The president’s all-out blitz to save his campaign seems to be sending people right to Joe Biden
It may be difficult to recall, but there was a time—not so long ago, in fact—when Donald Trump was not the main character in the 24-hour news cycle day after agonizing day. Sure, he’d crop up from time to time on Page Six, or get attention on Fox News for some new birther claim. But until about five years ago, Americans’ daily lives didn’t revolve entirely around the outrages and neuroses of a deranged former game show host. Life was far from perfect then, but at least it wasn’t…this. Our first thought upon waking was not, Jesus, what psychotic shit did he tweet while I was sleeping? News cycles weren’t consumed by the president’s attempts to prove he can drink water with one hand, or his musings that human beings could safely inject themselves with bleach, or his plan to rip off his button-down to reveal a Superman T-shirt as a show of strength. The government before Trump could be stupid or dishonorable or both — but when it was, it was within the normal parameters.
That we could go back there, that we could return to those comparatively simpler times, has been the premise of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. Thanks to pressure from the left and the circumstances the country finds itself in, the moderate Democrat is running on one of the most progressive platforms the party has ever put forth. But the main appeal of Biden’s 2020 campaign has not so much been ideology but a promise that this stupefying age of chaos, and all its attendant anxieties, can be brought to a close. You may not always like my approach or agenda, his pitch to voters has gone, but they will at least exist within the boundaries of normalcy and recognizable reality.
The appeal of that promise was underestimated during the Democratic primary, when Biden’s unity bid seemed doomed to be overtaken by his rivals’ bolder policy visions—and it is being underestimated now by Trump, who is trying to fight his way out of a hole by doing even more of the maddening, grotesque crap that appears to be turning voters away from him. Seeking an 11th-hour campaign reset, Trump has apparently decided that the key to reversing his political fortunes is for him to be everywhere, all the time—on the debate stage, on television, online—until November 3. What he seems unable or unwilling to see, though, is that this over-saturation only seems to make the stability and normalcy Biden represents more attractive. Continue reading.