FAILS: Columnist cops to epic fail!

MONDAY, JULY 8, 2024

That said, have the fails been general? The Washington Post's E. J. Dionne has long been a good, decent person.

In a column in today's paper, he cops to an "epic fail."

That unflattering term belongs to Dionne himself. As we type, his column is listed as the third MOST READ article in the whole of the Washington Post.

Dionne says he committed this epic fail in an earlier column. The earlier column was published on June 23, four days before the recent Biden-Trump debate. 

In that earlier column, Dionne submitted to the lure of prediction, a latter-day form of prophecy—of attempts to interpret the fight of birds. 

According to Dionne's assessment, his prediction in that column has turned out to be wrong. Headline included from June 23, Dionne's failed prediction went exactly like this:

Forget conventional wisdom. Trump needs the debate more than Biden

[...]

Debates are not about everyone watching. Many will absorb it the way I took in the glorious Boston Celtics playoff run: as partisans rooting unreservedly for victory, cheering every great moment and worrying about every mistake.

To the extent that partisans matter at all, they are likely to be Democrats who need constant hand-holding and reassurance that Biden can prevail. This, along with the 78-year-old Trump’s months-long denigration of Biden’s capacities at age 81, sets a low bar for Biden’s performance. Given his success at other big moments, such as his State of the Union addresses, he is likely to meet or surpass it.

That was Dionne's prophecy in his earlier column, the one he published on June 23. In today's column, he quotes that specific passage, and he calls it an epic fail.

Dual headline included:

The words about Joe Biden I never wanted to write
It’s hard to acknowledge that those who worried about Biden’s age may have been right all along.

[...] 

Among the many words I have written over the years, these, offered a few days before the debate, may have aged worse—and certainly more quickly—than almost any others. I poked fun at “Democrats who need constant hand-holding and reassurance that Biden can prevail.” I predicted confidently that given the “low bar for Biden’s performance” and “his success at other big moments, such as his State of the Union addresses,” he would [sic] “likely to meet or surpass” expectations.

I think the contemporary expression for that prediction is: epic fail.

Predicting the future is hard! In today's column, Dionne puckishly refers to his prediction as an "epic fail."

Basically, it's true! In the June 27 debate, it's obvious that President Biden didn't "meet or surpass expectations." In fact, his performance trailed expectations to such an extent that it has created a political crisis which has yet to be resolved.

To his credit, Dionne has copped to that bad prediction. For today, we'll offer two more observations about that June 23 column. After that, we'll cite a different part of that original column—a part of the column in which Dionne was basically right.

Concerning the earlier column:

Ugh! In that earlier column, even Dionne chose to denigrate the people whose concerns about President Biden have perhaps turned out to be right.

In fairness, he didn't describe those people as "bedwetters," the current term of denigration from major elements of Blue America's elite. He didn't use that unfortunate term, but his statement that such people "need constant hand-holding" did come fairly close.  

Given the powerful state of play which now prevails between the nation's Red and Blue tribes, even a decent person like Dionne felt the need to denigrate those with whom he disagreed. And not only that:

As shown above, the sub-headline to Dionne's new column makes this slightly odd statement:

"It’s hard to acknowledge that those who worried about Biden’s age may have been right all along."

That matches something Dionne says in the actual column. Question:

Why should it be "hard to acknowledge" an apparent fact which Dionne himself now seems to affirm? Why not offer a tip of the cap to those whose assessment may have been stronger than his, if only in this one instance—to those who may not have purchased the talking-points which were driving Blue America's "thought leaders" as the debate approached?

Dionne didn't see the debacle coming. Presumably, the same is true of President Biden's campaign staff, or they would have moved heaven and earth to keep the debate from occurring.

Presumably, Biden's performance on June 27 doesn't represent the way he seems to be on a typical, round-the-clock basis. That said, there were many episodes in the past year which should have suggested the possibility that the president might not hold up well in a 90-monite debate.

Why didn't Dionne (and others) heed these warning signs? We'll ponder that important question as the week proceeds.

For today, we'll call it quits after performing one more service—after showing you part of Dionne's original column in which Dionne pretty much got it right. We refer to the part of the June 23 column in which Dionne advanced the highlighted point:

To the extent that partisans matter at all, they are likely to be Democrats who need constant hand-holding and reassurance that Biden can prevail. This, along with the 78-year-old Trump’s months-long denigration of Biden’s capacities at age 81, sets a low bar for Biden’s performance. Given his success at other big moments, such as his State of the Union addresses, he is likely to meet or surpass it.

But there is a trap here for Biden, too: Because the “age issue” has been raised relentlessly against him, the media have a tendency to overlook or downplay Trump’s many moments of incoherence and even lunacy. Biden and his lieutenants must turn this side-by-side performance into an opportunity to have the two men judged by the same standards.

After denigrating the worried hand-holders, Dionne raised an excellent point:

He suggested that "the media" might hold Candidate Trump to a lesser standard in the aftermath of the debate. Given how awful Trump's performance actually was, we'd say that Dionne called his shot when he advanced that warning.

President Biden was awful that night, but so was Candidate Trump. That said, Biden's performance is currently being frisked in a way which seems to exceed the attention paid to the gruesome performance by Trump.

Does that suggest the possibility that an array of "epic fails" might be involved in the matter at hand? For example, that the unflattering term might characterize the way this ersatz election campaign has been covered, in recent years, by our ersatz mainstream press? 

Dionne has copped to an epic fail. We can't say his specific confession is wrong. 

But has it been epic all the way down? Repulsive fails in Red America (though only of a certain type), but relentless, unacknowledged fails in our own Blue America too?

Tomorrow: Calling the roll of the possible fails

This afternoon: In our view, a rather strange fact-check