May20

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

Republicans Suffer Severe Outbreak of BDS

We suspect most readers are not familiar with BDS. That may be because we just made it up. It stands for "Biden Derangement Syndrome." Presumably, readers ARE familiar with "Trump Derangement Syndrome." This is the dubious claim that some/many non-MAGA people are hypercritical of Donald Trump, not because he is guilty of some sort of wrongdoing, but because the TDS "sufferers" are afflicted with some sort of mental dysfunction.

We find ourselves, for the third time in as many weeks, deploying the old chestnut "in every accusation, there is a confession." We suppose it is possible that some people who are anti-Trump take the matter to extremes, and become obsessed with silly things. Although we kind of doubt it, if only because he offers up so very many real things to be concerned and angry about. You don't need to tell lies about his birth certificate, or his alleged dealings with Ukraine, when he's fomenting insurrection outside the capitol building, committing sexual assault, stealing classified documents, trying to accept a $400 million plane from Qatar, etc.

On the other hand, at least from where we sit, today's right-wing politicians and media are absolute Zen masters when it comes to making mountains out of molehills, as they desperately try to slur their political opponents. We have already taken the view that the book about Joe Biden's alleged decline, and the alleged coverup by his staff, is a basically worthless exercise. He's not in office anymore, he's not going to be in office ever again, and even if he was being protected by White House insiders, those people are no longer in the White House. The Jake Tapper book might have been useful a year ago, but Elvis has long ago left the building.

In other words, we just cannot see what useful result is going to be gained by carping about the subject. If this could possibly be the impetus for some sort of reform, like a constitutional amendment requiring presidents to take a yearly fitness test, then maybe. But we all know that's not going to happen, especially while Donald Trump, who is plenty doddering himself, is in office. The only purposes being served, as far as we can see, are: (1) selling books, mostly to right-wingers who just love hit jobs against Democrats, and (2) scoring cheap political points.

And in the last 36 hours or so, once Biden revealed his cancer diagnosis, it got even worse, and more ugly. Truth be told, it's so unbelievably inhumane and depressing, it was difficult to summon up the energy to write this item. Taking the lead was J.D. Vance, who really could use a punch in the face, or two, or two hundred (if that is deemed to be a threat against the VP's life, the FBI can find us in the guest room at James Comey's place). Here is what Vance said to reporters after being asked about Biden's diagnosis:

Look, I mean, first of all, of course, we wish the best for the former president's health. It sounds pretty serious, but hopefully he makes the right recovery. Whether the right time to have this conversation is now or some point in the future, we really need to be honest about whether the former president was capable of doing the job. And that's no, you can separate the desire for him to have the right health outcome with the recognition that whether it was doctors or whether it was staffers around the former president, I don't think he was able to do a good job for the American people. That's not politics, that's not because I disagreed with him on policy. That's because I don't think he was in good enough health.

In some ways, I blame him less than I blame the people around him. Why didn't the American people have a better sense of his health picture? Why didn't the American people have more accurate information about what he was actually dealing with? This is serious stuff. This is the guy that carries around the nuclear football for the world's largest nuclear arsenal. This is not child's play. And we can pray for good health, but also recognize that if you're not in good enough health to do the job, then you shouldn't be doing the job.

Let us point out, yet again, that Biden is NOT doing the job. He is out of office. If you believe there is a serious issue here, or if you believe Vance is offering a substantive critique, then you must come up with an answer to this question: What does Vance want? Does he want people to be prosecuted? Does he want Biden to be banned from serving as president again? Does he want Biden's doctors to lose their licenses? We don't think he actually has an answer to that question.

Initially, as we were mentally outlining this item, we intended to make the observation that even Donald Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who are two of the most classless people ever to serve in federal office, were courteous enough to offer best wishes and to shut their yaps, making Vance look extra bad. And while Vance does look very bad here—he's being described as "evil," "unchristian" and "ghoulish" all over social media—the decency from other Republicans just couldn't last. And so, Trump, et al., also started piling on Biden yesterday afternoon.

There are, in effect, three different conspiracy theories already circulating in the right-wing-osphere, and being amplified by Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), Karl Rove and countless others, with Fox, OAN and Newsmax also getting in on the action. Here they are:

1. It's a Cover-Up, Part II: Yesterday, oncologist Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel—brother of politician Rahm and of super-agent Ari—went on Morning Joe to do a little armchair doctoring. He said that Joe Biden has likely had the cancer for years, and that he is surprised that it wasn't caught much earlier, since it's the kind of thing that probably would have been caught with the standard screenings.
   
   Almost instantaneously, Trump and other Republicans glommed onto this, and concluded that not only was the Biden White House hiding the President's dementia, they were also hiding his cancer. So, the evils of Team Joe just doubled in magnitude. Or maybe these things are geometric, and they quadrupled.
   
   We're going to point out a few things here. First, while Dr. Emanuel is reasonably close to the Biden administration, having served on a couple of advisory panels, he was not a part of Biden's care team, and has not examined the patient or his records. So, he's speaking out of turn here. Further, he is undoubtedly right that Biden's cancer did not start yesterday, and that it's been within him for some lengthy period of time. That is how cancer works. However, it is not prima facie evidence that Biden and his family knew of his condition back in 2023, or 2022, or earlier. Lots of people have cancer without knowing it.
   
   Finally, even if Biden did know, the fact is that no president ever admits to having cancer (or any other serious health problem, generally speaking). The only example of a president fessing up that we can think of is Dwight D. Eisenhower, who admitted to having a heart attack, in large part because that's not so easy to hide (yes, FDR too, but we're talking about issues that emerged while the person was in office). Ronald Reagan hid his cognitive issues, Lyndon B. Johnson hid his serious heart disease, John F. Kennedy hid his Addison's disease, Calvin Coolidge hid his depression, Woodrow Wilson hid his stroke, Grover Cleveland hid his cancer, etc. It may not be ideal, but that's the way it is. If Trump develops (or already has) some serious health condition, he's not going to admit it, either.
   
   
2. It's a PR Move: This is not necessarily contradictory to conspiracy theory #1, but there is much scuttlebutt on the right (and some on the left) that Biden deliberately waited until Sunday to reveal the news, so as to cut the Tapper book off at the knees.
   
   Maybe it's sorta true. If Biden was going to announce anyhow, might as well try to choose the most fortuitous timing. However, some of the folks in this camp assert that he doesn't really have cancer at all, and that he's going to magically recover in a few months, once the book is forgotten. That's just vile.
   
   
3. It's a Legal Trick: This one is not only vile, it's insane. Some right-wingers are circulating the theory that Biden is not only cancer-free, but that he's dying from brain disease. The cancer story is ostensibly "cover" so that when Biden dies from cognitive issues, his actions as president won't be challenged in court on the basis that he was not competent. All we can say here is: "That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works."

We say again that we do not believe, for one minute, that there is any serious public policy dimension to the faux concern of J.D. Vance and others. It is all good and well to say that, for example, the U.S. should have done a better job of watching the perimeter of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. But if you don't use that to try to make some positive change going forward, then it's just blather.

What we will do now is try to imagine there's some potential political benefit to all of this. This is not such an easy question to answer, because: (1) Biden's political career is over, and (2) the next federal elections are 1½ and 3½ years away. We've (reluctantly) spent the day thinking about it, and here are four possible theories:

1. BDS: If there is anyone who is suffering from a chronic case of Biden Derangement Syndrome, it's Donald Trump, who hates his predecessor with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns. So, maybe this is all performative, for his benefit, and when someone like Vance or Jackson takes a potshot at Biden, they are really just bowing before the throne.
   
   
2. Preemptive Strike: Donald Trump's mental state does not appear to be all that solid either, and it figures to get worse. It could be that bleating about Biden's mental state is meant to inure Trump against similar kinds of criticism.
   
   
3. A Distraction: Right now, House Republicans are trying desperately to move the "big, beautiful" budget bill as fast as they can, because they want to get a vote in the bank before the blowback begins. There is all kinds of stuff in the current version that will be very unpopular with voters, and the more time voters have to learn about that, and the more time they have to give their representatives an earful, the more likely there will be defections. The more oxygen that Biden news and conspiracy theorizing suck up, the less oxygen there is for what's in the budget bill.
   
   
4. Laying the Groundwork: Republicans have adopted a very clear strategy in presidential elections of picking a (perceived) Achilles heel of the Democratic nominee, and then hammering on it endlessly, sometimes for years, or even decades. There was Bill Clinton's "slickness," Al Gore's inventing the Internet, John Kerry's flip-flopping, Barack Obama's birth certificate, Hillary Clinton's e-mails, and Joe Biden's hair-sniffing (which fizzled, and so was replaced by Biden's dementia).
   
   If Republicans imagine that the Democratic nominee in 2028 will be someone who was a Biden insider, most obviously if they think it's going to be Kamala Harris, then they could be laying the groundwork for the latest of those propaganda campaigns, eventually evolving into something like "Do you really want to vote for Kamala 'Cover Up' Harris'?
   
   If this is indeed the thinking, note that this approach has a mixed record. Sure, it brought down Kerry, and probably Hillary Clinton as well. But not so much for Obama or Biden. And there's a real possibility of a repeat of 2024, where the Republicans spent all kinds of time laying the groundwork for one line of attack, only to have it go counterfeit when Biden dropped out. If they go all-in on "the cover up," and the Democratic nominee ends up being, say, one of the governors (Andy Beshear of Kentucky, or Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, or Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, for example) then they will have wasted a lot of time and energy.

Please don't think we're sanewashing here. We're just trying to figure out how anyone, particularly someone who wears their "Christianity" on their sleeves, the way Trump and Vance both do, could possibly respond to a very possibly fatal cancer diagnosis with anything other than sympathy and best wishes. Even if you don't really mean it, have the decency to keep that to yourself, and don't try to score points off of someone else's suffering.

And finally, note that while we think the above theories probably have some merit, we have not yet revealed what we think the dominant dynamic is. It's not profound, but we think that the great majority of MAGA types live in a right-wing bubble that feeds upon itself, and that demands that Trump/MAGA win EVERY news cycle at all costs. We suspect that Trump, Vance, etc., as they perform their chest-thumping silverback act for the other MAGA types, have little awareness of how very bad they look to, oh, say, 60% of the country. It's one thing to carp about current policy debates, or even current officeholders. But Biden is an 82-year-old private citizen who is currently confronting his mortality, and is bracing for the battle of his life, which he might well lose. Leave the man alone; to do otherwise is utterly reprehensible. (Z)