Some Perspective After the DNC Hangover

The 2024 Democratic National Convention was, by most ways you could look at it, a shockingly spectacular success, even if Beyonce' and Taylor Swift didn't show (and, really, they'd have been in the way). The absolute exuberance on display made it plain that President Joe Biden's decision to step aside and not seek reelection had unclenched the anxiety-puckered anuses of the Democrats, and that let them be able to cut loose, open one extra button on the shirt, loosen the belt, and have a great fucking time. The process of anointing Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz as the Democratic ticket was masterfully conceived and executed, and its purpose was clear: You wanna really make America great again? Kick Trump and his MAGA motherfuckers into the shitcan of history. 

To put it another way, the message was "Don't you want the crazy shit over with? Don't you just wanna go back to normal?" And that's a damn fine message 

So much of it was just energizing, hitting the right spot like a well-placed vibrator. Harris's speech was a solid Democratic wish list, with a few specific things. Mostly, she's going to keep going on Biden's trajectory, with maybe a few twists, because Biden's agenda has been really successful, even if most Americans don't know it. It just felt good to watch someone who can explain that shit in a straightforward way and who isn't a fucking lunatic. Harris has fully come into her own as the nominee for president, embodying the energy and hope that has been unleashed in the last month. And we needed that in ways that we didn't even realize.

Mostly, I was totally into it, often slobberingly so, if you read the other two posts I've done on the convention. I stand by those. Biden got it up one last time to kick some ass. Michelle Obama was the best speaker of the whole thing. And the whole event was filled with highlights. 

The biggest "fuck those fuckers" of the DNC was the concerted effort to take back American identity - the iconography, the symbols, the chants. Unlike previous times when Democrats wanted to out-patriot Republicans, it wasn't cringe or in shitty taste. Because Donald Trump is a convicted felon and a rapist, and because he led an insurrection on January 6, and because he regularly denigrates the country, including the military, it was easy for the Democratic Party to steal back the patriotism trophy. You wanna know who loves the country? The fucking party that doesn't celebrate the dickholes who stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of the 2020 election. You wanna know who sides with the military? The party that celebrates their elected veterans. Between the flags being waved and the chants of "USA! USA!," a casual viewer might have thought they turned into a Republican gathering. That is, until the cameras panned the faces in the crowd and saw the incredible diversity of the people waving and chanting. Instead of just one very white segment of the country claiming the mantle of patriotism, it was almost all of us represented there, the real United States. 

Other individual moments just hit hard for me. I couldn't adore Tim Walz's family more, and his son, Gus, sobbing and pointing while yelling for everyone around, "That's my dad!" was simply pure and honest love and emotion. It was a distillation of how this event was a catharsis for Democrats, a release, an exhalation, and a good cry. And all of the cockmites of the right who tried to degrade Gus for having feelings are just showing that they don't understand the true meaning of the very idea of family they lie about championing. (And the fact that Gus is neurodivergent doesn't matter here. You're allowed to love your parents unabashedly.)

Speaking of catharsis, for a whole bunch of us, seeing the Chicks up there performing the National Anthem was some kind of sweet vengeance. If you don't know the saga of how the then-Dixie Chicks had their superstardom squashed in a wholly bullshit controversy in 2003, then do yourself a favor and read about it. Every single right-winger who whines about "cancel culture" would have been part of the gabbling mob who demanded the blood of anyone who criticized the war in Iraq. The restoration of the Chicks as genuine American icons was long time coming. 

The other highlights for me belonged to the speakers who demonstrated how Republican policies and politicians affect the very real lives of very real, everyday people. The appearance of four of the Central Park 5, the Black and Hispanic men who were accused as teens of a horrific rape in 1989 and were later exonerated, reminded us not just of how shitty Donald Trump has been for his entire life (he took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for them to receive the death penalty) but also of how the criminal justice system mistreats non-white people. Others, like those who were affected by gun violence and those who have suffered because of the repeal of Roe v. Wade, reminded us that this shit is personal. If Republican fuckery hasn't taken something away from you yet, it's just a matter of time before it does. 

All of that was terrific and necessary and heartening. But one reason I waited for a couple of days to comment any more on the DNC is because I wanted the drunk feeling of ecstasy to pass and I wanted to recover from the hangover after. I'm not trying to kill the joy buzz. I love it. I want us to ride the joy wave into fully taking back the federal government and at least a few more states. Still, some bullshit must be acknowledged, if for no other reason than to understand when that bullshit potentially comes back to bite us on our joy-brimming asses.

For example, the lack of a Palestinian-American speaker was shameful. For most voters, it's not a deal-breaker, if they even noticed. But if Harris was going to make the statement she ended up making about the war in Gaza, having someone with family under threat speaking to the delegates would have framed it more poignantly. The delegate who was ready to go, Ruwa Romman, a state representative from Georgia, had a speech that would have emphasized the suffering of Gazans, but also mentioning freeing the hostages held by Hamas and how important other issue are to Muslim voters. 

It would have been a simple gesture that would have gone a long, long way to getting out a message about inclusivity, that the tent is large enough to encompass such difference, and that freedom of speech means including speech that everyone might not agree with (although what Romman wanted to say was not really any different from what Sen. Raphael Warnock, the parents of a Hamas hostage, and Harris herself said). But she was denied by the convention organizers. I get that one "from the river to the sea" yelled from the stage would have been exploited by the right. But there's no way that Romman, who is an ambitious politician with a real future, would have said that because it would undermine the credibility of the group she was representing, Uncommitted, a new organization that has a chance to make some real inroads on US policy towards Israel and Palestine. 

Along the same lines, the complete erasure of transgender speakers or issues was also significant. Yes, the transgender population in the United States is small, but issues related to transgender rights loom large in the political discourse. Hell, just before the convention began, the Supreme Court refused to lift a block on the Biden administration's new rule saying that Title IX covers transgender students. Trans people are literal and figurative punching bags on the right; they are victims of violence and the subject of a stream of laws attempting to make their treatment and existence illegal, especially when it comes to trans youth. And they deserved a couple of minutes to assert their right to live their lives unimpeded by the government. "Mind your own damn business" could certainly apply to those attacking the parents of trans kids.

And I gotta be an old school liberal here for a minute. I'm all for loving your country, but I'm a little uncomfortable with the flag-waving and chanting of "USA." I'm conflicted in that I do love taking that away from conservatives, but I just want to be cautious that the patriotism doesn't tilt into jingoism. I'm not being churlish for the sake of churlishness. I loved the state pride in the roll call, for example. But patriotism can end up being used as a convenient cover for lots of sins and a cudgel on those who dissent.

Along those lines of discomfort, I was frankly put off by the constant emphasis on the military and the promise to keep military spending high (and I don't mean veterans care, which should be more highly-funded). But the prime time part of the DNC avoided much talk about people living in poverty, beyond mentions about how the expanded tax credit took kids out of poverty. We have issues with people suffering from hunger and too many people who are unhoused. Sure, Harris promises more housing, but that's targeted at the middle class. Keeping the military "the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world" isn't nearly as important to me as expanded poverty programs like job training and community development. If the emphasis on the military was a way to appeal to Republicans or those mythical "independents," well, honestly, I'd rather expand the Democratic voter base to bring in the vast numbers of those with low incomes who don't vote. 

And one final thing, as long as I've already pissed you off: Yes, Harris's speech was very good, very much of the moment, very attuned to the vibes that came from the convention floor and the snowballing anti-MAGA movement. But it was also a cautious speech, one that didn't take any big policy swings. We're no longer talking about Medicare for All; instead, we're talking about lowering the cost of health care. Again, there's nothing wrong with that, but it surely doesn't take care of one of the most pressing ills in this country, medical debt. You can argue that this cautious approach is a way of getting back to normal, of continuing to recover from Trump and the pandemic, but you could also argue that this moment of great unity in the Democratic Party is a time to take a big swing or two. 

Look, I'm not saying that any of this takes away from what was, truly, possibly the most successful DNC of my lifetime. I get that it had to be cautious even in its exuberance (and especially after the incredibly daring change of the person at the top of the ticket). And I'm totally on board with getting past the election, killing the MAGA demon, and growing from there, all with a sense of joy and recommitment to what it means to be American. I see that as a strategy, and I hope that's what it is. I like Harris and Walz. I desperately want them to win. I just don't want caution and return to the previous normal to become the most we can hope for.  

Michelle Obama Shows How It's Done

In her pre-recorded speech for the Covid-limited 2020 Democratic National Convention, former First Lady Michelle Obama explained one of her standard lines about dealing with your opponent: "Over the past four years, a lot of people have asked me, 'When others are going so low, does going high still really work?' My answer: going high is the only thing that works, because when we go low, when we use those same tactics of degrading and dehumanizing others, we just become part of the ugly noise that’s drowning out everything else. We degrade ourselves. We degrade the very causes for which we fight." She went further, saying, "But let’s be clear: going high does not mean putting on a smile and saying nice things when confronted by viciousness and cruelty...Going high means standing fierce against hatred while remembering that we are one nation under God...And going high means unlocking the shackles of lies and mistrust with the only thing that can truly set us free: the cold hard truth." And then she said her harshest line of the speech: "So let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country," which isn't all that harsh, really, although she gave reasons why she believed that, especially highlighting the chaos caused by Trump during the pandemic's early days.

I've been critical about Obama's belief in "going high" because it simply seems quaint and unsuited to the moment, part of an imagined time in politics that really never existed but we like to pretend it did. But that speech demonstrated a small but significant shift in tone for Obama, from a seeming refusal to denigrate an opponent to stating, essentially, that Trump is a motherfucker and he will fuck mothers because that's what motherfuckers do. 

Last night, in person while getting a deservedly worshipful reception at the 2024 DNC in Chicago, her hometown, Michelle Obama's version of "going high" evolved even further. I don't think she gave up on the notion, as some have said. I just think she showed how to disembowel Trump with a stiletto rather than a chainsaw. You can do it without calling Trump "weird" or "crazy" but by demonstrating how he's both of those things. You can do it by treating him like a petulant child in need of a long time out (preferably in a small cell) and you can do it by showing how this shit is personal.

Obama eviscerated Trump's entire career with a simple phrase: "the affirmative action of generational wealth." It's got a side benefit of eviscerating RFK, Jr., too. She put it in terms that everyone there could understand, explaining how capitalism privileges those with that kind of wealth: "If we bankrupt the business or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third, or fourth chance. If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead. No. We don’t get to change the rules so we always win. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top." 

Yes, the Obamas are extremely rich now. But they didn't inherit it. They busted their asses from humble beginnings. Obama pointed out how Trump's skewed sensibilities make him so vile: "For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working and highly educated, successful people who happen to be black. I want to know, who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those black jobs? Look, it’s his same old con, doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people’s lives better." Obama wasn't holding back, but she was carving Trump up in the most "going high" way possible: using the insults to pump everyone up and hit them in the heart and the brain. It was kind of brilliant, as was the pivot to how Kamala Harris is the very opposite of that decadent, louche, ignorant asshole. 

Again, like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton the night before, here was a party elder (I know she's just a few years older than Kamala Harris) saying, "Yes, go for Trump's neck and bite into those saggy orange labial folds and take him down." They took different routes there, Biden more personally angry, Clinton with more of a done-with-his-shit attitude. But Michelle Obama's speech, which will likely be the most-remembered from this convention (not the least because she is an electrifying speaker), asked us to turn away from Trump and all his petty shit and lies and bloviation and turn to each other to finish the job, that electing Harris has the effect of watching someone who has been sliced with a stiletto come to realize he's been gutted before he could do anything to stop it. That's some going high I can get behind. 

Joe Biden's Gifts to the Democratic Party and to the United States

Look, I don't know whether or not President Joe Biden is pissed off about giving in to the pressure put on him to drop out. If I were to venture a guess, I'd say that one thing he's angry about is that he didn't get to punch Donald Trump in his stupid, bulbous Tang-toned face. Rhetorically, of course. He wanted a knockout on Election Day. But rather than boxing, this has become tag-team wrestling, with Biden high-fiving Vice President Kamala Harris to enter the ring and finish the job.

If there is one thing that has come through since Biden first started running for president in April 2019, it's that he fucking hates Donald Trump. I mean, viscerally, savagely hates Trump with his whole body and soul. Even before Trump and his shit-flinging lunatic brigade decided to try to destroy Joe Biden by eviscerating his son, Hunter, Biden has held Trump in contempt, palpably disgusted that Trump even exists, let alone that he actually was able to become president and wreck Biden's beloved federal government. Biden destroyed Trump in 2020, but he left Trump strong enough to return, and so Biden wanted to, as he said so often when he was running, finish the job.

At the Democratic National Convention last night, Biden gave what was likely a variation of what would have been his acceptance of the nomination, turning into a valedictory speech, taking the well-earned victory lap on everything that he accomplished. He is absolutely one of the most consequential presidents in history. He took us from the depths of a pandemic that had been exacerbated in lives and in the economy by the rank incompetence and rampant narcissism of Donald Trump and raised us up. He pulled us back, using all the skill and tenacity he had accumulated and earned in his many decades in DC. 

Unencumbered by having any fucks left to give or needing to resupply his fucks for the future, Biden bore into Trump. In his 2020 DNC speech, Biden didn't say Trump's name. He didn't use the word "lie." He was aghast at what Trump had done as president, but he kept that personal hatred in check. Now, in 2024, after years of Republicans denigrating him and his family, he didn't have to pretend to be above it all. The working class kid could drag the rich dick into the street and brawl him there. He said, "In America, they’re safer today than when we were under Donald Trump.  Trump continues to lie about crime in America, like everything else" and "Trump continues to lie about the border" and "Typically Trump — once again putting himself first and America last."

The abject rage came out when Biden talked about Trump's routine and unrepentant denigration of the military. He fumed, "Who in the hell does he think he is?  Who does he think he is?" And he continued, "They are the words of a person not worthy of being commander in chief, period.  Not then, not now, and not ever." Biden brought up how Trump says he won't accept the election results if he loses (again) and that it will be a "bloodbath." "If anybody else said that in the past, you’d think he was cra- — he is crazy," Biden said, "but you’d think it was an exaggeration.  But he means it."

One of the gifts Biden gave to the Democratic Party and to the United States last night was that his remarks implied a blessing for the end of Democratic hesitancy to dive into insults and attacks, that the language of politicians, especially presidential candidates, had to stay elevated and high-minded, even when going negative. To their eternal credit, Harris and her campaign said, "Fuck that." When traditional consultants said she and Tim Walz shouldn't use "weird," she said, "Fuck that," and leaned into it. By finally being so open in such a high-profile setting about calling out lies and craziness, Biden was telling Harris, the Democrats, and the rest of us, "Fuck that. Take this asshole down any way you can." Hillary Clinton did the same in her speech, especially when she didn't try to silence the chants of "Lock him up." Her smile and nod was as clear as if she said, "Fuck you, Donald." Adios to going high when they go low. Let's get in the gutter and rumble.

Another gift Biden gave the nation was that, whatever he was feeling in private, his public statements on giving up on his re-election have demonstrated grace, self-awareness, and, above all, patriotism in its purest sense, not in the hateful, nationalist perversion of it that the GOP has contorted patriotism into. "I love the job, but I love my country more," he said. And then later in the speech, "I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my career, but I gave my best to you.  For 50 years, like many of you, I’ve given my heart and soul to our nation." That's one of the most meaningful things Biden will leave us with: the presidency doesn’t belong to a person. It belongs to the people. And the nation itself takes work, the work of all of us, not one person. 

Finally, Biden passed the torch at the end to Kamala Harris. And if this story ends like it's supposed to, with the orange hell-giant defeated by a spontaneous movement of a unified people, with Harris, the first woman president, triumphant and, recognizing the path forward is not going to be easy or without conflict, the belief in our national soul restored, this country could never thank Joe Biden enough for the gift of this joyful rejuvenation of the American spirit. 

Arrogant Dipshit JD Vance Goes to Michigan

Kent County in western Michigan is anchored by Grand Rapids and it's the fourth most populous county out of 83 in the state. (Yes, that is too many fucking counties.) Byron Center is a suburb of Grand Rapids, just 20 minutes from downtown, not some rural enclave. You'd have to be a vapid couchfucking clown to pretend otherwise. 

So, of course, JD Vance, the vice presidential candidate and Yale Law School's most embarrassing grad since Samuel Alito, acted like he was out in a field in the ass-end of nowhere, which does exist in Michigan, but without easy access to a decent airport. Vance was there to give a speech to the extremely white locals (the town is like 95% white) sitting outside at a trucking company. And by "speech," I mean, "bitching about bullshit." 

Vance, who always sounds like a smug asshole trying to talk so the yahoos understand what he's saying, blathered about allegedly horrific damage done to places like Byron Center by the Biden/Harris administration: "Byron Center has been cast aside, and a lot of places in this country have been cast aside by America’s ruling class in Washington D.C. Now, politicians come into places like Michigan. They say nice things, but they crush our industries, they offshore our jobs, and they undercut American wages with illegal labor. You, my friends, have been betrayed." 

Betrayed how exactly? The unemployment rate in Kent County is 4%. It's one of the lowest in the state, ranking sixth out of, once again, 83 counties. The median income in the county is $77k. The poverty rate is 10%, lower than the state or the country. The population is growing there and expected to keep growing. Home ownership is at 75%. And all of those trends have improved or stayed steady during the Biden administration. So what the fuck is Vance even talking about? And what the fuck were the gathered white people clapping for? Oh, wait. There has been an uptick in the number of immigrants, and the population is getting more diverse. That must be the fucking nightmare. 

By the way, Kent County went for Biden in 2020, 52 to 46 percent. He won Grand Rapids by over 30 points. He's the first Democrat to win by a margin that big there since LBJ. Obama won by just 2000 votes in 2008. 

Since Vance is running with Donald Trump, a man for whom the truth and reality are as sacred as wedding vows, of course he lied continuously. Here's what the gopher-looking motherfucker said about electric vehicles and battery manufacturing: "[Harris] supported these EV mandates that taxed you, took your money, and sent it to electric vehicles that are made in China instead of made right here in the state of Michigan, destroying thousands of Michigan auto jobs in the process. And it’s not just the car jobs themselves. Y’all know this. It’s the carburetors. It’s the transmissions. It’s the people who are making the components. They are the ones who suffer when Kamala Harris sends your tax dollars to Chinese-made cars." Just to put on my perfesser hat for a hot sec, the way the end of that is stated makes it sound like carburetors and transmissions are suffering, which is, yeah, weird.

But, see, the Biden administration (and, sorry, Harris is not president right now) is helping Michigan get massive investment from companies so that, according to one analysis, the state will be one of three that will "dominate" EV battery manufacturing by 2030. The state has received billions of dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act and from auto corporations. There have definitely been some bumps along the way (as there always are), not the least of which is Republican antagonism to electric vehicles, as if there's something anti-American and un-manly about them. No, they don't go "vroom." But the future is going to involve EVs, and you're either ready for that future or you can go fuck yourself into poverty with your carburetor.

Also, being Trump's mate means that everything your opposition does is either the worst thing in the history of everything or it's a hoax of some sort. Beardy Buzzkill here said, "When she does these rallies and does these events and does these fake dances, remember that there are parents who lost their children to drugs or violence who will never see their children move again, much less dance again." Honestly, that's like some asshole on social media who says, "Yeah, but what about climate change?" when you post that you had a good time with your husband this past weekend. And, for fuck's sake, Trump enters every Nazi rally of his by doing the double hand-job boogie, waddling like a walrus on a floating dock, and the gathered Nazis cheer like he's Simone Biles doing her floor routine. That's a fake fucking dance.

The bitterness that Vance and Trump have towards Harris is stunning, like they're insulted that they have to run against a non-white woman. Vance went on, "Everything about her campaign is fake, a fake joy that comes from being promoted to a new position, instead of using the position you already have to do your job and make the lives of the citizens of this country better. It’s a fake ticket that never earned a single Democrat primary vote. It’s a fake platform that offers no specifics about how to do the people’s businesses, and a fake promise to change the government." You know, it takes a level of self-delusion that approaches psychopathic to call anyone or anything "fake" when you are running for office alongside someone who has been found, multiple times, to have committed actual fucking fraud. 

In the entire speech, Vance put forward almost no policies while criticizing Harris for running on slogans instead of policies. The idea that was just, well, weird was that the way to control inflation is to stop printing so much money. No, really: "We ought to do is stop printing trillions of dollars that we don’t have and sending it to China. We should keep our money right here at home, build in America, buy in America, manufacture in America, and that gives Americans the wages necessary. But it also means that you’re not printing a bunch of money, which makes our dollar more and more worthless." Yes, money has been printed at a higher rate (which doesn't necessarily mean actually making more bills, but releasing...you know what? Google that shit) but that's because the world relies on the dollar and needs more dollars. To say it's a major factor in inflation is just one of those things you put out there because stupid people understand it (not to mention that inflation is way down now).

This was in answer to a question (from the Epoch Times, so fuck them generally) that was simple: "What other steps besides drilling can the Trump-Vance administration take to lower those grocery prices for people?" Other than not printing more money, Vance had nothing. Not a single goddamn idea. I mean, shit just got embarrassing when he was asked by a local reporter what the Trump campaign would do in Kent County specifically to get votes and his answer was, more or less, "Fuck all." He really replied, "We think, look, the entire state of Michigan is important, right?" And then he talked about how they want votes in Detroit so they're working more there, which is always what someone in Grand Rapids wants to hear. One topic that he avoided was women since everything he says about women is some Handmaid's Tale-level oppression and subservience. 

JD Vance is a fucking empty-headed weirdo, to be sure. But he's also an arrogant, preening dipshit desperately attempting to sound smart, folksy, and tough, like Trump without whatever panache we used to ascribe to Trump. He's the gleeful fuck toy of billionaires (or putative billionaires), and he seems to relish the role of trying to be as cruel and dismissive of any opposition as Trump is, all while attempting to act like he gives a damn about other humans.

But, goddamn, he's so fucking transparent about it that everyone can see right through him. 

Harris/Walz: We Need This Joy

Something occurred to me while watching yesterday's rally in Philadelphia kicking off the campaign for the full 2024 Democratic ticket of current Vice President Kamala Harris for president and Governor Tim Walz for vice president. It occurred to me while watching Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who had been considered a frontrunner for the VP job, pumping up the crowd like the greatest hype man in history. It occurred to me when Harris introduced Walz to a nation that, beyond those of us damned to be terminally online in the political world, knew very little about him. It occurred to me when Walz, all big  dad energy, scolded the Republicans, Donald Trump and JD Vance, for their deprivations and degradations while telling the gathered 10,000 people how they needed to get out on that field and beat the cross-town rivals. It occurred to me as I felt myself getting caught up in the excitement of the moment, with the expected cheers and spontaneous chants from the audience at Temple University. And it kept occurring to me today as I saw the elated crowds in Eau Claire and Detroit.

It was simple. I thought, "Man, we need this." And by "this," I mean all the joy and energy and possibility being embodied on that stage. But it's not only about this moment. We need this because the one thing that's been missing as we emerged from the worst part of the Covid pandemic (and recognizing that Covid is still very much a problem) is a catharsis, some release where we all recognize that we survived. And it's not just a catharsis for getting through the lockdowns and mass deaths and required health safety measures. It's a catharsis for surviving the presidency of Donald Trump, which took this country down some incredibly dark alleys, leaving it battered and weary, with a good deal of PTSD.

We couldn't actually celebrate, or even fully exhale, because hanging over all of us was the tension of what would bring the Trump saga to its end. We waited for something to validate the anger we had and to demonstrate that things would be different. We hoped that Trump would be convicted and sent to prison, but that didn't happen and may not. 

The election of Joe Biden was an absolutely necessary step to get to this point. We needed someone who knew how the federal government worked inside and out, an old hand to get to the bridge and right the ship, weld the holes, scrub off the rust, get rid of the piles of garbage, and get us back on course, all while restocking the bar. We were all scared out of our weary minds in 2020, awaiting the even deadlier next surge of Covid deaths that was coming in January 2021. Then January 6th happened, and our sense of security in the very things that are supposed to function in this country were undermined, all while watching a large percentage of the population go down a red-capped abyss of crazy and conspiracies they will likely never return from. Biden's skill was in allowing the rest of us to chill out, to see that the government hadn't lost the ability to actually work.

In the last few months, though, everything kept hitting us, even as Trump was found guilty or liable, owing hundreds of millions of dollars. All of it still didn't lead us to anything like a feeling of completion, a feeling we could, indeed, move on. We were hit again and again with insane Supreme Court decisions, with the polls that showed Biden losing, with Biden's obvious signs of aging, with this feeling that it was all going to go south again. We would stick by Biden if we had to (and more than a few were doing so gladly), but, my god, we needed celebration. We needed joy. Real joy, not the kind of joy that says, "We made it," but the joy that says, "We crushed it." We need to face our American demons, who are easily identifiable, and we need to unify to exorcise them and send them back to whatever crevices in the earth they crawled out of, not just defeat them at the polls. 

So, yeah, it's more than a little over-the-top to say this, but I got that feeling from the Harris/Walz rally yesterday, from the ecstasy with which people are reacting to this ticket. We suffered a mass trauma, both physical and psychological, from Covid, compounded by the savage incompetence and wanton cruelty of the Trump administration. And the effects of that trauma haven't been dealt with. 

But maybe this is how we heal: by coming together in joyful purpose, to laugh and mock and chant and celebrate, all in service of unifying to keep progressing, to make sure that the hard work that's been done doesn't get wasted by another Republican president, like Bill Clinton's work was wrecked by Bush, like Obama's work was wrecked by Trump. God, imagine how incredible it will be for Biden to hand it off to Kamala Harris, with no Republican in the middle to ruin it all first. God, imagine how amazing it will be to know that so many of us came together, all these disparate areas of the left, all these generations, all these races and genders and identities, for once not bothering with the in-fighting that divides us every election season, to make this happen. We can get back to all those difficult discussions about what direction we should go once we can exhale without that feeling that it's all about to end terribly.

This isn't just about vibes. It's about our deep need to feel connected again, to not just wander in our algorithm-induced scrolling comas, but to see that all that we have been through means something and can achieve something. It's a desire for authenticity, for modernity, for an embrace of who we really are. And it's a desire for normalcy again. God, we know we can never go back to what was before Trump and before Covid, but let us come up with a way to tell the delusional, harmful, weird GOP that we're done being afraid of the phantoms they demand we fear. 

In our Harris and Walz-induced joy is our strength. 

Hope and Weirdness on the Campaign Trail in 2024

As much as I still viscerally despise former president, shitty artist, and war criminal George W. Bush, the man pretty much nailed it early on when, referring to the inauguration speech of Donald Trump on January 20, 2017, he said, "That was some weird shit." That speech, where Trump shit all over the three presidents gathered there and talked about "American carnage," was genuinely weird in that "Why the fuck is he talking about all that in this dickish way?"

It's not the first time anyone called Trump "weird." On his show, John Oliver has regularly gone off about Trump's innate strangeness. And Trump's behavior has always been on the creepy side of weird. I know she's regretted not saying anything, but I do wonder how things would have gone if Hillary Clinton had stopped in the middle of an answer at her second debate, a town hall with Trump in 2016, when he was stalking behind her, so close she could hear his labored breathing and huffing as she answered a question, and said, "Back up, you creep. Get away from me." They probably would have accused her of being hysterical because that's how shitty and sexist the media was towards Clinton. 

And, you know, a bunch of out here in the filthy environs of the internets, with our blogstackletters or whatever, have gone off for years about the unending fucking weirdness of Donald Trump and his crazed followers. I haven't been shy about calling a weirdo a fucking weirdo. When he started hugging the American flag like it was the teddy bear his prick of a father took away from him when he was two, I wrote, "It was weird. No, that's not strong enough. It was fucking weird. Disturbing even that such an overtly simple-minded move could garner such a strong reaction, that while the left passes around photos of it to mock, the right sends it around with pride. Hell, the White House tweeted the picture with the single word, 'America!' Which is just even weirder. I wasn't triggered or anything. I just thought, 'How fucking pathetic. Of him. Of everyone there.' And how, for lack of another phrase, fucking weird."

It's been one of those things that some of us have wanted his opponents to emphasize because bullying always has supporters and racism is just built into the right. Sure, the line "this is not normal" became a thing, a way of responding to the broad array of fuckery committed by the Trump administration, but also to the rhetoric coming from the MAGA movement and the GOP. But that didn't really capture the essence of what so many of us were feeling and saying (although, you know, "abnormal" might have been fun) because it really is just so strange to see the Republican Party transform itself into a giant machine that is at the service of a single man, a rapist and felon, and his whims. 

Deeply fucked people do that, and, goddamnit, we tried outrage. We tried to point out the stripping of rights, the violence from white nationalists, the alliance with Nazis, the desire to dismantle democracy. We shouted that shit from the rooftops, and that's exactly the reaction all those idiotic fucknuts wanted. When you express pain to a bunch of sadists, they get off, laughing at you for giving them the gleeful orgasms that they wanted by baiting you into your rage. 

Apparently, though, they don't have a shame fetish. All it took was Minnesota Governor Tim Walz echoing a sentiment that's been out there, saying, "These guys are just weird" on MSNBC last Tuesday, and adding later in the day, "These are weird people on the other side. They want to take books away; they want to be in your exam room." It was like light bulbs went off all over and "weird" went viral because, goddamn, it's perfect. And they can't fucking handle it.

It implies "creepy" as well as strange and fucked up, and if demanding to examine the genitals of children to check their sex for playing sports in middle school is anything, it's strange and creepy and fucked up. So is listing innocuous words that people are not allowed to use. So is denying history and science that is plainly factual and threatening to jail librarians as sex offenders if anyone under 18 can get their hands on a book that mentions that gay people exist. So is your Bible fetish, forcing classrooms to display the Ten Commandments and forcing teachers to teach biblical lessons in public school classes. So is any politician declaring that childless people are "sociopaths" and women who don't have children are miserable. So is a presidential candidate talking about Hannibal Lecter and water pressure and bird-killing windmills and how the women who said he raped and groped them aren't attractive enough for him. So is declaring that an election was "rigged" when every single court and every single expert says it wasn't. It's all, all, all so fucked, so creepy, so wrong, so weird. And I haven't even gotten into the shit their voters do. Take off your red cap, Jesse. You look like a dickhead.

Kamala Harris is just a little older than me, and I'm sure that, as someone watching Democrats back down time and again from Republican attacks, she wished for the gloves to come off. Like me, she watched as the idea of going high when they go low failed to meet the moment, with Democrats trying to stick to some kind of unwritten rules of behavior. I mean, I wrote about this shit starting in 2003, about how Democrats need to be willing to stop depending on norms and traditions and fuck all that only rarely works and only at moments of great crisis, like in 2008 or in 2020. What about times like now, when there really is no great crisis in the United States other than the chaos that Trump and MAGA pukes bring about? Yeah, it's time to get in the gutter and bring the fight to them, but on our terms.

So we get the Harris campaign machine, which is an amped up version of the Biden machine, shifting into mocking mode with social media posts immediately reacting to Trump's insanity in speeches and interviews with "This is weird" and that have headlines like "JD Vance Is a Creep (Who Wants to Ban Abortion Nationwide)." They also post ludicrous things from Fox "news" and from the candidates, like a deleted part of JD Vance's campaign website about his being "100% pro-life." They're not afraid to get juvenile, with a post that says, "JD Vance does not couch his hatred for women." 

A joke about Vance fucking couches? Saying he has "hatred for women"? That's going way further than even Hillary Clinton did when she posted, for instance, "A running list of all the worst things Donald Trump has said about women. It’s long." She called Trump "unqualified and temperamentally unfit," which wasn't cruel enough. It was what was expected from Democrats: harsh, sure, but dignified. But saying he's "weird"? No one likes to be called that unless it's meant in an endearing way, like "eccentric." And plenty of men have egos that are so fragile that a woman calling them "weird" or "creepy" makes them collapse into a ball of incel self-loathing.

This whole campaign just feels different now. It's filled with life not just because Harris is younger and more energetic than Biden (although, at 60, she would still be older than most of the leaders in Europe). It's because I don't think the corporate media and many older Democratic leaders understand the vibe shift or the change in the zeitgeist, if you wanna be fancy. 

I'll go with it being a paradigm shift. See, I don't think that those people I mentioned up there get that the old shit is done and the old ways of responding to Republican attacks have to be shitcanned. Lemme put this in Gen X musical terms. Remember how shitty hair metal was so popular and then Nirvana came along and destroyed the whole genre? All the shit that we have put up with for so long doesn't apply right now because Harris has done what Biden could not. With Biden running, we just wanted to get him in office and keep things going as they are. Harris offers something different.

The Harris nomination and campaign and movement (which is really what it's become) offers hope, yes, in the Obama sense of making life better for more people. But because she's taking the fight right to MAGA's dumb faces, she is offering hope that Trump and MAGA can be crushed out of existence. The "weird" attack has punctured the rhetorical dome they were living under. They are hurt and confused, like baboons with shit to hurl but no idea how to hurl it in the right direction. And taking down JD Vance, who was the billionaire class's choice to make Trumpism outlast Trump, is a strategy that cuts off a future. 

And what does Harris offer in these months before the election? Not just a sense of purpose, but a sense of joy, as seen in her rallies where the jubilation between people of all ages is palpable. Megan Thee Stallion? Charli XCX? Beyonce'? Sign us all the fuck up. And it's not just a call to duty, but a call to enjoy it while you're doing it because you know that the people who have fucked with you for the last nine years are shitting themselves in fear. What I love is the feeling that, unlike Biden and Obama before him, she won't forgive and forget and demand we move forward without accountability for those who dragged us backward. God, I hope that's true.

Yeah, the weirdos are gonna get a whole lot weirder before this is over. But maybe now that we're making them play our game, we can make the rules. 

Harris, the Democrats, and Biden Take Back the Narrative at Last

Vice President Kamala Harris's first rally speech yesterday as the presumed Democratic nominee for president was remarkable for several reasons. In Milwaukee, which was a special fuck-you to the savage Republican National Convention that was there last week, you could watch in real time as she grew into the role of nominee, moving from slightly stilted delivery to full-on warrior preacher by the end, latching onto the chanted phrase that will no doubt become her slogan: "We're not going back." That's a perfect distillation of the significance of this moment in electoral and American history. The audience there lost their goddamn minds with glee.

Until this past weekend, there was a feeling of dutiful drudgery to the presidential election, along with a frisson of dread, for me and pretty much everyone I know. As I said over on the Threads, we understood the assignment: vote for Joe Biden to be re-elected president with the full knowledge that there was a very real chance that Vice President Kamala Harris would have to take over at some point. And it made sense, even to someone like me who wanted Biden to withdraw. Biden has been a strong president, a consequential one, and, even if I disagreed with him on some things (like Israel's war on Gaza), the man had a hell of a record to run on. But, goddamn, it sucked to have to worry that every time he made an appearance, we had to just be thankful he didn't stumble too much. 

I also always said it had to be Biden's decision whether or not to stay in. While that meant it would have been a terrible idea to push him out through some kind of effort to get delegates to go rogue, it didn't mean that people couldn't try to convince him to drop out. I thought how it played out in public was unseemly and unnecessary, and that it had gone on too long, but, as I told a few people, I didn't think Biden would stand down until after the Republican convention and after assuring that Harris would be the nominee. But the longer Biden waited, the more I thought that it was getting too late to do it. I dreaded the possible fight over the nomination, especially with too many Democrats calling for some kind of stupid fucking "blitz primary." Democrats can be Machiavellian motherfuckers when they want to be. Sadly, too often, it's with members of their own party. I was ready to just get back to the forced march feeling and live with the anxiety of whether or not enough Americans would come through when voting happened.

But you know you felt it on Sunday the second that Biden dropped out, that mixture of "oh, fuck" and "holy shit," and then when he endorsed Harris a half-hour later and then when Democrat after Democrat and caucus after caucus endorsed and then when the donations pretty much tsunamied in (including one from me), you kept feeling it. Unless you were the hardest Ridin'-with-Biden stan, it was a quick journey through surprise, confusion, realization, and release. Think of it like you've been with the same lover for 30 years, fucking more or less the same way, and then they tell you they want to try something new in the sack, like role-play or ben-wah balls or nipple torture. You're taken aback until you understand that it's fucking awesome, that those clamps feel incredible.

I've been watching politics as closely as anyone who isn't in the shit themselves for the last 40 years, and I've never seen the Democratic Party do anything with as much unity and grace as the insanely quick coalescing behind Kamala Harris. It was so perfectly-timed, so skillfully done, that it bears all the hallmarks of a well-planned operation. In the end, I want to believe that Biden and Harris outplayed everyone and fucked over everyone who needed to be fucked over. 

I don't know if it's true, but if Biden, who has been at this game for over a half-century, convinced Trump and the Republicans that he was not going anywhere so that they would waste millions of dollars and their entire convention attacking him and make Trump choose fascist dullard JD Vance for his running mate, it was brilliant. If the pants-wetting Democrats were really worried that the country was still too sexist to elect a woman (a non-white woman, too), Biden and Harris made sure that she was about as inevitable as they come. But it could just as easily been a spontaneous action that spurred more spontaneous actions, and it definitely was Democratic voters saying, "Oh, fuck no" to a primary or an open convention. Like I said, we understood the assignment. If it wasn't Biden, it was Harris.

Of course, the outpouring of support for Harris was relief that the forced march was over. Even more importantly, Biden's act of extraordinary patriotism completely took back the narrative on the election. True or not, fair or not, what was baked into every single thing that Democrats did was the corporate media's obsession, fanned by Republicans and even some Democrats, that Biden was suffering cognitive impairment and he should drop out. That was the narrative. That was what every Democrat running for every office would have to answer for. It was fucked up in the extreme, but, sorry, it wasn't unwarranted. 

In an instant, the entire narrative changed. Hell, it was burned to the ground. Now Trump is the very old man. Trump's criminality, venality, and incoherence are now front and center because nothing overshadows it. And by being a woman who is Black and AAPI, Harris represents a huge part of the population of the country and the huge number of us who ache for the end of the rule of old white men. If you wanna call that DEI, fine. Fuck, yeah, I love diversity, I think equity is imperative, and there's not a goddamn thing wrong with inclusion. Blow me if you use DEI in a pejorative sense. If someone votes for her because she's Black, well, shit, how many fucking white men have been voted for because they're white men? Wait, I know the answer: all of them. Plus, she's also a former prosecutor running against a convicted felon and rapist. That's its own narrative, too.

So now all of these constituencies are activated and are ready in a way that I honestly have never seen, not even when Barack Obama became the nominee. In addition to the ridiculous haul of campaign cash (which is great, but shows just how fucked our campaigns are, thanks to the Supreme Court), Harris's nomination has energized Gen Z, millions more of whom will be able to vote than in 2016 (on top of the millions of Boomers who have died since 2016). 

The thing is that Gen Z and a whole bunch of the rest of us won't give a shit about the attacks that desperate Republicans are going to throw at Harris. You're gonna attack her race? Her sex? Her having sex? Good fucking luck. None of that will have any effect. And the idea that they are going to use Willie Horton-like attacks on her is absurd coming from a criminal who is literally out on bail and awaiting sentencing for his felonies. 

See, we live in a time of vibes, where people want to part of where the vibes are. We want the feeling of belonging, of community, of actual joy without the burden of hate. We want to feel like we're moving forward, not, you know, going back. And that's a powerful attractor. When we get more of them post-Biden, polls are going to show a tight race, possibly with Harris a little ahead. Then comes the Democratic National Convention, and the vibes will continue. 

There's a long, long road ahead, and if this election season has taught us anything, it's who knows what the fuck is going to happen. Harris's position on Israel's war with Gaza could kill some of the Gen Z buzz. Republicans with blistered asses are always dangerous. Trump is an elephant with a raging hard-on in the middle of a crystal factory. Who knows how much he'll bust up the joint until he gets off?

But I have one more thing that Harris offers and it relates to Trump and the MAGA bullshit and JD Vance and all of it. It's a simple idea: Don't you want all of that to be over already? God, don't you want it to be done and gone? We can do that. We've already defied all the expectations about how this was supposed to go. We can defy them all the way through to turning the goddamn page at last on the old narrative and living in the new one.

At the RNC, the Rapist Finally Speaks

The delegates at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee finally got to hear from the rapist last night. Of course, the rapist is a former president, elected when it was suspected he was a rapist, and now the presidential nominee of the Republican Party, which happened after he was adjudicated to be a sexual abuser by a jury, which the judge clarified really meant "rapist." The people there, from all 50 states, from various walks of life, primarily white, but not exclusively, were elated any time the rapist sat down in the auditorium to listen to other speakers during the convention. Well, more accurately, to fall asleep while others spoke. 

A number of the delegates wore large white patches or bandages on their right ear. It was a way of showing support for the rapist because he had almost been shot and killed a few days before. We don't know why the would-be assassin targeted him, but it wasn't for being a rapist. One could wonder if the bullet had taken part of the rapist's ear off, would they have cut off parts of their own flesh in sympathy. It sadly does not seem out of the realm of possibility. 

In his speech, the rapist, who was also convicted by a jury of and is awaiting sentencing for 34 felonies related to paying off a porn star who he had had an affair with, spoke vividly about the shooting. The rapist bragged how he had been "speaking very strongly, powerfully and happily." There was nothing humble in how the rapist talked about himself, despite what some in the press have said. There was no humility. He focused on how much people love him, so much so that even as "we had many bullets that were being fired," people didn't run away at the rally. Rather than attribute that to the fact that no one knew what was going on, the rapist said, "They just, this beautiful crowd, they didn’t want to leave me. They knew I was in trouble. They didn’t want to leave me. And you can see that love written all over their faces." The rapist was saying that, even with bullets "flying over us," the people didn't care about themselves or their loved ones. They only cared about the rapist. That's frankly disturbing, not "beautiful."

The rapist, who was fined $2 million for misuse of funds from a charity for children with cancer, then talked about Corey Comperatore, a fire chief who was at the rally and who was shot and killed protecting his family from the bullets. Comperatore's firefighter's jacket and helmet were on display on the stage, set up like a ghost was wearing them, and the rapist walked over to them and kissed the helmet with his rapist lips. It was, to anyone not inclined to love the rapist, creepy, at best. People in the crowd wept at what they saw as the rapist's kindness and decency. They wept when he talked about his own blood being spilled. "My god," they must have thought, "how much that rapist has suffered for me."

They also applauded and cheered in those first 15 minutes or so of the 93-minute speech as the rapist kept talking about "unity" and "In an age when our politics too often divide us, now is the time to remember that we are all fellow citizens — we are one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." It seemed, for some in press, the rapist had really been changed by his near-death experience. 

Of course, the rapist would never admit that he was one of the primary people dividing the country. The rapist has never admitted wrongdoing, no matter how many court cases go against him. He has almost never apologized for his failures. He dismisses dissent and disavows errors. The rapist has one true belief, and that belief is that he is owed...something, whether it's a fortune or the presidency or freedom. For some unknown reason, he believes the universe owes him, and, for some even more unknown reason, the universe keeps complying. 

Yet, even as he was willing to give credit to whatever his rapist mind conceives of as "God" for that bullet missing him, he could only see it filtered through his narcissism. "Unity" means he doesn't budge an inch on anything, but everyone must unify under what he wants. When he said, "As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny," that destiny was his reelection. Join the rapist in transforming the nation or you are the problem, not the rapist, not the people who worship the rapist and have no problem at all electing the rapist. 

Indeed, a few seconds after quoting the Pledge of Allegiance, the rapist, who owes a half-billion dollars in fines for various frauds, took us on a journey into his dark heart, explicitly stating that the only way for the United States to unify is to dismiss all of the cases against him, that his crimes should go unpunished. And then the rapist, who others called a "changed man," showed that he hadn't changed one whit. 

Beyond his unchanging stances on immigration, taxes, foreign policy, and the economy, beyond his continuing to speak about his opponents in ways that invite further violence, the rapist did what all rapists do: he piled lie upon lie upon lie, building a mountain of lies that he could stand on and look down at everyone else. And there was no greater lie than his calls for everyone to come together. 

After his litany of horrors and bizarre tangents and weird asides, all the words that alienate more than half the people who listen to him and that ended up boring even the most loyal of his groveling followers, the rapist, who, it should always be noted, is only at the convention because he is out on bail, veered back to his script. "We must now come together, rise above past differences. Any disagreements have to be put aside, and go forward united as one people, one nation, pledging allegiance to one great, beautiful — I think it’s so beautiful — American flag," he said. 

Those words rang hollow. The only words that a rapist can say that wouldn't sound hollow would be "I'm sorry" and "I was wrong" and "I accept my punishment." When we speak of change and redemption, which is possible, even for a rapist, that is what we mean: acknowledge one's sins and ask forgiveness. Instead, we got to see an audience of fools cheer a rapist who is proudly, arrogantly irredeemable, and, thus, for those of us not cheering, will only ever be a filthy rapist.

Donald Trump Still Sucks

My first thought when I heard someone attempted to assassinate former president and current GOP nominee Donald Trump was "Oh, for fuck's sake." My instinct was that, dead or alive, this would make Trump into a martyr and make his idiot hordes of MAGA freaks worship him that much more intensely. I don't think anyone is going to change their mind about voting for Trump because some fucknut almost offed him, but I do think that the fucknut guaranteed that more of those Trump-loving freaks will make the effort to vote. And I wouldn't be surprised if it provokes the cretins who have been waiting for an excuse to get crazier to think this is go time and causes more violence.

Republicans are absolutely giddy that this happened. You can tell from their orgasmically gleeful posts on social media, with Sen. JD "I'm a more vigorous leg-humper than you, Marco" Vance declaring that "The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” Others have piled on, blaming Biden, blaming Democrats, blaming anyone who ever said a negative word about their orange idol. It won't matter what we end up learning about the shooter. He's a registered Republican who loves guns? That won't slow the GOP's conspiracy-mongering one bit. He could have been hired by Don, Jr., and Republicans would still blame Joe Biden.

And there's this breathtaking bit of fuckery from Sen. Mike "I should be prosecuted in the fake electors scheme" Lee: "We’ve got to take the political temperature down, as evidenced by what happened in Pennsylvania today. We call on President Biden to immediately order that all federal criminal charges against President Trump be dropped, and to ask the governors of New York and Georgia to do the same. Such a gesture would help heal wounds and allow all Americans to take a deep breath and reflect on how we got here." Now that's taking an assassination attempt and making assassination-ade. A

It behooves all of us in this time of reflection to keep one thing in mind: Donald Trump still sucks. He's still a shitty human being. A convicted felon and rapist who gets shot at is still a convicted felon and rapist. He is also man who is out on bail and awaiting sentencing. He is still the same asshole who declares himself "your retribution" to his followers who have committed repeated acts of violence. He is still the same asshole who mocks Nancy Pelosi's husband for almost being murdered, who mocks Joe Biden for falling off his bike, who wants violent cops to be immune from prosecution, who calls for people to be beaten and jailed, who regularly says he wants the death penalty expanded, who wants to use the military to shoot protesters and shoplifters, who says he will defend everyone's ability to get the kind of gun that was used to nearly take him out, who brags he did nothing to stop the mass killing of children by guns, and whose views on migrants and trans people and others has caused spikes in violence agains those groups. And the vast majority of his party is one hundred percent with him and thus are one hundred percent as guilty as Trump is for creating an America where such violence is simply the Price of Freedom or some such shit.

Trump and GOP fucked around and almost found out. Their policies and beliefs pretty much guaranteed that something like this would happen. But the lesson they are going to take from this is not to ban the guns that allowed this to happen or, at the very least, tighten the requirements to buy the goddamn gun, the kind of gun that killed one person at the rally and injured others. No, the lesson they are going to take is to get even worse, to use this as a way to silence Democrats and the Biden campaign, intimidating them by wielding their supposed victimization like a gun pointed at the electorate. Democrats are already promising investigations and saying they won't criticize Trump and canceling rallies and ad buys. But the high road is bullshit, man, when the other side is digging the ground out from below you.

So, okay, fine, take a day or two, Democrats, to act like mensches. And then get right the fuck back to tearing Trump down. Despite what Vance and other syphilitic Republican whores say, we're all calling Trump a dictator and fascist because he said he's going to be a dictator and supports fascist policies. He's mused about changing when elections are held and "joked" about serving beyond a second term if he's elected, undermining our democratic system repeatedly. Fucker wants to round up millions of people working in this country, including children, and put them in camps. It's his big plan this time around. That's what authoritarians do. We're not making this shit up. We're listening to what Trump and his policy people say.

Fuck sympathy. I guarantee Trump'll be saying how Biden and "the Deep State" conspired to have him killed (leaving out, of course, that the Supreme Court said that Biden could totally do that). A thoughtful, reflective man might grow and change, evolve, even, after an incident like this. That is not Trump. He screamed, "Fight!" repeatedly after. He wanted his idiot hordes to riot for him, like he has before. I'd be shocked beyond shocked if he didn't continue in that vein.

I don't want Donald Trump to be murdered. I want him to lose the election so we can begin to purge his poisonous movement from our political system. I want him to go to prison for the very real crimes he committed and to have to pay the hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments he owes. I want him to have to live in disgrace and infamy for years before dying. Let's make sure that happens. 

(Note: I don't buy the idea that this was a false flag or some other conspiracy you're hearing from the left. Trump's not that good an actor. I do think it's hilarious to call it a false flag just to piss off MAGA goons who call every mass shooting that.)

Joe Biden Is Running and That's That (Kind Of)

(Stick with me here. You're gonna agree and disagree with me strongly throughout the next few scribblings, but stick with me.)

I've been cagey, at best, about all this, so let me lay all my cards on the table here: I don't think Joe Biden should be running for a second term as president of the United States. (Remember: Stick with me.) It's plainly obvious that he's declined in the last year or so, with moments of absolute command and power (like the State of the Union, which was a long four months ago). But between the debate disaster and many other appearances where he's obviously confused or on autopilot, it's impossible to deny what's so clear. And it's kind of ridiculous to see all the praise for when Biden gives a speech with energy, yelling emphatically as if that demonstrates some kind of youthful vigor. Yes, he can read words and even mean them, but all that shows is that he's not totally incapacitated. 

I'll go even further and agree with Adam Serwer and others: I believe Biden should step down now and let Kamala Harris become president. Not only does it confer the glow of incumbency on Harris, but it's an act of supreme grace. Biden's last act as a public figure would be to assure that this dumb, sexist, racist country finally has a woman, a Black woman, as its president. What an incredible exclamation point on a long, fairly distinguished (with some significant blemishes) record. 

As I've said before, if you're replacing Biden, it's gotta be Kamala Harris unless she says she doesn't want it. Otherwise, Democrats will alienate the most reliably Democratic voting bloc in the country, as many Black leaders and commentators have warned. Besides, don't you wanna see Harris act like the vicious prosecutor she is against Trump in a debate? God, it'd be beautiful to see Trump have to stand there while Harris tears him to pieces. 

So there you go. That's where I stand on the issue with one caveat: Biden's gotta pull the trigger. That's the price of admission. Maybe after the NATO summit. Maybe after the Republican convention so that the GOP loses the chance to spend four big days lying about Harris. If Biden doesn't walk away, however stiffly, then, fuck it, it's Biden. Any effort to remove Biden would rip the party apart. Suck it up, motherfuckers, stop sniping at each other, and campaign like you're campaigning for Harris.

But, listen, goddamnit, and this is key: if you believe that Biden can't do the job and won't last another term, then, yeah, you are pretty much campaigning for and voting for Harris. What is the qualitative difference, if you think, as I do, that Biden can't go another four years, between Biden off or on the ticket if Harris has to be the replacement? That's where my head is right now. Sure, it's not an ideal situation; I'd love to see a full-fledged Harris for President campaign and get the chance to rally around her. And it's also entirely possible that Biden does do the next four years if re-elected. But we'd have all been fine with that if Biden had had a vaguely competent debate and fewer stumbling appearances. So, again, what's the difference in sticking with the ticket we have and working to make that ticket win and shutting the fuck up about our doubts about Biden's brain?

What Democrats should do is move away from all speculation about What Biden Should Do and pivot when asked that question. It's simple. Shit, I'll give you the script, like a good PR assistant: "Well, if you believe President Biden can't work for the American people for another four years, you should be thrilled that we have an excellent vice-president running with him." There you go. Turn it around on the questioner, promote Harris, and say, in essence, "Yeah, we know what's going on. We're not fucking idiots. But we can live with it." 

Hell, if you want, you could add, "Donald Trump's vice-president doesn't even support him for re-election." Or "Donald Trump sent a mob to murder his vice-president. Joe Biden trusts and respects Kamala Harris."

And then start attacking the fuck out of Trump and the Republicans. The question about Biden was asked and answered. If you (or I) don't like the answer, that's on you (or me). But our responsibility now is to take that bloated oranger fucker and his whole debased, anti-American movement down. Who leads us to do that is, frankly, far less important than that we do it. Survive the tornado and clean up after. So, yeah, fuck it, it's Biden/Harris, even if I'm leaning hard on the "Harris" part. Stop playing the fucking game that the corporate media and the GOP want you to play by engaging in endless debates about this.

Of course, obviously, major news outlets are going to keep this story alive when they should be giving at least equal weight to what President Biden has done (good and bad) and what Donald Trump did as president and the fucking insane shit he says on a daily basis. I still can't get my head around how the conversation is only that Biden is acting old and not that a convicted fucking felon, rapist, fraudster, and coup leader who is opposed by dozens of high-ranking officials who worked for him might become president with a get-out-of-jail-free card from a corrupt Supreme Court. The New York Times's editorial calling Trump "unfit" to be president is a start, but the bulk of coverage and commentary is still sharply tilted to getting Biden out. We could use a little fucking both-siderism in this case. 

So take a page from me. I've said what I have to say. Barring some major new information about Biden's cognitive abilities or Biden actually dropping out, I'm done talking about it. So should everyone else. But, what the hell, take a week, until after the RNC, to make sure Biden's not just waiting to take the savage heat from that conglomeration of assholes, dickfleas, twatmites, and shitheels before dropping out. Then, when he stays in, move the fuck on to the campaign to save the goddamn country. 

The Supreme Court Launches an Attack on the United States; Democrats Need to Fire Back

I've been thinking about all the things that got us to this point, where the conservative super-majority on the Supreme Court felt free to overturn a 40-year precedent that allowed the government to actually function efficiently and then, in the same week, was just fucking fine in giving a president "absolute immunity" to commit crimes as long as they fall within "official" duties. And let's be honest: They were giving Donald Trump and Republicans that pass. If a Democratic president had farted too loudly, this court would have found a way to have them executed immediately, and so it would be in the future. 

But it wasn't one thing that got us here. It wasn't just the 2016 election debacle. Yes, you can fucking despise everyone who prevented Hillary Clinton from winning, from Trump voters to the New York Times to James Comey to Bernie Sanders' voters to Susan Sarandon, but it wasn't just 2016. You gotta go back. It was when Senator Joe Biden wanted to play nice with Republicans and allowed Clarence Thomas's nomination to get out of the Judiciary Committee he chaired. It was when Democrats didn't filibuster evil twatmite Samuel Alito's nomination despite having the votes to do it because they respected the process. It was when anyone who suggested Ruth Bader Ginsberg retire while Barack Obama was president was accused of ageism or sexism and silenced despite it being the fucking right thing to do (see Anthony Kennedy two years later). It was when Obama held Senate Democrats back from going to war over Mitch McConnell's complete fuckery, upending of rules and tradition and history, in refusing to even allow a vote on Merrick Garland's nomination. It was Democrats believing that comity and Reaching Across the Aisle and all that bullshit meant something when the lesson they haven't learned, since perhaps LBJ was in the White House, is that when you have power, you fucking use that power, and you do everything to achieve your goals, your opponent be fucking damned. And if you don't use power when you have it, if you don't use the big megaphone to rally people, if you don't find ways to get shit done, then you are unilaterally disarming. 

The Supreme Court's decision in the incredibly symbolically named Trump v. United States case has no silver lining. Anyone who tells you that is fucking delusional. What's been set up by the Court in its division of crimes that are also official acts and unofficial ones is endless litigation over any charge brought against a former president for criminal acts. In one of the most fucked-up lines in any recent Supreme Court case (and there are a lot to choose from in the past couple of years), Roberts writes that court may not "deem an action unofficial merely because it allegedly violates a generally applicable law." You got that? When you break the law, you commit a crime, but that doesn't matter. That line affirms Richard Nixon's frightening assertion that "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal." 

This is nothing short of an attack on the very foundation of this country. One of the reasons we even fucking exist is to have a country where everyone is subject to laws and no one person, a king or queen, can merely act without regard to those laws. I mean, the majority on the Supreme Court essentially just did George III's job for him, like this is a last battle of the Revolutionary War. (I mean, the fuckers on the right are literally talking about a second American revolution.)

It's an extremist act from a reactionary Court that has set itself at the top of the government and our society, like the mullahs in Iran who really run that country (as long as they do the bidding of the oligarchs there, which still goes for the US). Look at the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and the Loper Bright decision that overturned the Chevron case giving deference to federal agencies in enforcement actions. Both of those were attacks on expertise. Doctors and their patients don't know best. Pregnant people don't know best. People who have spent their lives as researchers and scientists and workers in a field don't know best. Only the courts do in their obvious boundless and infinite wisdom on every single subject. Everything must be filtered through, they hope, radical right-wing judges.

The Supreme Court is not superior to the President or Congress. It's co-equal. And Joe Biden and Democrats need to act like they are equal partners in this shit fight at the fuck factory we call "government." And here's when I say something some of you are not gonna like, but, fuck it, it's not like I haven't said it before: I don't think Biden's up to the task. This isn't about his age. He's never been up for this particular task, even before his age and faculties became such an issue. And I'm not talking about fantasies about what Biden, now untethered from being accused of crimes for his official acts, could do, like go Michael Corelone on all his enemies (look it up, kids). 

Biden's an institutionalist. He believes in tradition and norms and rules, which are not bad things at all. But he responds as if his opponents have the same sense of the history of the nation and a devotion to the ideals of the United States when, truly, they don't give a fuck about anything but themselves and their idiot voters. Biden still makes a distinction between "MAGA Republicans" and what he believes are "good" Republicans, which would seem to just be Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins, and maybe or or two others, yet, with the exception of some abortion votes for Murkowski and Collins, the only distinction they have is that they don't support Trump. 

Hell, in his speech on extreme weather this week, he said, "My predecessor and the MAGA Republicans in Congress are trying to undo all this progress.  They still deny climate change even exists." And then later said, "Every single congressional Republican voted against the investments which created these jobs and combat climate change." So, really, the "MAGA" modifier is unnecessary since they all vote in lockstep on virtually everything. If you believe that piles of shit might have a gold nugget in there, you will dig through shit trying to find it and you will assuredly only come up with shit-stained hands. 

When it comes to the Supreme Court, Biden has stated, repeatedly, that he doesn't support any kind of reform beyond some ethics rules (which, no doubt, would be a good thing). In his remarks on the Trump immunity case, he keeps talking about voting, which, yeah, absolutely, fucking vote in November. But that doesn't change the court unless Thomas, Alito, and Roberts retire during a second term. That doesn't overturn this decision until at least two of the conservatives are replaced by a Democrat. The same goes for abortion rights and for power being restored to federal agencies and so much more. 

Democrats need to fire back at the Court and fire back hard. Drag the fuckers into the sunlight. Make Clarence Thomas's corruption an issue. Tie the majority with enemies of the nation. Fuck, I'd have an ad out already putting the six conservatives in British redcoat outfits. The Supreme Court is treated as if it's hands off when it comes to the filthy political world, except for "I'll pick justices like this one that I like." Fuck that. Call for impeachment of Thomas and Alito and say you can only do it if you get the majorities you need. Put it all on the table. Expansion, term limits, all of it. And everyone isn't on political social media or watching John Oliver explain it all for you. I guarantee that if you make an ad saying how fucking much Clarence Thomas gets from his billionaire sponsors, a fuckton of people will be getting that info for the first time. 

Basically, fuck the Supreme Court. The fuckers wanna play? Fucking play. 

Go even further to bring things back to what they're supposed to be. Propose an amendment to the Constitution that says the president must follow the laws. You're reading that and saying, "Yeah, right, that'll never happen." Think of all the shit the right has proposed that everyone thought would never fucking happen. It happens. You put the crazy dream shit out there and work towards it. You make it a rallying point. 

And rather than follow Biden's lead and going high when they go low or what the fuck ever, Democrats need to get out ahead on this because Republicans sure as shit are trumpeting and celebrating that Donald Trump got the Court over the finish line on all these issues. Essentially, the Supreme Court has put in place everything the right needs to get Project 2025 operational. They just need Trump to win. It's the final piece to the puzzle. So, yeah, yeah, vote like the country's life depends on it. If it's Biden, fine. Fuck it. If it's someone else, like Harris, same. But when it comes to the Court, it's time to drag them back into the gutter with the rest of us. 

Are We Really That Fucked After Last Night's Debate?

Yeah, I'll get to Biden, but the thing that needs to be hammered over and over is how much Donald Trump flat-out, blatantly, willfully, unapologetically lied every time he opened his filthy fucking mouth at last night's first presidential debate. He lied about the economy, he lied about Covid, he lied about immigration, he lied about abortion, he lied about January 6, he lied about his legal cases, he lied about NATO, he lied and he lied and then he lied some more. He lied as if lies were air and water and food. He lied as if lies were pussies out there for the grabbing. He lied as if his dick was made of lies and he could fuck the truth to death. He lied like lies were his name that he could plaster over anything and claim it was his. It was almost breathtaking to behold someone for whom the truth and reality are mere inconveniences to be washed away by his torrent of lies and then to think that he has a very real shot of becoming president. Even worse, he has a real shot at becoming president again. Trump is a fraud, a disgrace, and a motherfucker of unquenchable appetites, but goddamn if he doesn't know that there are plenty of voters who want to hear a lie told arrogantly, with braggadocio and bluster, than hear the truth told quietly. 

Why would anyone who does live in a world of observable and demonstrable facts trust a single word Trump says? Imagine being a US ally and hearing Trump repeat all these lies again and again. You'd be a fool to take him at his word on anything. You'd be a fool to put the safety of your nation and the world in his hands. I don't have to imagine being an American and knowing that my president is lying so copiously that it makes all the other lying presidents look like goddamn angels. It strips away any sense of security and stability. And, sorry, that's way more fucking frightening than Biden's age.

And I know, I know, I fucking know that both sides agreed to the rules for the debate, and one of those rules was no fact-checking. But CNN did a disservice to the nation by not once insisting that the candidates, especially Trump, stay in the realm of what's real. Traditional fact-checking would be "You said the United States has spent $200 billion on Ukraine. The real number is $110 billion." That's straightforward and, sure, it's the kind of shit that can wait until after the debate. But Trump was up there accusing Biden of taking money from China. He still insisted that the 2020 election was fraudulent. Those are big picture kinds of things that deserve some fucking slap down from the moderators. You're allowed to say, "Mr. Trump, you're factually wrong that you won the last presidential race." You're allowed to say, "No one is allowed to murder a baby after it's been born." That's not "fact-checking." That's "reality-affirming." 

Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are actual, honest-to-god journalists. To have them play the role of talk show host is worthless. Moderators keep shit on track. They don't just ask something and then say, "Fuck it," stay silent, and let the response chips fall where they may. When they asked a question and Trump used all his time to talk about something completely off-topic, they should have shut him the fuck down and insisted he answer. When they asked him about the January 6 insurrection and he diverted to immigration again (as he did with every fucking thing he was asked), they should have cut him off and made him answer and not let him ramble on until a pause where they could ask again, which they did several times. 

Yeah, President Joe Biden fucked it. He came across as fucking ancient, with a weakened voice and occasionally incomprehensible mumble. Even if he did have a cold, as his campaign insisted he did a little while in to the debate, that doesn't explain his rambling and his losing the thread of what he was talking about. And while Biden's answers were based in reality and while he mostly answered the actual questions, he failed again and again to counter Trump's lies and accusations and, frankly, stupidity. I kept thinking as I watched that Biden should have had an answer ready for the abortion lie I mentioned above. He didn't even have a strong answer for when Trump started attacking his son, Hunter. Both times, he could have revealed that compassionate side he's known for. He should have been able to jump on Trump's astounding assertion that Vladimir Putin would release Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich only if he's president. He should have talked directly to young people when Trump proved that he would do fuck-all to mitigate climate change. But he didn't. And perhaps he couldn't. Any decent debater would have destroyed Trump. Kamala Harris or Gretchen Whitmer would have reduced him to even more of a babbling rage balloon than he already is. 

So how fucked are we? Should Biden drop out and allow for another Democrat to take over the nomination, as so many in the punditocracy and more than a few Democratic operatives are saying? One reason I didn't write a hot take last night is that I didn't want my pants-shitting emotions that I expressed in the moment on Threads to rule what I said. As I did write last night, I now completely understand the people who have been calling on Biden to walk away from the race. And I do think Biden is too old to be president, but I also think Trump is too old, too. Neither of them should be running. 

I keep thinking how it plays out if Biden says he's done. If the nominee isn't Kamala Harris, it could cause a hell of a schism in the Democratic Party along racial and, perhaps, gender lines (if the nominee were Gavin Newsom or Josh Shapiro, both solid choices, by the way). But if it is Harris, I don't know how that goes, even if she wipes the floor with Trump in a debate because, and this is very important, for the most part, no one really gives a shit about debates except those of us who are damned to be so fucking plugged into the political bullshit machine for the ludicrous length of time that our presidential campaigns last. So I'm not taking a final position on Biden dropping out because I think it's a waste of time and energy that can be spent making sure everyone knows what a fucktastrophe a second Trump presidency would be. But if Biden's going out, it's gotta happen right fucking now. One upside to Biden walking away is that a younger candidate taking over would jolt this race to life and get a whole bunch of interest from people who have tuned out because of the sameness of it all. 

What I do know is that I'll support Biden if he stays because, whether he's with it or not, his administration has done some fantastic things (even if I completely disagree with them on Israel and a few other areas).  I want that administration to continue. Whether or not Biden drops out, I'll support whoever the nominee is because I'm not a fucking idiot who wants to see Trump and his idiot horde of nation destroyers go on a rampage of Christian nationalism and unhinged greed and brainless isolationism. I mean, it's fucking June. One good viral moment for Joe and all is forgiven about the debate. That's how dumb contemporary media is. 

Look, Biden had a terrible night. The rasping, the confused answers, the inability to respond clearly. It was a disaster, and we don't need to sugarcoat that. But the whole thing was a disaster. It was honestly depressing that we have to contemplate Trump being reelected. What kind of stupid fucking country would elect a convicted felon with up to three trials and at least two appeals coming up? The stupidest kind, that's who. And Trump calling Biden a criminal was fucking absurd. Trump was allowed to be at the debate because he's fucking out on fucking bail. And all that criminality got almost no mention except for a single question, as if the moderators were ignoring those facts, including that Trump's a fucking rapist. How come no one is pressuring Republicans to get the convicted felon and rapist who's out on bail to drop out? We should be constantly appalled by the idea that Trump is running and he has so much support, despite his crimes. 

Frankly, that's the most degrading part of this whole fucking race, not Biden acting his age.

Louisiana Wants to Put a Sign About Fucking in Kindergarten Classrooms

The state of Louisiana, with its overwhelmingly batshit insane Republican legislature and its even more bugfuck insane Republican governor, have passed a law that requires all public-funded schools, including universities, to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. In case you don't know, the Ten Commandments are from the fictional book known as "The Bible." In that epic novel, a character named Moses is given stone tablets by the character God containing ten pretty simplistic, common sense ideas, the kind of shit that fiction writers make seem way more meaningful than it actually is. I mean, c'mon, "thou shalt not kill"? No shit. Ooh, look at the big brain on God. Any fuckin' idiot knows not to kill or steal. But, sure, let's all pretend like this is some huge fuckin' revelation. Oh, and only Christians and Jews give a flying fuck about what's in this Bible thing. All other faiths and atheists can fuck off, but give us your tax money to spend on all this. 

The law itself is completely fucking mad. This is an actual quote from the law: "At a minimum, the Ten Commandments shall be displayed on a poster or framed document that is at least eleven inches by fourteen inches. The text of the Ten Commandments shall be the central focus of the poster or framed document and shall be printed in a large, easily readable font." There aren't enough jacking-off gestures to make at that. 

It gives the exact language that must be used on the Ten Commandments posters that, again, are supposed to be in every public school classroom. And it's some old school King James shit, as in "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee" and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is thy neighbor's." That is really in a real law passed by real adults in the real 21st-century in a real state in this increasingly unreal country. 

And, interestingly, it includes, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." According to every religious scholar I bothered to read for this, that commandment is about fucking. Don't fuck someone else's spouse. Or, conversely, if you're married, don't fuck anyone not your spouse. You can say it's about other things, too, but that doesn't take away from the fact that the Seventh Commandment is clearly and intentionally about intercourse. The act of sex. Fucking. 

The state of Louisiana has said that "Each public school governing authority and the governing authority of each nonpublic school that receives state funds shall display the Ten Commandments in each building it uses and classroom in each school under its jurisdiction." So it has to go up, with this required language, in the classrooms of pre-K kids, kindergarteners, and first graders. Which means that "Thou shalt not commit adultery" will be right there in front of thousands of Louisiana's small children. 

Lemme state this as clearly as possible: the Republican governor and the Republican legislature of Louisiana are forcing kids as young as four years-old to be faced, every single day they are in school, with a poster-sized list of rules that includes no fucking outside of marriage. 

Children being children, I think they might have questions about this whole "adultery" thing. How will those questions be answered? Will the teacher be allowed to say, "According to God, your mommy shouldn't have sex with your best friend's mommy or daddy"? Will they explain sex? Will they be allowed to explain sex? Louisiana law says that you can't teach about fucking until 7th grade (unless you live in New Orleans, where it's third grade. No, really). The teacher couldn't hand a child a book about adultery, like, say, the works of Louisiana writer Kate Chopin. That would likely run afoul of other laws that prevent children from having access to reading material that contains anything that's sexually explicit. Except, I guess, "Don't fuck around on your spouse" being on the wall in your 5 year-old's music classroom. Let alone "manservant" and "maidservant." 

The stupidest part of this whole thing is that Louisiana is almost always on the bottom of the nation when it comes to education, and this is the the shit that the politicians wasted their time on. It's also the kind of shit that happens when you no longer have a Democratic governor to occasionally say, "Knock it off, right-wing fuckers." This was done to please a core constituency of Christian zealots and to keep them donating to support their dickhole legislators who probably break half of the commandments before lunch. 

And part of that little performance is to make sure that the ACLU sues so the dickholes can act like they are standing up to the big city liberals. Of course, the ACLU is suing, along with other organizations, because this is a blatant establishment of religion by a government using public funds. So instead of spending the money to make their children a little smarter than their parents, millions of dollars will be wasted on years of litigation in the hopes that the Supreme Court will be deluded and Jesus-humping enough to allow this fuckery to happen. 

As someone from Louisiana, who went to public schools in Louisiana, who was a student when Louisiana had its teaching of creationism shot down by the Supreme Court, this is just fucking embarrassing, like the red states have to compete with each other to show that they are the most evangelical fucknuts in the whole Christian nationalist asylum and Louisiana just pulled ahead in the moron race.

One thing I look forward to is that if the Ten Commandments posters are ever installed in every classroom, they will have dicks drawn on them inside 2 days of being put up. I believe in the children.