The Final Debate, a Gerson Column and a Paradox

A Paradox

It seems to be the general consensus that Donald Trump will lose the upcoming election on both a popular vote and an electoral college basis because of his failure to properly address the challenges posed by the Covid19 virus pandemic.  That would be a good result, of course, but for the wrong reason.

Covid19 virus which some say is
mutating, for better or worse

 

Does that mean that if there were no such thing as Covid19, he would win re-election?  Does that mean that if there were no such thing as Covid19, Americans would be willing to trade in democracy and the Constitution for an administration no better than a crew of miscast actors, merely attempting to play the roles they are pretending to fill, rather than seriously doing their jobs, for which they lack qualifications, and that includes the President.  Quite possibly!

It is paradoxical that the Covid19 pandemic might be Trump’s undoing and the salvation of the nation.

 

 

What I Learned from the Final Debate 

Because so many voters have already voted, either by mail or at early voting sites, and so many others have already made up their minds, I decided to run an experiment with Thursday evening’s presidential debate. It was educational to say the least.

About 45 minutes before the debate’s start, I tuned in to Fox for their pre-debate commentary.  It was managed, so to speak, by Tucker Carlson flanked by a dour-faced Brit Hume, with assistance from anchors Martha MacCullum and Dana Perino.  Cameo visits by Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich also were included.

Carlson

As expected, they started out with a lie, primarily about Joe Biden’s ill-gained wealth and that of his family. They based this on the widely debunked story which came up a few days ago in the New York Post about emails found on a laptop Hunter Biden had left for repair and not picked up and which ended up in the hands of Rudy Giuliani and the appearance, just a few hours earlier, of a former associate of Hunter Biden who was eager to spill all of the dirt about the Bidens.

The first time I heard this stuff, I recognized it as a lie.  But within minutes, it was repeated by another one of the assembled Fox crew.  This didn’t stop for 45 minutes with all of the above Fox people pitching in, repeating and embellishing the original lie.  If you tell a lie over and over, and it is repeated by different people, it gains a measure of credibility among some people, and this was the sole purpose of Fox’s programming leading up to the debate, to condition its viewers to accept lies as possibly, or even likely, to be the truth, a necessity once Trump started telling them. 

After the debate, I switched to CNN and MSNBC to see what they had to say and their commentators were actually talking about what Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who had occasionally specifically referred to Fox’s earlier “legitimized” lies, had said in response to the moderator’s questions.

These discussions were what might be expected, but then, switching back to Fox, there was Sean Hannity interviewing that former associate of Hunter Biden, and painting the Bidens as thieves.  The entire role of Fox News last night was to legitimize lying so that when Donald Trump started to lie, the audience might be pre-conditioned to accept lies as truth.   This possibly worked among the feebleminded who comprise a good segment of Fox viewers.

As for the debate itself, Biden made his points, talking about what he would do to address the nation’s problems while Trump lied about his accomplishments, and repeatedly asked Biden why he hadn’t done those things when he was Obama’s Vice-President.  Biden replied, “We had a Republican Congress.”   Trump appeared like a boiling kettle whose cover had been firmly taped down.  His facial expressions showed this.  It broke through once when he interjected that “You’re both (Biden and Harris) jumping through AOC’s hoops.”  He also tried to attack Biden for what were Bernie Sanders’ positions.  Biden pointed out that he had defeated Sanders in the Democratic primaries. 

 

Conclusion:  A great debate for Trump if you’re feebleminded.  As for Biden, he lost no ground.  If you haven’t voted yet, do so now if possible.  It might rain on Election Day.

 

 

Shaky Planks

Michael Gerson is a conservative Republican who writes a column for the Washington Post.  Check out his latest message:

The Three Planks of Trump’s GOP are Shaky at Best

 

Michael Gerson

Gerson

WASHINGTON – One of the most symbolic moments of campaign 2020 was when the apparatus of the Republican Party strained and groaned to produce a platform reading, “RESOLVED, That the Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention.”

 

It was, in its own content-free, witless way, an assertion of power. The party that had produced a platform every four years since 1856 had become, well, anything President Donald Trump wished at the moment. It was a declaration and recognition of personal rule. After nearly four years, it is fair to ask: With the GOP as putty in Trump’s hand, what form has it taken? What are the large, organizing commitments of the GOP during the Trump captivity?

 

One would have to be voter suppression. What began, for some, as an effort to ensure ballot security has become a campaign to control the content of the electorate by limiting its size.

 

Not long ago, I would have regarded this as conspiracy thinking. At some point, however, a pattern becomes a plot. There have been Republican efforts to make voting more difficult in Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Texas, Iowa and Oklahoma. These have included: complicated absentee ballot processes, strict voter ID rules, obstacles for voters returning

from prison, objections to the broad distribution of ballots and logistical obstacles to early voting. The Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, set the example of shamelessness by limiting vast counties to a single ballot drop box. The president has attempted to destroy trust in the whole electoral enterprise in preparation for legal challenges to mailin votes.

 

Again and again, Republicans have used, or attempted to use, the power they gained from voters to undermine democracy. This has a political intention but (for some) it also has an ideological explanation. It is the logical electoral implication of nativism. If too much diversity is the cause of our national problems, it can be fought by restricting immigration or by restricting the democratic participation of minorities.

 

The second characteristic of the new GOP is denial of a pandemic in the midst of a surging pandemic. Trump and many other Republicans think they can win only if American voters forget about more than 219,000 deaths from COVID- 19 and the utterly incompetent federal response to the crisis. It is hard to recall any American presidential campaign that depended so directly on the outbreak of mass amnesia.

 

The third organizing commitment of the GOP under Trump is loyalty to his person. At the beginning of his term, there was a Republican attempt to understand the populism that elected Trump and draw its policy implications. That ended quickly. The president made clear that the only thing that really mattered about populism was its end product: himself.

 

Some would add a conservative judiciary to this list of GOP commitments, and there is a case to be made.

 

 

What should we make of this GOP agenda: voter suppression, disease denial and a personality cult dedicated to a con man? It is the weakest appeal to the public of any modern presidential candidate. The Republican Party may win or lose. But it deserves to lose.

 

Michael Gerson

The Washington Post

 

And remember that until Trump came along, Gerson was a Republican.