We have arrived at a terrible moment in American politics. There are two hundred and sixty six days until America decides. It is February thirteenth, Valentine's Day Eve, and this is my warning. John Berman is CNN's superb morning anchor, and he asked a question of CNN analysts Bacary Sellers, who's a very smart guy.
Here's the question, Pacary, if this campaign becomes Trump versus Biden, and if it devolves into something like old versus dangerous. If Democrats say Donald Trump is dangerous, Republicans say Joe Biden is old, is that a race that Democrats would be confident about.
Let's talk about the question for a minute before we get into Bacary Seller's answer. The question is completely logical. In fact, if you look at the race and you read all of the news coverage about it. What John Berman has asked is exactly where most of DC's conventional wisdom lays, which is, the race will be a choice for the American people between a candidate they think is too old and one they worry about is too dangerous. That's the race old versus dangerous. Except that's not what
the race will be about. The thing about presidential politics is most times you don't get from point A to B in a straight line. You have to tack to get there. You have to move on the obliques, on the angles. And so when you look at an issue like this old versus dangerous, there's a higher face card that develops out of that contrast that is not a good one for the Democrats. And that is what we must talk about today, lest we go over the cliff
like political lemmings. Here's the important thing to understand. How is it that Donald Trump came to power? And what was it that Republicans believed about Barack Obama's presidency in twenty fifteen when Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower. What millions and millions of Republicans believed across the country. Was it that Barack Obama had failed? They believed he succeeded. Barack Obama had set out to transform America, and they believed he did exactly that and he wrecked it. But
they believed he didn't do it alone. They believed he did it with the help of a complicit, effeckless, corrupt, accommodationist Republican in Congress. This is why the Republican establishment is hated so much by the Republican base. Now, let's go back to that twenty fifteen election, and specifically to the Jet Bush campaign. What Jet Bush believed looking in the mirror was that after eight years of progressive politics and Barack Obama, what the Republican Party wanted was a smart, capable,
accomplished conservative governor. That's not what they wanted. What they wanted was strength to offset the weakness that they felt was endemic to the Republican establishment. And the strength and the toughness that they looked for was the phony toughness of Donald Trump, who was able to climb in the race because he emasculated Jet Bush. He defenestrated him, He made him look weak, He made all of them look weak, Little Marco attacking Ted Cruz's father and wife and then
watching Ted Cruz genuflect to him at each instance. Trump feeds on weakness, and Trump's strength has been the image within his base that he is the strong leader. His campaign is a classical authoritarian strong man campaign. Now, let me be clear, Donald Trump is completely, utterly and absolutely dangerous. He is unhinged. He is an accused criminal. There is no comparison whatsoever between the characters of President Biden and
Donald Trump. But elections aren't fair, and so the contrast that has come to be is one between decrepitude and sinility and strength and vigor, the strong man versus the one who can't communicate strength versus weakness. And here's the problem for Democrats, and thus here's the problem for America. There has never, ever, ever been a presidential election where the candidate defined as weak and infirmed or disabled in
any way has ever won. The candidate perceived as weak always and I mean always loses the presidential race in American politics. The race that must be run against Donald Trump buyers that Trump be defined as crazy, unhinged, but also weak and also dangerous. He must be all of those things. He must be attacked from a position of strength. And this is what is so worrying about this moment
in time. A year ago, as Jonathan Martin of Politico reports, Democrats talked all the time about how worried they were about Biden. And what emerged from that is the dumbest and I mean fucking dumbest piece of conventional wisdom. Maybe ever. It was the idea that if in Washington, the obvious was talked about truthfully, directly and with candor. It would somehow help Donald Trump, as if the American people hadn't
made the judgment on their own. Eighty six percent of the country doesn't want the rematch between President Biden and Donald Trump. Yet the political establishment, which includes the media, is foisting it on them, jamming it down their throats. And so what the media gets wrong about this is what Macary Sellers gets wrong about it. There's nobody in the country who thinks Joe Biden, because of his age, is the wisest man in a nation of three hundred
and forty million people. This is delusional. Joe Biden is not to most accomplished grandpa quote unquote in American history. He's not, and that's not what the campaign should be built on. Or this is a smart guy, but this isn't real and where this leads is too disaster. Let's watch his answer.
But Gary, if this campaign becomes Trump versus Biden, and if it devolves into something like old versus dangerous, if Democrats say Donald Trump is dangerous, Republicans say Joe Biden is old, is that a race that Democrats would be confident about man.
That was the weakest if I've ever heard you use John There's no there's no need for the words. If this is this is Joe Biden versus Donald Trump, point blank period. So yes, I think the Democrats, I mean we we are proverbial bedwinners. Right, So anytime somebody says something harsh about about the president, or he mistakes the president of Egypt for representing Mexico, we just we just wring our hands.
I mean, we go clutch our pearls.
We just go absolutely nuts. Look, our candidate is the president of the United States. He's old, he's eighty, But this eighty year old man has accomplished more than any other grandfather in the history of the United States of America. Like, he's actually performed the task. Well, he's gotten bipartisan legislation through. And the alternative is someone who's dangerous. I mean, let's embrace what it is. I don't know why the White House is afraid of it. Embrace it. He's old, but look,
he's better than the alternative. And that alternative is somebody dangerous who has ninety one felony accounts, who owe by the way, who wants to talk about other people's families. But he has five kids by three baby mamas. I mean, let's actually have this discussion on the merits, and I believe we would win that election.
I'm going to be clear and tell you how Joe Biden wins. The fight must be brought to Donald Trump. The last thought the American people have walking into the voting both must be of Donald Trump. Yet Trump has reinvigorated his extremist movement. It's better organized, better funded, and better led than it has ever been. It has never posed more danger than it poses today. Donald Trump is
ahead in the polls. Donald Trump is raising money handover fist, and Donald Trump is certain to be the Republican nominee. President Biden didn't appear on the Super Bowl. President of Biden doesn't appear in public very often. President Biden must be at the front of his campaign, and he must take the fight to the mag of movement. He must scorn Trump. He must mock him, He must diminish him, he must dismiss him, he must laugh at him, and
he must lead the country in rebuking him. Presidential campaign or not. Entitlements earned because you did what you said you were going to do to get the job. Reelection is not a thank you cookie. The thank you the president gets his Air Force one and Marine one in Camp David in the White House and all the great shit that goes along with the job. Presidential elections are about the future, about what's next, and Donald Trump is attacking the pillars of global society and of America's way
of life. He's assaulting the foundation. When the UN was formed, it was from the ashes of a war that killed almost one hundred million people. Our grandparents or great grandparents had the wisdom, judgment, the rectitude to build out of their imaginations. Enduring institutions, though not perfect, because they're run by people, have kept the peace and prevented World War three.
And this is what Donald Trump is assaulting. This is what Donald Trump is trying to dismantle, and the result of it will be hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dead young Americans. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were terrible in their endurance and their cost in blood and treasure, but the casualties in those wars were not in the hundreds of thousands or in the millions. Because that's what
the casualty numbers will be in a global war. And anybody who tells you that America won't be part of a global war in the third decade of the twenty first century, that Donald Trump could keep us out, as Vladimir Putin, that his invitation rampaged across Europe, is crazy and they're lying to you. We have arrived at a terrible moment in American politics. We have arrived at a
desperate and dangerous hour. And it's the job of the Biden campaign to tell the American people how it's going to end, how we're going to get out of it, how we're going to move on. And thus far the campaign is not measuring up because Donald Trump is on track to be the forty seventh president of the United States, and that, my friends, is a national catastrophe. The only thing about it is we have a lot of time to still do something about it, so we shut Thank
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