Finally, too embarrassing even for Trump

This covid pandemic has been a  humbling time for Trump, and this is not a person who abides any humbling. His braggadocio in February and early March was undone by those nasty little critters. He couldn't follow his instincts because they were leading to disaster, and his course changes showed his lack of leadership.

Then he started enjoying his daily show-off opportunities, otherwise known as the daily covid taskforce briefings. One of the first shows was horribly embarrassing, with Trump touting how intuitive he was about the medical issues, and his medical advisers looking very uncomfortable as they agreed. So Trump toned it down, introducing people, thanking them, complimenting his team, and generally trying to play the benevolent leader. (One major exception: when he was asked gotcha questions from reporters he dislikes. In those cases, he sharply attacked, but not at length.)

Who would have predicted that a moment at one of these briefings would finally tip the scales? It appears to have happended. Trump had just had a briefing on ways to disinfect surfaces. So he mused during the public portion of the briefing on some of his ideas and asked the medical experts to look into them:

So I asked Bill a question some of you are thinking of if you're into that world, which I find to be pretty interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether its ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said, that hasn't been checked but you're gonna test it. And then I said, supposing it brought the light inside the body, which you can either do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you're gonna test that too, sounds interesting. And I then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute, and is there a way you can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it'd be interesting to check that.

This isn't the first time Trump has injected his opinion into medical discussions as though it carried some weight. He made optimistic (and dubious) claims about how soon we'd have a vaccine and about chloroquine as a therapy.

Somehow, his blather on April 23 was too much, and brought a storm of ridicule down on him. His defenders among the laymen were many, but lame. He didn't really suggest injecting disinfectants... no, actually, a lot of treatments are injecting disinfectants... there's a company that announced intralung UV equipment so that's not crazy... chemo drugs are injected poisons, and people take them...  he was just free-associating as is his habit... come on, it was sarcasm, etc.

I can't point to exactly why Trump didn't get away with this one, but he didn't. He was subdued at the briefing on the next day, and over the weekend moped on Twitter that he wouldn't do them anymore:

What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately. They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!

So now Trump has lost his podium, and he'll be sidelined until he figures out some way to refocus attention on himself. I'm a little scared as to what that might be.

Bad--Could Be Worse

Sincerely, Trump is a very scary leader to have during a crisis. But so far he hasn't made any uniquely bad decisions that no other national leader has made in another country. He was very slow to see the danger, but so were many others. It's not a good excuse for a US president, but at least he didn't actively make things worse. Now, however, Trump could, through his anger or impulsiveness or lack of judgment, make a whopper of an error. He almost did that already with his statement that the country could open back up and churches be full on Easter. He backed away from that, but what if he doesn't next time?

His lack of seriousness throughout this crisis should be costing him support, but it hasn't necessarily been that way. Some people blindly follow him thinking he's a great leader and only liars disagree. I think a lot of people see him as a uneducated blowhard, though to some that isn't a disqualification if they generally like his policies. Maybe to those people he still seems a better choice than giving Dems more power. Sad to say, but I can understand that. I don't have much confidence in Democrats either. This pandemic is going to be hard on us to a certain extent since we missed the window of handling it with minimal damage. And chance is still not done with us--the virus could mutate into something even worse. The damage we do to ourselves with poor choices isn't too great yet, but there is still plenty of time for that to get worse too. Fun times!

Image: perezhilton.com

Candidates Implode--Two in one day!

No, I'm not even talking about Rick Perry or Chris Christie.

This time it's Scott Walker (for campaign finance shenanigans) and Brian Schweitzer (for gay and whore slurs against members of Congress). Schweitzer's verbal gaffes were bad enough that they could have been perpetrated by Rick Perry, but not this time.

This is good. I'm happy when the stupider ones eliminate themselves. Actually, these problems may not rise to a strike-out for these candidates, but they're getting closer.

Image: news.stv.tv

A binder full of women

It's the one moment of the debate that I saw in real time. It sounded quite condescending to me, that Romney knew so few capable women managers that he had to go to third parties, and then received "a binder full of women."

My sweetie put an interesting spin on it:

"Probably a lot of Mormon men have a binder full of women."

 Image: tumbler.com

Top gaffes of the Democratic convention

For Democrats, it was a pretty well organized convention without too many socialistic promises made. So it was an improvement on the last big platform event, the State of the Union speech. The Dems embarrassed themselves in small ways, but not in big ways. (Much better than Obama's last big speech, the SOTU.)

• The "Government is the only thing we all belong too" video. This isn't a good sentiment when trust in government is low, as it is now. Obama campaign is distancing itself. See good critiques at HotAir and Reason.
• Nixing the stadium. This looks like over-reach, trying to fill a stadium again, and then canceling it for weather concerns. This is a problem with its roots in his 2008 acceptance speech. Just as well to bite the bullet this time and go back to a normal venue. No campaign should repeat the stadium thing.
• Floor vote for putting God and Jerusalem back in the platform. Poor optics on the part of the platform committee, poorly handled on the convention floor. They didn't send out enough memos or email, obviously, so the voice vote didn't go as it should. Many pundits/blogs thought this was the worst gaffe of the convention, but I don't think there will be much mileage out of a perfunctory mention of God and Jerusalem. They're just not the major issues in the campaign or important wedge issues. (By the way, what are the wedge issues?)
• Bill Clinton gave a great speech, but did you know he's a serial rapist? I'm seeing this charge frequently just in time for the DNC. (However, Ann Coulter was years ahead of the meme.) I'm following this rule for political decisions -- no disqualifications due to sexual misdeeds. The moral outrage is never applied consistently. People excuse and forgive on their side, but try to run those on other side out of government and out of town. I'm tired of the hypocrisy, and I don't want to narrow the choice of candidates to only those who are strictly faithful in their marriage vows. This pass doesn't extend to harassing or fooling around with minors. That's still verboten.
• I guess Biden disappointed those counting on him to gaffe.
• The Blaze found a delegate who said "Romney will destroy this country completely." If she were to meet him, she wants to kill him. Substitute 'Obama' for 'Romney' and you have a typical Tea Party interview or right-wing comment on a news blog. Yawn. Does this register on anyone's outrage meter anymore?
• Breitbart.com's pick for best and worst.

The Dems didn't even come close to crippling themselves, so this counts as a good convention. The Dems still have plenty of time to screw up, and the GOP often counts on this happening. By staying on message, the Dems are making the GOP work for a win this time instead of just handing it to them.

 Dem equivalent of Tea Party crazy

Image: theblaze.com

Keep those gaffes coming!

Oh my God have those news cycles been dominated by gaffes. We were talking about Medicare funding ... and successfully avoiding talking about the Medicare cuts "our side" voted for... then we were saved - SAVED - by Joe Biden and his "chains" remark. Then we had more fun and a great biology lesson from Todd Akin. Will we ever get back to some real issues? OF COURSE NOT.

The easiest way to derail a news meme that's not going your way is to find something egregious said by the other side. There are probably tens of thousands of politicians giving statements, holding fundraisers, and going into interviews without gags in place. Someone is going to say something. Then we have twitter and the internet and so many willing campaign operatives and media critters that no gaffe needs to go unnoticed. I predict that this is the way the rest of the campaign will go. Maybe there will be an undercurrent of real issues, but it most of the coverage will be of one gaffe after another.

Both Sides Now

Both sides will play this gaffe game, but so far the Dems have been the winners. I bet the GOP is working just as hard, but they have one or two major handicaps.

The first handicap, which I'm certain of, is that most of the mainstream media tilts a bit left. They're more disposed to report gaffes than embarrass Repubs and less disposed to report gaffes that embarrass Dems. The right can scream all they want about media bias, but we've heard that before, and screaming it louder isn't going to help them. Their own media is even more blatant in its bias, which can't help them when they try to get sympathy, nor if they try to counteract the leftist bias with their own gaffe reporting. The conservative media just hasn't built up any credibility, and that's going to hurt them now.

The other handicap I'm less certain of. Both sides have their whackos, but it's possible that the right has more of them. There's been more upheaval in the GOP, what with the Tea Party and Libertarian factions growing. Another contributor to the whacko count was the GOP having fewer incumbent senators and a lot of challengers not acclimated to greater media scrutiny. This may be too much of a generalization based on Akin, Angle, and O'Donnell.

These handicaps mean that the GOP will probably lose the gaffe race unless there are some stunners by Dem candidates. However, it's hard to figure out which gaffe will rise to the top. The same day Todd Akin uttered his gaffe, an election official in Ohio wrote "I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban -- read African-American -- voter-turnout machine." He wanted to make sure the early voting in Ohio didn't include Sunday. No convenient weekend voting that might help those undesirables. That sounds pretty major to me.

Rating Scale for Gaffes

This demonstrates another odd thing about gaffes: individuals don't decide how bad a gaffe is--it seems to be an accumulation of responses more like a herd or a hive-mind. I have a hard time identifying the characteristics of a winning gaffe versus one that isn't going to make a dent. (Example - Cain's 9-9-9 plan and how the numbers didn't add up. Yawn - nobody but me cared.)

Perhaps people will tire of campaign coverage by gaffe. If so, what will replace them? I doubt if wonky position papers will attract general attention. I can hope that punchy, clear policy statements and critiques might work, but the hive-mind probably disagrees with me on that. I'll just have to wait and see. Sigh.

Image: whowhatwhy.com

Just to clarify: This is not a joke. I really believe that issues will be largely undermined, and the flashiest, most memorable media coverage will be about gaffes. I would mourn the lost chance for a good campaign, but the the outlook hasn't been promising for a while. This isn't a death so much as another nail in the coffin.

More about gaffes.  Bernstein on gaffes.

Not all gaffes are equal

It was a tough day for Republicans. On Sunday, the GOP candidate for Senate from Missouri made a big-ass mistake. He said that he doesn't believe that women can get pregnant from rape due to some bodily defense unknown to people who actually study human biology. Therefore, any woman claiming she got pregnant from a rape is probably a liar, and doesn't deserve to have a safe, legal abortion. Besides, even if she was telling the truth, her baby is innocent and deserves to live... never mind how traumatic the pregnancy might be... and even if the woman is a 12-year-old girl.

Some Republicans are pissed that this gaffe may cost them the Senate seat, and they're wailing about how unfair it is that gaffes stick to them but not to Dems.

Clearly, I'm not too sympathetic. To some people, this is just a little 'oopsy' like "57 states" or "put y'all back in chains" or "I like firing people."

This is different. It's not like saying the wrong word or using a questionable metaphor, or forgetting to fill a sentence with enough clauses so the words can't be taken out of context. This guy meant what he said. This has been his belief and reflects a policy objective that he would legislate if he could.

It would be scary if he could actually follow through, which he can't. What IS scary is that someone this dogmatic about abortion, reproduction, sex, and rape could be elected to the Senate. In 2010, the idiocies known as Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle were defeated, not by GOP primary voters, but by general election voters. We'll have to count on general election voters again. Let us pray, yet again, to be saved from the foolishness of some of our fellow citizens.

  Christians wooing women voters?

Image: mediaite.com

Also interesting. Bernstein on what the party can do.

Watching a gaffe mushroom

Yesterday I was trying to find out whether the left was going crazy over the Paul Ryan as Romney's running mate. No they weren't, but I blundered into this story:

Boehner Spokesman: Obama Responsible for Drought

It seems that some hapless spokesman for John Boehner released a statement to the press including these words, attributed to the Speaker himself:

[Obama] "continues to blame anyone and everyone for the drought but himself."

Anything like that spreads over the liberal blogosphere fast. It was picked up the Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo Livewire, etc. By 2:30pm in the afternoon, comments were coming back to Speaker Boehner's own site, and by 4:30pm, the site had a correction up:

UPDATED @ 4:30 PM ET: Clarifies that the president is blaming others for failing to respond to the drought when he has yet to urge Senate Democrats to adopt a bipartisan drought-relief measure passed by the House. 

So, did anyone in the infamous Lamestream Media jump on this story? No. CNN, NBC, CBS, NYTimes, WaPo, none of them seems to have run with it, at least according to my Google search. The most high profile liberal sap is MSNBC, to its shame.

I'm reminded of the slam on Al Sharpton in May, where someone in a conservative news factory cleverly edited Al Sharpton and made it seem that he was accusing the Republicans of being for genocide. That was picked up by Mark Levin (if it didn't start there) and spread around quickly too. Fox didn't fall on it, to their credit.

There is one major difference in this case. The conservative sites didn't have links to sources, but most of the liberal sites did. That's how I got to Boehner's site and saw the correction.

There is also a major similarity between the conservative blogophere and the liberal blogosphere. They will both run with meaningless gaffes that any adult would immediately discount. The immaturity is so predictable and tiresome. Grown up, all of you!

Rick Perry's Economic Plan -- I Can't. Oops

I guess I won't have to research his plan. Yeah--it's like having a snow day!

In case you haven't heard, Rick Perry had a horrible debate, and his stock on Intrade has nosedived more than 50%. The downside to this situation is that Newt Gingrich will soon be the presumed contender to Romney. I can't stand Newt.

"Ah shoulda stuck with two depar'mints."