Addled Lying Monster
Trump is the Best Trump You'll Ever See Again
Plus:
How Long Will It Take the "Smart Set" to Stop Underestimating Kamala
Harris
Aug 12, 2024
The Democratic National Convention
begins at the beginning of next week. Kamala Harris picked Tim Walz as her
running mate at the beginning of last week. So, perhaps this week will provide
us with the first relative news lull in a summer that has promised many such
respites and delivered none.
Reflecting on where we
are and what I am hearing, a few thoughts to start the week:
- The Trump you are seeing now is
the best Trump you will ever again see. It may seem hard to believe. After
all he is melting down before our eyes. He did an interview last week and
was clocked at two lies a minute. He is so flummoxed by the rise and rise
and rise of Kamala Harris that has resorted to loony conspiracy theories
that the well documented crowds showing up at her rallies have somehow
been generated by AI and even crazier arguments that she is not really a
black woman. He has spent most of the past couple weeks hiding out in what
some Internet wag has called Bunker-a-Lago. And when he does speak
publicly he has revealed himself to deeply unwell, sundowning 24 hours a
day. But it is only going to get worse from here. During the next 85 days
as it becomes clearer and clearer that he is going to lose this election
and be confronted by jail time, ignominy and possibly even worse for him,
irrelevance, he is going to act out in ways that will make his past
ugliness seem statesmanlike. He will become more racist, more misogynist.
He will spread more lies. He will increasingly cast doubt on the soundness
of the election process and argue once again…but this time with more
desperation…that that the 2024 is going to be stolen from him. He will
become a greater and greater threat to our institutions and more openly
encourage his followers to disrupt voting, vote counting and vote
certification. He will take to every medium that will have him with
hysteria. He will become even less coherent and much more demented. It
will be horrifying to watch because it will not only be the final shrieks
of desperation from a creature headed for political extinction, but he
will have no reason to restrain himself, no reason to respect what few
norms he has not already violated. So, bad as he is today, his current
pathetic performance is likely to be as good as it gets for America’s
worst president, America’s worst presidential candidate and one of the
worst Americans in our history.
- Usually the worst times in Washington, DC are the couple of months
between an election and the inauguration of a new president. During that
period, the worst in the denizens of the capital manifest itself. They are
competing for a few key jobs, for a few seats at the table of power, for
the influence that will enable them to advance their agendas or get rich
or become famous or simply continue their climb up the slippery pole of
federal government career success. Unfortunately, that period has started
already. It started the moment that Joe Biden stepped out of the 2024 race
and the torch was passed to Kamala Harris. (It started even before when
the advocates of an “open primary” really meant they wanted their friend,
ally, race horse to have a shot at succeeding Biden for all the reasons
noted above.) In an instant, all the folks on one side of the ship of
state ran to the other side of the boat to gather around a new leader and
to position themselves for a new reality. All of a sudden people who had
spent years gainsaying the VP were announcing on television and in columns
and on the Twitter blogs that they had really been for her all along. They
were just keeping it on the downlow don’tcha know, because well, they
didn’t want to disrespect Biden or some other form of baloney sliced so
thin that you could see right through it. Now, different people and
different cliques of political creatures are aligning themselves into
groups seeking to influence the campaign, raise funds, provide policy
advice. So long as this helps the VP win, I say, more power to them. We
can use all the help we can get in this existential fight to preserve our
democracy. But I do want to say one thing. A recurring bit of commentary I
hear as I bumble around Washington is about how the struggle within the
campaign (which is both inevitable and vastly overstated in terms of its
consequences) is between the Biden camp and the Obama camp. People are
finally admitting the tensions that existed between Biden and Obama and
the resentments that have brewed among some on the Obama side when they
felt that team Biden ignored or dissed them when hiring for the
administration. While there is a shred of truth to this, it misses a few big
glaring points. First, this happens all the time. This is the Beltway
Circle of Life (and Death). Next, it is actually being managed
extraordinarily well by the Vice President and her inner circle. Most
importantly, this is not about a choice between one past reality and
another. It is about the creation of something entirely new. While the
Harris administration will undoubtedly be full of great talents from Team
Biden and Team Obama and even Team Clinton (we’re not dead yet), the
vision, the policies, the management style, the culture of the
administration and its identity from top to bottom will come from the new
president. In other words, we’re watching the creation of something
entirely new and please spare me the patronizing bullshit that somehow the
identity of the first U.S. administration in history led by a woman will
somehow bear the stamp of one or another man-led administration of the
past.
- I’m reading a lot about how the “Harris honeymoon” will end.
Apparently, such endings are inevitable. Momentum can’t be
sustained. It’s a law, say the pundidiots. Trees don’t grow to the sky. Of
course, these are the same people who have underestimated the VP for
years, who said America was not ready for a black woman candidate, who
said she couldn’t unify the part, who have been sitting on the sidelines
slack-jawed watching as what they declared was impossible happened. There
are only 85 days to go in this campaign. The energy underlying the Harris
campaign could certainly be maintained or grow throughout that period. The
stakes are high enough. She and Walz and their campaign team are good
enough. The real energy of this campaign is also being generated outside
the political consultancies and conventional wisdom factories of DC. It is
coming from regular people attending Zoom rallies, waiting in line at live
rallies, volunteering in record numbers, donating in record numbers,
creating memes, driving the social media conversation. What if this not
some news cycle driven phenomenon but was actually a response from the
American people who started to rise up and say no, enough of the lies and
the threats and the hate of MAGA, enough the alliance between the greedy
and the vile and the weird. That’s not our America. That’s not who we are.
We are taking back control. We are a movement. We now have a candidate and
a ticket that reflects not just who we are but understands our aspirations
and wants to advance them.
I don’t know about you,
but I believe that what we’re seeing is not hype nor is it a honeymoon, it is a
turning point in history, a popular movement to save the experiment in American
democracy and one of those ideal marriages between a leader, a moment and a
nation.
But then, you know me.
I’m one of the handful of folks who has felt that Kamala Harris has been
underestimated for the past four years and who has long argued that if given a
true chance she would soar. I’m obviously a crackpot. (Know-betters would always
tease me for having a “crush” on Kamala. Which was demeaning and dumb and would
never be said about someone who believed in a male candidate. But answer then
as now is: Watch and see.)