The Carpentariat

Dr. Rudy Giuliani on Joe Biden's health. (Here we go again.)

Media Matters preserves for our pleasure Dr. Giuliani's gerontological expertise, now that he's had time to consult with colleagues: Biden is demented, "there's no doubt about it," says the good doctor from Moscow. What's extra amusing is watching Fox & Friends' hosts — F&Fs' hosts, mind you — clearly wishing that Rudy would shut the fuck up.

On Fox & Friends, Rudy Giuliani says Joe Biden "has dementia. There's no doubt about it. I've talked to doctors. ... The president's quite right to say maybe he's taken adderall." The hosts get visibly uncomfortable. pic.twitter.com/2Ma7DKNBpS

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) September 29, 2020

Trump "shouldn’t be underestimated" before debate

Politico correspondent Ryan Lizza concludes a lengthy piece on Trump's 2016 debating "style" against Hillary Clinton and what it might portend for Joe Biden:

"Last time around Trump learned to master and dominate the debates in the Republican primary, and he was extraordinarily effective against someone as skilled as Hillary Clinton in  the three general election debates. He shouldn’t be underestimated."

I was glad to see Lizza setting exceptions for Trump perhaps far higher than they have been. Since the president has taken two brutal beatings in only the last month — from Woodward, immediately followed by the New York Times — viewers may expect to see a broken grifter take the stage with his tie between his legs. But given Trump's congenital nastiness of historic proportions, adversity is more likely to make him even more aggressive in assaulting Biden and acting the strongman.

It won't be enough, though, as long as the former vice president's behavior is the presidential one. That is just about the only bar Biden must meet.

The still-persuadable voter and debate game

From Monmouth's latest polling, released yesterday:

"About 3 in 4 voters (74%) plan to watch the first presidential debate live on Tuesday night, although just 3% say that they are very likely to hear something that will impact their eventual vote choice. Another 10% say this is somewhat likely to happen.... These results are practically identical to a Monmouth poll taken right before the first debate in September 2016, when 75% planned to watch that event live while very few said it was likely to affect their vote (2% very and 10% somewhat)."

Since about a quarter of voters don't intend to watch tonight's debate, we may assume that they are part of the largely resolute 87%. Patrick Murray, Monmouth's director of polling, framed the viewership in a sports metaphor: "The audience for these debates are voters who already have a rooting interest in one side or the other." After all, how many spectators, indifferent as to who wins, attend a baseball or football game?

Added Murray: "The spin and media framing after the fact is more important for potentially moving the small group of persuadable voters who remain." According to Monmouth's polling, that persuadable group hovers somewhere in the 10% to 13% range, unless a significant portion just wanted to impress the surveyor by sounding open-minded.

To me, however, any persuadable voter — at this late stage — is just plain frightening. Anyone who isn't by now convinced that Trump is an irredeemable, treacherous scoundrel is either so ill informed or uselessly naive as to be nearly as dangerous as Trump to the republic's welfare. There is, quite simply, no excuse for any unincarcerated citizen to entertain even the temptation to cast a ballot for a shockingly unAmerican US president.

But they're out there — millions of them. And so Biden must play the debate game. Yesterday E.J. Dionne populated his column with five recommendations on how the former vice president should proceed (remind — often — the audience that "they cannot believe a word Trump is saying," don't be defensive, etc.).

Biden should be able to go on stage, point at Trump, say to the audience, Are you kidding me? — and then leave. But, no, he must play the game.

Trump trots out his favorite fallacy

From a Times article on the Times' article: "Trump initially called the Times [tax return] article 'totally fake news' on Sunday, and then shifted to falsely accusing the paper of basing the report on illegally obtained information about his finances."

This is possibly the most asinine — and therefore more commonly used by Trump — logical fallacy in the argumentation playbook: Dear reader, viewer, or voter, what you just learned as fact means nothing since it came to you illegally.

It didn't, of course, but that's another argument. Backed up by hours of propagandistic gibberish about dark liberal forces from Hannity, Ingraham, Limbaugh & Co., Trump's base falls for the fallacy every time. That, or the base uses the Trump-dispensed fallacy to also disingenuously distract from the non-availability of a logical defense. 

It would make no difference if the Times' material came from Satan himself. We need only know if the material is valid. Which it is. End of story.

The debate's starting gun has already sounded

I will be strongly demanding a Drug Test of Sleepy Joe Biden prior to, or after, the Debate on Tuesday night. Naturally, I will agree to take one also. His Debate performances have been record setting UNEVEN, to put it mildly. Only drugs could have caused this discrepancy???

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2020

(Is "strongly demanding" similar to "severely conservative"??? We aggressively need to know.)

Has the president ever read transcripts of his interviews, or debates — sorry, Debates — with Hillary? They are wonders of incoherence and incongruities. 

I've been reading that the Trump campaign has ceased to taunt Biden about mental acuity, given their unseemly conflation of stuttering and misspeaking, Trump's regular savaging of the English language, and Biden's vast and conspicuous superiority in matters of clarity. But Trump  himself just can't help himself; he's never met a taunt he didn't like.

The tweet does make clear, however, how Trump (still) intends to go after the former vice president: as though America's crudest bully is at third-grade recess. 

It's Biden by 10, still - and Trump's tax fraud is unlikely to increase it

I'll wager the NYT story on Trump's tax returns and remarkably incompetent business career will change the polling numbers not one bit. This presidential miscreant will simply say his tax avoidance "makes me smart." And his gullible base will applaud him for it. 

The chief question still hangs. Where has Trump been getting his cash? To that, we all know the answer, which, one hopes, the Times will definitively expose soon. As the paper concedes, his tax returns do not reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia, however "additional articles will be published in the coming weeks." Not that that will disillusion his base, either. But for now, I see the Times' tax-return preview, if you will, as something less than a "blockbuster" story — hence the following numbers are quite likely to hold. 

Released yesterday, the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll shows Joe Biden with another double-digit lead over Trump, whether among registered voters (53 percent to 43 percent) or likely voters (54 percent to 44 percent). Yesterday's New York Times-Sienna poll showed roughly the same: Biden leading by 8 points. Both polls are rated A+ by FiveThirtyEight.

The Post notes that "national polling reflects only the potential popular vote for president and is not a direct indicator of the state-by-state competition for electoral votes." An 8-10 point lead is, however, a strong indirect indicator of rather uniform leads in battleground states, since absent those, the nominee could not be significantly ahead nationwide.

As with other major surveys of late, the Post-ABC poll finds Biden pretty much mopping up the floor with Trump. The latter, once again, has a secure lead among males (55 percent to 42 percent), because we're idiots. Yet Biden crushes Trump among women (65 percent to 34 percent), which, observes the Post, "is more than twice as large as Clinton’s was." Astounding.

Less astounding but more commanding is the former vice president's lead among all non-white voters 53 points (76 percent to 23 percent). He also captures the 65+ vote by 5 points (52 percent to 47 percent).

And dumbfounding is the way I'd describe the enthusiasm gap of nearly 20 points: "65 percent of those currently favoring Trump say they are very enthusiastic about that support," reports the Post. "Among those backing Biden, 47 percent of registered voters say they are very enthusiastic about their support for him."

Democrats finally have the opportunity to dethrone the nation's most dangerous man and only about half are "very enthusiastic" about it? One would think they'd all be doing Daffy Duck backflips, no matter the nominee's name. That half of them are not is simply baffling.

***

But, whatever. That's Dems for you, as always, so I shan't fret. Besides, it's time for my $1,000 haircut, so I can mask my balding little head and deduct the ridiculous thing from next year's taxes on my vast, invisible income.

Amy's Dominion

That you will always keep in mind that your legal career is but a means to an end, and as Father Jenkins told you this morning, that end is building the kingdom of God.

—Amy Coney Barrett in a 2006 speech to Notre Dame graduates

Now that's some scary stuff — just whose kingdom? — which has as much business sitting on the US Supreme Court as Trump has in the White House.

This nation is the world's oldest representative democracy precisely because it was founded on secular grounds, thereby avoiding the kinds of combative religious fanaticism that had plagued and bloodied Europe for centuries. A failure or refusal to embrace such fundamental historical background belies her Scalia-mentored reputation of "intellectual rigor."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein put it perfectly in 2017 at Barrett's appeals court hearing: "When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country."

The senator's remark was a sober, religiously unprejudiced opinion directed only at intoxicated religious bias, which had no business on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, either.

Yet Senate Republicans will, as they are invariably wont to do, battle Democrats' conscientious, dispassionate objections to Barrett's peculiar beliefs "by daring liberals to demonize a religious woman," writes the Times.

Such is the essence of cheap demagoguery, without which the Republican Party would cease to exist. Let us pray.

​​​​​I have discontinued seasonal fundraisers, but that doesn't mean I can do this without you. These posts don't write themselves. They take time and investment, the first of which I supply in abundance, the second of which I can meet only so far. You are the critical bridge, the essential lifeline, between this site's survival and no more. So please click "Donate" and do what you can. It is most appreciated.

Thank you —PM

Hot damn, a possibly possible conspiracy theory

Fareed Zakaria recaps a Trump-election-stealing theory — in effect, a possibly legitimate conspiracy theory — that is growing in speculative weight, which I'll compress even further:

* Post-Election Day, Republicans contest thousands of mail-in ballots, causing a blizzard of Democratic countersuits.

* This creates such mayhem, confusion and delay that states must choose their presidential electors themselves.

* Eight of the nine swing states have Republican legislatures, which choose Republican electors; Democratic governors or perhaps Democratic secretaries of state choose a competing, equally partisan slate of electors.

* Now we have twice the confusion when some of the electors' legitimacy are challenged; hence when Congress meets on 6 January to add up the Electoral votes, the votes of those states hopelessly enmeshed in legal conflict are simply not counted.

* This deprives both nominees of the 270 Electoral-vote threshold.

* The election goes to Congress, as mandated by the Constitution.

* Each state has one vote, among whom there are presently 26 Republican delegations, 23 Democratic delegations, and one tied.

* Thus another soul-killing four years of Trump's hell, at the end of which we are irretrievably toast.

Trump, suggests Zakaria, is knowingly, premeditatively involved in the GOP strategy, or conspiracy, if you like; the columnist notes this remark at a 16 September presidential press conference: "At a certain point, it goes to Congress. You know, at a certain point, it goes to Congress. You know that."

No, we don't. That's just one possible outcome among several. Plus we can't be entirely sure that Republicans' three-vote edge in Congress (as of today) would hold. If the nation votes overwhelmingly for Biden — which I believe it will — leaving no doubt whatsoever as to the victor, we could see an honest-to-God mass insurrection in this country were Republicans to ruthlessly dictate the loser-as-winner. And that might be enough of a haunting spectre for merely three Republican delegations to say, no thanks.

Or, Melania leaving the White House, Jan. 20th

One can dream.

Danger! GOP warns of one-party rule!

Two weeks ago, NeverTrumper Tom Nichols amused us and himself by recalling the duplicity of his former comrades:

"Would-be Madisonians among the Republicans warn that no party should have untrammeled access to the levers of power—and especially not the Democrats…. If Joe Biden is allowed to run the executive branch without a Republican Senate, America will become a one-party state that sooner or later will fall under the boot of the dreaded Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez…. This faux constitutionalism is naked hypocrisy: I do I do not recall, during my days in the GOP, anyone on the right ever pleading that Americans should leave at least a few Democrats in office so that we Republicans would not go crazy and start force-feeding Ayn Rand or Friedrich Hayek to impressionable schoolchildren."

Not that the Washington Post's hysterical, pseudoconservatively saturated Marc Thiessen is even a would-be Madisonian; nevertheless he did laughably affirm, of late, Nichols' spoofing of these clowns:

"If Biden wins, Democrats will likely keep the House and retake the Senate, though without the 60-vote majority needed to break a Republican filibuster. That means the only check on their absolute power will be the GOP minority."

The America-First, Trump-Second healthcare plan

It's an extraordinary thing to witness: Trump's hate-filled, inexhaustible obsession with President Obama.

In his latest demonstration of fixating on a man a thousand times his superior, yesterday he signed an executive order "to affirm it is the official policy of the United States government to protect patients with preexisting conditions." That's how Trump put it in a speech. And this is how the Washington Post dryly put it: Yes, Trump said what he said, "despite the fact such protections are already enshrined in law."

But Obama was the first to enshrine the protections in law, so in Trump's fevered brain all memory of "Obama"-care had to go. "Obamacare is no longer Obamacare, as we worked on it and managed it very well," continued Trump. "What we have now is a much better plan. It is no longer Obamacare because we got rid of the worse part of it — the individual mandate."

Then, just to top things off, just to finish replacing the sublime with the ridiculous, he said "We’ve really become the health-care party — the Republican Party."

If Trump actually believed that, I'm rather sure he would have blathered his speech in something more than a monotonal, sleep-inducing tone. Here's a sample, though I doubt you'll endure its entire two minutes.

Quote of all times

It’s impossible to underscore how absolutely extraordinary this situation is — there are really no precedents in our country. This is a president who has threatened to jail his political opponents. Now he is suggesting he would not respect the results of an election. These are serious warning signs.

—Chris Edelson, American University presidential historian

No more seasonal fundraisers …

Just occasional reminders that:

I can't do this without you. That's something of a cliché, I know, but it's a truthful one. Some readers may find this shocking, but the posts herein don't write themselves. They take time and investment, the first of which I supply in toto; the second of which I can meet only so far. You are the critical bridge, the essential lifeline, between this site's survival and no more. So please click "Donate" and do what you can. It will be most appreciated. Thank you. —PM 

The GOP's enormous stamina

Axios reports that several congressional Republicans — from Rep. Liz Cheney, "The peaceful transfer of power is enshrined in our Constitution," to Sen. Ben Sasse, "We’ve always had a peaceful transition of power" — have pushed back against … who, why, for what reason?

Notes Axios: "None of the statements issued so far directly mention Trump by name — or why they're speaking out on the issue now."

Not even the president's threat to overturn American democracy can compel these cowards to condemn Trump by his gilded, disgraced name. One can already hear them — passive voice — on 21 January, as His Bloatedness clings by his nails to the Resolute Desk: "The peaceful transfer of power was enshrined in our Constitution" … shhhh, "but hey, life is all about change; let's not hold grudges."