Joe Biden’s in such a miserable electoral pickle right now—hasn’t “moved the needle” for 18 months—that some of his putative media enablers (you never really know what motives drive the dwindling “chattering class”) are on the ledge, either pleading with whatever “committee” runs the Democratic campaign to convince President Sippy Cup to step down in favor of… almost anyone who’s younger than 70, or, more self-indulgently, writing “I told you so” columns anticipating Biden’s defeat and the end of the world as we know it. This isn’t sudden, or revelatory, as I wrote recently, but as the weeks and months go on, the guarded pessimism has morphed to full-on panic, and will only become more apocalyptic. Some cling to the idea that Biden will clobber Trump in the June 27th debate, which is doubtful, or that some “moment,” say Putin’s assassination, or a resolution of the Middle East conflict that satisfies all sides will provide “the path to victory.” And the Paul Krugman acolytes hope that dumb Americans will realize that the Biden economy is really good.
New York Times columnist, Bret Stephens, a #NeverTrumper since 2015, was more honest than most of his colleagues in a June 11th essay. He concluded, after jotting down a shopping list of Biden’s indecisive policies: “It all leaves the president with one option that can be a win for America and, ultimately, his place in history. He can still choose not to run, to cede the field to a Democrat who can win—paging Josh Shapiro [an unobjectionable moderate, but there’s no way, given America’s abhorrent rise in anti-Semitism, that a Jewish man will receive a “brokered convention” nomination] or Gretchen Whitmer—and do the hard and brave things it will take to secure security and peace for the free world. There’s still time, if only just. It would be a courageous, honorable and transformative legacy.”
Never mind that Biden will leave no mark on history, aside from the almost completely wasteful Infrastructure Jobs and Investment Act. Does anyone believe that Dr. Jill will bless this last-minute gambit?
Peter Wehner, who writes for the schizoid Atlantic, is all but conceding the election, as well as democracy, and his regular columns are becoming angrier. This isn’t facetious: I hope Wehner has a “support network” and “happy place” where he can enjoy “me-time,” since he gives the indication, that as summer turns to fall, he’ll need a private room at Bellevue. Earlier this week, in an essay headlined, “The Motivated Ignorance of Trump Supporters: They can’t claim they didn’t know,” Wehner is drawing lines: you’re with me or against me. It’s personal.
After conceding that some Trump voters have redeeming personal attributes, he writes: “I struggle more than I once did to wall off a person’s character from their politics when their politics is binding them to an unusually—and I would say undeniably—destructive person. The lies that MAGA world parrots are so manifestly untrue, and the Trump ethic is so manifestly cruel, that they are difficult to set aside.”
This baloney about “character” is the tic of an advocacy journalist. Most of my friends support Biden, however reluctantly—I’m casting a write-in vote for Roger McGuinn, since he’s contributed more to American culture than the other choices—and hate Trump with a passion that dwarfs their disgust over Bill Clinton in the late-1990s. Last weekend I saw a college roommate/journalism collaborator for the first time in decades: I made a crack about the liberal enclave of New York’s Upper West Side, and after he rolled his eyes, we talked baseball. Eric’s a lifelong Pittsburgh Pirates fan, and I remember him sitting at our kitchen table, with the Bucs game on the radio, methodically scoring it, instead of studying for final exams (which he almost always aced). We speculated about when, not if, Pirates sensation Paul Skenes would blow out his arm.
Above is a picture of my late Uncle Joe—handsome and smartly-attired at 27—somewhere in New York City. Joe didn’t let politics roil him; the last conversation we had on the subject was in 1992 when he (and Uncle Pete) said he was voting for Ross Perot. We jovially jousted for a few minutes on the subject—I thought Perot was a kook—and that was that.
Look at the clues to figure out the year: Duke Ellington plays at Carnegie Hall for the first time; the U.S. Federal Writers’ Project is shut down; the Zoot Suit Riots last a week in Los Angeles; Andrew L. Stone directs Hi Diddle Diddle; Christopher Walken is born and Nikola Tesla dies; the Yankees win their 10th World Series; ABC begins broadcasting; Edie Sedgwick is born and Fats Waller dies; the FBI places author Richard Wright under surveillance; Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Roald Dahl’s The Gremlins are published; the Mills Brothers’ “Paper Doll” is a huge hit; and Notre Dame’s Angelo Bertelli wins the Heisman Trophy.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023