CONSENSUS: President Biden has sent out the clowns!

THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 2024

So said one C-Span caller: A type of consensus quickly emerged as we listened to Sunday's morning's first hour of Washington Journal.

The first four callers quickly agreed. This year's presidential election is the most important election in history—or at least, the most important within our lifetimes.

Callers formed a second type of consensus. They agreed that the nation was facing an existential crisis—but only if the other guy wins: 

If President Biden's win re-election, we'll likely be losing the republic, several callers quickly said. Then again, if Candidate Trump wins a second term, our democracy will soon be gone.

That was perhaps a slightly deformed type of consensus. Borrowing from the early Dylan, we turned to the disillusioned analysts and thoughtfully offered this:

But oh, what kind of consensus is this, which goes from bad to worse?

Along the way, as the hour unfolded, we heard America singing. At some point, each citizen has to answer this question:

Do you actually like "us the people?" Do you actually like "the American people," given the imperfect way we the people so frequently seem to be?

Peculiar phone calls poured in to C-Span—peculiar phone calls from Red America, but from Bue America too. In what was just the morning's third call, C-Span's moderator had already accepted, without a word of comment, the claim that President Biden isn't just senile and a moron, but is a pedophile too. 

That last assertion flew by without comment. At 7:24 a.m., Dennis from Toledo, Iowa countered the claim in this manner:

MODERATOR (6/9/24): Dennis is in Toledo, Iowa—Democrat.

DENNIS FROM IOWA: Well, they're both too old, but I'm for Biden. You had a Trump caller call in and said Biden was a pedophile. Well, it is Trump who is twenty-four years older than his present wife, and he's had many wives.  If he's so great, how come he can't satisfy them? 

And he's been divorced multiple times. They just—they're idiots, these people!

MODERATOR: All right, Dennis in Toledo, Iowa. We appreciate your calling in.

So ran this rebuttal. At 7:37 a.m., Kevin from Illinois offered an alternate view of the nation. He was calling on the Red America line:

MODERATOR: Kevin, Illinois, Republican. 

Kevin, 2024? The most important in history?

KEVIN FROM ILLINOIS: Absolutely. Good morning, sir and thank you for your program and for the people's opinions. It's nice for people to actually, you know, give their opinions.

It's the most important—one of the reasons is financially. The food, the gas—all the nonsense. I'm all about God, and I'm all about Trump...

For the record, the caller is allowed to be "all about God." With the food and the gas, he had actually gotten off to a fairly conventional start.

That said, before too long, he was offering a slightly off-beat observation. President Biden has sent out the clowns!

KEVIN FROM ILLINOIS: ...They're wanting our country to be their country. Now you say, "What is our country?" 

I went to a circus last week, and when I went, it was a foreign circus. I have nothing against foreigners, but there was no clowns. A little boy had a red nose, wanting to go in. The world is changed, and it's changed because of Biden's policies...

According to this C-Span caller, President Biden has sent out the clowns! For the record: In Blue America, we all know which of our bombs to drop on the head of this caller. 

During the hour, callers wandered the countryside, dissecting the coming election. These callers are "us the people" too.

"No people are uninteresting," Yevtushenko inscrutably said. Along the way, each citizen has to decide, at some point, if he or she actually likes "us the people," given the ways we are.

(We often think of President Lincoln when we listen, on weekend mornings, to C-Span's various callers. We think of the way Lincoln is praised for one manifestation of his moral and intellectual genius—for his ability to speak the language of "average people," who were often extremely average on the Illinois frontier.)

A certain type of consensus formed as we listened this past Sunday morning. Quite a few callers agreed—this is the most important election ever, especially if The Other Guy wins.

Very few callers took the discussion in a traditional, "issue"-laden direction. One caller who did was the program's fourth caller. He said this was the most important election in our lifetimes, except for that other campaign.

Gregory form Sherman Oaks, California called on the Democrats' line. He was the fourth caller of the morning, and he seemed to call in from a time warp. 

He followed the call from Dennis in Indiana, who had trashed President Biden in the vilest possible ways. He said this is the most important election—though only in the past six.

This caller walked a loftier road. Like Pepperidge Farm, he remembered:

MODERATOR (6/9/24): That's Dennis in Hudson, Indiana. And this is Gregory, Sherman Oaks, California, Democrat. 

Gregory, good morning to you.

GREGORY IN SHERMAN OAKS: And good morning to you. And this is the most important election, at least in six elections. 

I've heard a bunch of Republicans talk about how we're going to lose our republic, or our Second Amendment rights, or jobs or some other stuff. 

What we're going to lose is our planet. If we don't get behind doing something serious about climate destruction and global heating, all the other issues are going to be dying out, on a planet that is dying out.

It's up to us, in this generation—and this part of this generation now running the show, has the choice whether or not we're going to save the planet from the worst possible effects of climate change and climate destruction and whether we're going to save it by finally cutting back on such things as  fossil fuels subsidies and turning that money to energy efficiency, green energy, climate mitigation and resilience and other environmental and climate remediation. 

We are the generation that gets to save the planet. I would say that one other election really was, like this one, the most important election, and that was the election of the millennial year 2000.

We could have started the third millennium with a president who was going to at least put a foundation on saving the planet by attacking climate change. Of course, that was Al Gore—Albert Gore Jr., the vice president. And instead, we wasted the first decade of this new century and new millennium on a president who gave us climate betrayal, two stupid wars and a financial meltdown, among many other failures.

MODERATOR: That's Gregory in Sherman Oaks, California.  Thank you.

This caller took us all the way back to Campaign 2000. 

According to this fourth caller, we could have elected a climate visionary that year. "That was Al Gore—Albert Gore Jr., the vice president."

Instead, this caller said, "we wasted the first decade of this new century and new millennium." We wasted that decade on a different president—"on a president who gave us climate betrayal, two stupid wars and a financial meltdown, among many other failures."

This caller may have seemed a bit out of touch. A quarter century has passed since coverage of that campaign began in March 1999. During that time, our discourse has disintegrated in a way which was reflected in this particular morning's phone calls.

In Campaign 2000, a certain pretense still prevailed—the pretense that discussion of our campaign was built upon the discussion of important issues. 

Behind that pretense, there lurked the devolution which has brought us to our present place, in which our two Americas compete on the basis of "convicted felons," and our callers wonder about why The Other Guy can't satisfy his various wives.

We liberals! We needed to know about Stormy Daniels! We needed to hear her tell her ridiculous, buckraking story! 

By way of contrast, this throwback caller from Sherman Oaks wanted to discuss the destruction of the planet. They don't discuss that, or pretty much anything else, on our own Blue America's present-day "cable news" channel. 

How did we ever get to this place? Tomorrow, not unlike Pepperidge Fram, we'll try to help you remember. As of last Sunday, this:

Some of the callers talked circuses, wives. They too are "us the people." We may not regard them as neighbors and friends, but they're plainly our fellow citizens.

We leave you today with a basic question. How much sharper than these callers are "our favorite reporters and friends"—the vastly overpaid corporate employees who script our own Blue America?

President Biden has sent out the clowns! So said one C-Span caller!

Tomorrow: Some of the ways we got here