THE SEARCH: Just another manic Wednesday!

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2024

Also, Van Jones [HEART] President Biden: Long ago, during the 2016 campaign, he was described by his opponent as a puppet to Putin. 

Is he Elon's puppet now?

We refer to former candidate / incoming president Donald J. Trump. Yesterday, he created a contretemps when he intervened in the ongoing budget brouhaha, an action he took after Musk suddenly tweeted on the subject roughly a hundred times.

Or at least, we heard that number reported on cable news. All in all, it was just another manic Wednesday here in our struggling nation's version of Oran. 

The budget meltdown happened so late in the day that it didn't make the print editions of today's New York Times. Online, a report begins in the manner shown, featuring an unusually colorful bit of journalistic language:

Trump Criticizes Spending Deal, Pushing Congress Toward a Shutdown

A bipartisan spending deal to avert a shutdown was on life support on Wednesday after President-elect Donald J. Trump condemned it, leaving lawmakers without a strategy to fund the government past a Friday night deadline.

Mr. Trump issued a scathing statement ordering Republicans not to support the sprawling bill, piling on to a barrage of criticism from Elon Musk, who spent Wednesday trashing the measure on social media and threatening any Republican who supported it with political ruin.

It was not yet clear how Speaker Mike Johnson planned to proceed as the package, which was stuffed full of unrelated policy measures as well as tens of billions of dollars in disaster and agricultural aid, appeared to be hemorrhaging support. Some Republicans suggested he was mulling stripping the bill of everything but the spending extension and putting it to a vote, but the fate of such a measure was also very much in doubt.

Really? the bill "was stuffed full of" unrelated policy measures? Have editors at the New York Times barred use of the word "included?"  

Give the reporters credit! In today's report, they never say that Speaker Johnson had been trying to "shove the spending package down America's throat." 

They show that amount of restraint. But before too long, they do say this, bringing the eternal note of incomprehension in:

Even before Mr. Musk began making noise, a swell of Republican lawmakers...had been furious about the funding measure, which was rolled out on Tuesday night. It began as a simple spending bill to keep government funds flowing past a midnight deadline and into mid-March, but it emerged from bipartisan negotiations laden with $100 billion in disaster aid and dozens of other unrelated policies.

The G.O.P. resistance meant that in order to pass the bill, Mr. Johnson was going to have to rely, yet again, on Democratic votes to pass it, using a special procedure that requires the support of two-thirds of those voting. But by Wednesday afternoon, the backlash to the legislation had spread so far and wide in G.O.P. ranks that it was unclear whether he would even be able to muster a bare minimum of Republicans to partner with Democrats and push it across the finish line.

Say what? Speaker Johnson had been planning to use "a special procedure that requires the support of two-thirds of those voting?" Say hello to the cultural problem known as "the complexification of everything." 

In that passage, the Times reporters are referring to a procedure which could (possibly) be explained by Norman Ornstein but (almost surely) by no one else.  No average American citizen understands what the Times was talking about, and the Times didn't try to explain.

This complexification of everything will tend to lead to the disintegration of a large modern nation. When no one understands what's happening, people are free to fall back on the simplified stories they'll be told by their tribe's chosen tribunes.

Long ago and far away, those of us in this sprawling nation were periodically invited to chuckle at footage of South Korean legislators engaged in fist fights on the floor of their nation's legislature. 

Today, we Americans still get to watch the clown-car as it sputters and chugs along, periodically breaking down. By now, though, the clown-car in question is our own country—is us! 

The American carnage is everywhere now. As an example of what we mean, a visit to Mediaite offered these headlines at the start of this very morning:

CNN Panel Melts Down In Finger-Pointing Fallout Over Elon Musk’s Role In Derailing Spending Bill

139 Year Old Newspaper Shut Down Over Mayor’s $1.1M Defamation Lawsuit Win

‘F*cking Lying Piece of Sh*t’: Dan Crenshaw Lashes Out at Claim He Wants Pay Rise for Congress

House Democrat Says ‘I’m Just Gonna Sit Back and Sip My Tea’ and Watch Republicans Fight Each Other

Musk Sends Blatantly False Tweet About ‘Bioweapon Labs’ That Is Reposted More Than 30,000 Times

For the record, that CNN panel melted down on NewsNight, a program the network seems to have invented in hopes that manufactured screaming matches may attract a few additional viewers. 

The newspaper which is shutting down is doing so in the wake of what seems to be astoundingly dishonest behavior. 

Rep. Crenshaw can't seem to take it any more, and we can't say we blame him. Rep. Crockett is going to enjoy herself, sipping her tea, as our flailing nation comes apart at the seams.

In the midst of all this turmoil, some of us in Blue America may still be wondering about a pair of questions. The questions relate to an event which happened long ago—last month's presidential election:

How did we ever lose to that guy? Why would any decent person have voted for Candidate Trump?

Even in the midst of our current "American carnage," some of us may remember the days when such questions seemed to matter. As part of the answer to those questions, this report does appear on the front page of today's New York Times. We'll skip the first two paragraphs:

Biden, Wearied and Stinging, Prepares to Exit

[...]

This is the twilight of Mr. Biden’s presidency, the final days of the final chapter of an epic half-century political journey that has had more than its share of twists and turns. Time is catching up with Mr. Biden. He looks a little older and a little slower with each passing day. Aides say he remains plenty sharp in the Situation Room, calling world leaders to broker a cease-fire in Lebanon or deal with the chaos of Syria’s rebellion. But it is hard to imagine that he seriously thought he could do the world’s most stressful job for another four years. 

That does not make it any easier as Mr. Biden heads toward the exit. Nothing that has happened since he was forced to drop out of the race in July has made that decision look wrong, yet Donald J. Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris has been interpreted as a repudiation of Mr. Biden. It stung. It still stings. But unlike Mr. Trump four years ago, this president accepts the outcome.

[...]

Even when pushing for his priorities, Mr. Biden has found it hard to break through. During his visit to the Amazon rainforest last month, his fragility appeared painfully clear to those traveling with him.

After speaking for seven minutes on a day of draining humidity, a blue shirt hanging loosely over his frame, he turned to slowly shuffle away down a dirt path as several people in the audience not used to seeing him up close said they held their breath, worried that he would trip. (Aides said his gait was no more unsteady than usual.)

And so on from there. At any rate, aides still say that President Biden is "plenty sharp," but it's Peter Baker's assessment that he probably couldn't have done the job had he been re-elected. 

Meanwhile, in this morning's Wall Street Journal, a related report by Linskey et al. appears beneath this dual headline:

How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge
Aides kept meetings short and controlled access, top advisers acted as go-betweens and public interactions became more scripted. The administration denied Biden has declined.

This morning, Annie Linskey appeared on CNN to discuss the Journal's detailed report. In theory, the transcript of her remarks should be accessible here, in the 6:30-7:00 chunk of CNN This Morning. 

(At present, the transcript of that segment is missing.)

To what extent might President Biden have been diminished within the past several years? We can't answer that question, but as of August 2023, it seemed to us that it would be very hard for him to seek re-election.

Meanwhile, let the following be said:

When the president "slowly shuffled away" down that dirt path in Angola, the Fox News Channel ran with a bogus claim according to which he had unaccountably wandered off into the rainforest.

Even after additional video footage showed that this claim had been utterly bogus, players on the Fox News Channel kept pushing the bogus claim forward. This is the business our moguls have chosen as the so-called "democratization of media" continues to turn our sprawling nation into an array of warring tribes.

President Biden dropped out of the race in late July of this year. Candidate Harris was forced to jump in—and uh-oh! She herself was one of the people who had said that the president was still quite sharp.

(She had also said that the southern border was secure. Many people thought that was bullroar.)

President Biden dropped out of the race; Candidate Harris was forced to jump in. Did that unprecedented set of events possibly contribute some votes to Candidate Trump's narrow win? 

We would assume that it did. 

In our view, this was almost surely one of the many ways those of us in Blue America managed to lose this year's election. That said, many of us in Blue America still can't seem to conceive of any such explanations or reasons at all.

When President Biden stepped out of the race, Van Jones expressed his deep admiration for the departing candidate. For ourselves, we had a somewhat different reaction. 

That said, we regard Jones as a thoroughly serious player. At the time, People magazine reported some of what the CNN analyst said:

Van Jones Gets Emotional Talking About Joe Biden Dropping Out of 2024 Presidential Race

Van Jones appeared to fight back tears while discussing President Joe Biden stepping down from the 2024 presidential race.

While speaking live on CNN on Sunday, July 21, Jones, 55, became emotional as he spoke about Biden's decision to take himself out of the running. The president, 81, is now instead endorsing Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee.

[...]

Tearing up, the former Obama adviser went on, “Because this is somebody that you love. This is somebody that you care about. This is somebody who was there for you. This is somebody you wouldn’t be here without him. And you had to take something from him."

Jones continued, "If you're a young person watching this, this is leadership, this is patriotism. This is what it means to put the country first, and put the party first and put the cost first. When your arm gets tired you let somebody else finish pitching the game."

"That's what Joe Biden has done, and he's done that for all of us," he continued.

That wasn't our own reaction at this disaster unfolded. But Jones is a thoroughly serious person, and he's been conducting a search.

How did we ever lose to that guy? Why would any decent person have voted for Candidate Trump?

For ourselves, we've long regarded the president-elect as being (tragically but dangerously) disordered. Still, we can think of many reasons why other people might have decided to vote for him. Or perhaps, why people might have decided to vote against our own candidate, or just against the long-standing performance of our Blue American tribe.

How did we ever lose to that guy? Why would anyone vote for him?

Last Saturday, Jones stated his view on that matter to Chris Cillizza. All in all, he isn't impressed with our own tribe's political smarts. 

In our view, the whole thing started in 1965. We happened to be physically present when the downward spiral began.

Tomorrow, we'll try—we'll try especially hard—to review what Jones said to Cillizza. For the record, Bill Clinton said much the same thing in an interview with Joe Scarborough, and a guest essay in the Times attempted to explain why some of us in Blue America are perhaps unable to see what these people mean.

Tomorrow: Bill Clinton said much the same thing