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| In 2016 Matt Taibbi's "Clown Car" coverage chronicled the rise of Donald Trump with some caustic tales of campaign shenanigans. Taibbi's reviving the Clown Car to cover the Democratic Party primary |
In 2016 Taibbi's "Inside the GOP Clown Car" coverage of the Republican primary season helped many of us stay sane as we watched a well known huckster and scumbag (initials DJT) prevail in a field of candidates filled with nutcases, nitwits, and nincompoops. Anyone reading Taibbi's work throughout 2016 knew that Hillary's campaign was in trouble. Unfortunately the Democrats like the Republicans would rather marginalize the Taibbis of the world instead of learn from them.
Good news for political junkies: Taibbi has brought back the Clown Car coverage, this time focusing on the Democratic Party candidates for president. The first piece is called "The Iowa Circus." Money quotes:
*Traveling hundreds of miles across Iowa, passing cornfields and covered bridges, visiting quaint small town after quaint small town, listening to the stump speeches of Democrat after would-be Donald Trump-combating Democrat, only one thought comes to mind:
They’re gonna blow this again.
*The top Democrats’ best arguments for office are that they are not each other. Harris is rising in part because she’s not Biden; Warren, because she isn’t Bernie. Bernie’s best argument is the disfavor of the hated Democratic establishment. The Democratic establishment chose Biden because he was the Plan B last time and the party apparently hasn’t come up with anything better since. Nothing says “We’re out of ideas” quite like pulling a pushing-eighty ex-vice president off the bench to lead the most important race in the party’s history.
*The Democrats had years to come up with an answer to Trump that is fundamental, powerful, and new, solving the problem the elder George Bush once called “the vision thing.” What’s mostly been shown instead is more of the same. Literally more, as in three times the usual suspects. The sequel even Hollywood would never make is now showing in Iowa.
*. . . much of what has passed for the Democratic Party debate to date has involved what campaign commentators call “moments" . . . There was Klobuchar dunking on Inslee, Harris thrashing Biden over his past stance on school busing, former Housing Secretary Julián Castro walloping O’Rourke for not doing his “homework” on section 1325 of the immigration code, and O’Rourke providing an anti-moment of his own in an agonizing marathon effort at speaking Spanish in his introductory debate segment.
*The presence of human scratching post Biden atop the field has contributed to the not-undeserved impression that the party does not know what the hell it is doing. Biden has not only been battered by nearly all of his Democratic rivals, he’s also been drawn into flame wars with Trump, reanimating the 2016 pattern of TV networks giving Captain Orange masses of free airtime to flail rivals for sport and ratings.
*Biden’s early front-runner flubs are reminiscent of Jeb Bush’s $150 million failure to handle Trump tweets. There are many such parallels. Biden is Jeb. O’Rourke, running in what the Times calls the “younger face” lane, is Marco Rubio. Unseen Steve Bullock is unseen Jim Gilmore. Bill de Blasio is the same “Why is he running?” New Yorker George Pataki was. And this election’s version of John Kasich, the embittered realist barking, “What are we doing here?” from the literal edge of the debate stage, is former Maryland Rep. John Delaney.
*Reporters show up at events with anxious smiles on their faces, like parents looking for a child at a department store. Maybe this one? How about her, or him? This is an extension of a phenomenon that began in the second half of the last GOP primary, when the press tried lavishing compliments on the “real” candidates they hoped would stop Trump. The internet remains littered with the wreckage of these efforts, in headlines like “Signs of ‘Marco-mentum’ for Rubio in New Hampshire.”
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| CNN will host Democratic "debates" on July 30 and 31. I refer to these hyped media events as For Profit Scams. You can find my explanation here and here. |
Then as now, in their zeal to find someone, anyone, to beat Trump, the press is once again too focused on the candidates themselves, ignoring warning signs that are almost always sitting right there in front of them, in the crowds.
*Williamson belongs to a category of candidate you might call the Ignored. They’re candidates blown off by national political wizards who don’t believe, or don’t want to believe, they can win. How anyone can think this way after 2016 is mind-boggling.
The list includes Williamson, entrepreneur and Universal Basic Income proponent Andrew Yang, Hawaii congresswoman and regime-change opponent Tulsi Gabbard, and, most conspicuously, Bernie Sanders.
I think it's critical that Democrat party King and Queen Makers take seriously Taibbi's final paragraphs, but I know they won't:
*Four years ago, the rank inadequacy of the Lindsey Grahams and Scott Walkers and Jeb Bushes who tumbled into the pastures of Iowa made great sport for snickering campaign journalists, myself included. We dubbed the field of governors, senators, and congressgoons who couldn’t beat a game-show host the “Clown Car,” and laughed at what many of us thought was the long-overdue collapse of the Republican Party. The joke turned out to be on us.
The GOP error was epic in scale. The Republicans sent twice the usual number of suspects into the buzz saw of a Throw the Bums Out movement they never understood, creating the comic pretext for the Clown Car: twice the canned quips, twice the empty promises, double the rage, frustration, and eye rolls.
Nobody will want to hear this, but Democrats are repeating the error. The sense of déjà vu is palpable. It might and should still work out, according to the polls. But a double catastrophe seems a lot less impossible than it did even a year ago. Lose to Donald Trump once, shame on the voters. Lose to him twice? It’s glue-factory time for the Democratic Party, and another black eye for America, which is fast turning its electoral system into a slapstick reality show.— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) July 26, 2019They may not lose - it will likely be close no matter what - but the point holds. Just like 2016, both politicians and campaign press are not in tune with how much they’re distrusted generally. Trump is expert on capitalizing on this and he is set up to do so again. https://t.co/6gFUn0N3uQ
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