To beat Trump, show his similarities to a dead end college boyfriend who thinks he's special but is just like the others

Will Stancil and many others repeat: “Trump is a liar, Trump is a crook, Trump has been caught in brazen dishonesty, why won’t the media call this out and keep the pressure on! If Biden did similar things he would be annihilated”.

In truth, the media and the Democrats have called Trump out Trump’s lies and abuses, and it’s not clear that more table thumping about decorum or ‘fact-checking’ would change the swing voters’ minds. But I want to deal with the second proposition here, that if Biden did these things, he’d be toast.

I tend to agree- he would! Hunter has come close to blowing Biden up, and those are the sins of the son, not the father! But I don’t think the final source of this asymmetry is a failure to hammer home the right talking points. I think that the ultimate source of this asymmetry is that the two candidates are selling different products.

Biden is selling the idea of an honest, benevolent broker who will do his best to uphold the Republic as an act of public service. Of course, the truth is more complex- he’s a bad man like the rest of them presiding over war crimes, weighed down by numerous personal and political sins. He’s also riddled with dementia, making the whole question of character a bit moot. However, he certainly comes closer to this ideal than Trump. It is thus devastating for him if he is seen as a dishonest or self-interested man. He can’t lie brazenly too often, although, of course, every politician helps themselves to a few open lies.

Trump is selling the idea that the house’s frame is rotten, that the boil is ready to ooze pus, that chaos is a ladder, that a cat needs to be loosed among the pigeons, and that he’s a conman but damn it, he just might be our conman. He is an ecstatic release of destructive sado-sexual energies- a case study in political Freudianism, even for a guy like me who isn’t a Freudian. Jouissance. Many swing voters outright state this is what they see in him- the thrill of the possibility things could be different, that America might shake itself up, and land in a configuration that doesn’t feel like a slow-dying behemoth.

By all means, I would advise the Democrats to keep pointing out Trump’s lies, it might help at the margin, but I would expect no miracles to come of it. A better focus might be painting him as weak- saying not that he will fuck America, but suggesting that, in his impotence, he won’t be able to fuck America - at least not long, hard and rough. Focus also on how he is ultimately mundane- he is not some exotic demon-lover for whom we might wail, but just another tawdry and complicit courtesan who’s been in elite circles for years and favors the rich- a new flash in the old pan.

Have you ever had a crush on someone who was a bit bad? A deep crush? Perhaps in the sort of boy who reads a bit too much Nietzsche. And you believed in the mystery of the beloved object, in their hyper-dimesionality and strangeness, thinking they could change everything, that their touch would be other, that they were capable of mighty good and mighty evil, only to realize later just how empty they really are? Just another silly, weak guy who not even the world spirit could get onto a horse?

Finally, If the Democrats do replace Biden, and I think this would be prudent, they would be well advised to remember the product they are selling, and how this creates strong expectations on them for seemly conduct. It must be handled with dignity. I suspect Newsom grabbing the crown off Kamala would be a bad look in this regard, and this is one consideration- albeit perhaps not decisive. If they do, prudently, swap out Biden, they gain a powerful weapon- the ability to point out that Trump’s as old as hell, and will even older than Biden is now by the time he finishes his term.