May
5
2024

Alligators in the Sewers

So this happened:

Is it just me, or is Drew Barrymore doing an impression of Kate Hudson doing an impression of Drew Barrymore?

If you don't know what I'm referring to there, please use your mouse or other pointing device to watch this, "it is a delight!"

Drewie's yearning for a government official to be a Nurturing, Caring, Sharing Mother To Us All is pathetic. Her all-female audience eats it up, though.

If you prefer text to video, Ann Althouse has some of that: "We all need a mom.... We really all need a tremendous hug in the world right now. But in our country, we need you to be 'Momala' of the country.".

Says Drew Barrymore to Kamala Harris. This comes just after Barrymore begins the interview by trying to draw out Harris about her relationship to her 2 step-children. This sequence of topics and the redeployment of the family name "Momala" into the political sphere seems carefully planned, and it is an effort to tap Barrymore's immense warmth for the benefit of the Democratic Party vice presidential candidate, who is, I would say, insufficiently warm and puzzlingly fake:

[6:44 video]

Kamala's response is to nod and smile and murmur a "yeah" that sounds rather dubious.

What — if anything — is she thinking? I'll guess: I've got to just endure this feminine bullshit and act like I'm touched but really doesn't my feminist credibility demand that I resist and try to say something like you'd never talk to a male candidate like that or actually maybe this cutesy love is exactly what a male candidate would extract from Drew and eat up with no consequence, like George Washington, Father of Our Country, but he didn't have some famous lady imploring him to be Daddy — the Daddykins of Our Country — and oh, God, are the wheels turning in my head too conspicuously? Is this a viral clip? How do I look, do I look beautiful but not warm or warm but not beautiful, at least a little warm. Yeesh, I've got to hold hands with Drew now, and my face needs to show that I'm deeply touched by wonderful sweet Drew — Drew, loved by all! — and they don't love me — me, the step-mother, the evil step-mother — and she's hamming it up, talking about lifting people up — ah! That's my opportunity to wrest my hands out of her bony grip and do my clappy-clappy thing and now I can talk about lifting people up but it's that ridiculous babble that comes out when I try to take advantage of these God-awful situations they put me in to try to warm me up for public consumption and oh, jeez, I sound so insincere, I said "sincerely" twice, but I must go on....

Elsewhere in the interview, she discussed her trademark, the Inappropriate Cackle.

Lady, I got no particular problem with the way you laugh. It's that you do it for no reason whatsoever.

(And if you care: Classical reference in headline.)

Unfortunately, Momala failed once again to make our 2% probability threshold for inclusion in our phony table:

Warning: Google hit counts are bogus.
Candidate EBO Win
Probability		 Change
Since
4/28		 Phony
Hit Count		 Change
Since
4/28
Donald Trump 45.6% +1.8% 3,660,000 0
Joe Biden 44.4% -1.2% 455,000 -161,000
Robert Kennedy Jr 3.3% -0.3% 32,700 +3,000
Michelle Obama 2.6% -0.6% 187,000 +17,000
Other 4.1% +0.3% --- ---

And, hey: Trump managed to retake a slim lead over Biden in the bettors' eyes.

Also of note:

  • But seriously, folks. Jim Geraghty notes fear at the White House: Biden-Harris a Profile in Cowardice on Campus Disorder.

    In the past few weeks, Americans have witnessed a stark contrast between the written statements and fierce condemnations from the likes of National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, and Biden’s on-camera, off the cuff, mushy, “I condemn the antisemitic protests. That’s why I’ve set up a program to deal with that. I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians and their — how they’re being. . . .”

    White House communications staffers kept telling us how much the president firmly believed “forcibly [taking] over a building on campus is absolutely the wrong approach,” but for some reason, the president, who is rarely more than a few steps away from television cameras, just couldn’t come out and say so himself.

    It turns out Biden was willing to stand up and call out the illegal actions committed by the anti-Israel protesters . . . but only after the worst-offending protesters had been put in zip-ties.

    I suppose there are some folks out there who hang on Biden's every public pronouncement.

    But I eagerly await a prestigious news outlet to do something like the Boston Globe did in March 1980: "accidentally" headline an editorial about the sitting president "Mush from the Wimp".

  • Friends, Granite Staters, Countrymen: lend her your ears. River Page at the Free Press pays attention to the wackos who are seriously discussing Barron Trump, American Caesar.

    Barron Trump is the future American Caesar. I’m told he is keeping a list of enemies so that he can one day avenge his father. I’m told that one day, he will cross the Potomac with 10,000 men to dissolve the Senate. I’m told that he will do these things, and become my God Emperor and yours, because he is six feet, seven inches with an aquiline nose.

    According to memes from the very online right, Donald Trump’s 18-year-old son is destined to save the nation.

    I suggest cutting back on the LSD.

  • But, hey, what about RFK Jr? The WSJ took a look Inside RFK Jr.’s Chaotic 2024 Election Campaign.

    As the presidential election was heating up in February, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign made an announcement to staff: Charles Eisenstein, the director of messaging, would spend weeks in Costa Rica, “reconnecting with spirit.” While there, he recorded a podcast interview in which he said some of his boss’s ideas were “actually repugnant” but that Kennedy was still the best candidate.

    In recognition of his sojourn in the Central American country, Eisenstein took a pay cut for working less: rather than earning $21,000 a month, he started billing the campaign $14,000.

    The episode highlights the unusual nature of the Kennedy operation, which even by the standards of freewheeling political campaigns stands out for its eclectic mix of characters, poor financial planning and what some staffers describe as a dysfunctional, unprofessional atmosphere.

    Nobody ever offered me $14K/month for calling my boss's ideas repugnant while connecting with my spirit in Costa Rica. I guess I made some bad career choices.

  • That's a low bar to set, George. But Mr. Will has a point: The 2024 electorate is more interesting than either candidate.

    Like the Gorgons in Greek mythology whose glances could turn people to stone, today’s sour candidates have calcified our presidential politics with their glowering contest. “Rancor,” said José Ortega y Gasset, “is an outpouring of a feeling of inferiority.” Both men have much about which to feel inferior. The electorate, however, is at least interesting.

    Some of those interesting factoids:

    In 2016, Hillary Clinton became a harbinger — and casualty — of today’s ongoing class-based realignment. If her White working-class turnout and percentages of support had matched those of Obama in 2012, she would have won Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Florida and the presidency. She would have won Wisconsin and Michigan if she had matched Obama’s 2012 turnout in Milwaukee and Detroit.

    Because so many Democratic voters are in California (13.7 percent of the party’s national popular vote total in 2020) and a few other noncompetitive states (e.g., Illinois, New York), the party probably must win the national popular vote by more than 3 percentage points to win 270 electoral votes. Oddities abound. Gerald Ford came closer to defeating Jimmy Carter in the 1976 popular vote than Mitt Romney came to defeating Obama in 2012. Clinton, losing to Trump in 2016, won the popular vote by a larger margin (2.1 points) than John F. Kennedy did defeating Richard M. Nixon in 1960.

    But GFW's bottom line holds: "Finally, for 50 years, the percentage of Americans calling themselves moderate has remained constant, around 40. Yet, remarkably, the ascent of glowering Gorgons has turned moderates away from politics."

    I don't consider myself a moderate: I'm a pretty wacky mongrel libertarian/conservative mix. But, as noted above: the Gorgons have made me politically homeless.


Last Modified 2024-05-06 4:50 AM EDT