I have a confession to make. I didn’t turn my television off last night when my wife and I left the house to pick our son up from chess club. It’s only a ten-minute roundtrip ride, but still. When we returned, the State of the Union speech was just about to begin, and I announced that I was not watching that [expletive]. I’d spent all day focused on politics, and I had had enough. But she declared that she wanted to see at least a little bit of it, so I went to bed.
But it turned out only to be a catnap, and when I arose Governor Gretchen Whitmer was concluding the Democratic response. It was only later that I discovered that I had missed this:
https://twitter.com/Gary_Andrew/status/1224897654427193344
Speaker Pelosi later explained to reporters that she tore up the speech because it was a “manifesto of mistruths.”
At that moment, it seemed that Pelosi and I were on the same page.
The panelists on MSNBC seemed worried that the speech had been an effective bit of theater and demagoguery, so I concluded that Trump hadn’t been booed by his own party or discovered that his teleprompter wasn’t working. Did I want to know more? Was I interested in what proposals he was offering or what kind of lies that he told?
Pelosi’s action basically decided that for me. There was nothing of merit in the speech. If I had wanted to assess how effective I thought the show had been in misleading the nation, I would have watched it myself. I knew that it would be a manifesto of mistruths and that it would enrage me. Pelosi confirmed this.
Meanwhile, I learned that Trump had been greeted by the Republicans with chants of “Four more years!” as if they aren’t in the process of acquitting the man for manifestly impeachable offenses. Should they censure him rather than remove him from office, and some have recommended?
“Four more years!”
And, yet, here I am, the next morning, back with my nose to the grindstone, trying to write intelligently about the state of American politics. Lately, this has been an unremitting drag. I’m not surprised that Democratic participation in the Iowa caucuses was less than inspiring. As desperate as all decent people are to be rid of Donald Trump and his political movement, the more powerful impulse is sometimes just to climb in bed and pretend none of this is happening. If only for a moment.
“And, yet, here I am, the next morning, back with my nose to the grindstone”…
If you can do it, so can I. One could say we have a choice, but no, not really. We don’t.
“Are you ready? Okay. Let’s roll.”
His optics were top notch. Example: he spoke about a woman there who did all sorts of good stuff while her husband was in Afghanistan then produced him in a big surprise.
“He shredded the truth, so I shredded his speech,” Pelosi told House Democrats, according to multiple sources in the room. “What we heard last night was a disgrace.” link
I’ll say while I don’t think its enough I think she did the best one could do in the situation.
Hard as it was I watched, transfixed though I wanted desperately to get away from the spectacle. This was a huge campaign speech – not a state of the union – by a master at theater. Indeed it had considerable half truth, lies and innuendo. But he opened the dialog for his campaign. I’ll give him that. For me the worse part was maybe the medal he bestowed on Rush. I really don’t wish the man ill but a medal for the hypocrite and right wing nut job he has been for so much of his life was more than I could handle and so I left for a bit. It was nice to see Nancy rip up the speech, I confess.
I don’t know how we will beat this man and strongly suspect he can’t be beat no matter who runs – at least not as the economy is performing at the moment. Meanwhile the dems still haven’t figured out how to run the fucking app whatever that thing is. It is a disgrace.
But Elizabeth is still sending me e mails for money. Nah Liz this is a lost cause.
Buck up, Jon, you can’t take this negativity into the tournament.
You’re right of course, Martin. So now I’m about to watch more theater on the tv, oh joy. I’ve not seen Schumer this excited.
It may seem like it, since he gets away with everything and the media works overtime to normalize him and build a perception of popularity oversampling republicans and his most rabid supporters. But Trump is widely despised. He’s the kind of person that most people would not want to be around, were he a coworker, neighbor or family member. I won’t even add friend to that mix, since Trump is inherently disloyal. Many of the Senate republicans who support him because they’re afraid, don’t like him, and can’t even bring themselves to say he’s a great leader.
The anti-Trump vote, I believe, is a “silent majority” for our time, made so thanks to a media that virtually ignores them to focus on the antics of the white house clown. We got a taste of it in 2018. In 2016 turnout was 55.7% vs. 58.2% in 2008. If the democrats can increase turnout by at least 3 percentage points, in 2020, it should be more than enough to win, even with Trump cheating.
2020 is still democrats race to lose.
You’re making a very important point: the media really do oversample his most rabid supporters. And I suppose this is driven by the “Man Bites Dog” principle of journalism: according to the normal view of things, you wouldn’t expect a guy like Trump to have been elected, let alone be supported by rabid admirers. You’d expect most people to hate him. And in fact, most people do. So it’s the ones who love him that get the coverage, that provide the shock value — because that’s “news”. The new “silent majority” is just ho-hum, it’s what you’d expect. And this is one of the big failures of journalism today, right up there with the “he said/she said” idea of “objectivity,” and equal coverage to the flat-earthers and the round-earthers. Who’s right? You decide!
You know what would really be “Man Bites Dog” ? If the media were to give due coverage to how deeply unpopular Trump is, and how they don’t really cover that issue, now THAT would be news. But it would also mean that the media would be covering themselves as part of this news, and they REALLY don’t like to do that.
Simple, when democrats get in power you strip him of the medal. There’s no official procedure for it but its been talked about before and congress can create a procedure. I’d like nothing more than to dig up his cancerous carcass and tear that thing off him.
I’ve been trying to think of what might be a liberal equivalent of giving the medal of freedom to Rush Limbaugh, in terms of offensiveness to the other side. Maybe giving it to Michael Moore? But Moore is a relatively small bit player. Maybe if McGovern had been elected while losing the popular vote in 1972 and gave the medal to Jane Fonda right after she returned from Hanoi.
that’s an excellent effort on your part.
This says it best
I didn’t watch it as I knew it would be what it was, a cornucopia of lies and Trump idiocy. His plight notwithstanding, giving the patron saint of hate and bigotry Limbaugh a medal on the floor of the chamber said it all in terms of what Trump and the GOP stands for.
BTW, speaking of lies, the biggest whopper of them all was when he said he and the GOP will protect preexisting conditions, even as his lawsuit to destroy all that and more, and for good, makes its way through the courts. That “journalists” can hear this and call his speech “great” is shameful. They are active participants in this deception.
Well, here’s what I consider to be positive news. All D senators, including Manchin and Sinema, will vote to convict. Romney will vote to convict on one count. Here’s what I wrote on Nov 23:
“In the Senate, I will count it as a victory if we get even one R vote, and a major victory if we get more than one (perhaps Romney and Murkowski). A majority vote (>50) for conviction on any count would be a triumph almost beyond belief. A loss would be if the Rs keep their caucus together and we do not.”
So, I’m counting this as a victory.
(Note, by the way, that I wasn’t looking to Collins as a possible vote to convict. I assumed she would be a coward, and she has proven me right on that assessment.)