RHETORICAL CRITIC

Now that the SCOTUS has not just gone off the rails, but denied there is a railroad track by giving the office of the president carte blanche, I suggest our current President take the following actions, and label them clearly as actions that derive from his “constitutional duties” throughout the process:

1. Appoint three new justices to the Supreme Court from the current shortlist. The more liberal, the better.
2. If Senate votes on them, the Democratic votes are there, and they will be seated. If the Senate doesn’t vote due to the GOP blocking the vote, seat them anyway, declaring the Senate’s advice as per the Constitution was effectively waived. Do not wait more than a month after the initial appointments to do this. August is perfect as they will start hearing cases again then.
3. The three new justices arrive for work. If the current justices allow them to participate, great. If they don’t, declare any blockading justices have abandoned their duties and appoint immediate replacements. See step two for details. In the meantime, the other justices start hearing cases on schedule or they get the same treatment.
4. Employ Capitol police, the FBI, and any other law enforcement agencies as necessary to ensure the Court continues to function.
5. Remind everyone in the press daily that you are only “exercising your constitutional duties” by taking these actions in accordance with the recent SCOTUS ruling. Perhaps give them a lecture in the powers of the executive branch while you’re at it.

This is the mildest reasonable response I can muster.

The checks and balances system only works if there are both checks and balances.

It’s 2024. I am not willing to serve a king, and neither should you.

It took me awhile to find a halfway reasonable take on the debate fallout, but here it is: “The pundit class turned on Biden. Does it matter?” Best quote:

“I was staying up late listening to everybody freak out on the phone calling Joe. And I literally was just shaking my head, going, ‘These people need to get diapers,’” she said.

What’s left of the GOP is awful, but the Democrats could learn a thing from them about loyalty. If they actually want to persuade Biden to step away from the nomination, drop-kicking him in less than a day isn’t the way to demonstrate you have his best interests in mind – or to show you give half a shit about anyone, or the electoral process, for that matter.

Last night’s presidential debate was awful.

There isn’t much decency left in public discourse, and the only glimpse in that debate came from a struggling Biden. The moderators were wooden automatons, and despite their rules, Trump raved on, ignoring every question and subverting the process, a complete caricature of even his 2016 self. At several points I wondered if he had been replaced with a orange-slathered robot. At this point, there is no real difference. Did it ever matter to Trump voters?

The press have already surrounded Biden like vultures. And, yeah, he’s old. He looks old. He acts old. His stutter was present in force.

But he also answered all the questions. And when he misspoke, he corrected himself. Trump didn’t bother with either. He was only there to strut his tail-feathers.

And yet the call is for Biden to step down. Sure, he should listen to them… when those same voices tell Trump to do the same just as loudly.

The best lesson here is not that Biden should walk away, but that both candidates should. The entire country deserves better.

But if what little is left of the GOP can blindly accept Trump’s empty bluster as statesmanship, then the skittish Democrats can accept Biden’s hesitant but solid counsel. I heard a guy who backs NATO and Ukraine to the hilt, who wants Roe back, who wants to raise taxes on the rich and reduce health care costs.

Any electable Democrat will take exactly those same positions. Whether they are delivered by a 42-year-old or a 82-year-old makes no difference to me. He has a much younger VP if he falters.

And alas, the easiest way to tell who your friends are is to watch what happens when you falter.

As the debate concluded, I found himself thinking about the 1992 vice-presidential debate. I watched it live on television, as that was the only option – Quayle-Gore-Stockdale, also in Georgia.

Stockdale, Perot’s pick for VP, was relatively unknown to the audience. He may have been the most impressive VP candidate of the last hundred years: Medal of Honor recipient, Stoic scholar, a moral rock. I think about his f-you letter after resigning as president of The Citadel often, as it’s almost impossible to conceive of a college president acting solely out of principle in 2024.

He chose to begin with rhetorical questions – who am I, why am I here – which were initially well received, but his overall elderly manner and hearing aid clashed with the much younger Gore and Quayle. To their credit, they paid him deference. It was a different era.

And yet, it was exactly the same. The press turned those first rhetorical questions into a soundbite – and so that he didn’t know who he was (“Who am I?”) became the news.

Strangely enough, the foundation of Trump’s 2016 run lies in Perot’s 1992 political outsider “I’m a businessman” pitch. Perot/Stockdale went on to win 18.9% percent of the popular vote, the strongest finish of any third-party candidate since Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose run. Then again, that was much lower than where Perot had polled in the spring; Perot sank his campaign with increasingly weird behavior in July, which I suspect would have emerged later if not sooner. But it set a precedent.

So I’ll remind that this is still June. Potential July implosions have yet to spring forth. There’s still a lot that can happen before November.