Democrats

Welcome to Thunderdome. The initial reactions to this week’s presidential debate from the commentariat was emphatic: Trump lost, Kamala won. But sometimes debates suffer from an initial overreaction from the highly tuned in, and once there’s a couple of days of simmering, reactions can change. That could be what we’re seeing happen in the reaction to this debate — it’s certainly what friend of the newsletter Hugh Hewitt thinks. But it’s also what some undecided voters think, too. Take Arizonan Sabrina Champ’s reaction, who was previously a Bernie Sanders voter and says no one won the debate: “She baited him and he fell for it. That was disappointing,” Champ said. “But as far as Kamala is concerned, I didn’t see a lot of policy.

Welcome to Thunderdome. So after all that, the rumors of huge celebrity appearance or endorsements — Beyoncé! Taylor Swift!!! George W. Bush!? — what Democrats delivered in Chicago was a convention that just felt like a box-checking exercise. There were no huge surprises. There was no over-the-top Hollywoodland display. The biggest name to show up was Oprah. The parties were decidedly lackluster. The off-air logistics were a disaster. The mood was one of nervous energy, with many partisans content to sit in their seats looking at their phones for five hours while smart Democrats roaming the halls admitted that they were concerned things were about to get, as the Obamas said, tough.

Welcome to Thunderdome. Last night, something that a month ago was unthinkable happened: Joe Biden announced from the Oval Office that he would stand down as his party’s nominee and pass the torch to a new generation of Democrats in Kamala Harris. The speech was blatantly political with the normal Jon Meacham high-school civics elements instead of sounding the type of deeply personal notes that marked the better aspects of Biden’s career. It was delivered with a world-weary tone, the old man being put out to pasture by a party and their media allies who deliberately chose to knife him at his weakest moment, despite lauding his achievements as historic for the past several years.

Welcome to Thunderdome. There’s something that happens when you’re around people with feeble minds that make communication a challenge — whether they’re old, disabled or toddlers — where their inability to find the right word or express themselves isn’t a barrier to understanding what they mean. When my one-year-old toddles around the living room and says “baba,” I know she’s asking for her bottle. But there’s an insulation factor here. You understand them even though others don’t. If you are a White House staffer, I have to tell you: you have been suffering from this same disease. You have become insulated and completely resistant to the signals, the ringing flashing klaxons that indicate Joe Biden cannot do the job of the commander-in-chief any more.

It saddens me to admit it, but the evidence is too overwhelming to dismiss: Democrats are significantly more cunning than Republicans. I say “Democrats,” but that is an imprecise, even a misleading, designation. Party affiliation is not now, if it ever was, a really accurate predictor of ideological coloration. What I mean are those people, most of whom happen to belong to the Democratic Party, who have been bitten by the bug of extremism, who are fired by revolutionary fervor, who regard every opponent, every contrary opinion, as a “by-any-means-necessary” fire alarm. It is an attitude that has stirred their creativity, also their vindictiveness. Hercules had to undertake twelve supposedly impossible labors. Donald Trump is fast catching up.

Welcome to Thunderdome. When Joe Biden ran for president, he did the same thing he always does when he does anything: invented an obviously fictional story casting himself as a rescuing hero. In his framing of the situation, he — a lifelong politician who has demonstrated nothing but constant ambition for the White House — was a reluctant candidate pulled from the sidelines by the roaming threat of a dangerous Orange Man and his tiki-torch-carrying supporters in Charlottesville. Biden wasn’t running because he’d been trying to get the job for decades; he had the nobler purpose of healing the soul of the nation.