Stupid parlor tricks

It's all about perception, and Americans are not in love with Joe Biden

There’s a key difference between the American political class and the polity, and you can clearly see it in microcosm looking at the Washington, D.C. Republican primary, which Nikki Haley won with two-thirds of the votes. D.C. is the highest educated city in America, and its average salary is well above the national average.

The political class in America has the benefit of “luxury beliefs” as Rob Henderson calls them. These are ideals that confer and convey status to those who hold them. Progressives tend to have luxury beliefs which allow them to suspend reality on many issues: like Hamas raping Israeli women, or the viability of Joe Biden as a presidential candidate.

Photo by Alev Takil on Unsplash

There’s a difference between holding luxury beliefs and seeing reality as it is. Conservatives who can put down their own self-interest, politically, or humble bloggers like me and David Thornton, whose careers and fortunes don’t depend on what our readers think (thank you for reading!), see through the veil of Trumpism and observe it for what it is: a grift. Personally, I cannot support a grift or the cult of personality surrounding a grifter, and therefore, like Mark Cuban, I would not vote for Donald Trump, and suffer Joe Biden even if “they were having his last wake, and it was him versus Trump, and he was being given last rites.”

Of course, Mark Cuban has the benefit of being super wealthy, and doesn’t have to worry about paying the mortgage, or the rent, or the price of milk. Cuban will do well no matter who is president. But the rest of the country can’t afford to be so aloof.

There’s a series of polls Siena College and the New York Times has been running every day dealing with how Americans look at the political race. FiveThirtyEight rates Siena among the most reliable pollsters. Yesterday’s poll noted that across age, race, or gender, more Americans think Trump’s policies helped them than Joe Biden’s. A full 43 percent of voters think Biden’s policies have hurt them personally, compared with 40 percent who say Trump’s policies helped them (with Biden getting 18% in that category).

Sunday’s poll dealt with Biden’s age, and similarly, most voters (73 percent) strongly agree (47%) or somewhat agree (26%) that Biden is too old to be an effective president. This is compared to 42 percent for Trump, with 32% saying they “strongly disagree” (only 11% for Biden).

Most chilling, the poll asked “Regardless of who you support, who do you think will win the 2024 presidential election?” Only 39 percent think Biden will win—only 57% of white, college educated voters. Among Black voters, 41% think Biden will win, and 38% think Trump will win. Among Hispanics, 52% believe Trump will win. With women, 13% more women think Trump will win than Biden.

Perception isn’t everything, but it’s a lot.

American voters are mad. They see high prices in the supermarkets, rent increases, insurance increases, high interest rates, growing credit card debt, and they’re mad. Young people are hopeless and mad. They see housing prices removing the possibility of them becoming homeowners in the foreseeable future. They see many jobs in their preferred fields so competitive and drying up due to remote work and offshore competition. Non-white voters are mad. They see wealthy progressives imposing their luxury beliefs on various “intersectional” topics and anti-family policies, but expecting them to go along because they’re liberal.

Voters are mad, and they’re worried, and they don’t believe Joe Biden can do the job. They don’t believe he will win, and they will not be surprised if he loses to Donald Trump.

And the political class responds with stupid parlor tricks, like claiming the Supreme Court of the United States is in a coma, or worse, in some nefarious agreement to let Trump win. Ian Millhiser, writing in Vox, said the “courts, it is now crystal clear, are not going to do much of anything to prevent an insurrectionist former president from occupying the White House once again. And the Supreme Court appears to be actively running interference on Trump’s behalf.”

The Supreme Court was unanimous that Colorado’s Supreme Court had it wrong when they allowed Trump to be removed from the primary ballot (and therefore the general election ballot). The reasoning each Justice used was different, but in general they all held that the 14th Amendment is not self-actuating, or that a state doesn’t have the power to claim that power for itself. To most people who saw the issue as it is from the beginning, this is not a surprise, or evidence of collusion. It’s just the Court doing jurisprudence for the country.

But the political class, the progressives with their luxury beliefs, want to use stupid parlor tricks to keep Trump away from the Oval Office.

As they found out in 2016, this not only doesn’t work, but is turned to Trump’s advantage, because it’s part of the grift that the “system” hates him. But they can’t help it because they really believe that the country can afford a little law-bending, a little petty corruption of the legal system, a little political targeting, a little arm-twisting of private companies for things that other private companies get away with, because the target is Donald J. Trump.

Trump deserved to be impeached and convicted for his role in January 6th, 2021. He brought the crowd. He spoke to the crowd. He refused to tell the crowd to go home until the damage was done. He denounced his own Vice President. He encouraged Congress to violate the law and the Constitution. He did all these things, and yet the Senate chose to be “Republican” over “American.” Blame Republicans. This will be part of outgoing Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s legacy, and not a good look.

But it can’t be “fixed up” by political and legal stupid parlor tricks, or political self-promotion by state attorneys general like Letitia James, or district attorneys like Alvin Bragg or Fani Willis. The federal case by special prosecutor Jack Smith won’t move forward until after November. This is reality.

The only way Trump can be effectively defeated is to defeat him politically. But Democrats, beholden to the political class and progressive luxury beliefs, have suspended reality that Biden is unpopular and, as things stand today, will lose the general election.

There is no way to make Trump more unpopular than he is today. But as my brother Jay has been saying, “Biden loses ten votes a day.” He’s not loved, and he’s not regarded as capable. There may be no way to keep Biden from continuing to lose popularity. He should step aside. There are other Democrats who could at least be compelling speakers and appear to be competent (like Gov. Gavin Newsom).

On Thursday, President Biden will stand before Congress and give his State of the Union address. Reality says it’s likely Biden will gaffe, lose his place, or otherwise present himself foolishly at least once or twice during the speech. Parlor tricks will say he’s just fine and look at the vigorous, energetic, mentally engaged president.

He should step aside and let another Democrat beat Trump. I hate to pray for failure, but maybe if Biden so fumbles the SOTU that nobody can deny his unfitness, Democrats will wake up and save the situation. I doubt it. They’ll go on pretending, and trying more parlor tricks all the way to November, when there’s a high probability we will wake up to another Trump term.

The political class will wail and gnash their teeth. But the polity can blame those very people for the result. Just like we can blame the GOP Senate for not disposing of Trump in 2021, it will be the Democrats fault, and their stupid parlor tricks, for not disposing of him in 2024.