A couple of years back, I wrote about how many political reporters find treating politics as sport more entertaining than tackling it as serious business. Handicapping the race —how does Trump saying there should be penalties for mothers who get abortions affect his standing in the polls? — is more fun than looking at how ugly that would be. And Trump saying outrageous shit like how Americans captured British airports during the War of Independence is a laugh-a-minute, right? Much better to focus on how silly he is than bring up whether he’s slipping into dementia — sure, Biden’s age is very, very important but who cares Trump is only four years younger and a gibbering idiot who treats NATO like a protection racket. As Shakezula says, every article about how very, very old Biden is reflects a bad choice.
Standard arguments from the media are that voters aren’t as concerned about Trump’s age whereas Biden’s age worries them. Given there’s been more coverage of Biden’s age, that’s not surprising. As Paul Krugman says, it’s overshadowing that Biden has solid accomplishments in four years: pulling out of Iraq, boosting American manufacturing, a stronger labor board, expanding Obamacare, defending abortion rights. The press, however, have picked Biden’s age as the issue and they’re running with it. Maybe because it’s the easiest thing to criticize Biden on so they can pretend they’re even handed and unbiased. Trump says he should be immune from prosecution if he kills his political rivals, Biden’s four years older — see, both sides are flawed!
Thus right-wing pundit Ross Douthat can admit Biden’s doing a good job, sort-of, but the perception of age might affect the race. And maybe it would give our enemies hope we’re too weak to stop their evil schemes (for a country with as much military power as we have and as much willingness to use it, we’re astonishingly nervous about looking weak). The solution: Biden wins the primaries, drops out at the nominating convention and lets the party pick the next president.
It’s hard to see how this makes sense as a strategy — I know, it’s Douthat, he never makes sense, but still. This involves an old-school horse-trading convention where delegates and party power-brokers settle on the nominee — but how many voters who picked Biden are going to feel good about this (Douthat is emphatic Biden shouldn’t handpick the next candidate)? Why assume this will turn up “Johnny Unbeatable,” the one candidate who’s clearly capable of taking Trump down? Why assume Douthat, who thinks the right wing isn’t reactionary enough, is offering a strategy he thinks will help Dems? As LGM points out there’s no way this works out well.
However this strategy does appeal to people in the media, at least: Ezra Klein (for whom I have way more respect than I do Ross Douthat) thinks it’s a good idea — and it would give the media so much excitement and conflict to cover (“hey’re going to be sitting for a million interviews and podcasts — very busy time on “The Ezra Klein Show.”). Coupled with the impulse to treat right-wing bullshit as if it was sincere and serious, it results in some of the press putting their thumb on the scale on Trump’s side, whether they’re intending to or not. Case in point.
The thumb had a fatal impact in 2016 with the media’s endless covering of Clinton’s emails and non-scandals. It could happen again. But then again, we’ve seen what Trump is capable of. The forced-birth movement reminds us every day how much worse they have in mind for America’s women. I’m hopeful the public, outside the hard-core MAGA people, are past being fooled.
We’ll know in a few months. Until then I’ll keep arguing, keep donating, keep writing GOTV postcards.
