not the least of which is that it is mostly a waste of time that I don’t have. But the thing that pushed me over the edge was an exchange with friends, one of whom (a fantastically intelligent person …usually) chided me for not seeing that the Presidential election is a “binary choice”. Misapplied logic aside, I think his unstated argument is more or less that of the Never Trump movement. That is, any vote that does not positively work toward preventing a second Trump Presidency is implicitly a vote for Donald Trump. And any vote for Donald Trump is insane and unacceptable. And, at least at the time, the only vote that would fit that definition would be one for Joe Biden.
I disagreed. This is a sore subject for me, and I reacted less than graciously (another reason to get off of Facebook — it’s about me too, not just the comments that irritate me). At face value, the election is most definitely not a “binary choice”. I can choose to cast my vote in any number of ways, including not voting at all. Indeed, I am very likely to choose that last option, which is valid and legitimate. The implication that I am somehow voting for catastrophe by failing to vote for Joe Biden is ultimately just a display of arrogance in disguise (as my engineering professors used to say, “I leave the proof as an exercise”).
The part that I found offensive at that time, and find even more offensive now, is the idea that Donald Trump is more of an existential threat to “our democracy” than Joe Biden (as an aside, I detest the phrase “our democracy“, particularly from people who write passionate sonnets to an unelected administrative state). As I hope everyone realized around 9:10 PM EDT on June 27, both of these guys are existential threats to the future of the world in their own ways. A vote for either is a deeply irresponsible misuse of the franchise. Calling the situation a “binary choice” is one of the most exquisitely puerile exercises in anti-intellectual, civics-challenged partisan hackery that I’ve heard in… well… at least a couple days. It isn’t my fault that the primary systems are broken, and that, as an independent in Pennsylvania, I have no say in the matter. All I can do is look at the menu — and I choose to push away from the table and leave the restaurant, thank you.
Here is the truth: Whatever one thinks of Joe Biden’s career, or politics, or character, or dog training skills, or worthiness to occupy the Oval Office on his best day, he is now a compromised old man whose cognitive abilities are deteriorating quickly. He has no business being President now, let alone running for a second term. He is a danger to a world order that is currently under threat from a New Axis of nations that detests Western liberalism. This should now be obvious to anyone with eyes and ears. If you want to argue the same about Trump, go right ahead. But my purpose here isn’t childish whataboutisms. One problem at a time. Trump isn’t currently President. A cognitively impaired old man is.
Kamala Harris should have been sworn in as our first female President last weekend. I am no fan of her politics, but I’m pretty sure she is sentient. And if you really want to give Trump substantial opposition, why not give her a chance to prove her mettle? Let America sample her chops, and take a sip from her leadership cup. If there is an imminent “binary choice”, this is the one that matters in the here and now. Joe or Kamala …or someone else? — Democrats, this is is your real choice. Trump doesn’t enter into it.
But I digress. How the Democrats handle the current mess that they created is their business. The questions I want to address are (1) Why wasn’t this obvious to everyone a month ago, and (2) How was the mess allowed to happen in the first place? I will handle these questions together because the answer is the same for both.
It certainly was obvious to me — and to any objective observer, a month or even a year ago — that Joe Biden cannot serve a second term. I do not generally watch cable news, hang out on Twitter/X or imbibe partisan claptrap from ad-driven media, right or left. I reached this conclusion on my own, based on what my lyin’ eyes and ears were telling me. I did consider some of the recent blowback from left-leaning media regarding videos released from the right, some of which were indeed edited hit jobs. But it turns out that the editing was more “slight magnification” than distortion; the underlying picture remains clear and easy to identify, even viewed through right-wing filters. No editing of the 6/27 debate is required, as it speaks for itself. That hit was entirely self-inflicted and self-magnified, in front of fifty million viewers.
So how did this happen? How is it that, as recently as a few weeks ago, intelligent, educated friends were telling me that the election is a “binary choice” — which, again, in their eyes translated, less than subtly, to “you must vote for Biden”? The answer is fairly simple: activism masquerading as journalism. The save “our democracy” crowd circled the wagons. Oh the irony.
The major media have mostly ignored the elephant in the Oval Office since President Biden was inaugurated, firmly believing that any non-sentient entity would be preferable to Donald Trump clear through 2028. Of course, that calculus mostly (though not entirely) changed in one ninety-minute debate, when the reality of a barely sentient human controlling the nuclear football hit home for many. The problem is, President Biden didn’t suddenly fall off a cognitive cliff on that fateful evening in June. He has been in steep decline for months. But most mainstream journalists and news outlets ignored the obvious, often attacking anyone who suggested that there might be a problem. Joe Scarborough thought this was the best Biden ever — or at least that was the snake oil he tried to sell as late as a couple months ago. Sure, a few exceptions dribbled out along the way… mostly twigs tossed into the river, destined to be carried away within the larger flow of DC noise. But the resounding subtext from the mainstream media was “They’re telling us he’s okay, and who are we to disagree this close to an election.” Maybe he could somehow pull off another 2020-style basement campaign, avoiding exposure, allowing the other guy to take all the media bullets.
Well, nice work fellas. You knew that was never going to happen. And now, to quote a famous pastor of the Obamas, “the chickens are coming home to roost.” Your guy is now fully exposed — to friendly fire.
The Fox News Effect
The past week aside, I don’t watch cable news regularly; I check in occasionally just to see what might have changed (usually nothing). And I almost never watch Fox News. With one or two minor exceptions, Fox is garish entertainment tailored to a specific audience, one particularly enamored of female news anchors who look like alien Barbies. If there were an FDA for television labels, Fox would be forced to remove the “News” label. Of course, the same is true of CNN.
I mention Fox News because of a particular effect that some analysts see in play. If you turn on cable news, you will discover that different outlets not only cover stories in different ways, but cover different stories entirely. Sometimes it is difficult to imagine that Fox and CNN are covering the same news cycle, given the lack of commonality in the stories they cover. In other words, the cable news outlets not only shape the news, they define what constitutes news. Mainstream journalists often view stories that Fox News chooses to cover as illegitimate by default, or at least questionable. And sometimes they have a point — but not always. Either way, covering a story that Fox chooses to highlight is bad form, akin to abetting the enemy. The kind of thing that will get you disinvited to A-List dinner parties in Georgetown. So if Fox chooses to focus on the cognitive decline of the President, mainstream journalists automatically recoil, even if they were not predisposed to defend the President.
I think this “Fox Effect” is real. But, like the proverbial broken clock, Fox News will be right occasionally. And it was right about the decline of President Biden — which, unfortunately, happens to be a critical if not existential issue from an international perspective. Mainstream journalists, many being progressive activists first, had even greater incentive to ignore the mounting evidence. They refused to dig for information, preferring instead to dig in their feet. They accepted fabrications and fairy tales from the same power structure they are supposed to monitor. They accepted the bogus claptrap of Karine Jean-Pierre, when she disingenuously claimed that she had trouble “keeping up with” her vigorous and active Supreme Leader. Seriously, Karine? You can’t keep up with that guy??? That would be sad if it hadn’t been a bald-faced lie.
I will close with a brief return to the term — their term — “our democracy”. Democracies cannot survive without a strong, impartial and free press. This is why freedom of the press is ensconced in the Bill of Rights. American media have failed in their core responsibility, and in so doing have threatened “their democracy”. Had the media done their job months or years ago, the “binary choice” of this election would not be two corrupt old men, one failing cognitively, the other not far behind. But here we are. We’re here because the press refused to do its job. Yes, I do believe that some of that refusal relates to the progressive / activist dispositions of most mainstream journalists. But perhaps the more important explanation resides in a deeper problem: Economic interests and technology have reduced both news and politics to forms of entertainment, some of which is now interactive. Foundational elements of our culture now trade more in fashion, sport and avocational cosplay on social media than in serious research, reporting and analysis. And we are now fully trained to believe that this is normal. Well, it isn’t normal. It is profoundly dangerous. This is why we now have a cognitively impaired president and a morally deficient huckster as his primary challenger.
This election is not a binary choice, and it never was. Even if it had been written in stone that the ballot would include Biden, Trump and a cast of nobodies with no chance of winning, it still would not be a binary choice. I will not be compelled to choose between one of two unacceptable options. But, as it turns out, there’s a decent chance that the ballot will not look like that. Whatever the ballot looks like for you, you can always vote “no thank you”. And I almost certainly will, given the most likely options. If my non-binary message of “we have to do better” falls on deaf ears, that’s not my problem.
P.S.: Somewhat ironically, I want to send a shout out to CNN, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash for gifting the country a return to a serious debate format, and sticking to it. I might have asked different questions, but that will always be the case. Overall, I thought they did an excellent job, and perhaps created the template for all future Presidential debates. Nicely done. Better late than never.