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Biden Slips a Cog: Second Time as Tragedy, Second Time as Farce, or Both?

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” –Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

As a former humanities major, an English professor manqué, and a humble blogger pressed for time and words, I strove to avoid and did not yield to putting the word peripeteia in the headline, and in the end succeeded by substituting “plot twist” (from the invaluable TV Tropes):

One of the basic building blocks of plot, a Plot Twist is a sudden, unexpected change in the fortunes or situations of the characters, setting, or plot.

Plot Twists are usually based on the assumption that there is something going on that we, the readers/viewers/players, don’t know about; if we had known about it, it would hardly be surprising. When it is revealed to us, we are surprised and shocked. This includes hidden aspects of particular characters’ backstories or their personalities (“I never would have thought Alice could kick Bob’s head into the locker!”)

Sometimes even when we do have all the information, the twist can come as a shock due to a sudden, unforeseen action by other actors in the plot, the setting or place it’s occurring in. We could see an action that we’d long predicted but not all its ramifications, so the shock value is still there. (There is also the “hidden aspect” of Jill Biden’s character, which we’ll get to.)

Here for your viewing pleasure is the plot twist in question (repeating from here). Biden’s slippage, in his June 27 debate on CNN with former President Trump:

Whether or not Biden “slipping a cog” is “shocking” (or perhaps “shocking, shocking”) is “unexpected” or not (2020; 2024), it certainly has shock value from “setting or place”: seen, live, on national television, by 51.3 million viewers, and never to be unseen[2]. So, from the standpoint of sense-making, “Plot Twist” is pretty good. However, the Aristolian peripeteia is much better, as we shall see[1].

In this post, I will present some sense-making tools for the dramatic series of events that followed and will follow Biden’s emission of grinding, clunking, and clashing sounds on the national stage. A caveat: That doesn’t mean I’ll actually be able to make sense of the situation, for reasons I will explain. However, we can at least make sense of what we area allowed to see as “the narrative” plays out. To help with that, I will first consider Biden’s slippage as a farce; I will then argue that Marx’s “tragedy” vs. “farce” epigram, though witty, is false; and I shall then consider Biden’s slippage as a tragedy, with particular attention to the individuals who surround him. Throughout, I will take up issues current in the news flow; just not using the frames many are accustomed to.

Biden’s Slippage as a Farce

Imagine you are sitting in the audience at a play, watching the characters speak their lines on the stage, enjoying the spectacle. Suddenly the scenery collapses, along with the “legs” that hide the wings, and everything that’s going on backstage is revealed! Hilarity ensues. Until order is restored, you see frantic stagehands, managers, costumers, make-up artists, maybe even intimacy coordinators and investors running around waving their hands and shouting. Something similar happened following Biden’s slippage:

Of course, this “genuine space” will be quickly suppressed. However, the imagined spectacle I just posited reminds me of a wonderful farce called Noises Off, which I saw in London back in my traveling days. Noises Off is a play within a play, and it too collapses the distinction between stage and backstage, between on-stage and off. Here is a sample from the script (video of the full play, starting in the same place). Use Monty Python voices in your mind for the characters:

In this rehearsal, we see a process surely much like that Biden insiders must have experienced when they “overprepared” their candidate. After all, “I open my mouth, and I never know if its going to come out three oranges or two lemons and a banana” describes Biden’s performance to a T, doesn’t it? (Dotty speaks “openly and honestly,” which is one reason Noises Off is so entertaining.)

My OED defines farce as “a dramatic work intended only to excite laughter,” and really, what else can we do? Wikipedia goes a little further, and defines farce as, among other things, “characterized by heavy use of physical humor” (Dotty’s sardines; Biden’s slippage. For this reason, farce is considered the lowest dramatic form, with tragedy the highest). Farce also includes “situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, ridiculous, absurd,” “ludicrous, improbable, and exaggerated characters; and broadly stylized performances.” Finally, in farce the characters are static; they are implacably who they are. We don’t watch Fawlty Towers for Basil Fawlty’s character development, after all. All these characteristics apply to the dramatic incidents following Biden’s slippage which I will now present.

(1) Situations that are highly absurd. Donor hysteria:

A debate watch party in Los Angeles on Thursday night happened to feature Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff, Pritzker, Whitmer and Beshear. There were other high-profile attendees – by a few answers in, Rob Reiner was screaming about losing and Jane Fonda had tears in her eyes, according to people in the room.

(2) Physical humor. Via alert reader randy, from Politico, What’s wrong with the picture:

Just like the sardines! (“Ron, which way do I hold the phone? Did I hold it that way before?”)

(3) Situations that are extravagant:

(4) Static characters:

Four minutes, no questions. No action. Just as static as Basil Fawlty.

So much for farce. Let us now turn to The Bearded One.

Marx’s Epigram is Wrong

The country has had an impaired President whose condition was kept from the President at least once before now (if we omit both FDR and Reagan in their last terms[3]). President Wilson:

Following his attendance at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Woodrow Wilson returned to the United States to campaign for Senate approval of the peace treaty and the League of Nations Covenant. However, the president suffered a stroke that October which left him bedridden and partially paralyzed. The United States never did ratify the Treaty of Versailles nor join the League of Nations, which had initially been Wilson’s concept. At the time, non-interventionist sentiment was strong….. Edith Wilson and others in the President’s inner circle (including his physician and a few close friends) hid the true extent of the president’s illness and disability from the American public. Edith also took over a number of routine duties and details of the executive branch of the government from the onset of Wilson’s illness until he left office almost a year and a half later. From October 1919 to the end of Wilson’s term on March 4, 1921, Edith, acting in the role of First Lady and shadow steward, decided who and which communications and matters of state were important enough to bring to the bedridden president.

Article II, Section 1: “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of Ameria.” We elect one person, not that one person’s family, friends, or milieu.) Thinking about this topic makes me queasy: I’m more used to using tools like Ferguson et al.’s industrial model, or class analysis, or institutionalism. In blogging as in life, I’m less than comfortable with small group dynamics, let alone individual personalities.[4] Presumably, the humanities can help me with that! But here we are; in a crisis, things correlate, and I suppose they do correlate in the persons of people who happen to be “in the wrong place at the wrong time” and embody the titanic forces at play.

Small group dynamics entered the chat just before the debate on June 18 with a short Daily Mail story: “‘The only people who could force him out would be Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer,’ one Democratic strategist told DailyMail.com. ‘It would have to be the four of them collectively'” (first time I’ve heard a Democrat use the word “collectively” in a long time). The interlocutors on the Biden side are not named, but presumably they are a small group too). Small group dynamics make their next appearance on June 22 in the New York Times:

Interviews with dozens of people close to the president reveal a truth at the heart of Mr. Biden’s political life: While he is surrounded by a diverse and multigenerational crowd of campaign operatives, policy experts and cabinet secretaries, he reserves his full trust for a small circle of insiders who are the definition of old school.

(The three are Mike Donilon, Ted Kaufman, and Ron Klain. Mike Donilon’s brother, Tom, is married to Jill BIden’s former chief-of-staff. Klain, of course, set the course for Biden’s Covid policy of mass infection without mitigation before Jeff Zients took over. Kaufman, among other things, headed the Biden-Harris Transition Team.)

Another small group story came on June 29, from Axios, this one closer to the bone: “Behind the Curtain: Biden oligarchy will decide fate:”

The only way President Biden steps aside, despite his debate debacle, is if the same small group of lifelong loyalists who enabled his run suddenly — and shockingly — decides it’s time for him to call it quits. Dr. Jill Biden; his younger sister, Valerie Biden; and 85-year-old Ted Kaufman, the president’s longtime friend and constant adviser — plus a small band of White House advisers [who?]— are the only Biden deciders.

So, although everybody who is anybody agrees that Biden trust and works in a very small group, nobody is quite clear on who the group members are (Franklin Foer, who wrote a book on Biden’s White House, writes “The group around President Joe Biden is familial to the core,” but doesn’t name the group members (!)). I’m inclined to believe that Axios got it more right than the Time because Jill Biden is part of the group:

However, Joe Biden is also, as it were, clan leader of the Bidens, who are all lending each other no-interest loans and wetting their beaks in the money stream generated for them by Hunter Biden’s influence-peddling operation. Dear Hunter! Surely they must have a representative in the small group as well, and Hunter’s presence makes sense from that perspective.

I’ve been trying to think of a word for this extra-constitutional entity, this small group that would play — or perhaps is already playing the same role in the Biden Presidency that the group around Edith Wilson played in Wilsons. The Axios URL shows the original headline was something like biden-debate-replace-advisers, but the editors jacked it up to read “Biden oligarchy.” But that’s wrong; oligarchy is an entire political system. (“Biden oligarchs” might have been OK, but to me, an oligarch is a member of the only small group that really matters: The squillioniares, and although Biden et al. may service the squillioniares, they are not, themselves, squillionaires.) I thought of cabal, milieu, gang, clique, crew, faction, team, troop, club, coterie, posse, and finally settled on the term “circle,” since a circle has a center (Biden), connotes repetitiveness and stability, and has allied terms “social circle” and “inner circle.”

So to repeat, everybody agrees that Biden has a tight circle, and must be approached through it, but everybody is much less clear about who the members of that circle actually are. To me, that’s an interesting result!

Oh, and the subhead: Marx’s epigram is wrong, because although the Wilson and Biden circles as extra-constitutional entities are historical parallels, the Wilson circle, so far as I can tell (Wilson-era historians please correct me) was neither tragedy nor farce, and the Biden Circle is now mired in both farce and tragedy, as I shall now show. (Note that I will not map current events to an Aristolian plot line; I am simply appropriating the concepts and twisting them to my purposes.)

Biden’s Slippage as Tragedy

We have already spoken of Plot Twists; here is the more rigorous Aristotelian theory. From the Brittanica:

The most powerful elements of emotional interest in tragedy, according to Aristotle, are reversal of intention or situation (peripeteia) and recognition scenes (anagnōrisis), and each is most effective when it is coincident with the other. In Oedipus, for example, the messenger who brings Oedipus news of his real parentage, intending to allay his fears, brings about a sudden reversal of his fortune, from happiness to misery, by compelling him to recognize that his wife is also his mother.

We can see that Biden’s Cog Slippage was both peripeteia and anagnōrisis. The reversal of fortune: The Biden campaign wanted and early debate because they hoped both dispatch Trump and to show that Biden’s cognition was unimpaired (as they successfully did with the SOTU). Instead, to anyone but a party loyalist, the debate was a disaster; it revealed precisely what the campaign hoped to conceal. The recognition scene, multiple levels: Biden himself (“‘I don’t walk as easy as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to,’ he said, as the crowd chanted ‘four more years'”); Biden’s circle; much of the Democrat Party; and many, many millions of viewers all recognized the Cog Slippage as serious and undeniable.

Another Aristotelian term: hamartia. Again from the Brittanica:

Hamartia, (hamartia from Greek hamartanein, “to err”), inherent defect or shortcoming in the hero of a tragedy, who is in other respects a superior being favoured by fortune.

Aristotle introduced the term casually in the Poetics in describing the tragic hero as a man of noble rank and nature whose misfortune is not brought about by villainy but by some ‘error of judgment’ (hamartia). This imperfection later came to be interpreted as a moral flaw, such as Othello’s jealousy or Hamlet’s irresolution, although most great tragedies defy such a simple interpretation. Most importantly, the hero’s suffering and its far-reaching reverberations are far out of proportion to his flaw. An element of cosmic collusion among the hero’s flaw, chance, necessity, and other external forces is essential to bring about the tragic catastrophe.

I believe that the tragic flaw common to Biden and his circle is loyalty. From Politico in 2020, “Biden Rewards Loyalty“:

The best way to get a job in the Biden White House is to have once worked for President-elect Joe Biden

That much has become clear this past week, with 13 of the first 14 White House appointments going to former Biden staffers. Several were high-ranking officials on the 2020 campaign or were in the vice president’s office but many also go back decades — to his Senate office or even his 1988 presidential run. Biden’s transition team is also full of Biden veterans, suggesting many more are likely to pop up in his administration.

The hires are part of a larger dynamic in Biden-world: he values loyalty.

President Barack Obama’s Defense secretary, Leon Panetta, who also served with Biden in Congress, described Biden’s approach to politics as “street smarts” versus “Harvard smart.” He said that “part of that street ethic is loyalty to people and loyalty to friends.”

Biden can sometimes put loyalty above optics, even when it’s politically risky — a dynamic to watch closely for in the administration when a scandal inevitably hits.

Loyalty as one of Biden’s central values goes back to Biden’s family upbringing. From Marie Claire:

Jean Biden passed away in 2010.

When Jean passed away, she was surrounded by loved ones including her great-grandchildren. “At 92, she was the center of our family and taught all of her children that family is to be treasured, loyalty is paramount and faith will guide you through the tough times. She believed in us, and because of that, we believed in ourselves,” the Bidens said in a statement. “Her strength, which was immeasurable, will live on in all of us.”.

“Family is to be treasured, loyalty is paramount and faith will guide you through the tough times.” Couldn’t describe the Biden circle better (and not in a good way). From People:

“My dad used to say, ‘Family is the beginning, the middle, and the end,’ ” Joe shared in a speech at the White House in 2023.

As Harry Truman is said to have said: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” Certainly it’s A Good Thing not to be surrounded by betrayers and schemers. And loyalty, like courage, is a real virtue (of course, some Nazis had courage, so it’s not the only virtue). But the loyalty in Biden’s circle seems to be so strong that they can’t bear to take the car keys away from him, when they clearly should.

Here, from a source outside Biden’s circle, is a description of Biden’s fate:

This is the part where “far-reaching reverberations are far out of proportion to his flaw.” No doubt the people in Biden’s circle think of themselves, and want to be thought of, as good, as do most of us. But the elder abuse they are visiting on Biden is not good, and that’s their tragedy, brought about by the tragic flaw they share with Biden.

Conclusion

There is much else to write; extra-constitional entities making decisions for the executive branch could certainly be seen as tragic by a constitutional scholar[5], but I must stop here with a final Aristotelian term: catharsis. Once more from the Brittanica:

In criticism, catharsis is a metaphor used by Aristotle in the Poetics to describe the effects of true tragedy on the spectator. The use is derived from the medical term katharsis (Greek: “purgation” or “purification”). Aristotle states that the purpose of tragedy is to arouse “terror and pity” and thereby effect the catharsis of these emotions…. The interpretation generally accepted is that through experiencing fear vicariously in a controlled situation, the spectator’s own anxieties are directed outward, and, through sympathetic identification with the tragic protagonist, his insight and outlook are enlarged. Tragedy then has a healthful and humanizing effect on the spectator or reader.

We can only hope. I’m here for the pity and terror, but I don’t see when or how catharsis will take place in 2024.

NOTES

[1] My use of Peripeteia is not the hotdoggery it may seem; the term is known in the gaming community, as one would expect it to be.

[2] All the tweets I saw from the fraction of the political class that wants Biden to drop out medicalized the slippage (“dementia,” “senility”). All the tweets I saw from dull normals and muppets spoke of signs they saw before they had to “take the keys away” from an elder family member. Here is the single thread I saw — not from the political class — that mentioned the possibility that Biden had suffered cognitive damage from his two Covid infections. See NC here: “A sociopathic elite is one thing, that we’re used to; but a sociopathic elite with brain damage is quite another.” Interestingly, Biden comment on boxing:

I’d say the brain damage counts for something with boxing too!

[3] To my surprise, CBS: “Physicians diagnosed Reagan with Alzheimer’s approximately five years after he left office but the date of the onset will likely be pondered by political historians and medical experts for years to come.” Leaving the medicalese of “dementia” aside, it’s not clear to me that Reagan ever reached the “take the car keys away” stage. Of course, Reagan had a better staff, an even more compliant press, and better hagiographers than Biden has ever had.

[4] I vehemently oppose the “great man” theory of history.

[5] There are rather a lot of extra-Constitutional entities playing roles just now, as if we had an unwritten Constitution like the U.K.: Political parties, the intelligence community, even the press…

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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118 comments

  1. GramSci

    Ok, I’ll try:

    «I’ve been trying to think of a word for this extra-constitutional entity, this small group …«

    “Clinton Foundation”?

    1. lambert strether

      No. The CF is highly institutionalized and large, not a small group. Not the same at all. Be serious.

      1. Lena

        The “Biden Circle” is good. Simply calling it “The Family” would work for me as well, “Family” here representing more than biological ties. The longtime closeness, the need to protect and the inability to be objective as witnessed in those surrounding Biden is essentially familial in nature.

        In families, the “center” can shift over time especially as the result of serious illness. A daughter takes on the role of mother when the sick mother can no longer care for herself – feeding, bathing and otherwise caring for the mother who has now become the baby. The roles have changed.

        Many who have experienced this understand the complex and difficult situation. It is a tragedy but one that must be faced, not covered up.

          2. Lena

            Then the “Biden Circle” it shall be. I had not thought of “The Family” cult organization when I wrote my comment. Trying to forget anything to do with the Clintons is kind of a hobby of mine.

            1. Dessa

              I think “circle” is the better word, but I feel like that group sits somewhere betseen a court and an entourage

          3. Dalepues

            Wiki calls the Peaky Blinders a gang. I know of a crime family in C.A. called “La Tribu,” or The Tribe. The problem for me in picking a word is that all the obvious choices are, well, too obvious. They’re already overused. It would be nice to find a word that is both concise and rarely used.

            1. Lena

              For an unusual word, perhaps the Old Irish “Muinter” meaning a group of people connected by a common bond (in this case, JRB). It can refer to family but also to attendants or followers.

              1. Kevin Walsh

                The modern Irish word muintir can also refer to the entire population of a country or region.

              2. Cat Burglar

                Biden seems like a typical Irish-American politician with his family and retainer political primary group. Historically, an even larger loyalty group is sustained by loyalty upward and rewards moving downward.

                But where Richard Daley or Boss Tweed were doing this exchange throughout a mass patronage network, Biden broke the rail strike, owes us 600 bucks each, and didn’t deliver his Covid or infrastructure spending promises (and did not punish Manchin for disloyalty). So he may have loyalty in his primary groups, but he hasn’t held up his end of the deal. So his base is ready to cut and run.

            1. Daniil Adamov

              Seconded. There is precedent for it being used in basically this way, to denote a ruler’s or some other public figure’s relatives and advisors who may exist entirely or partly outside all formal government structures.

            2. Acacia

              I had to search that term, and Google gave me this as the second-top result:

              The Camarilla is the most organized of the vampiric sects, an elite club that favours tradition and control of the mortal populace from behind the scenes.

              Not the primary definition, but somehow it seems apt.

          5. Daniil Adamov

            That’s fair enough. I can’t help noting, though, that to me the Family means something else still: Yeltsin’s inner circle. By some of the versions I’ve seen, it included his daughter and her husband, though the others were a very small selection of government figures, oligarchs, his security chief and his tennis trainer. The Family is said to have convinced him to 1) run in 1996 and 2) appoint Putin as his de facto political heir in 1998. I think there are some interesting parallels here.

            1. Polar Socialist

              I had the exact same connotation.

              For this case, I’d perhaps dig from the annals of history the well known Privy Chamber…

            2. hk

              Except we (USA) have no Putin? Trump does seem like various clownish “opposition figures” to Yeltsin (Zhirinovsky is what i thought of first, but only because that’s the name I remembered most and I suspect that there are more apt comparisons.). Maybe Nicholas Burns as an analogue to Putin, I mean? (There’s that intel agency parallel, too, but Burns has no obvious path to predidency any time soon…unless Harris gets forced out and Burns is the surprise pick as VP, and then some. )

              1. Daniil Adamov

                It’s not an exact analogy with Yeltsin’s inner circle, no. Or rather, it’s a similar sort of group, the closest retainers of a collapsing president, in a different political landscape. Another similarity is that they were always fretting about how to “save our democracy” (and their loot) from their enemies. Biden doesn’t have any obvious good options for a successor, though.

                I’m not sure if there’s any obvious Putin figure (sober, healthy security state protector of democracy, the constitution and the market economy; that, IIRC, was the idea at the time) in America. The short-lived Mueller cult suggests there is some demand for one among the Democrats, but Mueller is old and peaked too early. I haven’t been following the other intelligence figures in America too closely. I’m not sure any of them would be ready for this election anyway; they started grooming Putin for the role two years in advance.

                As for Zhirinovsky, yeah, Trump inevitably got compared to him here, but Zhirinovsky was too sui generis. It’s been suggested that the KGB was backing him at first, then went to pieces, letting him slip their leash and turn his party into a permanent and semi-independent force. There were certainly other colourful challengers too. Luzhkov, the crooked but popular mayor of Moscow, was probably the biggest actual threat in 2000; but a long-serving mayor isn’t very Trump-like, despite some stylistic similarities (he was also a garrulous and garish populist).

                Thinking about it, the biggest difference in the aforementioned political landscape is that America has a much stronger and more stable political class than we had in the 90s. Trump is still an outlier, and I don’t think he could’ve survived this long (politically) without allying with the Republican party elites. He didn’t make his own party; Luzhkov did just that, and he was not alone. Meanwhile, I doubt anyone outside current party elite circles will be nominated by the Democrats any time soon. There’d be too much resistance from people who think it’s their or their patron’s turn. This “Family” would have its work cut out trying to smuggle anyone in past them.

        1. Lambert Strether Post author

          I don’t want or need a clever meme. I’ve done that for years, and I don’t need to do it now. Since in my view, it’s utterly ineffective at anything but promoting in-group self-regard, I don’t see why anybody needs to do it. I needed a neutral term for a reasonably well-defined sociological phenomenon that I’m guessing is widespread in politics. I’m sure that Kamala Harris, for example, has a circle (just like sports figures have entourages). Probably most political figures do (and like it or not, we’re voting for that circle, and mot merely the candidate).

          1. Terry Flynn

            Thanks Lambert. Perhaps tangential but the “clever meme” phenomenon is something that I regard as a scourge of many YouTube channels.

            The Critical Drinker is IMO the archetypal example of someone who had a very valid point….. But it was ONE valid point…. And now he just turns up the volume one notch every time to keep support. Which is what the tabloids did in the 1980s. He has the requisite attention level now but if you have watched one video of his you’ve seen them all.

            Plus YouTube (ironically) suggested to me a channel by a guy who has read his books. I had genuine LOL moments at what the Critical Drinker wrote and got published. It sounds like fan fiction by a 12 year old boy who has zero understanding of the real world.

            1. Terry Flynn

              PS something about NC and Lambert’s Corrente site that should be treasured is that there are 50 to 100 important issues covered regularly.

              There is no need to “up the volume” artificially. The breadth of analysis ensures that simple factual reporting is sufficient to ensure engagement.

              As far as I’m concerned you’ve “made it” if you can do that…. People who just up the volume each time to maintain support should be examined closely.

            1. Terry Flynn

              Thanks! You & I have both quoted the Critical Drinker in the past so wondered if you had any thoughts about him these days….. (see thread)

              1. The Rev Kev

                Looking over his videos, I find myself agreeing with more thoughts of his than those that I disagree with. He is a bit like Jimmy Dore or Jonathan Pie in that he has his own, loud style but if you pay attention to what he is saying, you find fascinating insights into what passes for popular culture these days. If I was a modern film critic, I would be much more abusive about some of the stuff coming out of the big studios. Those studios tend to have the reverse Midas touch in that every story that they touch turns to crap. My own DVD collection was built up over a number of years but these days I am lucky to find something good enough to add to them at the rate of perhaps one a year. Most films these days I could not be bothered to watch even if they were handing out free tickets outside the movie theater.

                1. Terry Flynn

                  Thanks. Certainly in agreement that I agree more often than disagree with him. But that’s kinda a symptom of the issue…… He says what you expect every time. He needs a broader critique.

                  Plus I’d urge you to look for channels who read out his books….. Jeez…… I spent 25 years building up to my published book. Not same type of course but certain fundamentals hold… Like researching the basics…. His entire basis of first book is a complete joke and only works in our bizarro timeline.

                  It is (sadly) funny how utterly he misunderstands how the basics of govt and the security services work.

      3. JPN

        I think the term you’re probably looking for is “kitchen cabinet”, it has been a political term since it was used against Andrew Jackson by his political opponents for having a small unelected group of advisors. I haven’t heard it used in years, though and I believe if it ever does crop up the usage isn’t nearly as derogatory as it used to be.

      4. integer

        How about “cluster”? For example: the Biden cluster. An added bonus is the association with the term “clusterfuck”.

    2. The Rev Kev

      I tend to think more in terms of medieval fiefdoms such as with the Bidens, the Obama family, the Clintons that are always looking out for themselves but who will come together for mutual interests such as Russia or Iran or China. The Trumps are newcomers and the older guard will not tolerate them muscling in on their territories.

      1. Ranger Rick

        Neofeudalism keeps coming up. I’ve been on the watch ever since I ran into the term in Modern Mercenary. In a sense, the old dynastic systems never really went away, they just got new names. No kings but elected heads of state (hello Holy Roman Empire!), no nobles but representatives, no landed gentry but the FIRE sector who both own the land and the money used to buy it. The book posited the loss of the monopoly on violence as the surest sign the system had come into effect, but thinking back to strikebreakers and the railroad police, that happened a long time ago.

      1. Terry Flynn

        A president’s faculties certainly matter.
        Less so their grocer I’d imagine.

    5. Grebo

      “Wake”. Apart from the obvious it is the collective noun for a group of vultures feeding. Not exactly neutral I grant…

  2. albrt

    Scott Alexander has an interesting post up. The beginning and end are about prediction markets, which I do not find interesting, but the middle is about how he (a psychiatrist) failed to recognize that Biden had gone ’round the bend. One thing is fairly clear – a switch has been flipped and Alexander went from not believing Biden was senile to being entirely convinced Biden is senile. I think a lot of people are in that situation, and I do not think it is possible to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

    https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-markets-suggest-replacing

  4. Revenant

    I thought the word you needed was house (House Biden, rulers of the Imperial tax planet Delaware) or clan or, indeed, Mafia family.

    But you got there via a few paragraphs on loyalty.

    Biden’s circle are made men. Unmade only in death. But will sonny be able to take over from the old man?

    Trump doesn’t come over the same way. Too self-interested, incontinent and legitimacy-seeking. He has coin-operated lackeys and henchmen, not made men lieutenants.

    Weirdly, the Clintons don’t come over the same way either. A weird mix of legalistic and charismatic but not dynastic.

    Actually, the Biden soap opera is a lot like Dynasty or Dallas….

  5. hk

    Jake Sullivan = modern day Edward House? There are some peculiar parallels both in the grand nominal memes (search the world for monsters to destroy and, in particular, invade Russia!) and the sinister self-serving characters in supporting “puppeteer” roles…

  6. cgregory

    Focusing on Biden helps the GOP tremendously as it distracts the public from what the Supreme Court has just done to destroy the Constitution and the administrative state. We should switch the debate to who– Trump or Biden– uses the Constitution to keep the country running smoothly. The best test for that is to ask, “How many administration appointees have gone to jail?”

    1. Carolinian

      So you think the country (and the world) are running smoothly under Biden? Really?

    3. rob

      I think that is a bad test. and a bad framing.
      both biden and trump and the democrats and the republicans ; are all part of the decades old tradition to undermine the constitution , truth, justice, and anything that could be called “fair”.
      the rationale should be more along the lines of paying attention to how many people SHOULD go to jail, and NEVER face any scrutiny or consequences.
      That is a long list…. AND its “national security”…..that is at stake…. we can’t be allowing the crimes of every administration to be openly discussed…. never mind prosecuted.
      And what’s with the constitutional fetishism?.. most of the constitution is just function and form…. the really important part is the bill of rights… and those(except for the 2nd) are being abandoned…. legally.
      the supreme court, trump, biden, members of the council on foreign relations; whomever people put at the helm of this disaster we call “reality”,,,,,they are just contributing to the squandering of what should be.

  7. Carolinian

    Thanks, although IMO the problem with Joe would be the things he did when he didn’t have dementia. So all that “loyalty” may have been sycophancy that encouraged his worst impulses. In fact he seems almost incapable of admitting error or responsibility and this insecurity in turn requires lots of loyalty. Call it bad Dad syndrome.

    Now that the plot twist has taken place I don’t think all of this is going to go away. They are kidding themselves–too loyal perhaps.

    1. Screwball

      Loyal?

      Reminds me of G. Gordon Liddy. I thought his book “Will” was a good read. 1982 release. IIRR, he was the guy who said what corner do I stand on. Of course that could all be BS as well. But Watergate and the books around it, including this one, gave us a sample of how this stuff works.

      1. rowlf

        I read WIll after Liddy and Timothy Leary did college speaking events. A few decades later I thought Liddy borrowed a few other people’s stories as his own, such as during his FBI gunslinger days.

    1. Bernard Murrell

      The people of Gaza probably don’t care which genocidal demented old man bombs them. The result is the same.

    3. fjallstrom

      Since October, but before the debate Biden had lost about ten points in difference between approval and disapproval. US main stream media analysts are as a rule unable to formulate that this would have anything to do with a very visible and protested genocide. Even when analysing issue polls were the genocide is a large factor, they as a rule skip over the genocide.

      So anything is an excuse not to report on the genocide. If they manage to pull it of the stories of today it won’t be back until they are forced to report on it, which probably is when campuses open for autumn.

      1. .Tom

        Yes. I mean that no matter how this goes next with Biden, be it him or Kamala or someone else, it’s going to suck up a huge about of news bandwidth for months and push other stories out.

      2. Susan the other

        It’s as if farce is our way of seeking truth. I think I finally understand the profession of court jester. The office of the White House should have one. We should elect both the President and the Stand Up Comedian to hold office together. Because we need farce to keep our courage. After the Cold War we lost sight of just how farcical we are. And what a good thing it had been to have a counterbalance. And we spiraled down into triumphalism. Which was/is very gross and as tragic as senility. “May the farce be with us.” (Mel Brooks?). I mean, if you have a healthy sense of farce, would you be able to commit genocide? Or would just the thought make you vomit?

  9. Acacia

    I’ll go with farce, not tragedy.

    First, Joe Biden was never a great man. Full stop.

    We could say there has been a reversal of fortune (tho see below), but has there been any recognition of this?

    I see no evidence that Biden and his claque are anything other than firmly in denial. Did I miss it? If the protagonist of this drama had genuinely recognized what has happened, and not just in this debate, Biden would have dropped out of the race.

    Also, pity and fear?

    Personally, I feel none. Just disgust and contempt. Probably because the whole episode was predictable, and only hits home the level of gaslighting and perception management taking place in this country. Predictable also, as we’ve all been half-joking (only half) about Biden slipping a cog for at least a year now, and there were bets being taken on the Internet (check out Polymarket). Ergo, reversal of fortune also questionable. To me, at least, the only thing surprising was to see just how far gone Biden actually is. This raises questions like “who is actually running the show?” but these don’t elevate it to tragedy.

    Now, if Joe Biden gouges his own eyes out and staggers blind and bloody around the National mall…

    1. britzklieg

      “we’ve all been half-joking (only half) about Biden slipping a cog for at least a year now”

      Questions about his mental state were in play well before he was elected. He embarassed himself many times during his campaign: “you know… the thing” “corn-pop” screaming wildly in the face of voters (and at Bernie too), mumbling and fumbling, difficulty in walking already evident… the man never deserved the presidency. He was shoved down our throats and whatever else, Bernie (and yes, his fealty since is beyond disturbing/depressing) could have beat Trump and would have been a much better POTUS.

      Biden is and has always been a fraud. Now he’s braindead fraud. And it has never been funny.

      1. Acacia

        Agree on all points.

        IM Doc has noted that from his vantage point, Biden was already well into mid-stage dementia during the 2019 campaign.

        1. Jeff W

          Yes, and, as is indicated in a comment I made earlier today in Links, President Biden’s declining cognitive state was evident to Matt Stoller, Glenn Greenwald and David Dayen by early March, 2020, and for Stoller and Greenwald at least (and they can’t have been the only ones), probably before that.

          1. Big River Bandido

            Anyone who has watched Joe Biden even casually over the last 20 years can readily see the disintegration of the brain he once used to plagiarize law school papers with.

            He’s gone from being a mean, dumb SOB to a mean, dumb SOB with serious dementia. Anyone who claims to have not noticed the signs 5 years ago is either being willfully ignorant or in denial.

        1. John Anthony La Pietra

          Or just “Bidenfraude”? (Of course, those who enjoy the phenomenon a little too much will be accused of “Bidenfreude”. . . .)

    2. tegnost

      maybe the drama is on a larger scale and the tragic figure is obama and biden a pelonius, perhaps

      1. Acacia

        Larger scale, yes, but I think we’re talking about more than the idea that Biden plus Obama plus their larger circle are somehow tragic figures as an ensemble — that is something I really cannot see.

        Regarding the protagonist and the reversal of fortune in tragedy, Aristotle is fairly clear.

        The tragic drama is opposed to what we would now call a morality play: the reversal must be neither the spectacle of “a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity”, nor “a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity”, nor again, is it “the downfall of the utter villain”. Pity is aroused by “unmerited misfortune” and fear by “the misfortune of a man like ourselves”. The essential quality of hamarteia concerns a character “whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty” (see: Poetics 1452).

        Does any of this sound like Obama, Biden, at alia? Not to me. Do I feel any pity for Biden? Nope.

        We’re talking about opportunists, con men, looters, enablers of war and genocide — not heroes in a tragic drama.

        I think the most we can say is that the “tragedy” is at best a metaphor for the fate of the American Republic.

        None of the current leadership (including their enablers, e.g., Dr. Jill) qualify as tragic figures, unless we leave Aristotle far behind, and his interpretation is the locus classicus for the whole theory of tragedy.

          1. JBird4049

            And just why are they idolized? What can possibly makes worshipping these charlatans worthwhile?

            Maybe I am just getting old, but after forty years of horse manure plus the desecration of the last two national elections as well as the responses to such as Covid, Ukraine, and Gaza, I am just done.

            Seeing the smirking liars, brainless leaders, and fabulists as they continue to slaughter in massive swathes people around the world including Americans so they can continue in office to rake in the bribes sickens me.

            I welcome the end of the Democratic Party.

    4. DJG, Reality Czar

      Acacia: “Also, pity and fear? Personally, I feel none. Just disgust and contempt.”

      I agree: I’m not wasting pity on these people, and I have no fear of their particular vanities. I’m not bothering with disgust. Contempt, yes, loads of contempt.

      Which is why the situation is neither tragedy nor farce.

      Thanks for the comment.

    5. lyman alpha blob

      Thank you. I get pretty tired of all this hagiography over the man who gave the eulogy at Strom Thurmond’s funeral, which he presumably did because Thurmond was part of his circle.

      And I don’t think the SOTU in any way showed that SlowJoe’s cognition was unimpaired. It came across to me as ‘angry old man shakes fist at cloud’, much like the ‘comeback’ video in the post, where he literally shakes his fist.

      He’s the same vicious, grifting prick he always was, just with less working gray matter. He would have to have been a decent human being at one point for any of this to be tragedy.

  10. John Wright

    Perhaps his loyal group is seeing Bidens decline as rapid and wanted a good performance for the books.

    If is Parkinson’s prediction of the path is uncertain as I learned from a close relation.

  11. Mark Gisleson

    Love the grist ground extra fine. Even now ‘experts’ are charging hourly rates to to carefully chew each gristlet before examining its entrails and, if necessary, bringing in a chicken to confirm their initial findings, gristlets being less reliable postCOVID altho I’ve yet to hear a cogent explanation for that.

    The math is quickly changing from protect Biden to protect all of us (the corrupt politican’s version of P.E.O. Club) to OMG Biden’s going to take all of us down with him AND then the indictments will start coming in. The latter is the real hidden fear. Biden family corruption in Ukraine is a Watergate unto itself and since only the Bidens got rich, some may think it a good time to rediscover the concept of accountability.

    2. Typingperson

      This is why we should pay presidents (and Congress) a lot more. US prez makes just $400k annually, plus $70k in expenses. (That compares w/ $100k in 1949 — 75 years ago.) We should pay the prez $5 million a year to make them less susceptible to pressure, aka bribeable.

  12. JBird4049

    Reading this, it makes me believe that it is not the incapacity of any one man, but all those, all the individual political leaders or individual person in a position of responsibility, who are empty suits, effectively lacking any moral impulse to deal with this potential catastrophe; this is where money, blackmail, or a loss of position, should be almost meaningless as anyone thinking of what any kind of war, or economic and natural disasters, would be like without effective leadership.

    Since these individuals are incapable of dealing with this, it is obvious that they cannot do their own individual jobs. All the laws, rules, traditions, even potential raw power, are useless if people refuse to act, even failing to mention the 25th Amendment or something more outré such as impeachment. They are more focused on covering their behinds from mere criticism than anything else. In fact, if Biden is so enamored with loyalty, what about his (and their) loyalty to his country, or more importantly, to the American nation?

    1. Samuel Conner

      > what about his (and their) loyalty to his country

      This has been on my mind since the debate. One can understand the friends and family who are reluctant to draw attention to the President’s incapacity or to pressure him to acknowledge the problem, but some, probably many, of the people who have known that there is a problem are employees of the United States and should have a higher sense of duty.

      I hope that something good comes of this crisis, such as greater future transparency about the medical condition of the highest office-holder.

  13. ilsm

    I went to a technical university. My liberal arts were all elective. So limited!

    The past few days I reacquainted with the Cheshire n cat and Alice. There seems to be several realities.

    Then there is Strawman and Dorothy. Jill is not carrying Toto!

    I cannot vote for Biden.

  14. Useless Eater

    Biden was doped up for SOTU. Any honest person should be able to see/admit that, I think. So the question becomes, where were the drugs at the debate? Or why didn’t they work? If the drugs were deliberately withheld for the debate, that indicates a plot.

    1. LifelongLib

      I’m not a psychologist, but it seems reasonable that a debate requires a higher level of cognition than reading a speech does. Maybe the drugs just couldn’t get him there. Not a plot, but a gamble or a miscalculation.

    2. Screwball

      Disclaimer; not a doctor and only guessing.

      I think they messed up the timing. He was running out of gas at the SOTU – they didn’t want that to happen again – so they dosed him closer to the starting time. He was really bad very early, but got better as the night went on, IMO.

      It’s truly amazing we are even having this conversation about the most powerful office in the world.

      1. Mark Gisleson

        Biden did get better as the debate went on but it’s fair to wonder if they tweaked his meds during the breaks. Given modern science and the two lengthy breaks he may have even gotten a Keith Richards style whole body blood transfusion courtesy of his grandchildren.

        1. Screwball

          I wondered that too. If I remember right, the first break was not at the halfway point, but much later, which made me wonder about the timing. The second bread was just before the final statements by both. Again, if I remember right.

          I’m sure they knew ahead of time on the time of the breaks. I will go a little more tin foily and say I think he got the questions in advance. All those 1, 2, 3 point things seemed scripted to known questions. This gets more interesting when you see the clips of Bash pointing her finger. He was given all the help they could give him, which also proves they all knew how bad he is.

          Tin foil hat off.

  15. The Rev Kev

    The Democrats had full control over the conditions for that debate and they really tried to rig it so that Biden would succeed. But whoever decided that split-screen views were OK really blew it there. The sight of Biden on the right running down into incoherency while on the left Trump keeps on glancing at him as if to say ‘What the hell?’ will be a classic for the ages. In spite of what some Democrats say, Biden never was a great man and should never have been made President. I suspect that the only reason that the donors made him President was so that he could execute Project Ukraine and as he had bad blood between himself and Putin, in that respect he was thought ideal. Now to their horror, as that particular boat is sinking rapidly Biden refuses to leave through his old-man obstinacy and may well take a lot of people with him.

    1. Lee

      Crushing Sanders and the left wing populism he represented was another reason for Biden’s ascendency.

      1. Samuel Conner

        That was probably the principal reason. If Sanders had not been in the race, the D Party decision-makers would have been happy to let the primary play out without the early shakeout that was engineered to push JRB into the lead. Sanders had to be stopped, and JRB was the most effective vehicle for that.

        The thought occurs that BHO may be remembered as the man who gave us DJT, twice.

        1. hk

          I’ve been always of the view that BHO and DJT are fundamentally the same person, if on the opposite sides of the coin.

          Both came in to office promising “change” to wide swaths of the people sick and tired of the same old politics. Both got assimilated by the politics as usual and failed to deliver, but somehow got enough fans on style points that they remain both viable forces.

    1. Carolinian

      thanks

      My flavor of abuse but the side corollary that they will somehow push aside Trump lacks elaboration and credibility. So if it’s all a plot to remove Joe to what end?

  17. VTDigger

    Re: Great Man theory, surely in Monarchies & Dictatorships this theory must have some utility? Rome would have fallen much more quickly if not for a few competent emperors.

  18. everydayjoe

    The catharsis is common amongst establishment Dems and Republicans- what Biden said in the debate on how the world fears American military might. This world view has to change.

  19. James P McFadden

    Family is everything — loyalty is king — especially in crime families.

  20. Wukchumni

    Here’s the story of a lovely lady
    Who was a doctor, but not that kind of doctor
    Helped him around like she was his mother
    While doing arm curls

    Here’s the story, of a man named Biden
    Who was busy with two boys of his own
    They were three men, living all together
    Yet they were all alone, er except for Beau

    Till the one day when the debate went ghastly
    And they knew it was much more than a hunch
    That this group must somehow make things seem normal
    That’s the way they all became the Biden Bunch

    The Biden Bunch
    The Biden Bunch
    That’s the way they became the Biden Bunch

  22. David in Friday Harbor

    I’m not a professor of anything, manqué or otherwise, but doesn’t catastrophe better describe Thursday’s Biden denouement than catharsis?

    I strongly agree with Acacia above, that we have been gaslit by the DNC and their stooges in the media. Biden’s denouement was entirely predictable: weeks ago my friend and I sat drinking wine and watching a sunset discussing the dread that he felt and the utter contempt that I have for those two clowns.

    At least the media gaslighting has ended and the Biden mob are “going to the mattresses.” Denouement (unravelling) is followed by achievement (finishing). Their little Ukrainian shake-down is soon going to land them all in prison. Now that will be a catharsis!

    1. Steve H.

      > doesn’t catastrophe better describe

      O Lord sir, I hope so.

      I do like your take, I think it’s an advancement on the argument.

      I’ve been chatting with Eliyah about the Sleeping Beauty Problem, that from one perspective events are independent, but not from the other. A catastrophe assumes an end, which it may be for the Biden clan. The Trojan Women was the third play of a tetralogy, the catastrophe of Troy,\; but Cassandra was still hauled across the sea for her speech in Agamemnon.

  23. eg

    For the Dems writ large the Greek terms I’m looking for are hubris and nemesis. They thought they were fooling everyone where Biden’s physical and cognitive decline were concerned — so much so that they organized an early debate and structured it to their own specifications, no less.

    Oops …

  24. The Rev Kev

    A “circle” rather than a Clan? I would agree to the term circle only if it referred to the shape of a donut because if you look into the middle of a donut you would see that there is really nothing there.

  25. ALM

    Is loyalty also a tragic flaw shared by the media whose grotesque gaslighting propped up a hoary, often incoherent, short-tempered, feeble politician with a penchant for challenging voters and reporters to hand to hand combat? Biden was showing clear signs of senility during the 2020 campaign. His decline was impossible not to see. Just ask Julian Castro (who was destroyed by the Dems for saying so). I understand family and inner circle omertà. But the media have no such excuse. The Biden Gang could not have gotten away with it without unrelenting media cover.

  26. Froghole

    Thank you for mentioning Edith Wilson. Another (probably problematic) analogy is with late-stage Franco. By the late 1960s the Caudillo was visibly ailing, and power had gradually transferred to the Opus Dei crowd and after about 1970, more especially, to a court camarilla known as the ‘Bunker’ who were opposed to any kind of reform. Prominent amongst this coterie were Franco’s son-in-law, the corrupt heart surgeon Villaverde, and Franco’s very ambitious wife, Carmen Polo. There were not only the threats of accountability and democracy, but of Franco’s own longevity. The paranoia of the camarilla increased proportionately. Therefore, Franco would have to be kept alive for as long as possible by whatever means available, even at the expense of effectively torturing his body courtesy of successive surgical procedures. The closing pages of Paul Preston’s 1993 biography recounting Franco’s end in 1975 make gruesome reading – as excruciating as anything since the long death rattle of Philip II – in which the dictator’s blood splattered the operating theatres and adjacent corridors.

    As I see it, Biden was preferred in 2008 in the same way that LBJ was in 1960: as a perceived ‘conservative’ (which LBJ probably wasn’t and Biden undoubtedly is) in order to ‘balance the ticket’ and reassure the markets that there would be an emissary of the corporate class – what better than a Delaware senator? – at Obama’s side. The DNC was much criticised in 2016 for pressing the claims of a candidate with significant credibility issues, despite the argument that her unpopularity would pale by contrast with that of Trump. How much more severe must the criticism now be of the DNC for having succumbed to the Biden Bunker’s vast and insufferable sense of entitlement, and to have pushed the party into accepting the coronation of a highly mediocre, morally compromised and often reactionary hack who is highly unlikely to remain compos mentis for the next four and a half years?

    Moreover, as writers like Caitlin Johnstone have noted, Biden may already be mentally unfit to hold office, and may have been for some time. Thanks largely to the almost incredible – indeed eye-watering – incompetence of the Biden Administration, the World is now faced with two highly consequential wars and the threat of rapid escalation with China. The risk of a nuclear exchange is now perilously high, yet ultimate decisions will remain vested in the hands of an evidently impaired president until January. Should Sections 3 and 4 of the 25th Amendment not have been invoked long before now?

    1. britzklieg

      I lived in Madrid during ‘the ’72-’73 academic year (my dad was teaching at the University) and the Franco I saw a few times (once at a bullfight and once in a parade) was already a prop a la El Cid, although apparently still breathing. In hushed tones and out of earshot from the Guardia Civil many madrileños called him “el momio.”

      1. Ignacio

        In fact i believe and, i think i have commented before that Biden’s candidacy looked very much something a la El Cid. When Franco finally died there where many in the loyal camp who went to visit the burning chapel. That was very apparent. It was less apparent, though almost certainly much larger in numbers the feeling of relief which was conveniently kept below the surface.

  27. dk

    (Article II, Section 1: “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of Ameria.” We elect one person, not that one person’s family, friends, or milieu.)

    It’s always a family and milieu, it’s naive to think otherwise or complain about it, we’re human beings not genAI personae. Imo impossible the framers, family men all, were unaware of this or thought the magic they were spinning would change human nature to the point of overcoming deeply rooted biological foundations of trust: once can best evaluate (and possibly) trust people one has spent a lot of time with; impressions from early life are also significant. Family loyalties are the first loyalties we have to deal with, no matter how things turn out, they give us prototypes and a strategic palette.

    A benefit of public political campaigns is the opportunity to get a preview of that family and milieu in action. Beyond saying that Joe’s Jill issues were obvious throughout, let’s pass on to Kamala Harris, who ended her own 2020 campaign in December 3, 2019, following a (press-deferentially?) thin but steady stream of rumors, brought to a head by a November 29 NYT article:

    How Kamala Harris’s Campaign Unraveled
    https://web.archive.org/web/20191129104131/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/29/us/politics/kamala-harris-2020.html

    From the start, the campaign structure seemed ripe for conflict. Ms. Harris divided her campaign between two coasts, basing her operation in Baltimore but retaining some key advisers in the Bay Area. She bifurcated the leadership between two decidedly different loyalists: her sister, the chair, and Mr. Rodriguez, a trusted lieutenant who had managed her 2016 Senate campaign. Mr. Rodriguez was a central figure at the San Francisco-based consulting firm, SCRB, that had helped direct Ms. Harris’s rise for a decade; all of the firm’s partners were lined up to advise the presidential race.

    The two camps were soon competing, each stocked with people who shared a tight bond with Ms. Harris but who regarded each other with suspicion or worse. The setup cost Ms. Harris opportunities to recruit some of her party’s most sought-after outside strategists and left her reliant on a team less experienced in national politics than in California, an overwhelmingly blue state where campaigns often turn on factional infighting within the Democratic Party.

    Making one’s sister the chair of one’s campaigns, as Harris had been doing throughout her career in California, is an early tell of an excessive degree of family trust and a reduced ability to build a skill-based team. Not necessarily a deal-breaker, given a desolate bench, but something one might keep in mind.

    1. Lena

      IIRC, Kamala also leaned heavily on her sorority sisters from an all-black sorority for support during her failed 2020 campaign. When Elizabeth Dole ran for president, she also relied on her sorority sisters to get out the vote. I thought that was a strangely old fashioned Southern girl type thing. It didn’t turn out to be a successful strategy for either woman.

  28. Ignacio

    If loyalty is the most priced virtue by Biden this might explain the cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias that, IMO, has shown to be so apparent in Biden’s administration in foreign policy. It also explains inability to change course, negotiate, and the moral conundrum in which the Biden administration has sunken.

    Kind of a mini-nomenklature it looks like in which balanced viewpoints are set aside in favour of loyalty. Loyalty is usually considered a virtue but it can lead to vicious circles.

    1. Samuel Conner

      IMO the quality of virtue in loyality depends entirely on the degree of virtue of the person to whom one is loyal. Loyalty to a bad man is, IMO, not a virtue.

  29. DJG, Reality Czar

    “Finally, in farce the characters are static; they are implacably who they are.”

    This is Henri Bergson’s definition of what is funny. He didn’t know Wile E. Coyote, but he describes Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff, running and running, and falling only when he notices that he has violated the laws of physics. This is not exclusively part of farce.

    The key term here, which isn’t used often enough in describing U.S. culture and politics, is melodrama. Melodrama is overdetermnation of the story—constant pointing at what the viewer is “supposed” to feel. Awwww, meeting cute!

    “the tragic flaw common to Biden and his circle is loyalty”

    Loyalty is a melodramatic virtue. I’m hard-pressed to think of a tragedy that relies on loyalty.
    –Possibly, Antigone. But Antigone’s hamartia may be to choose personal ideas of the law to the code of the state.
    –Otherwise, tragedy is about the recognition of failure, and I don’t see any of that in the Biden claque. Like so many Americans, years of empire have persuaded them that they are always right.
    –Tragedy is someone like Hektor, who leaves to defend Troy knowing that he is about to die and surmising that his wife will be sold into slavery and his young son thrown from the walls of the city. And we get Jake Sullivan.
    –Note that the Democrats keep collectively referring to him as filled with empathy and compassion. A veritable bodhisattva. Again, this is melodrama. The claque wants us to believe that Joe “cares.” Awww, let’s meet cute.
    –The only tragedy that may apply is Arthur Miller’s devastating play, All My Sons, which shows the horror of greed and a bureaucratic mindset as applied to public and private duties.
    –Biden is tragic only if Zelensky is tragic. And Zelensky is a plaything of history, not exactly Othello. Or: Biden is tragic only if Berlusconi is tragic. Bungabunga doesn’t cut it.
    –But none of this is as beautiful, horrifying, and tragic as the events in say, the Bakkhai by Euripides.

    Indeed, Marx’s observation may not hold. He just hadn’t seen enough Anglosphere melodrama. Maybe someone should have sent him a reel or two from Gone with the Wind and South Pacific.

    1. hk

      Biden is, IMHO, as tragic as Macbeth. The least conventionally “tragic” figure in Shakespeare (well, he and Richard III maybe), and, in many ways, a genuine villain.

    2. lambert strether

      > Loyalty is a melodramatic virtue

      This is brilliant. Thank you (for that and Bergdon. I knew the static characters idea was received from somewhere. I just didn’t know where).

      “Melodramatic” is also much more pointed than “performative” (which in current usage is a faux ami of an important philosophical concept, spelled exactly the same).

      1. DJG, Reality Czar

        Lambert Strether: Yes, in the Anglosphere, where so much is melodrama, the word and concept are avoided. (In Italian culture, which has a strong streak of melancholy, the word melanconia is almost never mentioned.)

        “Performative” has indeed deteriorated. You pointed me to the original source–which is the English philosopher’s idea of language effecting a change, Fiat Lux, spells, incantations, chants. But I am now editing a manuscript for University of Chocolate City, all in English (ahinoi, the international language), and “performative” means almost exclusively related to performances and staging of work.

        In a sense, melodrama has once again done its work–and destroyed the performativity of language.

  30. stefan

    Biden’s slippage distracts from the fact that both these guys are a pair of old gasbags….either way, we are entering Andropov-Chernenko territory…and Republican dominance of governance will be worse by a power of ten…

  31. john r fiore

    Well, they do return as farce…in 1988 Biden had 2 brain aneurysm clots removed after a disastrous primary bid where he was caught “misleading” voters on several ads and lying about his ROTC performance in college…among other things. Back to today, its sickening to read only about the “donors” who are “upset” or who are always quoted. Who the hell cares about them…they are the mediocre ones who have destroyed the country…but, the legacy media, bizarrely, holds them upo as kings and queens…to think that people with no political or military experience, only experience in making money, know whats best…well, just look at the streets of the US…..the entire “election” process is so fake, so rigged, so cringe worthy…all these idiots have to be dislodged….

  32. Michael Fiorillo

    Interesting question: can a venal mediocrity be a tragic figure? I’d say yes, hypothetically, but only if you have the dramaturgical chops to pull it off… which our stunted and emotionally-amputated culture does not. So, farce it is…

    And how about the Court of President Biden? Unwieldy perhaps, but it includes family and courtiers, and fits with our increasingly feudal times.

    1. Alex Cox

      We were taught at school that tragedy is “a fall from high estate.” So the demise of Lear and Hamlet (both high-ranking royals) was a tragedy. The ruin of Macbeth, a usurper, wasn’t.

      Is the fall of a second-rate bag-man for Burisima and MC/Visa a tragedy?

      I agree with Acacia that it is not.

  33. Alice X

    Almost always a day late, but still a dollar short (much more, actually with inflation), me, not him, I recall Biden’s gaffes* in the past with the only fondness I can muster for him, or the system that he quite effectively has represented and promoted for these (now too) many years. Now, he can’t remember enough to make those momentary lapses into reality of yore, though he got close when he said we beat Medicare.

    Alice :-/

    *A gaffe is when someone in power blurts out the truth.

  34. Wukchumni

    It’s difficult not to draw parallels to Willy & Linda Loman and their good for nothing son Biff, but somebody has to go there.

  35. Louis Fyne

    we’re at the “throwing everything at ghe wall and see what sticks” phase.

    IMO.

    IMO, it now seems clear that Axelrod, while speaking the quiet part out loud, didn’t have a plan when he threw Biden under the bus on live TV.

    No one is playing 4-D chess. I bet, IMO, over the weekend, some level-headed lawyers explained the FEC laws, laid out the DNC bylaws and opined thatthis is a giant mess unless Biden steps aside voluntarily.

    Which, IMO, of course Biden won-t as Hunter and Jill are setting DC records for grifter.

    What a scrumptuous dumpster fire!

  36. Jams O'Donnell

    Look on the bright side. If Biden runs (and wins!!!???) then he’ll probably become completely unstuck after a few months – then you’ll get Pres. Kamala, and with any luck at all she will really drive things into the ground.

  37. Victor Sciamarelli

    As to a name, I suggest the ‘Sub Rosa Council’ and coincidentally the WH has a rose garden.
    I think Biden’s idea of loyalty is a bit askew. He expects that he will never be betrayed, which is fine, but beyond that I think he has difficulty understanding dissent. Faced with informed opinions or expert advice that contradicts his views, he’d rather close the door and listen to his advisers.
    He expects allegiance which for him is incompatible with any full throttle dissent. Biden wants to appear confident. Yet, he is rigid and narrow minded.
    Ukraine is a good example. A month after the war began and a peace agreement was initialed, I’m convinced Biden never heard from anyone that he should seize the moment and change course.
    Personally, I think the sec of defense should always be a civilian. Yet, Biden went out of his way and made an exception to the rule in order to give the job to General Austin whose career was following orders from the president.
    The tragedy of Biden is he does not have the courage to be a good president and it was luck that put him there.
    Lastly, isn’t Jill Biden good enough to play Lady Macbeth? Look like th’ innocent flower,
    But be the serpent under ‘t.

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