"America needs Michigan"
Biden represents a position in the culture war.
Joe Biden says "malarky." He rides a train. He puts ashes on his forehead on Ash Wednesday.
He was the one potential Democratic nominee who didn't have to prove that he wasn't on the leading edge of anything, especially woke politically correctness.
A lot of Democrats want Biden to change. They want him to commit himself to expanding the size of the Supreme Court, to supporting Medicare For All, to pushing harder and faster against fossil fuels, and generally to bend more left. Democrats worry that Trump's blows are landing when he says Biden is "hiding in the basement" by doing virtual rather than in-person campaigning.
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| Jeff Daniels narrates |
Biden is continuing to do what he has done all along, a light schedule with small, virtual events. He is nearly invisible compared to Trump. This isn't an accident; it is craft. Biden wants this to be a referendum on Trump. America doesn't know much about Biden, but we know enough. He isn't Trump, he's an old war horse Democrat, and he is available. Either people want four more years of Trump, or not.
Rich Lowry of National Review posited that if Trump wins re-election it will have nothing to do with Trump's plans for a second term, because he appears to have none. It will be because the marginal voters in America wanted to send a big middle finger gesture to the American left, as if to say You guys have gone crazy. It would be a rejection of Democratic flirting with socialism, a rejection of open borders, a rejection of protests turned into arson and looting, but most especially a rejection of puritanical intolerance and moral scolding by the left. People don't like having their thoughts and actions defined as racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, and deplorable.They don't consider themselves to be the beneficiary of systemic racism and damned if they feel themselves to be guilty of thought crimes. They think the left has gone crazy with the culture war.
Biden doesn't look or talk like an avant-garde scourge of the woke left. He looks like the loving granddad who doesn't exactly understand what the grandkids in their twenties and thirties are so upset about. Biden is the family man, the practicing Catholic, the son in a large Irish working-class family, and he is settled in his way of thinking. Some people consider that a gigantic liability. It is also an asset.
The actor, musician and playwright Jeff Daniels narrates a two-minute video endorsement of Joe Biden. It is a special message to the swing state of Michigan, although it will work for voters all over the Upper Midwest. It is a message of praise of Michigan's work ethic, values, people. The message defines Biden as the man of good values, good Michigan values.
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| Trump and Stormy Daniels |
The Trump campaign has spent a billion dollars trying to shoehorn his Democratic opposition into a caricature of the dangerous, socialist, extreme, coastal elite, Hollywood-hobnobbing, anti-religion, abortion-loving, rioter-defending enemy of the good people in Trump's base. Democrats chose the candidate where that won't fly. Joe Biden may be Sleepy, but he isn't woke.
Daniels describes himself as a native Michigan boy who makes Michigan his home now.
"People talk a lot about 'Midwestern values'. Here in Michigan we live those values, things like decency, honesty, and respect. But we're hurting in Michigan right now, in our factories, on our farms, in our hearts."
"Here in Michigan, we don’t believe in paying off porn stars to keep their mouths shut about who we really are,” he says, “And we don’t think much of a man who disrespects women. In fact, we don’t think he’s much of a man at all.”
Click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoNZR2tIqcY
I doubt if this video will win any votes or move the electoral needle. The real meaning of this ad is that it could be produced at all and not seem utterly artificial and just another phony political ad. It is, of course, a political ad, but its use to us is that it is saying something that doesn't need saying. We already knew Joe Biden was an old fashioned guy, trying to look hip by wearing aviator sunglasses. He looks the part of old fashioned midwestern values because he is who he is.
6 comments:
Thank God. If wokeness is a virtue, I’ll go back to sleep.
Wake me when it’s over.
Joe may not be woke, but a significant percentage of the administrative substructure of a Biden administration will be.
Just look at what happened under Obama with regard to Title IX for an example.
That tack might have worked a few months ago. At this point I think you’ve lost the plot.
Jeff Daniels can speak for two minutes. Can Biden?
One of the things about the so called "culture war" that I find interesting is that it's pretty much over, and those still fighting it remind one of the Japanese soldiers who were in caves for years after WWII.
Our culture has evolved in a relatively short time to advance the fundamental rights of women, minorities and LQBTQ individuals, is generating arts and letters at a pace rivaling the Renaissance, and is making scientific discoveries that have profoundly improved the lives of every citizen.
For a "war" it's pretty one-sided.
Rick,
The culture war now includes being “canceled“ for saying anything that does not agree with woke dogma. Barry Weiss was run out of the New York Times for political incorrectness and advocating for Jewish interests. James Bennett was fired from the New York Times for deciding to run an op-ed by a sitting US Senator.
At colleges in this country, you have to write a “diversity statement“ (basically a loyalty oath to woke dogma) in order to be hired. Shades of McCarthyism.
Many of us are fighting against this woke tyranny. The war is definitely not over.
Banzai!
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