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Weird Discourse




As Republicans and Democrats agree, this election discourse is weird. For one, Republican pundits are shook. They know it’s impossible to reasonably defend a Trump campaign, but they kiss the ring and try to do it anyway. That wouldn’t be such a bad problem. They have the right to make their arguments. But they do it so poorly and foist so much deceptive discourse onto the public. Here are a couple of their ge(r)ms.

 

There is really more than one president at a time. They insist that the current administration is the Harris administration. But it’s not. Harry Truman didn’t proclaim “the buck stops here” when he was the vice president. The sign was displayed on his desk when he was president, not vice president. You probably don’t know the perspective of his vice president, Alben Barkley, on the decision to drop the atomic bomb. You know it as Truman’s decision. Similarly, you probably don’t know Hannibal Hamlin’s perspective on the Emancipation Proclamation. (By the way, he was all for it and also favored arming Blacks.)    

 

Three quarters of the American population thinks the country is on the wrong track. This is a Scott Jennings go-to. Over the weeks that I’ve been listening, I haven’t heard him specify what that wrong track is or which long-term forces created it. His type of argument is overly reductive. Things are bad under Biden---really Harris. The argument comes with corollaries: a) Democrats have been in the White House three of the last four terms meaning they are responsible for any problems, and b) they should be able to solve all problems given that they are in the White House. This reasoning treats issues such as inflation and immigration as if they map neatly on to administrative changeover. Do we blame Republicans for 9/11 because it happened on their watch? Or would a longer view of the entire situation in the Middle East yield a more productive analysis? Moreover, how is “solve” being defined? What are the specific metrics by which we can declare a problem solved? As to what three quarters of the American population thinks, we can’t know it. Granted, polls have their scientific aspects and statistical standards. But they are still only as good as their samples. It’s hard for me to accept that I’m accounted for in surveys because I’ve never been surveyed. We know, even all pollsters do, that a poll can’t identify the position of any particular person. We also know what people do---such as giving the popular vote to a Democrat in the last four presidential elections. This will make the fifth in a row. The Republican line also treats the White House as if it’s Congress and ignores the obstructionists in the Senate and House of Representatives. Biden didn’t prevent Congress from delivering an immigration bill.

 

Now Democrats don’t get off the discursive hook. They take the bait too often and wind up in the Republican-Democrat tit-for-tat blame game. I’m like Oprah. I ride with the Independents and with Kamala Harris on this one. But Democrats are a little fuzzy as I guess a big-tent party must be. They’re not clear about class commitments. Some speakers at the convention emphasized “middle class.” Some stressed “working class.” None offered a critique of capitalism, certainly not of racial capitalism. I know that approach loses elections in this country---and Americans are not a wonkish bunch---but conversations about political economy, especially if one is interested in long economic arcs, seem almost pointless if no one is going to mention the elephant in the room. When the topic came up in a town hall a while ago, Nancy Pelosi admonished the questioner and declared firmly, “This is a capitalist country.” She said she was trying to make it work better for more people. The Democrats are speaking a lot these days about joy. Seems Van Jones, who once went gaga on air over a Trump state of the union address, is practically giddy. But how much joy has capitalism ever brought to the masses? Just asking. We’re in the system we’re in, and tough choices are always before us. The main thing I say is monitor the weird discourse and keep thinking.      


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