Excellent writing and thinking, as usual, Alexis. History will not be kind to Donilon and Richetti. They very well might go down as some our history’s great villains, who doomed our democracy with their hubris and avarice, if things go terribly dark. Donilon demanding his four million-dollar payday from the campaign illuminates his incentives for keeping Biden in the race. The Richetti full-family employment plan also shows us why he thought it was a splendid idea to not share polling with Biden.
I do wonder how Tapper and Thompson were able to interview 200 sources, cross check, do further reporting, and then write a finished book in four months. Many star journalists (Bob Woodward, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin) have been criticized in recent years for saving the juicy scoops for their money making books rather than reporting it contemporaneously to fulfill their constitutional function. It would have been nice to have known what Tapper and Thompson knew when they knew it, and I find it really hard to believe they didn’t know at least some of the juicy bits well before the debates. Four interviews per day would have chewed up 50 of those 120 days alone. If they had done their duty as reporters that might have forced Biden out well before the debates. Tapper’s defensiveness on this point in the podcasts I have listened to feeds my skepticism.
Another group of folks who deserve a lot of blame are people like me who actively raised the Cognitive Dissonance Shields. I told myself for far too long that I thought it was great, simply wonderful, to not have think about or hear from the president every single day after four years of wall to wall, 24/7, high volume insanity from Trump. I’ve met the enemy in this instance, and it was me.
Good questions Francis. I think if I knew (from a distance) then everyone pretty much knew. They just pretended they didn't. Having been in certain tense social and political environments myself, where it is difficult to stray from the company line, there is more than mere nefariousness at work. It goes deeper than that. (Remember the Asch psychology experiments when people went against what they saw clearly about the objectively clear lengths of lines in the face of peer pressure to the contrary. I think most of us social creatures know this is no joke. And most of us are no heroes either. I make no such claim about myself). Still, at a certain threshold point, when the length of the line is so clear and the stakes are so high, one would hope that the obvious objective truth would win out. Everyone saw that Biden was too old; I saw it from 2016 and even before. By the same token, it's hard to believe that so many smart people -- Republicans this time -- don't know the same thing, or worse, about Trump. Many knew it before, and said so out loud. (See Vance, JD, and Rubio, Marco etc.). What will it take for the fever to break? My fear is that the whole system collapses before this unkillable-seeming Hollywood villain goes away. Profiles in discouragement. Do we totally discount the possibility that the MAGA crowd is right and we are wrong?
Great piece Alexis. I agree - the Dems are having (kicking and screaming) their reckoning. It will be interesting to see who emerges at the other end. Are the likes of Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg automatically disqualified for having been complicit in the Biden health coverup? And there are literally no prominent Republicans who aren't complicit in the current catastrophe. Time for both parties to pass the torch.
Yes, it's sad to see people much older than we are holding on well beyond their time. And I see people on both sides of the aisle--no need to name names--who can run and throw and call crisply clear audibles in response to cracks only they can see in the defense. I want us one of those.
Excellent writing and thinking, as usual, Alexis. History will not be kind to Donilon and Richetti. They very well might go down as some our history’s great villains, who doomed our democracy with their hubris and avarice, if things go terribly dark. Donilon demanding his four million-dollar payday from the campaign illuminates his incentives for keeping Biden in the race. The Richetti full-family employment plan also shows us why he thought it was a splendid idea to not share polling with Biden.
I do wonder how Tapper and Thompson were able to interview 200 sources, cross check, do further reporting, and then write a finished book in four months. Many star journalists (Bob Woodward, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin) have been criticized in recent years for saving the juicy scoops for their money making books rather than reporting it contemporaneously to fulfill their constitutional function. It would have been nice to have known what Tapper and Thompson knew when they knew it, and I find it really hard to believe they didn’t know at least some of the juicy bits well before the debates. Four interviews per day would have chewed up 50 of those 120 days alone. If they had done their duty as reporters that might have forced Biden out well before the debates. Tapper’s defensiveness on this point in the podcasts I have listened to feeds my skepticism.
Another group of folks who deserve a lot of blame are people like me who actively raised the Cognitive Dissonance Shields. I told myself for far too long that I thought it was great, simply wonderful, to not have think about or hear from the president every single day after four years of wall to wall, 24/7, high volume insanity from Trump. I’ve met the enemy in this instance, and it was me.
Good questions Francis. I think if I knew (from a distance) then everyone pretty much knew. They just pretended they didn't. Having been in certain tense social and political environments myself, where it is difficult to stray from the company line, there is more than mere nefariousness at work. It goes deeper than that. (Remember the Asch psychology experiments when people went against what they saw clearly about the objectively clear lengths of lines in the face of peer pressure to the contrary. I think most of us social creatures know this is no joke. And most of us are no heroes either. I make no such claim about myself). Still, at a certain threshold point, when the length of the line is so clear and the stakes are so high, one would hope that the obvious objective truth would win out. Everyone saw that Biden was too old; I saw it from 2016 and even before. By the same token, it's hard to believe that so many smart people -- Republicans this time -- don't know the same thing, or worse, about Trump. Many knew it before, and said so out loud. (See Vance, JD, and Rubio, Marco etc.). What will it take for the fever to break? My fear is that the whole system collapses before this unkillable-seeming Hollywood villain goes away. Profiles in discouragement. Do we totally discount the possibility that the MAGA crowd is right and we are wrong?
Great piece Alexis. I agree - the Dems are having (kicking and screaming) their reckoning. It will be interesting to see who emerges at the other end. Are the likes of Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg automatically disqualified for having been complicit in the Biden health coverup? And there are literally no prominent Republicans who aren't complicit in the current catastrophe. Time for both parties to pass the torch.
Yes, it's sad to see people much older than we are holding on well beyond their time. And I see people on both sides of the aisle--no need to name names--who can run and throw and call crisply clear audibles in response to cracks only they can see in the defense. I want us one of those.