"I called on Mr. Biden to step aside almost a year ago, warning that he would be forever known as 'Ruth Bader Biden' if he didn’t."

"Since then, each time I would bring up that idea, publicly or privately, people would dismiss it out of hand: Get on board, they’d say, the Democrats will never replace him, it’s off the table.  Well, now it’s on the table, where it always should have been. And far from being some kind of disaster for the Democratic Party, it plays right into what works best in 21-century American culture. Americans like new.... Democrats could not buy, with all of George Soros’s money, the enthusiasm, engagement and interest they would get from having an open convention — and in Chicago no less, famous for Democratic convention drama. Suddenly, instead of rehashing the debate from hell — worst episode of 'The Golden Bachelor' ever — they would be hosting a competition, something Americans love. Who will get the rose this August in Chicago? Gavin or Gretchen? Suddenly, Stacey Abrams might say she’s in! And so might Tim Ryan, and Josh Shapiro! And Amy Klobuchar and Ruben Gallego! And Mayor Pete and Raphael Warnock! And Wes Moore, and who knows, maybe Andrew Yang says he’s a Democrat again!... My pick would be Gavin Newsom.... "

Writes Bill Maher, in "Why I Want an Open Convention" (NYT).

Maher, a comedian, claims not to be joking, but how can there be an open convention when the Democrats announced a plan to nominate Biden through a virtual convention that would take place in time to meet Ohio's ballot-access requirement?

But that's not the only reason to balk at a chaotic convention. Bandying about all those names of people who did not subject themselves to any of the debates and primaries that voters think of as a democratic process?

But let's look at the rules —"What happens if a presidential candidate cannot take office due to death or incapacitation...?" (Brookings):

"The History of Lobotomies and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

 

At 1:02: Duncan Trussell starts talking about "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" — "It's completely different from the movie... Ken Kesey, he was like..." — and Joe Rogan, who'd just said he read the book, blurts out: "Ken Kesey wrote it?!" Trussell lets that go and proceeds to put the story, as told in the book, into his own words.

At 3:22: Duncan and Joe discuss the real-world medical practice of lobotomies: "They really did that"/"They really did that.... What happened to the person? 'They became a really good patient.'"

At 4:45: Duncan and Joe discuss Thomas Eagleton and electroshock therapy for depression. "Today, in this victimhood society, if you said he suffered from clinical depression but he sought help, [he]'d be a shining example: Look at him!... He's a hero!"

"Your revolution will not succeed because you have not yet learnt to be frivolous."

A line from the 1987 novel "Saints and Scholars" by the communist (his word) academician Terry Eagleton. Asked about that line — why is comedy important? — he says:

“It is... because comedy can be a form of friendship, solidarity. I mean, one of the difficulties of being a radical is always being against or outside things. Radicals want to come in from the cold as much as anybody else.” For Eagleton, it seems, the cold is part of the radical life – he is now both thinking of Bertolt Brecht and quoting him: “‘We who wanted to prepare the ground for friendship could not ourselves be friendly.’ ”

Eagleton says he was "an earnest, high-minded, grim-lipped intellectual" until feminism — of all things! — turned him toward "'low-minded' virtues such as bathos, irony and... comedy." How earnest, high-minded, and grim-lipped a man must be for feminism to lighten him up!

"A new Operation Chaos, it's called SOB, Save Our Biden, Operation Sling Blade."

"We need to keep this guy on the campaign."

Is it really this bad? Check out the amazing gush of Biden gaffes at that link. (Warning: It's Rush Limbaugh, but you need to read the evidence.)

You know, when I hear all that, it almost makes me think that Biden is screwing up on purpose to set up an Eagleton move.

You may have noticed the big internet rumor, but I'd like to claim credit for starting that meme, here, recorded on September 5th:



I was yanking Jane Hamsher's chain, but these things take on a life of their own.

IN THE COMMENTS: JMH notes that Jim Geraghty predicted on August 29th that Biden would withdraw:

Picture this scenario...

One month from now, the Palin pick has proven a bonanza for the McCain campaign. A large chunk of Hillary's 18 million voters have been won over. Conservatives are unified and energized, and the previously-undiscovered "Maxim magazine vote" is suddenly giving McCain large margins among young males.

Joe Biden will disappear from the campaign trail, and we will later learn it was to see a doctor. A previously-undiscovered, vaguely ominous health issue will be discovered, and Biden will sadly announce that he cannot continue as Obama's running mate. With a sudden need for a new one, Obama will turn... to Hillary Clinton.

Call it the Torricelli gambit.

But why would Hillary accept it? Also in the comments is Dust Bunny Queen:

Why in the world would Hillary allow herself to be put on the ticket at THIS point? Seriously. If Obama kicks Biden to the curb, doesn't this bring up several troubling issues.

1. When the going gets tough, Obama throws people under the bus. Grandmother, Rev Wright, Biden.

2. What kind of decision making does this indicate on the part of Obama. Can't he get anything right? Does he have such poor judgement that he has to continually make excuses and blame other people. Does Obama have ANY loyalty to anyone besides himself? Evidently not.

If I were Hillary, and NOW you want my help after kicking me in the teeth, I would say "thanks but no thanks" a la Sarah Palin and gleefully watch Obama melt down. I don't think he would have a snowball's chance if he made this sudden switch.

If she runs on his losing ticket it will just brand her as a loser. If she stays above the fray and then runs again in 2012 she has a fighting chance. Basically she should tell Obama "fat chance loser."

Hey, Eagleton meme-pushers. You know McGovern said "If had it to do over again, I’d have kept him."

Last year.

"Perhaps Governor Palin, realizing that and trying to minimize her own humiliation in coming days, should withdraw before she is nominated..."

The "that" is.... Well, what is the "that" there? The previous paragraph in this Garry Wills NYT op-ed -- "McCain’s McGovern Moment" --- is:

Perhaps Senator McGovern should not have deserted Tom Eagleton. Perhaps Senator McCain should stick by Governor Palin. But if he does soldier on with her by his side for a while, will he end up having to call another midget convention like the one that had to be cobbled together to nominate Sargent Shriver? That is hardly in his best interests.

So Palin -- perhaps -- ought to realize that McCain perhaps may find it hard and perhaps need to oust her in the end. Quit now before you embarrass yourself and hurt poor old John McCain, Garry Wills says.

This Eagleton meme is everywhere. Over at the Atlantic, Joshua Green has a piece called "The 'Eagleton Scenario'":

Barring a dramatic reversal, Sarah Palin will formally become the Republican vice presidential nominee Wednesday night. Since Friday, when the pick was announced, news surrounding Palin has been almost uniformly negative....

Is that evidence of what a terrible idea it was to choose her or of how horrified the media are to see the McCain campaign electrified?

Here in St. Paul, talk of Palin has dominated the Republican convention—even more so than cable news—and by Monday night discussion among Republican operatives and reporters had turned to whether Palin would survive or become the first running mate since Thomas Eagleton in 1972 to leave a major-party ticket.

Oh, so the discussion among Republican operatives and reporters has turned to whether Palin is the new Eagleton? Why is that? Because the reporters are asking Republican operatives about it? What slithery language you have there, Joshua!

With reporters and opposition researchers crawling through Alaska...

Slithering....

... and with the McCain campaign having dispatched its own team of lawyers to re-vet Palin....

So now defending yourself in the face of attacks is "re-vetting"?

... Republicans are wondering what shoe might drop next.

The expression is "waiting for the other shoe to drop." People have 2 shoes. This is an expression to be used when one thing has happened in a context where you expect one more thing to happen. You live in an apartment and you hear, from upstairs, a shoe drop. You therefore conclude that your neighbor is taking off his shoes and rationally expect to hear the second shoe. There's no expression "what shoe might drop next." There's no rain of multiple shoes. There's no concept that if there's one shoe, there are probably a whole lot of other shoes out there.

Sorry, I got sidetracked. That just annoys me. The random intrusion of inapt shoe metaphors.

But yeah, so, obviously Green wants us to think that the Republicans upset about Sarah Palin. But who is pushing the Eagleton meme? Who wants her out?

You know, I remember the McGovern campaign. I was a big supporter of McGovern's, and I hated Nixon, as did all of my friends. And the scenario then was completely different from what you are seeing now. We were never excited about Eagleton in the first place. We just wanted McGovern to win. Eagleton didn't infuse new energy into the McGovern campaign or jazz up am important subset of voters. He was just some boring Senator that got slotted in. And then he brought nothing but trouble and distraction as the news came out that he'd been hospitalized for depression 3 times and had receive electroshock treatments. It wasn't just that there were a couple of old political controversies or a family member was less than perfect. We were getting significant new information about his brain, the brain that we might need to rely on to make presidential decisions. It was simply not acceptable, especially since he'd also withheld this information from McGovern, which showed some really poor character.

The Palin candidacy has virtually nothing in common with the Eagleton scenario, and the people who are saying it does are displaying their desperation. Obviously -- I'm not the first to say this -- if you want McCain to lose and you think she's so terrible, you should be happy to see Palin as the VP nominee. It will help defeat McCain.

Jeralyn Merritt is comparing Sarah Palin to McGovern's disastrous selection, Thomas Eagleton.

She's taking bets on what day Palin will drop out:

Did John McCain just repeat George McGovern's fatal mistake? How long will Palin stay on the ticket? Will McCain recover any better than McGovern?

It had nothing to do with Eagleton's particular problems, but how McGovern came to choose him, failed to adequately vet him, and then waffled when the problems arose, effectively costing him the election.

Eagleton cost him the election? McGovern lost by an awful lot. But, certainly Eagleton damaged him badly.

Anyway:

John McCain picked Sarah Palin to get the enthusiastic support of the evangelical, radical right. He didn't think it would matter that she has no national experience because he perceived he could argue Obama didn't either.

Or he thought it would work as a magnet for attacks that could be turned around onto Obama. But Merritt doesn't see it that way because:

Obama presented himself for 17 months to the American people, they heard him debate more than a dozen times, they made their own decision that he was ready for the job and the Democrats voted him their nominee.

Did they? I remember early excitement, among Democrats, followed by months of difficulty fighting back Hillary Clinton, who had let the nomination slip away by failing to do the math early on and to take the caucus states seriously enough. The Obama campaign figured out a clever strategy. Was this really the public vetting him? He pulled off a surprise early on, got some people very excited, and ultimately edged out the more qualified contender. How was that a decisive test? When the testing really got serious, Hillary surged. But it was too late.

Obama wasn't unilaterally appointed by a party's nominee in a transparent play for the evangelical and female vote. As if Sarah Palin could fill Hillary Clinton's shoes by virtue of her gender. As if women wouldn't see that Sarah Palin is the antithesis of Hillary Clinton on issues. As if anything would evoke Palin's lack of qualifications more than to compare them to Hillary's.

Yes, the VP selection process is different and more nearly unilateral. But the person chosen must be accepted by the Party, and the position is VP, where at least there will be some time for seasoning. And as for Hillary, Obama's qualifications looked weak next to hers and yet he won. Nor can you say that all of the support for her was because of her qualifications -- that weren't that strong -- and her policies -- they weren't all that popular. The fact is that she pushed the idea that she was a woman and she'd be the first woman President, and some people responded to that. For them, Obama's failure to pick her for VP -- or even to vet her -- is perhaps rather irksome. Meanwhile, Palin is something new and different, and disaffected, shunned women may feel the pull.

As I'm typing this, Obama is being interviewed by Anderson Cooper about Gustav. Anderson's last question was how he would answer those who say that Gov. Palin, as mayor of a small town and Gov. of Alaska, has more experience than he does. He didn't miss a beat. He smiled and said Palin's town of Wasilia, Alaska had 50 employees. His campaign has 2500. The town's budget is about $12 million a year. His budget is 3 times that per month. He cited the legislation he's passed on emergency management post-Katrina and that many recommendations he made were adopted and are being put in place as we speak.

It's true that Obama's biggest accomplishment is his success (thus far) in running a Presidential campaign. But isn't this a bit absurd? One qualifies to run for President by the very activity of running for President? I'm glad to hear that he smiled when he said that, because I don't think it's an argument you can make with a straight face.

The Bob Dylan song that turned on Jimmy Carter is the one that Barack Obama calls a favorite.

I found it odd — and blogged about it here — that Barack Obama named "Maggie's Farm" as his favorite Bob Dylan song. So I sat up and took notice today, watching the movie "Gonzo" — the documentary about Hunter S. Thompson — when they got to the incident in 1974 when the idiosyncratic journalistic was sitting bored out of his skull trying to ignore a Jimmy Carter speech and this line got him all excited:

I grew up as a landowner's son. But I don't think I ever realized the proper interrelationship between the landowner and those who worked on a farm until I heard Dylan's record, "I Ain't Gonna Work on Maggie's Farm No More." So I come here speaking to you today about your subject with a base for my information founded on Reinhold Niebuhr and Bob Dylan.

In my old post I wondered why Obama had come up with "Maggie's Farm":

Do you believe "Maggie's Farm" is one of his favorites, or do you think they just tried to find a political song that had some appropriate rhetoric? The character in the song is perceiving what's wrong with the farm (the country) and is looking for a change.

A commenter over at Expecting Rain — a Dylan fan site — made the Obama connection too:

Hunter Thompson covered the 72 campaign and championed McGovern. After McGovern dropped the ball by choosing that sweaty Eagleton guy for his running mate, Thompson was disillusioned for years until he saw Jimmy Carter make an early campaign speech to Ted Kennedy and a bunch of lawyers, brazenly criticizing the American legal system.

Thompson was rejuvenated. In the speech, Carter quoted a Dylan song, Maggie's Farm, which Obama is citing now. Maggie's Farm is a metaphor for transcending the political system. Dylan plugged in and played it for the acoustic folkies at Newport Folk Festival to say, "I'm not a symbol of the right or the left, I just want to rock and roll."

I don't know whether this means Obama and Carter are soulmates or Obama is cribbing from Carter's playlist or Obama reads Hunter S. Thompson or it's well known among Democratic campaign advisors that you can push some useful buttons by invoking "Maggie's Farm" or what. I'm just noting the linkage.

And I wanted to tell you I saw the movie "Gonzo." Watch the trailer. You will get an accurate impression of the film from this:



It was a bit long and rambling, but a pretty good documentary about a very interesting writer and his wild life and times. Recommended if you like documentaries and can deal with some heavy-handed comparison of Bush to Nixon and Iraq to Vietnam.

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian writes:

Just once I'd love to hear a politician who would say something like:

"You know, I don't think I've been the same since I heard the 14th unfinished fugue of J.S. Bach's "Art of the Fugue", specifically the point where Bach inserts as a countersubject the notes corresponding to the letters of his own name. It was that moment that I felt a profound connection between humanity and the universe, between numbers and metaphysics. It was that moment, listening to the ailing old Bach's assertion of his selfhood, coded into his own complex and beautiful system, that I felt truly alive and driven to spend my life devoted to the advancement of civilization and humanity."

But no. It's "Maggie's Farm". Fleetwood Mac. Wyclef Jean. You can't be elected if you actually like music anymore.

“If had it to do over again, I’d have kept him. I didn’t know anything about mental illness. Nobody did.”

Said George McGovern last year, referring to his rejection of Tom Eagleton back in 1972 -- when supposedly no one knew a damned thing. McGovern chose Eagleton as his running mate after Eagleton had assured McGovern's aide Frank Mankiewicz that he had nothing unusual in his background:

He did not tell Mr. Mankiewicz that he had been hospitalized three times for depression and that his treatment had twice involved electroshock therapy.

But rumors began circulating among politicians and journalists. Mr. Eagleton ultimately held a news conference on July 25 in Custer, S.D., where he had just briefed the vacationing Mr. McGovern over breakfast. Mr. Eagleton told reporters that he had been treated for “nervous exhaustion.” But in response to questions, he acknowledged that the treatment had included psychiatric counseling and electric shocks.

That day Mr. McGovern said, “I think Tom Eagleton is fully qualified in mind, body and spirit to be the vice president of the United States and, if necessary, to take on the presidency on a moment’s notice.” A few days later, as objections to Mr. Eagleton began to mount, Mr. McGovern insisted that he was “1,000 percent for Tom Eagleton.”

But the pressure from party leaders, campaign contributors and members of McGovern’s own staff was unrelenting. On July 31, the candidates met again, this time in Washington, and Mr. McGovern forced him to withdraw. Mr. Eagleton stepped down after 18 days as the nominee, saying he had done so for the sake of “party unity.”

R.I.P. Thomas P. Eagleton.

Clearly, it was Eagleton who made the mistake. Even today, do we really know so much more about mental illness? And, if we do, would we say that someone who had been hospitalized three times for depression should be Vice President? It seems to me that McGovern would have rejected him if he'd known, as would any other competent presidential candidate then or now, and Eagleton's failure to disclose that information to Mankiewicz was an entirely separate reason to reject him. It was horrible when McGovern said "1,000 percent" and then got rid of him, but the biggest mistake there was saying "1,000 percent" instead of figuring out what to do quickly and accomplishing it diplomatically. Why does McGovern now say that he should have kept him? It must just be that he doesn't like his name associated with hostility toward persons with mental illness. Why not be kind and compassionate now that nothing is at stake?