Just took a trip into town to run errands. From Camp Swampy in rainy season, this entails a harrowing 1.5 miles through a washed out pig trail / dirt road frequently bisected by giant puddles that may qualify as wetlands (good thing I drive a Jeep), then the hardtop road into town. On the way, I listened to David Plouffe’s podcast: Campaign HQ. His guest was Claire McCaskill.
McCaskill is super-optimistic about Biden’s chances of beating Trump, which improved my mood a bit. I didn’t always agree with McCaskill when she was a senator — her brand of centrism tries my patience. But she is smart about politics, and she understands the type of voters Biden needs to win.
Plouffe and McCaskill also discussed the filibuster, and both are on board with getting rid of it, but they have grave misgivings about the consequences. McCaskill said laws will whipsaw severely when parties swap power, including legislation governing basic functions like healthcare, choice and immigration.
I think she’s right. But it also occurred to me that maybe that’s what needs to happen. Republican Party policy isn’t popular. For decades, Republicans in Congress used their lack of absolute control as an excuse for not enacting policies their base loves but that are unpopular with Americans more broadly, such as outlawing abortion. To be fair, Dems do this too, but Democrats’ policies usually are popular and not a rhetorical sop to an extremist base.
Republicans’ performative votes to repeal the ACA are a great example. They voted to repeal, defund, deauthorize, etc., literally dozens of times. Then Trump came into power with unified control of Congress, and not only were Republicans unable to kill the ACA, it’s more popular than ever.
It’s awful that basic rights and policies that address acute needs can be stripped away by congressional vandals, but maybe that’s what it will take to make it obvious to those who aren’t paying attention that, yes, there are real and significant differences between the two parties, and it matters which is in charge.
Anyhoo, the last segment of the show addressed things that could go wrong in the presidential election. Two things keep Plouffe and McCaskill up nights: 1) the Trumpist AG in KY may decline to prosecute the cops who killed Breonna Taylor and time the announcement for maximum effect, setting off civil unrest that benefits Trump, and 2) Biden may have a bad first debate, never having debated a lying psychopath before.
Though borrowing trouble is often my wont, I’m not too worried about either of those things. Biden did just fine in his debate with Sarah Palin, who is in fact a lying psychopath — and one who is marginally more functional than Trump, I’d argue. Also, Trump can’t resist pouring gas on flames, so I don’t imagine he’d handle further civil unrest in a way that would redound to his credit.
Open thread!
Cheryl Rofer
We are all counting the days down. At around 100, I kind of wanted to mark it all on my calendar, talked myself out of that, but everyone is doing it now.
Major Major Major Major
Jeez, that’s not a lot of days. Thank god.
He did that in 2012, Paul Ryan is just more understated.
Marcopolo
While I don’t think I am grinding my teeth (see the story about dentists finding patients with higher levels of cracked teeth this summer), I am occasionally having downright dystopian nightmares once or twice a week–at least that I remember. My subconscious is apparently aware that Trump needs to do big shit to change the current narrative and that the debate is an opportunity for him to do that because I had a dream where in the middle of the first presidential debate Trump decked Biden with a cheap shot after Biden called him a liar to his face. Alas, that was so wrenching I immediately woke up. No idea how my id would have run with that scenario. And honestly, I have to say I have no idea how something like that would play in reality. That is how fucked up everything is right now.
I’ll be casting my vote in person absentee in 13 days. I hope I’m a little lighter on the way back to the car.
Everyone have a good day. And if you are in areas of the country that are burning up, flooded, or labeled a pandemic red zone stay safe.
Kent
McCaskill is like Jimmy Carter in that she is a much better ex-Senator than she was a Senator. Mainly because she no longer has any fucks left to give. After having paid some attention to her over the years, I’m still somewhat surprised when I hear how far she has come when I hear her on TV. She truly LOATHES Trump and the entire GOP.
But as someone who managed to win state-wide in MO for many years, I gotta give her credit for knowing her shit
I wanna see Susan Collins get tossed out of office and then go full rabid MAGA on Fox News for the rest of her career. Would be highly amusing.
VOR
I doubt there will be a debate. Trump will claim some reason for avoiding it and his base will swallow it. I think Pence will actually debate Harris.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: He also debated Sarah Palin in 2008.
ETA: I now see that BC mentioned that.
Baud
I agree. A large part of the GOP strategy is hiding, not only behind lies, but also behind inaction.
germy
StringOnAStick
@VOR: Pence debating Harris will only happen once, because she’s going to turn him into a pile of sputtering goo.
Kent
If the White House and Campaign had any actual control over Trump there probably wouldn’t be debates. But judging from the 18-session interview series with Woodward that happened a few months ago it is clear that he does whatever the fuck he wants and no one can rein him in. If Biden mocks him mercilessly for being a coward he will show up. If there is one thing Trump can’t take is being mocked.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: Try running to the left of where she was and getting elected in MO.
Gin & Tonic
The dog found a turkey. A wild, juvenile female. Not sure if she was in hunting or retrieving mode, but she let go of it without a fuss and moved on; however, the turkey wasn’t well. So, to the surprise of no married men in the audience, I was tasked with grabbing the unfortunate fowl and putting it in a box. My dear wife drove her to a local wildlife rescue/rehab place, but by the time she got there, there was nothing they could do (time for a “pining for the fjords” reference?) So in the end we aren’t sure whether the bird was already injured, and that made it easier for the dog to capture her, or if the time spent in the dog’s jaws was what proved fatal.
Nature, red in tooth and claw, I guess.
Marcopolo
@Kent: As a liberal as hell Missourian I had no problems with McCaskill as my senator. She was as good as we could expect to get considering the huge number of non-college educated WWC voters living outstate. Her re-election in 2012 was a fairly masterful act in that she chose the R she wanted to run against. But if you look at the shift in rural R to D voting margins (the D vote cratered) since Obama nearly won the state (lost by ~4000 votes in 2008) there was really no way she could win in 2018.
Baud
@StringOnAStick: There’s only one debate scheduled.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: Did you get to keep the turkey?
dmsilev
@StringOnAStick: Well, that and there’s only ever one VP debate per cycle anyway.
germy
Ruckus
@Cheryl Rofer:
In the navy when I was in, a short timers calendar was pretty much standard across the board. I will leave to your imagination what they looked like. But the actual point was that it reminded you every day how much more time you had to wait/invest/wake up in a cold sweat. I stopped trying to make every day my last because I still had to wake up, get up, and live in the moment, like it or not. This has an end, noon, Jan 20, 2021. We just have to insure that we win by as much as possible.
L85NJGT
When your enemy is making mistakes, don’t interrupt them.
Kent
One thing is for sure. Biden will actually be prepared. Although you gotta wonder who the hell they can possibly get to play a legit Trump during debate prep practice sessions. It is a LOT easier to impersonate a normal GOP politician like McCain or Romney than an unpredictable psycho like Trump. But they do have plenty of material to watch. There were a shitload of Trump debates in 2016 and endless tape of Trump winging it in public since then.
News reports on TPM suggest that Trump is just going to walk into the debate and wing it with no prep. So it is going to be interesting to say the least.
I expect the results will be anti-climactic. Biden is a smart, competent and experience debater. And Trump has epic feral survival skills. As long as they don’t upset the general current trajectory of the campaign it will probably be a win for Biden. No matter what Trump says, it isn’t going to affect his base. And I don’t think post-debate media spin is going to make much difference at this point. Unless there is some sort of epic melt-down of the sort we haven’t seen yet.
Gin & Tonic
Perhaps some parts of the USG are still functioning.
Frankensteinbeck
@StringOnAStick:
I doubt it. Pence will do what he does, blandly repeat baldfaced lies without improvisation. I suspect Kamala knows how to deal with that in terms of what the audience thinks, but Pence himself I expect to be an unresponsive robot. It’s a monologue, not a debate, to him.
cmorenc
@Marcopolo:
IMHO Trump is much more likely to attempt to employ bullying physical and verbal aggression short of actual assault-by-contact, e.g. invading Biden’s physical space, continually interrupting Biden, Trump’s disregard of debate rules or moderator attempts to keep him in line, and baiting Biden with blatant “what ya gonna do about it” lying and gaslighting Biden’s attempts to call him out on it. In short, Trump will behave like the bullying sociopathic assshole he is and try to simply run over Biden’s civility and try to make Biden look weak.
Biden better be ready to respond and verbally punch back more devastatingly hard than Trump is able to give, without descending to Trump’s level.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
My prediction on the debate; Joe will do ok, Trump will sounds like a babbling idiot and Trump’s base will proclaim how Trump POWNed Biden. This happens all the time with scientists debating creationists; the believer rejects all information that doesn’t support the conclusion. The main issue will be how the two candidates look side by side and can Trump’s doctors shove enough meth into Trump to keep him from looking like death warmed over.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: No.
Ramiah Ariya
One thing that Americans may not be aware is that in India (and I suspect in other countries), politicians are called Trumpish to make them appear unattractive to voters!
When the pandemic started, the expectation of every Indian was that it would hurt us the most – with high population density, an unruly public (in our perception), and being poor. In fact, in years before the pandemic, I planned to leave India (for the US or Sweden!) mainly because of the high danger posed by a possible global disease to my family.
NOBODY here expected that, instead, the US would be running the worst – both Indian politicians and the public responded with appropriate fear, and we have watched the circus in the US with wonder.
The truth is, if the US govt had indeed been competent, India surely would have been the focus of reams of coverage from the Western press (much of it would have been contemptuous in my experience) .
I do not think Trump’s base understands that the guy who promised to make the US respected around the world has sunk it so far, that people point to the US (even here) on how NOT to address any calamity.
StringOnAStick
@dmsilev: Too bad. I like seeing Kamala in prosecutor mode.
dmsilev
Voter Casts Ballot Topless After Being Told Her Anti-Trump Shirt Was Illegal At Polling Place
Dorothy A. Winsor
There are way fewer days between now and the election than between the election and the inauguration. Which is both comforting and terrifying.
ChrisS
@Gin & Tonic: Turkeys are, unfortunately for the individuals, pretty much born to die. 50-75% hatched poults don’t reach 2-weeks old. The odds don’t get appreciably better after that. That’s part of the reason why it was so hard to restore populations after WWII.
The good news is that as a species they are doing pretty well now.
Fair Economist
@Kent I suspect McCaskill had to trim her sails to be elected in such a red state, and that her intermittent tendency to frustrate us while she was in office resulted from political necessity and not personal preference.
As Nancy Smash says, “Just win, baby.”
gkoutnik
I know that it’s just the way we’re used to talking about it, but the 53 days in the post title do not refer to the number of days until the election. They refer to the number of days until the election is over. The election has already started, on Tuesday when voters in NC first received their mail-in ballots.
53 days to GOTV. Tick tock.
germy
@Frankensteinbeck:
Pence has a thing where he squints and shakes his head in a patronizing way whenever someone challenges him. It’s the evangelical version of a Clint Eastwood performance.
Harris will calmly state what the administration has done wrong, and Pence will smirk as if to say “This bullshit, can you believe it?” And then he’ll reply with some lies, and the moderator won’t correct him.
That’s my prediction
Betty Cracker
@StringOnAStick: McCaskill is concerned that people have lowered the bar for Pence so much that Harris will seem to underperform if Pence doesn’t go fetal and start bleating for Mother.
@cmorenc: Plouffe and McCaskill said pretty much the same thing. They said Biden can get bogged down in detail sometimes, and that’s okay during a normal debate, but with a psycho like Trump, he has to be aggressive. Both seemed confident that his people are on it, and he does seem to have an incredibly competent team.
germy
@dmsilev:
She’ll be a keynote speaker at the 2024 Republican National Convention.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
There is a lot weird stuff the base believes, like Trump is a Christian. The image Trump has nurtured his entire life is he is Gordon Geko come to life. Apparently the base wants Ronald Reagan and Trump is the closets thing they have,
germy
karensky
@VOR: That outcome would be sweet.
Amir khalid
@dmsilev:
That’s fine. Kamala Harris will only need two or three questions to completely eviscerate Pence.
geg6
It’s been interesting around here in my very Trumpy county. I live in what is probably one of the more affluent, but not rich areas of the county along a main artery through the center of the county (my township is actually named Center Township because, well, we’re in the center). This artery goes from the most southern tip of the county near the Pittsburgh airport and right next to Allegheny County, which is where Pittsburgh is, all the way to the very northern tip. I travel this road several times a day and dozens of times a week, along with it’s branch where my campus is located. In the ten mile strip that I travel most often, which is where home, work and all the stores we go to are, there are exactly 6 or 7 homes with Biden/Harris signs. Only one Trump sign and one with a faded, tattered Trump flag. I know yard signs are no metric to hang my hat, but I am pleasantly surprised by this.
germy
Baud
@geg6:
That’s good news even if it is anecdotal. Media is making a big deal at PA’s closeness and GOP voter registration numbers.
Kent
@Frankensteinbeck: Exactly. All of these people like Pence are polished liars with decades of experience at just calmly mouthing talking points that may or may not have any relevance to the question at hand.
These aren’t normal people who actually listen to an argument and get rendered speechless when they don’t have a comeback. They are trained through repetition to just mouth memorized talking points.
Pence isn’t likely to get rattled. He’ll just smile his smarmy grin, put on his “serious face” and mouth whatever platitudes he has been saying for years on that topic. The fact that his answer might be non-responsive will make no difference to him and to any of his loyalists watching.
WaterGirl
@Major Major Major Major: I think that is what got Obama in his first debate with Romney. Just the shock of all the lies. Fortunately, all we can expect from the dumpster is lies, so the element of surprise is gone.
Humdog
@cmorenc: I think a punch back could be less effective than laughing at Shitstain’s ridiculousness. The Fuckwad is a brawler. He cannot, however, joke or stand being the butt of a joke.
germy
@Amir khalid: She will do well, although the debate format is stacked against her.
Questions will be framed with the usual Republican talking points. The moderator is a friend of the Trump administration.
Harris will still be impressive, I predict. I’m sure she knows what she’s walking into.
catclub
@germy:
I wonder what Democrats would put in a honey pot mail server
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Yup, feeding “both sides”.
catclub
@germy: you mis-read. She is a Democratic voter.
LongHairedWeirdo
Just to mention one thing: remember the first Obama/
weaselRomney debate. There, it was Obama doing poorly dealing with a lying not-as-bad-a-psychopath, and it was Biden who showed how to handle it.Also, remember, part of the Republican plan was to make Biden sound so old he can’t possibly present a good debate showing – they’ve lowered the bar, so if he messes up, it won’t hurt him as much, and if he is as capable as he normally is, well, Trump is a *terrible* debater. Remember, he flat out said that he’d use the DOJ to hurt his political opponents.
I won’t deny that Biden *could* have a bad night. But I fully expect Trump to have one that’s far worse.
(Side note: remember the days when we could have considered “because you’d be in jail” to be a death sentence for his campaign? Of course, that was before the Republicans learned that they can let *any* crime, any harmful news, just blow over, so long as they all loudly insisted there was nothing wrong.)
lowtechcyclist
I’m not so sure. The GOP has been holding onto power primarily by rigging the game in so many different ways, necessitated by the reality that they don’t have majority support, and their base’s vote share is shrinking by the day.
Once the Dems un-rig the game, I just don’t see how the GOP gets back in power, unless the Dems essentially say, “oh, we can’t actually help people who need it,” and if that’s how they play it, then 2022 may well look like 2010 redux. But if Dems use their majority to (1) make elections fair and meaningful, and (2) rescue people (at least, those who’ve survived) from the carnage of the past year, then they should get through 2022 in decent shape, and it’ll all be downhill for the GOP from there.
The flip side, of course, is that if Trump somehow manages to hang onto power, they’ll rig the game to such a degree that it’s hard to see how the Dems regain it for a decade or two. Really this election and its aftermath is for all the marbles.
germy
@catclub: Ah. I skimmed quickly and thought she was one of the “Trump can grab MY p**sy” voters.
Miss Bianca
@Gin & Tonic: a bit of both, I am guessing, because if wild turkeys were easy to catch as, say, rabbits, chipmunks, or packrats, my doggoes would have probably bagged one by now – it certainly wouldn’t be for lack of trying!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Gin & Tonic: Passing up the free turkey for t-day, eh?
Betty Cracker
@lowtechcyclist: I agree. In the optimistic scenario (the Dems win the presidency, Senate and House), it will be imperative to use the two-year window with no filibuster to maximum effect. It won’t be enough to just tinker around the edges. If you’re blowing up a pillar of that institution, blow that fucker up so the rubble falls on the enemy. McCaskill and Plouffe said as much in the podcast too. Voting rights has to be a priority.
ciotogist
Biden was the one who said Giuliani’s sentences consisted of “a noun, a verb, and 9/11.” He’s got a great bullshit (excuse me, malarkey) detector, and Trump is nothing if not full of malarkey.
Kent
She is a smart and accomplished debater who will have plenty of prep. What they will train her to do is re-frame the question and then answer her re-framed question rather than blindly following down whatever rabbit hole the moderator lays out.
“Question: How are you going to pay for your health care plan in a time of rising deficits?”
“Answer: The real problem American’s face today is rising health care costs which have been rising by double digits in recent years. Joe and I have a plan for reducing health care costs to average middle class Americans by doing x, y, and z”
That’s how they are trained to deal with a hostile moderator. They do it every time they go on TV. In a debate it is actually easier to do than an interview because the moderator is actually going to let you speak for your allotted time period and then be forced to move on when you use up your time. Unlike in an actual interview where they can interrupt and hector you and keep returning to the same question again and again.
Harris will be fine. She is smart enough not to take the bait when asked leading “gotcha” questions and do the stupid “raise your hand” thing.
But Pence will also likely be fine too. He’s a professional politician and they rarely ever really have melt-downs in public.
satby
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Wild turkeys are scrawny.
Betty Cracker
@LongHairedWeirdo: I heard a recent podcast* with Axelrod and Plouffe that addressed that first Obama-Romney debate. They said Obama was definitely off his game. Unlike the current occupant, he took his job seriously, so it was tough to get him to stop running the country long enough to engage in debate prep. Trump doesn’t have that problem since he’s actually a retiree who allows his incompetent nepotism hires to run the country, but from what I’ve read, he’s not doing much debate prep either.
McCaskill pointed out something I’ve been thinking for a while: the debate would be a good time to call Trump out for trying to have it both ways on so many issues.
Biden can’t be both an addle-brained Trojan horse socialists are riding into the White House AND a criminal mastermind who orchestrated a “deep state” coup against Trump and conspired with the DNC to shiv Bernie Sanders. Biden can’t be a racist who used the crime bill to incarcerate minorities AND be a puppet of BLM “radicals” at the same time. The list goes on and on.
*It sounds like all I do is listen to podcasts, but it’s only on car trips!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@satby: Beggars can’t be choosers.
H.E.Wolf
He generally reserves that behavior for attempting to bully women much shorter than he is. [ETA: adjusted syntax for clarity]
(He has a particularly strong abhorrence for women of color, so if Kamala Harris were to have been his debate opponent, we might have seen a repeat of his 2016 performance.)
In addition, his public appearances of the past few months seem to indicate that his physical condition has deteriorated since 2016. It’s unlikely that he can still pace around the debate stage *and* look menacing, both at the same time.
cmorenc
@germy:
In any panel discussion where there is: a) someone representing the D side; b) someone representing the R side; c) a tv anchorperson moderating the discussion, a stock GOP technique is the grinning smirk and shaking head whenever the D rep is speaking. Pence’s technique is but a variant of this same shtick. It’s intended to express total disrespect and rejection of whatever facts / arguments the D (or even the moderator person) are saying, while staying nominally (barely) within the “rules” of polite, civil conduct. Of course, some GOP reps (especially in the Trump era) are unable to restrain themselves from crossing over into being rude assholes – but
Pence does have the ability to nominally stay within the boundaries of polite, civil behavior and at least in short stretches, not sound like a moron. That’s why he was able to get the better of Tim Kaine in the 2016 debate, at least on impression of less firmly partisan voters than ourselves. Of course, he’s up against a far more formidable, skilled opponent in Harris – simply being able to spit out short, coherent sound bytes won’t be enough against Harris.
cmorenc
@Betty Cracker:
NO! Biden needs to keep the election focused on TRUMP, not what Biden did or didn’t do here and there. Your suggestion would only tend to create openings for the Trump campaign to refocus the election on muddying up Biden’s record.
This election is and needs to stay focused on the failings and malfeasance of TRUMP, and Biden as an attractive alternative. PERIOD.
catclub
@cmorenc: i agree. That one is too easy. Shadowy forces are manipulating Biden and his platform and the deep state. Biden is still incompetent/senile.
Betty Cracker
@cmorenc: The smartest thing Mike Tyson ever said was “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” I think it’ll be hard to pull off on a “stay focused on the failings and malfeasance of TRUMP PERIOD” strategy in a debate setting where Biden doesn’t choose the questions or control the garbage that dribbles out of Trump’s mouth.
Biden did counter one of Trump’s idiotic accusations very effectively the other day in a speech when he said something like “do I look like a radical socialist with a soft sport for rioters?” I kind of wish THAT moment happened during a debate.