Thursday, August 27, 2020

The Last Six Months Don't Count

 I haven't been watching much of the RNC, because I don't want to boost the ratings with which the Occupant of the White House is obsessed, but I've been watching and reading recaps, and the thing that strikes me is that the Republicans are running as if the last six months have never happened.  They cite economic figures from February, COVID-19 simply isn't mentioned, and the civil unrest that has been unfolding over the past three months is portrayed as something that happens in 'Joe Biden's America'.

One of the best RNC postmortem series consists of long-form deconstructions by Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch and Matt Binder of the DOOMED podcast.  During last night's breakdown, they perfectly described the Trump campaign's strategy: Trump is running as if he were the challenger and Biden were the incumbent.  Furthermore, Jared Holt noted that the Trump campaign is running an imaginary Trump (a competent, compassionate man) against an imaginary Biden (a socialist firebrand).

Now, for the next two months, I expect to hear about Joe Biden's inadequate COVID-19 response, and his failed economic recovery program.  It will be a final, ramped-up gaslighting campaign, the perfect coda (I hope) to a four-year campaign of mendacity and distortion.

6 comments:

bowtiejack said...

Amen.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

America doesn't look so great right now.

Ed said...

Doesn't matter.
“A ballot is just a substitute for a bullet. If your vote isn’t backed by a bullet, it is meaningless. Without the bullet, people could ignore the election outcome. Voting would be pointless. Democracy has violence at its very core!” ~Muir Matteson, “The Nonviolent Zone”
"Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves." Herbert Marcuse
"Working within the system means to become a part of the system. When you go into the voting booth, the only meaningful significance that your action will have is to show that one more person supports the state". ~Mark Davis

Infidel753 said...

"Ed" is a right-wing troll who goes around posting canned comments on posts that get linked from Crooks and Liars. This is one of his standard ones meant to discourage voting. I've seen it before, word-for-word, on maybe half-a-dozen posts. Probably best to just delete him. I'm pretty sure he never even comes back to see whether he's gotten a response.

Professor Chaos said...

No matter who the Democratic nominee is, the GOP always campaign against an inagjbary caricature who is tougher left of Stalin. They used to call Bill Clinton, the epitome of moderate, a communist. They called Obama both a Marxist and a fascist. This is just what they do.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Probably best to just delete him.

I'll leave it up, so his inane boilerplate can be ridiculed by all readers.

This is just what they do.

Yeah, they are stuck in the mid-20th century Red Scare.