Tag: Trump vs. Biden

Biden’s Speeches Are Better, but the Dem’s Messaging Isn’t

The Daily Escape:

Sea Smoke, Willard Beach, Portland, ME – January 2022 photo by Rick Berk Photography

Tom Friedman had a column in the NYT proposing that in 2024, Biden should drop Harris and run instead with Liz Cheney. When Wrongo read that, he poured a big glass of Bushmills 21 single malt.

The thrust of this, and other musings about 2024, is that Biden is a weak candidate who is further dragged down by Harris. That may be true. But assuming Biden is up against Trump again, who are the additional voters who will vote Democrat because of Cheney, and who otherwise would not do so?

We’ve learned in the past weeks that Biden can give good (and tough) speeches, as he did in calling out Trump in the Capitol Rotunda on the anniversary of Jan. 6. And in Atlanta on Tuesday for voting rights, where he said:

“I ask every elected official in America: How do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”

Those words set a great example for how Democrats need to message in order to win.

It’s a good message, but what happens next on voting rights is crucial: Democrats can stick with Senate Majority Leader Schumer’s plan and lose on a vote to consider suspending the filibuster rules to pass voting rights. Everybody knows that Schumer’s plan will produce nothing meaningful. Can they instead find a compromise with Republicans (and Manchin and Sinema) to get some form of a voting bill passed?  Wrongo favors getting something done, even if the Party’s left wing isn’t happy with the outcome.

Biden and the Democrats also need to message better on several other dangerous political issues.

First, schools are going to be a big problem for Democrats in the mid-terms and beyond. Politico has an article: “How School Closures Made Me Question My Progressive Politics” where the author says her son’s school was closed when Trump was President. It’s open now under Biden, but she’s still mad at the Dems.

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot fought with the Chicago teacher’s union about keeping schools open. This exposed divisions between traditional Democratic constituencies, the union, and a majority-Black populace. Keeping schools open has become a nationalized issue. As the NYT noted, it’s a problem for Democrats everywhere:

“Because they have close ties to the unions, Democrats are concerned that additional closures like those in Chicago could lead to a possible replay of the party’s recent loss in Virginia’s governor race.”

The Democrats messaging on schools should echo what CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said: “Schools should be the first places to open and the last places to close.” Biden also needs to side with parents and students. If reopening schools is a top priority, testing needs to be available and free to schools. And he needs to call out the teachers unions: “No one should be keeping schoolhouse doors closed, especially not our friends in the unions.”

Second, crime is also going to be an issue in Biden’s re-election campaign as well as for the Democrats in the mid-terms. We all know that the call to “defund the police” was a political disaster. Democrats need to change the conversation, particularly since they didn’t deliver on a long-promised bipartisan police reform bill last fall.

Dems need to be completely clear that they oppose defunding the police. Biden can lead by saying: “Some folks think that we shouldn’t put criminals in jail or they downplay the dangers of violent crime. They are wrong. We have to protect our families and our neighborhoods.”

The messaging should include: “Continuing the fight for social justice shouldn’t come at the cost of public safety.” Dems could also point to the hypocrisy of Republicans who claim to “Back the Blue,” but then turned a blind eye to the attacks on Capitol police officers on January 6.

Third, immigration isn’t going away as an issue. The Dems should be saying that America benefits from the presence of immigrants. But border security is important, along with an enforceable system that decides fairly who can enter the country, and who should stay.

NYC’s new mayor Eric Adams has announced he supports the idea of letting non-citizens vote in local elections. This would add something like 800,000 voters to the rolls only for city-wide elections. Today, just 15 US cities allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. Eleven are in Maryland, two are in Vermont, plus NYC, and San Francisco.

This will be a huge 2022 talking point for Republicans. They will say it’s proof that Democrats want immigration solely to increase the number of Democratic voters. Biden and Dem mid-term candidates should be saying: “Only American citizens should be allowed to vote.”

It isn’t the media’s job to fight the Dems’ partisan battles, despite Dems wishing that were so. Democrats need to ramp up their messaging game. The Democratic Party doesn’t have a true coordinated effort to counter the right-wing disinformation ecosystem, and are suffering because of that.

As Ron Filipkowski says:

“If the Democratic party had relentless, full-time people working as a team to fight the right-wing disinformation war, it would be more effective than all the traditional media outlets combined.”

Democrats have to get better at politics if they expect to hold the House and Senate in 2022.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 28, 2020

Why should you wear a mask? Wrongo’s FB friend (an MD) explained it well:

 “We don’t wear the mask to keep ourselves safe or even to make other people comfortable. We wear masks so the germs that spill out of the holes in our faces via water droplets and aerosols get caught in the mask and don’t get into other people’s eyes, nose or mouth or land on their wounds, clothes, hands or face….That way transmissions end with us. We stop the spread and can go about life almost like usual. Masks are also a great visual reminder of what’s going on…people stay back a bit. I actually wonder if that visual reminder is what so many people hate about masks. Do they want to pretend this is not happening or not a big deal or that they aren’t utterly failing society in every way?”

From Pew Research: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are about twice as likely as Republicans and Republican leaners to say that masks should be worn always (63% vs. 29%). Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to say that masks should rarely or never be worn (23% vs. 4%).

Republicans also are less likely than Democrats to say they have worn masks in stores or other businesses always or most of the time in the past month.”

Fact Tank says that only 49% of conservative Republicans say they have worn a mask all or most of the time in the past month, compared with 60% of moderate Republicans.

All of this explains where the virus is expanding:

Wearing a mask is more threatening than an attack by terrorists:

Europe thinks we should wear masks:

A tough year gets tougher:

Times like these call for better drinking choices:

The presidential race is shaping up to be a real fight:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 17, 2020

Wrongo was unaware, but some Catholics are praying to the 2nd century St. Corona (d. C. 170) thinking she’s the patron saint of plagues and epidemics. She, along with St. Victor, a soldier, were tortured and killed around 170 at the order of a Roman judge, according to an account written in the 4th century.

Apparently, this is just another piece of fake news that started on the internet and has been amplified by Twitter. St. Edmund is the go-to saint for epidemics and plagues. St. Corona is actually the patron saint of treasure hunters and maybe, gamblers.

Given the state of the global economy, would it hurt to ask her for something, maybe like a month’s rent? On to cartoons.

What will happen when we re-open?

But how far is up?

Hard to fish when you’re high and dry:

Mitch won’t help:

The guy who doesn’t think America needs testing is gonna get one:

Biden is staying in his basement. Good idea, or bad?

Trump’s new strategy: Obamagate!

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Saturday Soother – Even More Pandemic Edition, April 4, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Spring in Town – Grant Wood, 1941

Welcome to Saturday, fellow disease vectors! Here’s a quote often mis-attributed to Winston Churchill: “If you’re going through Hell, just keep going”. Those are words to live by in pandemic America.

You remember Joe Biden, right?

His campaign was premised on Trump’s complete unsuitability for the presidency, and on Biden’s particular experience and fitness for it. Biden wasn’t running on the issues, he was hammering on Trump. Before the pandemic, according to Joe Biden, Trump was:

“A threat to this nation unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime.”

But lately, Biden could be a picture on a milk carton. He’s disappeared. Rather than holding a news conference in public every day, demanding to know why the administration isn’t providing enough tests and PPE to the states, Biden’s trying to organize a phone call with Trump. To share lessons learned from Obama-era pandemic responses. That will certainly change everything.

Does Biden have a strategy to win in November? The ABC/WaPo poll found that only 24% of Biden’s supporters were ‘very enthusiastic‘ about him, compared with 53% of Trump’s. While ABC News reminded us that in 2016, “Hillary Clinton’s ‘very enthusiastic’ score was 32% in September.”

These numbers are from the poll that has Biden beating Trump by only 2% points. Now, this poll could be an outlier, since the Real Clear Politics Polling Average has Biden at 50.6% to Trump at 44%.

Regardless, Biden needs to get off his ass, get out in public, and act like the leader of the opposition.

And speaking of leadership (again), RaĂșl Ilargi Meijer has a great column about leadership in the pandemic era. He differentiates between the visionary giants like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.  and our current crop who he calls “Little Managers”:

“They all failed to a horrific extent at their #1 task when it comes to Disasters, Pandemics, whatever their respective governments file these events under: Prevention. But now we’re in a whole new world. Now these failed leaders move into a situation they actually MAY be able to handle. That is, the -crisis- management that inevitably follows AFTER the failure at their #1 task of Prevention.”

Ilargi says that they might be able to succeed at crisis management because they were trained to be little managers. He describes them: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Core characteristic: these people don’t act, they re-act. Prevention is a job they’re absolutely not qualified for… Trump, Macron, BoJo, Merkel, Rutte, Xi, Abe, Conte, you name them, they’re all little managers…they have no ideas or visions, at least not original ones. People with original ideas don’t become politicians…”

Worse, politics isn’t policy. More:

“For now, the only thing to do is hope the little managers are better at step 2, Crisis Management, than they were at step 1, Prevention. Because there are no ready alternatives. When they say stay home, that’s the best thing to do right now.”

And finally:

“Can we blame our own respective…little managers? To an extent, sure. They didn’t do what they promised to when they swore their respective oaths. But maybe just maybe we should blame ourselves more, for picking little managers to lead our countries in the first place. We should have known that they were never going to be more than 2nd rate “leaders” who were never going to deliver more than 2nd rate societies.“

Hard to improve on that.

We’re all going through hell with no choice but to keep going. So, let’s take a breath, and try to spend our self-isolating time concentrating on something other than COVID-19. Here are “Two English Idylls” by the little-known George Butterworth, who was part of the English pastoral idiom.

These are Butterworth’s earliest surviving orchestral pieces, with No. 1 dating from 1910-1911, while No. 2 is from 1911. Butterworth and Ralph Vaughan Williams were close friends, and you may hear similarities in their music. Butterworth was killed in 1916 in WWI during the Battle of the Somme, he was 31.

Here it’s performed by the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, under Sir Neville Marriner, in 1975. The accompanying photography of the English countryside is transporting and wonderful, so Wrongo urges you to take a few minutes to watch:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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