I don’t see it. Not at the moment, anyway. At least not publicly.
Here we are in the penultimate date of March, 2020, in the midst of a pandemic not seen since 1918, in an election year in the United States, with Donald Trump polluting the airwaves daily with lies, disinformation, gaslighting and racist, misogynist insults from his campaign rallies in the Rose Garden and elsewhere. Which begs the question, how are Democrats and the DNC responding to this fusillade of bullshit?
Answer: Tepidly.
Which is very worrisome, some seven months and four days or so before the critical November general election.
What on earth are Democrats and the Democratic National Committee waiting for?
Their online national convention this July?
Odds are that the state of Wisconsin, a key state in the general election in 2016, will not be hosting a physical Democratic National Convention this July given the coronavirus pandemic.
Given this inevitability (especially since the Tokyo Olympics scheduled for late July were cancelled last week), what is the Democratic Party doing to combat and push back against Trump ahead of the November 3 general election? It is very troubling that Trump is virtually unchallenged as he continues to lie relentlessly to millions of people across the country.
So far the corporate news media has continued to cover his campaign rallies on coronavirus and today CNN actually cut away from the rally and then provided updates. This is what all of the corporate news media should be doing.
If some of the news media’s approach is to rightly truncate or avoid covering someone who has lied more than 17,000 times in the last three years, then the Democrats will also have to get tougher on Trump, whose lies get covered while the truth is swimming in the ether. These are the critical moments for the Democratic Party to actively be out front and center in full view of the American public.
My advice for the corporate and Establishment Democrats: do what you did at the start of this month when you coalesced around Joe Biden, tipping the balance for voters. Back then you were all over TV screens. It was you, Pete Buttigieg. You too, Cory Booker. And Beto O’Rourke. Amy Klobuchar. Kamala Harris. Joe Biden himself. They all expended more energy (and canned enthusiasm) in attacking or siding against Bernie Sanders than they have in attacking Trump for his abominable failures not just over the last three months but over the last three years.
Now, all those ex-candidates have been absent from TV. If they have been on, it is not to give strong State Of The Union-like responses to Trump’s daily pathological lies.
Their damning, overwhelming silence in the face of such brazen disregard by Trump of his constitutional oath of office…feels like assent.
Throughout the last few months but especially now, Joe Biden has at best been unsteady in his rebuttals to Trump, stumbling, staggering, sputtering, monotoned and without a hint of passion or urgency about a man who has willfully put thousands and potentially millions of American lives in danger with his inaction. Asked on Meet The Press yesterday whether Trump had blood on his hands, this was Biden’s answer:
Not the most encouraging fightback from the man who is just about 800 delegates away from the Democratic presidential nomination. In an election year.
Here’s a suggestion: all the Democrats who were presidential candidates, who fell over throwing food in the faces of each other on the debate stage over the last few months, should “enthusiastically” support the candidate they all but bumrushed to join on March 1. The truth is apparent for they and all others to see: Joe Biden just doesn’t have that old time rock and roll. And after the debacle of this finale last Friday during a CNN town hall on the Coronavirus and the debate against Bernie Sanders, Biden has said “no mas” to future debate encounters.
If Joe Biden can’t debate Bernie Sanders at least once or twice more, how on earth is he going to hold anywhere near his own on a debate stage against an asymmetrical debater like Donald Trump? If he can’t even stake out clear, definable positions or core beliefs that voters can see and tangibly embrace, what is the point of his presidential campaign? Biden has hardly allayed concerns about his fitness since his last primary victories two weeks ago. Two weeks will turn into three until the next primary on April 7. And despite the chaos, illness, death and fear that has rattled the planet, life incredibly still goes on, as crude as that might sound.
In other words, there remains additional issues to discuss and address in the world to COVID-19. The corporate news media however, sadly thinks otherwise.
Simply put: it is time for the DNC to implement any private strategy they have cooked up and start deploying it pronto publicly in the oft-chance a fear-stricken America starts falling in love with a dictator’s lies. If it happened in Germany during a depression then it could happen in the United States in what is expected to be another Republican Depression (which is what it was called under Hoover’s watch back in the late 1920s.)
While Trump’s message of lies and hate remain relentless, toxic and oppressive, the Democratic message has been self-muting and devoid of confidence. The Democratic Establishment has been silent, shadowy and equivocating. The Democratic Party has also been hypocritical in its stance on rape allegations Tara Reade made earlier this month against Joe Biden (Al Franken was jettisoned from the Democratic senate for far less severe but nonetheless unbecoming conduct owing to a vigorous Democratic movement led by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who endorsed Biden last week). The Party has also behaved like a Republican outfit, with Party elders like Jim Clyburn calling for a close down of primaries (in a veiled effort to help hide Joe Biden from any scrutiny, which he’s never received in earnest in 50 years of a political career.)
The bottom line is, the DNC has to show voters right now at this critical juncture that as many thousands lose their lives across the country the Democratic Party has the mettle, the leadership, the robust opposition to Trump and most importantly the agenda that will grab the panicked public conscience and inspire them to vote this November 3. The DNC should not take anything for granted and must avoid 2016 at all costs.
The chance for the Democratic Party to win in November begins right now.
POLITICRAT 