Weekend at Bidey's

"I don’t think I need to wait for the polls."

Last week’s 2024 presidential campaign debate is likely to be the most debated debate since the JFK-Nixon bout I watched with my family on a black and white TV the night of September 26, 1960. Those of us with TVs thought JFK had won. Those who listened on radio thought Nixon had.

Anyone curious about what Presidential debates were like before the United States lost its mind might read the transcript of that first debate. Watching two intelligent leaders with distinctly different ideologies able to give reasoned, thoughtful, and responsive replies is like a visit to a foreign country. How quickly one forgets what such air used to breathe like.

As with more recent debates, this last week’s was one that few voters actually watched. It had the smallest audience of any first-in-a-series presidential debate this century, about 51 million out of the 155 million potential voters. Of course, that’s 20% better than the ratings for the top week (Season One finale) in the 15-season run of The Apprentice. Democratic commentator Lawrence O’Donnell likes to point out that in the 1980 Carter-Reagan debates, 85 million votes were cast in the presidential election and 80 million people watched on TV. He neglected to mention that in 1980 there was no YouTube, TicToc, Facebook, Snapchat, or Instagram.

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O’Donnell was right, though, when he said the current era of TV debates do not test anything that is actually relevant to the job of the president. “No one ever runs into the Oval Office and says, ‘Mr. President, you have two minutes to explain your position on some subject.’” But O’Donnell omits the larger point. What TV debates are good at is giving viewers a high-definition view into someone’s thought processes. When they put Mr. Biden under the lights, he produced a very long, very painful, vacant stare. It was no longer just a question of who would be better for the next four years, but rather, who is in charge? Democrats, if they are being honest, find themselves in 25th Amendment territory.

This should have come as no surprise, especially to the team surrounding the president that called for the early debate schedule and prepped Biden in the week leading up to the fiasco. It was predicted by many on the right. Only those living in a Democratic National Committee (DNC) echo-chamber would have failed to see it coming.

Here is what Chamath Palihapitiya (Sri Lankan-born Canadian and American venture capitalist, engineer, senior executive at Facebook, and now founder and CEO of Social Capital) predicted on the popular All-In podcast June 7th:

Palihapitiya: I believe that's what's going to happen in the next 30 to 60 days, so I'm predicting … 100% there'll be a Switcheroo. Who's the new I have no idea. Could be Gavin, could be anybody, anything's possible. I think Trump's going to demolish him [Biden] in the debate. I think he'll sink to 30 percent in the polls and then the Democrats will find a way to give him a graceful out. And then they'll field somebody else. I think the Democrats, as cynical as it sounds, were waiting to see what happens with this Trump trials conviction–what you call lawfare, what other people call fair use of the law–and then they are going to see how he does in the debates. That's why they moved the debate up to June. And I think they know to pull the plug on this if it gets too far gone, and they have the ability to do that, because all he's got to say is, ‘You know what? I'm feeling old and I want us to win and I'm going to slot somebody else in, all right?’

In his MSNBC show the day after the debate, O’Donnell tried to patch over the catastrophe. “There is an overnight poll indicating no shifts among voters,” he said, echoing a hasty DNC press release. That was a bit premature.

In a Data for Progress poll, two-thirds of voters said Biden is too old to be president. A 538 poll found only 20 percent of likely voters said that Biden has the mental fitness to be president, and 15 percent said he has the physical fitness. Nearly 60 percent of likely voters said Biden has "poor" or "terrible" mental or physical fitness. CNN's poll found that 59 percent of registered voters have no real confidence in Biden's ability to lead the country—a figure that increased by four points after the debate. Asked if they would consider voting for Biden, 58 percent of registered voters responded no.

A SurveyUSA poll asked if Joe Biden is up to the job of being president for the next four years—57 percent of likely voters responded no, compared to 29 percent who said yes. A Morning Consult poll found that, among voters who watched the debate, 63 percent believe that Biden should be replaced as the Democratic nominee for president; 62 percent said Biden is not mentally fit; 68 percent said he is not in good health; and 78 percent said he is too old.

The major pollsters that survey large numbers of voters and correct for skews will not have their results for another week or two.

Looking at it from across the Atlantic, The Guardian writes:

Biden’s age has long been an electoral challenge. But his shaky debate performance shocked even his staunchest supporters. At a rally on Friday, Biden acknowledged his stumbles, but insisted he was still the best candidate to defeat Trump.

***

Former South Carolina lawmaker and Democratic commentator Bakari Sellers, who endorsed Harris in the 2020 primary, said wishing for an alternative to emerge at this stage was futile.

“You’re not nominating Gretch or Gavin or Wes over Kamala. Stop it,” he wrote on X, adding: “Choice is Trump, Biden or couch. I choose Joe.”

Giving the view from Italy, Ugo Bardi wrote:

What impressed me most was how far from reality both debaters were. And how far from reality most of us are. Reality is fast becoming one of those “unknown unknowns” that Donald Rumsfeld mentioned, and you don’t have to suffer from senile dementia to lose track of what’s going on.

O’Donnell and other pundits in the days after the disaster raised the obvious problems with the “hot swap” option. “The last time we saw something close to it, a presumptive nominee drop out of the race, was in March of 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not run for re-election,” said O’Donnell.

His vice president, Hubert Humphrey, who did not run in a single primary, won the nomination at the convention in Chicago because back in those days most of the delegates went to the convention free to vote for anyone. That has never happened again, because of a rules change beginning in 1972. They created the current system of voters choosing the nominee through delegates and it is worth noting in 1968–which you can read all about in my book about that presidential campaign, called Playing With Fire–Hubert Humphrey lost that election to Republican Richard Nixon by less than 1% of the vote. And the Humphrey campaign, quite reasonably, blamed their loss on not being able to raise enough money in so short a time and not having enough time to build a presidential campaign around a candidate who was forced to enter the race so late and not run in a single primary.

On Saturday I went to the farmers market in the small town of Ethridge, Tennessee and asked a vendor selling Trump 2024/MAGA paraphernalia–hats, flags, doormats–how sales have been going since the debate. He said he could barely keep up and wished he had bought more inventory. While we were speaking, a father accompanied by three young sons bought four Trump 2024 baseball caps with camo coloring.

I don’t think I need to wait for the polls.

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The morning of the debate, Anthony Scaramucci, whose tenure at the Trump White House lasted 11 days and whose name has been made into a unit of time (the shortest-serving prime minister in British history, Liz Truss, lasted 45 days or “4.1 Scaramuccis”) told Fortune that there will be two films playing at your local cinema on Election Day. Those films are: Weekend at Bernie’s or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, he said.

“You can either have an elderly guy that is somewhat forgetful or a lunatic who needs a lobotomy.” —Anthony Scaramucci

Four days after the debate, as if the stakes could not be any higher, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. delivered the long-delayed decision of the Trump-supermajority U.S. Supreme Court, restoring the monarchy and the divine right of kings:

At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute.

The PBS News Hour invited Boston College Law Professor Heather Cox Richardson to explain that to its viewers.

Jeffrey Brown: Well, what do you fear now? We have former President Trump has a track record, his first administration. He's spoken of things he wants to do in the future if elected. What do you fear and why do you think that these constitutional checks and balances that we have had will not hold?

Richardson: Well, they're gone. I mean, that's not—it's not a question—people are saying this might be a problem in the future. No, we're in the problem, because the rule of law—law and order—underpins our entire system—the idea that everybody should be treated equally in the courts. The Supreme Court just ripped that up.

So what am I afraid of? I'm afraid of, first of all, is that people don't recognize what a big deal this is. This isn't an adjustment in the law. This is a change in our entire constitutional system. It says that there is one of the three branches of government that cannot be checked by the other two.

And I don't think that people necessarily understand what that means. And all you have to do is look to any authoritarian country.

The Court ruled that Congress, as a separate co-equal branch, has no authority to pass criminal laws regulating presidents. Forget Richard Nixon’s Watergate burglars. That’s now legal. Forget the Iran-Contra La Peña bombing. Legal. Gulf of Tonkin deception of Congress? Legal. Allende, Diem and Mosaddegh overthrows, the Castro attempts? Torture and extrajudicial rendering? Legal. 18 U.S. Code § 1116 - Murder or manslaughter of foreign officials, official guests, or internationally protected persons? Unconstitutional.

We could just go through the Federal code and start tearing out pages:

52 U.S. Code § 30121 - Contributions and donations by foreign nationals

18 U.S. Code § 201 - Bribery of public officials and witnesses

18 U.S. Code § 872 - Extortion by officers or employees of the United States

18 U.S. Code § 878 - Threats and extortion against foreign officials, official guests, or internationally protected persons

5 CFR § 2635.702 - Use of public office for private gain.

2402. Hobbs Act -- Generally

18 U.S. Code § 371 - Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States

Justice Sotomayor dissented:

Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The court effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding. This new official-acts immunity now ‘lies about like a loaded weapon’ for any president that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the nation.

To say that this is a crisis striking at the heart of the American experiment seems absurdly understated. These past few days may well augur the end of the American experiment.

Of course, President Biden, as Commander in Chief, could simply dispatch Seal Team Six to snatch the five justices in the majority and fly them to a black site at Gitmo, and then, by Executive Order, shut down Fox News, disappear Donald Trump and enough GOP legislators to swing the majorities in state and federal government to his party, and even order Hunter Biden released, but what are the chances? Scranton Joe? Nawww.

If we want to see anything even remotely like that, we have to wait until January.

Meanwhile, let’s end these wars. We support peace in the West Bank and Gaza and the efforts to bring an immediate cessation to the war. Global Village Institute’s Peace Thru Permaculture initiative has sponsored the Green Kibbutz network in Israel and the Marda Permaculture Farm in the West Bank for over 30 years and will continue to do so, with your assistance. We aid Ukrainian families seeking refuge in ecovillages and permaculture farms along the Green Road and work to heal collective trauma everywhere through the Pocket Project. You can read all about it on the Global Village Institute website (GVIx.org). Thank you for your support.

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#RestorationGeneration.

當人類被關在籠内，地球持續美好，所以，給我們的教訓是:
人類毫不重要，空氣，土壤，天空和流水没有你們依然美好。
所以當你們走出籠子的時候，請記得你們是地球的客人，不是主人。

When humans are locked in a cage, the earth continues to be beautiful. Therefore, the lesson for us is: Human beings are not important. The air, soil, sky and water are still beautiful without you. So, when you step out of the cage, please remember that you are guests of the Earth, not its hosts.

We have a complete solution. We can restore whales to the ocean and bison to the plains. We can recover all the great old-growth forests. We possess the knowledge and tools to rebuild savannah and wetland ecosystems. It is not too late. All of these great works are recoverable. We can have a human population sized to harmonize, not destabilize. We can have an atmosphere that heats and cools just the right amount, is easy on our lungs and sweet to our nostrils with the scent of ten thousand flowers. All of that beckons. All of that is within reach.