Is Biden ahead in the polls because of magical moderation?

[Update:] I did not yet know when I posted this a couple of hours ago that Michael Brooks, one of whose videos is embedded at the end of this post, passed away suddenly yesterday. This is really tragic news. A Variety has an article by Jordan Moreau on his death, Michael Brooks, Political Commentator and Podcast Host, Dies at 37 07/20/2020]

Ezra Klein provides a strange example of Beltway Village worship of "moderation" in How Biden is winning Vox 07/20/2020. Basically, he argues that Biden's current lead in the polls is a total validation of his pitch in the Democratic primaries that the voters are clamoring to Make America Boring Again and definitely to avoid the Democrats doing anything to address the intensity gap between The Democratic Party and the Trumpified but continually radicalizing Republican Party.

He describes what he calls "Biden’s view of the Republican Party":

He sees it not as a monolith but as a coalition. Some members of that coalition love Trump and will grieve his defeat. They’re not going to work with Biden, and he doesn’t expect to work with them. But some Senate Republicans dislike Trump, regret what their party has become, and are looking for redemption. What they need is a Democrat they can work with — a Democrat who doesn’t antagonize their voters and won’t rub their noses in their loss. What they need, Biden thinks, is Biden.

But this isn’t just Biden’s theory of governing. It’s also his theory of the campaign.

But Ezra's doesn't seem to realize that his argument that moderation on Biden's part is the basis of his popularity isn't entirely compatible with his additional observation that Biden's popularity is largely due to the fact that Joe Biden is not Bunker Boy. But, of course, that would also apply to any other Democratic Presidential candidate. He writes:

Trump’s approach to politics and lethal mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic have also given Biden an advantage, in part by neutralizing Trump’s ability to distract the country with feuds and flotsam, and in part by ensuring Democrats are mobilized to vote against Trump no matter what Biden does. Biden can take base mobilization somewhat for granted because Trump will do much of the work for him. “Trump is great at energizing his base,” says political scientist Alan Abramowitz. “But he’s equally good or even better at activating the Democratic base.”

Of all the very, very foolish things Democrats might do, being complacent about turnout would be the most politically irresponsible. It's worth recalling that the Hillary Clinton campaign made a similar complacent assumption. We know how that turned out.

Ezra's analysis of Biden's approach to the Senate filibuster rule plains also scares me (to put it mildly):

My question [in an interview last week] was simple. Democrats don’t have a path to 60 seats in the Senate. So how will Biden keep his agenda from dying at the hands of the filibuster? Would he support filibuster reform, or elimination? Biden’s reply was his campaign in miniature, reflecting both the instincts that have made him successful and the caution that has frustrated many on the left.

“I think it’s going to depend on how obstreperous they” — meaning Republicans — “become, and if they become that way,” he replied. “I have not supported the elimination of the filibuster because it has been used as often to protect rights I care about as the other way around. But you’re going to have to take a look at it.”

That answer, which reflected a genuine shift in Biden’s rhetoric on the issue, made some headlines. But it wasn’t the end of Biden’s argument. “I’ll say something outrageous,” he continued. “I think I have a pretty good record of pulling together Democrats and Republicans.” He went on to say many Senate Republicans will feel “a bit liberated” by Trump’s defeat and may be ready to work with Democrats on issues like infrastructure and racial inequality.

“In my career, I have never expected a foreign leader or a member of Congress to appear in the second-edition Profiles in Courage,” Biden said. “But I’m fairly good at understanding the limitations for a senator or leader and helping them navigate around to what they want to do from what they’re having political trouble doing. I have been successful in helping my Republican friends find rationales to help me get what I’m pushing over the top.” [my emphasis]

I can believe based on his career that Biden may actually believe he can charm Republicans into being reasonable on substantive issues critical to the Democratic Party. But the idea that Republicans will suddenly start actingwith  the "Tip-'n-Ronnie" comaraderie that Beltway pundits still take as their model of nicey-nice bipartisanship is delusional. And when Reagan became President in 2001, there were still substatial remnants of the situation from previous decades in which liberal-conservative divisions on some major actually did cut across party lines.And the Republicans hadn't just had two Presidencies whose seriously lawless action were not just countenanced be actively enabled by the Republicans in Congress.

Here's another examle of what asymmetric partisan polarization looks like.

House Democrats just forcefully responded to the #Portland situation by...

[squints at screen]

...obediently passing Trump's Homeland Security appropriations bill https://t.co/nwm1TnZXGK

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) July 19, 2020

Meanwhile, Bunker Boy is threatening to veto the Republican Holy of Holies, the Pentagon budget, unless it's changed to reduce the amount of Covid-19 testing available inside the US.

That's asymmetric partisan polarization. And once again, the Republicans get what they won't, the Democrats don't get what they want. Even when, in this case, what the Democrats want is to do something responsible to deal with a pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of Americans just this year.

Michael Brooks has a brief discussion from a left (pro-Bernie) perspective about some elements of Biden's program that are at least positive proposals that the pro-labor left can approve, even though they are insufficient to the challenges and opportunities of a new Democratic Administration. What Biden’s Campaign Is Getting Right (TMBS 148) 07/17/2020:

Notice how the Lincoln Project campaigns against Bunker Boy

Despite my serious doubts about the motives of the Lincoln Project backers, I'm glad they are running these hard-htiing spots. But I also think it's time for the Democratic Party to be seriously embarrassed that they are letting Republicans do the aggressive campaigning for them. One of numerous things out of joint in 2020.

This qualifies as an actual "antifa" spot, because it is calling out the "fa": How It Starts 07/20/2020:

Something else strikes me about the Lincoln Project pitches. They may be a gaggle of neocons who really hate Trump because they think he's not competent enough at starting wars. (I'll be happy for them to prove me wrong after the election.)

But I don't remember any of their ads making a pitch to those legendary creatures known as "moderate Republicans" reassuring them that, hey, it's okay to vote for Status Quo Joe because he really loves plutocracy and is completely committed to the notion that the wealthiest people should never ever have to pay taxes to support their country. These are turnout ads to motivate voters who already dislike or hate Trump to vote in November. This one even suggests that It's critical for the sans-coulottes to be protesting in the streets. These are definitely not ads aimed at converting some slice of the 35-40% who are devoted to Bunker Boy.

Bunker Boy and Biden address the politics of monuments, and Biden's is actually worth listening to

Bunker Boy read a maudlin speech at Mount Rushmore yesterday whose text obviously bored him to death except during the sentences inciting his elderly white core constituency against the scary black demonstrators. It's always mildly entertaining to hear him recite names of people he mostly couldn't identify if asked during a press conference or ordinary conversation.

NBC News has a YouTube of its live coverage, Trump speaks at Mount Rushmore event, with his speech beginning just after 1:15:00. Trump speaks at Mount Rushmore event:

Although the removing-statues moment is almost exclusively about monuments to the Confederacy, Trump praised statues of Washington and Jefferson in a bored tone. He didn't even allude to the, uh, special character of Confederate monuments.

Status Quo Joe did address the Confederate monument issue, as Eddy Rodriguez reports in Biden Says We Should 'Protect' Columbus, Washington and Jefferson Statues Newsweek 03/30/2020.

The monument protests come up at two different points in this video, just after 33:30 and 1:01:00. Biden delivers remarks on the Trump's response to the coronavirus Washington Post 06/30/2020:

SQJ managed to make a decent point about monument symbolism. Although he wouldn't be himself if he didn't manage to garble the message a bit. Still, he does make the point that Confederate symbolism stands for white racism and treason and people generally understand that's what it stands for, despite the Sons of Confederate Veterans types babbling about Heritage and their sacred honuh of their great-great-great-grandpappies.

Without explicitly offering advice to protesters, he actually managed to sound like he was giving a sympathetic suggestion to protesters to keep their focus on Confederate monuments and not blur the message by making issues of those whose symbolism is not so clearly identified by the general public. When pressed on the unauthorized removal of Confederate statues, Biden understandably expressed a preference for normal procedures, citing the Mississippi Legislature's recent decision to dump the Confederate-themed official state flag:

But I can understand, I can understand the anger and anguish that people feel by having for years and years, then under the statue  of Robert E. Lee, who, if you're an African-American. So, it's a difference. It's always better to do it peacefully. But there's a distinction between, in, those monuments, and - I shift responsibility and I'm not, I think,  the elected officials where those statues are have a responsibility to move. Put them in museums. Get them down.

But don't expect, if you have sittin' in front of you all these years, and we finally, finally, are going through another phase of maybe responding to the systemic racism in America, and what's we seen happen is, don't be surprised if someone pulls down the statue of Jefferson Davis. It's better that they do not. But it's fundamentally different than pulling down the statue, or going into the Lincoln Memorial and tryin' to pull, you know, a - not Lincoln Memorial, that's a bad example - the Jefferson Memorial, and grabbing Jefferson off his chair. [my emphasis]

That is not nearly so clear for most other public monument themes. I'd be happy to help someone pull down a Grover Cleveland statue. But good luck trying to explain the symbolism of that in a 15-second TV report. Hint: Cleveland's explicitly expressed philosophy of government was, "though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people."

Trumpism and pre-Trumpism

Another reminder that Bunker Boy is bad in his own unique way and is changing the US government radically for the worst. But Trumpism also didn't appear out of nowhere. The Republican Party created it, and the Democratic Party far too often abetted the process.

Angela Dewan and Jennifer Hansler report (CNN 06/08/2020):

The US' credibility has taken another dent over the past two weeks. Current and former diplomats told CNN the events at home were "scary" and "heartbreaking" to watch -- and also undermined their mission. A current State Department official said that America's "moral standing is challenged."

But the erosion of the country's moral credibility didn't begin with Trump. America's so-called war against terror and the abuses that came with it, such as those in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, was a major turning point. Some of that was remedied under the Obama administration, but even then, the US continued to violate rights abroad as the wars trundled on.

Trump's three years in office have expedited that erosion, in part by his failure to lead by example at home, said Rob Berschinski, who worked for the US State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor during the Obama years. [my emphasis]

The American political system is currently badly broken. From asymmetric partisan polarization to the militarization of the police to the collapse of the will of Congress to maintain essential Constitutional checks to the massive corruption of money in politics to the massive inequality and institutionalized white racism that underpins the system, the problems cannot be fixed only by substituting a minimally competent President for Bunker Boy.

Al Gore, who was rightfully elected President in 2000 but was blocked from taking office by a system already badly failing, wrote about the cycles of security scares in American history, with particular reference to the post-9/11 one, wrote in The Assault on Reason (2007), published the year that Season 5 of The Apprentice began:

Former Supreme Court justice William Brennan commented on this cycle once, writing, ''After each perceived security crisis ended, the United States has remorsefully realized that the abrogation of civil liberties was unnecessary. But it has proven unable to prevent itself from repeating the error when the next crisis came along."

There are also reasons for concern this time around that what we are experiencing may no longer be the first half of a recurring cycle, but rather the beginning of something new. For one thing, this war is predicted by the administration to last for the rest of our lives. So we are told that the conditions of national threat that have been used by other presidents to justify arrogations of power will persist in near perpetuity. Some have expressed the view that over time it will begin to resemble the "war" against drugs - that is, it will become a more or less permanent struggle that occupies a significant part of our law enforcement and security agenda from now on. If that is the case, then when - if ever - does this encroachment on our freedoms die a natural death? [my emphasis]

Bunker Boy Chaos

Is this a man who will submit to a free and fair election?

Not if he can help it.

Indeed, Trump appears to have no interest in being president in the traditional sense. He’s king of the white people in the red states. Anybody who voted against him is an enemy.

To the extent that MAGA means anything, it means restoring the social conditions of the Deep South in the 1950s, an impossible delusion. [my emphasis]

That's Gene Lyons in 2020 is bad, and it’s not half over Chicago Sun-Times 06/04/2020.

He also explains some basic facts about President Bunker Boy:

Chaos is Trump’s only talent. Empowered by false bravado and Daddy’s (and/or Russian mob) money, Trump blunders into something he does not and cannot understand — the casino business, airlines, professional football, now the U.S. government. He listens to nobody, makes one foolhardy blunder after another, bankrupts or otherwise destroys the enterprise, betrays everyone who trusted him, and blames everybody but himself for the disaster.

However, Trump impersonated a business tycoon on a TV show. Millions bought the con. It’s taken him three years and a viral pandemic to bring America to a state of near breakdown, but he’s finally got us there.

So now this most godless of men has taken to posing in front of religious shrines with a Bible. [my emphasis]

Joe Conason notes, "Under ordinary circumstances, open dissent from high-ranking military officials against the actions of civilian political leaders would signal a danger familiar to other countries." (A Timely Warning From The Generals National Memo 06/05/2020)

But in the recent case of former senior military officers issuing serious warning about the illegal use of the military inside the United States:

Speaking out in defense of constitutional order, these retired officers articulated a fundamental principle: Unlawful orders to fire on fellow Americans are not to be obeyed. We live in a republic, not a dictatorship. And should Trump or his cohort harbor any militaristic fantasies about the upcoming election — which he appears likely to lose — well, this uplifting episode marked a line that they shouldn't dare cross.

Wesley Clark talks about the issue in this CNN clip: Retired general: Mattis' statement does two powerful things 06/04/2020. This is an additional clip from the same day from Clark on Sen. Tom Cotton couldn't be more wrong.

He's glad to be a Bunker Boy

Singer-songwriter Courtney Jaye commenorates President Bunker Boy Epic News 06/04/2020 (not entirely suitable for office play):

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