CSotD: Come sit right back and you’ll hear a tale …
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They don’t often cooperate like this.
Dave Granlund offers a rejoinder to the conservative cartoonists who have accused Biden of refusing to come out and fight, and …
There’s always been a kind of suspicion that submarines weren’t sporting.
Before that, there was a suspicion that sharpshooters weren’t sporting — Nelson fell to a marksman who fired from the rigging of a French ship at the Battle of Trafalgar, while British General Simon Fraser was brought down at Saratoga by one of Daniel Morgan’s rifleman and Kentucky riflemen systematically eliminated the British officers at long range in the Battle of New Orleans.
It’s worth remembering that Sherman’s famous quote was a warrior’s caution to a group of graduating military students:
It’s entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here. Suppress it! You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell!
Also, politics ain’t beanbag, either.
And for all the sneering at Joe Biden for “hiding in his basement,” it’s not like he hasn’t been working down there. And hitting his targets.
He has published a number of position papers, including one that adopts most of the progressive wing’s New Green Deal, which Steve Kelley labeled as cheating, though someone else might see a candidate making common cause with members of his own party.
Meanwhile, going back to Toles’ take, Trump’s campaign is in genuine disarray, with firings masked as reassignments, and, if the ship isn’t sinking, it’s certainly taking on more water than the pumps can handle.
You may not see much coverage of Biden’s proposals, because, in keeping with Bennett’s suggestion that Trump refuses to acknowledge his position, there are always circus acts which, just as in 2016, are more fun to cover than dreary, detailed policy proposals.
However, cans of beans and promises that science won’t stand in the way of reopening schools seem to draw more outrage than support.
Max Boots’ commentary is behind the Washington Post paywall, but here’s the money quote:
So far, Biden has stayed safely out of the line of fire in keeping with Napoleon’s advice to his marshals: “When your enemy is executing a false movement, never interrupt him.” At this rate, Biden’s most effective campaign strategy might be to never come out of his basement, leaving Trump to rage in frustration and futility.
It’s not simply the liberals who are taking notice. Conservative cartoonist Bob Gorrell notes the way Trump’s lack of discipline, such a refreshing attention-getter four years ago, has become a deadly drag upon his re-election campaign.
Fellow conservative Lisa Benson notes the impact of the lockdown on small business, and she’s right.
I don’t know how visible this is in major cities, but here in the little ones (14,000 or so), we are seeing small restaurants in particular deciding they can’t afford to wait for restrictions to end, and other small local businesses are also giving up.
From a political point of view, the question is whether anyone will look into the way Covid-19 relief funds were distributed, which seems to have been to favored major clients and well-positioned organizations rather than to the mom-and-pops they were designed to save.
I suspect, rather, that it will be blamed on the Covid restrictions themselves, and, while Ann Telnaes speaks for many people in her contemptuous depiction of anti-mask snowflakes, Utah’s bare-faced Deplorables showed up for a pair of meetings, shutting one down completely with their angry refusal to follow science rather than politics.
At which point, I’ll give Steve Kelley another bite at the apple, this time with a cartoon I suspect I’m not supposed to agree with.
Biden was not my first, or second, or even third choice for Democratic candidate, but he’s a good placeholder indeed, because not only is he a competent, experienced major politician, but he’s a good guy at a bad moment.
People were furious that Gerry Ford pardoned Nixon, but he, too, proved a competent, experienced good guy at a bad moment and, while Biden, if elected, should probably not say that our national nightmare is over, he could still be a needed pause to regain our senses.
The best part being that, while Ford took a shot at a full term, Biden is old enough that he’d almost certainly go one-and-done, by which time both Democrats and Republicans will have had a chance to set up for whatever comes next.
Granted, “You Could Do Worse” isn’t much of a campaign slogan in normal times, but it’s not bad when the example of how much worse you could do is standing in front of us all.
Not that we listened four years ago, when we were not only warned that the balance of the Supreme Court was at risk, but had the very real example of Moscow Mitch’s manipulation of the Merrick Garland nomination as evidence.
Ann Telnaes plays homage to the tenacity and courage of the ailing-but-not-surrendering Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but we really can’t count on individual heroes to save a people who aren’t willing to pitch in themselves.
Speaking of individual heroes, the death of Civil Rights icon John Lewis reminds me not of him so much as of the many who stood beside him, and of all the planning and groundwork and training they went through well before they sat at lunch counters or marched anywhere.
I was glad he depicted it in “March,” but too many people still think the Civil Rights Movement happened on that bridge.
Confrontations and demonstrations are only a very small part of what it takes to change the world.
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