10 things I've asked Grok in the last 2 or 3 days.

1. Is it honest for me to say: I have no idea whether Trump has any idea whether Mitch McConnell had polio?

2. What poet had a beard, round glasses and wore a "poet’s hat"?

3. What is the origin of the phrase "take up the mantle"?

4. What have smart people had to say about the tendency to see images in words, including things that are not really relevant to the etymology of the word? For example, one might imagine that "ostracize" is connected to "ostrich" or "marginalize" relates to "margarine."

5. What is the argument that the crows in "Dumbo" are not a racist stereotype?

6. Does RFK Jr. speak of himself in terms of "Camelot"?

7. What is that famous saying about remaining silent because I was not X, Y, etc.?

8. Why do some people say you shouldn't use "impact" as a verb?

9. What is the episode of "Leave it to Beaver" where June and Ward Cleaver are turning over a mattress and Ward asks if it's mattress-turning day?

10. What if you had to argue that "The fog comes /on little cat feet" is actually very depressing and pessimistic?

"The initial vote was 50-50, with three Republicans — Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — joining all 47 Democrats in voting no."

From "VP Vance breaks tie in the Senate to confirm Pete Hegseth as defense secretary/Three Republicans voted with every Democrat against Trump’s controversial pick to lead the Pentagon, forcing Vance to step in and put Hegseth over the top" (NBC News).

We're told "McConnell's vote was a stunning rebuke of Hegseth and Trump, whom the former Senate Republican leader has clashed with repeatedly over the years."

"Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Friday overruled the overseer of the war court at Guantánamo Bay and revoked a plea agreement reached earlier this week..."

"... with the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and two alleged accomplices.... In taking away the authority, Mr. Austin assumed direct oversight of the case and canceled the agreement, effectively reinstating it as a death-penalty case.... Mr. Austin’s decision brought relief to family members of victims who had expressed anger over the deal, but it also left uncertain the next steps of the prosecution over America’s deadliest terrorist attack.... The case had become mired in more than a decade of pretrial proceedings that focused on whether the detainees’ torture in secret C.I.A. prisons had contaminated the evidence against them.... Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the longtime Republican leader, called the agreement 'a revolting abdication of the government’s responsibility to defend America and provide justice.' Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas called the deal 'disgraceful and an insult to the victims of the attacks,' and introduced legislation intended to nullify it. But Senator Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, hailed the plea agreement as a 'small measure of justice and finality to the victims and their loved ones.'"

From "Defense Secretary Revokes Plea Deal for Accused Sept. 11 Plotters/Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III assumed direct oversight of the case and effectively put the death penalty back on the table" (NYT).

"He helped transform the Republican Party into a cult, worshiping at the altar of authoritarianism."

"He’s damaged our country in ways that may take a generation to undo. No, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. The politician I'm referring to is Mitch McConnell.... He’s been a truly awful public official. McConnell has always put party above America. Remember when he said his most important goal as Senate leader was to make Barack Obama a one-term president? The fact that he hasn’t always kissed Trump’s backside has infuriated the former furor-in-chief. Despite his opposition to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election — admitting publicly that Trump 'provoked' the attack on the U.S. Capitol — McConnell voted to acquit Trump on the charge of inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021...."

Writes Robert Reich, in "Goodbye, Mitch: You were the worst/But the Republicans might find someone even worse to replace you" (Substack).

I'm not agreeing with this, just calling attention to it for its harsh language and for Reich's drawing of Mitch McConnell, which is quite nice.

And then there's "furor-in-chief." Did he mean Führer-in-chief? "Führer," which means leader, is strongly associated with Hitler. "Furor" refers to an emotional state, not to a person. It means "fury, rage, madness, anger, mania" (OED). Maybe saying Trump was the "furor-in-chief" is like calling Aguirre the "Wrath of God"...

"Ingraham Wants Mitch McConnell to Resign Just So She Can Keep Calling Biden 'Decrepit.'"

 A headline at The Daily Beast.

Something happened to Mitch McConnell.

BREAKING: Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell freezes and appears unwell at a press conferencepic.twitter.com/k98r8X7xzW

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) July 26, 2023

It says in the NYT that later, McConnell "returned to take a number of questions from the news media — more than usual — and answered them clearly. Asked what had occurred, Mr. McConnell said only, 'I’m fine,' and said he was able to continue with his leadership duties."

Aides said his problem was "lightheadedness."

McConnell suffered a "serious fall" earlier this year. He's 81.

"Number one: Anybody who listened to the speech — I did not say that they were going to be a George Wallace or a Bull Connor."

"I said we’re going to have a decision in history that is going to be marked just like it was then. You either voted on the side — that didn’t make you a George Wallace or didn’t make you a Bull Connor. But if you did not vote for the Voting Rights Act back then, you were voting with those who agreed with Connor, those who agreed with — with — And so — and I think Mitch did a real good job of making it sound like I was attacking them. If you’ve noticed, I haven’t attacked anybody publicly — any senator, any — any congressman publicly. And my disagreements with them have been made to them — communicated to them privately or in person with them. My desire still is — look, I underestimated one very important thing: I never thought that the Republicans — like, for example, I said — they got very upset — I said there are 16 members of the present United States Senate who voted to extend the Voting Rights Act. Now, they got very offended by that. That wasn’t an accusation; I was just stating a fact. What has changed? What happened? What happened? Why is there not a single Republican — not one? That’s not the Republican Party. ... So, that’s not an attack.... Look, I still contend — and I know you’ll have a right to judge me by this — I still contend that unless you can reach consensus in a democracy, you cannot sustain the democracy....  I believe we’re going through one of those inflection points in history that occurs every several generations...."

From the transcript of Biden's press conference. Biden was responding to a question about his campaign promise that his “whole soul” was dedicated to “bringing America together, uniting our people.” Instead of reaffirming that dedication, he found a new basis for dividing people — the misinterpretation of his Georgia speech. "Mitch did a real good job of making it sound like" he was attacking his opponents. He was attacking his opponents, and really harshly — yelling at people who don't support the current voting rights legislation.

By the way, I've been noticing that the supporters of the Voting Rights Act rarely if ever mention any specific provisions of the text. They say "voting rights" but not which rights. I'll bet very few Americans have any idea what is in the bill, what rules states will actually need to follow if it is passed. The political discourse is woefully impoverished, abstractions and accusations of nefariousness.

"You could not invent a better advertisement for the legislative filibuster than what we’re just seeing, a president abandoning rational persuasion for pure, pure demagoguery."

"A president shouting that 52 senators and millions of Americans are racist unless he gets whatever he wants is proving exactly why the framers built the Senate to check his power." 

Said Mitch McConnell, quoted in "McConnell rips Biden’s voting rights speech as ‘profoundly unpresidential’" (NY Post). 

I didn't watch Biden's speech — I can read the transcript — but I did overhear it, and I said out loud, What is he yelling about? Why is he scolding us? He's using a ridiculous "tough guy" voice. 

You can criticize me for not attending to the substance, but he wasn't trying to use substance. He was using emotive sound effects. It was like a Trump rally — but no. A Trump rally would have humor and fun. 

And I don't think Trump ever relied on the argument that you're a racist if you don't agree with him. The anti-Trump rejoinder: Trump never called his opponents racists, because his between-the-lines message was always come all you racists and follow me. 

"Lindsey Graham, who says that Trump is a 'handful,' a word usually leveled at spirited women, is going to Mar-a-Lago this weekend to golf with his sovereign lord..."

"... and try to explain the importance of the 2022 midterms to Trump’s legacy. But Trump doesn’t give a damn, except how he can use the midterms for revenge or self-promotion.... By coddling Trump on his election fakery, the Republicans gave it so much oxygen, it led to tragedy. Trump, the supreme ingrate, wasn’t grateful for McConnell’s nay vote. He promptly composed a masterpiece of spleen, a statement threatening to primary Mitch’s candidates and calling him 'a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack' who lacks political wisdom, skill and personality.... Ted Cruz’s truckling may be the most jarring, given Trump’s attacks on Cruz’s wife and father in the 2016 campaign. But I’ve always said the story of Washington should be titled 'Smart People Doing Dumb Things.' Cruz wouldn’t even study with people from what he called 'minor Ivies' while at Harvard Law School but didn’t think twice before leaving Texans starving, freezing and dying to go catch some rays in Cancun and then blaming his daughters. We’ll see if Trump can sustain this king-in-exile routine without the infrastructure he once had. Consider his asinine election challenge with all those crazy lawyers. Ever the shrew, all he has left now is his forked tongue."

From "The Tale of the Untamable Shrew/Republicans are still trying to muzzle a smack-talking Trump" by Maureen Dowd (NYT). 

1. Dowd is comparing Trump to Kate, the shrew in Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew." As I've said more than once, there is something womanly about Trump. And there are times when the way people react to Trump is like the way they react to an untamed woman. Dowd talks a lot about "Shrew" but also wanders all over the place and never really explores the hypothesis that Trump's wildness is something like a nasty woman. Why do we feel this deep need to control him? What does it say about those who think that he did not belong in our serious, well-established institutions and that he spoke with shocking directness and exhibited self-dramatizing emotion?

2. Here's a whole Wikipedia article on the "nasty woman" meme that originated in the 2016 campaign.

3. Is it true that the word "handful" is usually leveled at spirited women? I'd guess it's mostly used about children — a nice way to say the kid is hard to manage. If you say it about an adult, you are loading in the concept that you are into manipulation. Both "manage" and "manipulate" are built from the Lain word for "hand" ("manus"). If you think an adult is a "handful," maybe you ought to consider why you're putting your hands on her/him.

4. Let's take a closer look at the last sentence of the column: "Ever the shrew, all he has left now is his forked tongue." I see 2 ways to go with this:

a. Metaphor screw up. A forked tongue is characteristic of some reptiles, notably snakes. A shrew is a small mole-like mammal.  If you don't mean to refer to the animal, but only to the extremely irritating person, then don't bring up an animal characteristic like "forked tongue." Sharp tongue would be fine.

b. Microaggression alert. Are we still using "forked tongue" to refer to lying?! I would have thought it was relegated long ago to the dustbin of potential microaggressions. Background from Wikipedia: "This phrase was... adopted by Americans around the time of the Revolution, and may be found in abundant references from the early 19th century — often reporting on American officers who sought to convince the tribal leaders with whom they negotiated that they 'spoke with a straight and not with a forked tongue' (as for example, President Andrew Jackson told the Creek Nation in 1829). According to one 1859 account, the native proverb that the 'white man spoke with a forked tongue' originated as a result of the French tactic of the 1690s, in their war with the Iroquois, of inviting their enemies to attend a Peace Conference, only to be slaughtered or captured."

"While a close call, I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal and we therefore lack jurisdiction."

"The Constitution makes perfectly clear that presidential criminal misconduct while in office can be prosecuted after the president has left office, which in my view alleviates the otherwise troubling 'January exception' argument raised by the House."

Wrote Mitch McConnell, quoted in "Hours before the verdict, McConnell tells Republicans he plans to vote to acquit Trump, calling it ‘a close call’" (NYT).

To say "close call" is to hedge his political bet. To rely on the jurisdictional ground avoids the question on the merits. Who knows if he'd consider that a "close call" too?

The NYT seems to know, because it has this:

The leader had let it be known that he believed Mr. Trump committed impeachable offenses and told advisers and colleagues he was open to conviction as the best way of purging Mr. Trump from the Republican Party. He even said publicly that Mr. Trump had “provoked the attack.” 

"We’re glad Senator McConnell threw in the towel and gave up on his ridiculous demand. We look forward to organizing the Senate under Democratic control and start getting big, bold things done for the American people."

Said Justin Goodman, a spokesman for Mr. Schumer, quoted in "McConnell Relents in First Filibuster Skirmish, but the War Rages On/Senator Mitch McConnell dropped his demand that Democrats promise to preserve the procedural weapon that can grind the Senate to a halt, but with President Biden’s agenda in the balance, the fight is not over" (NYT).

Senator Mitch McConnell... had refused to agree to a plan for organizing the chamber without a pledge from Democrats to protect the filibuster, a condition that Mr. Schumer had rejected. But late Monday, as the stalemate persisted, Mr. McConnell found a way out by pointing to statements by two centrist Democrats, Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, that said they opposed getting rid of the procedural tool — a position they had held for months — as enough of a guarantee to move forward without a formal promise from Mr. Schumer.... 

As they press forward on Mr. Biden’s agenda, Democrats will come under mounting pressure from activists to jettison the rule....  “I feel pretty damn strongly, but I will also tell you this: I am here to get things done,” said Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana. “If all that happens is filibuster after filibuster, roadblock after roadblock, then my opinion may change.”...

We were just talking about Tester. Remember? He's the Senator who brings his own meat to Washington and wants to "get shit done."

Democrats say they must retain at least the threat that they could one day end the filibuster, arguing that bowing to Mr. McConnell’s demand now would only have emboldened Republicans to deploy it constantly, without fear of retaliation. “Well that’s a nonstarter because if we gave him that, then the filibuster would be on everything, every day,” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press."  

Ah! That makes the most sense of it all. Democrats want the threat of abolishing the filibuster, and Republicans are moderated by the threat alone. Notice that actually to change the rule would require every single Democratic Senator to agree and a tiebreaker vote from Kamala Harris would still be needed. That's a lot of cohesion. 

Kyrsten Sinema is up for reelection in 2024, and she took over a seat that had been held by a Republican. The other Democratic Senator who faces reelection in 2024 and who beat a Republican incumbent in 2018 is Jacky Rosen. We don't hear much from her. As for Manchin, he's been in the Senate longer — since 2011, after the seat was vacated by the death of the Democrat/Klansman Robert Byrd (a historic filibusterer) — but Manchin too is up for reelection in 2024, and I think McConnell knows he can count on Manchin not to vote against the filibuster. 

"Mitch said to me he wants Trump gone. It is in his political interest to have him gone. It is in the GOP interest to have him gone. The question is, do we get there?"

Said "one Republican member of Congress," quoted in "McConnell privately says he wants Trump gone as Republicans quietly lobby him to convict" (CNN). 

The ongoing Republican whisper campaign, according to more than a dozen sources who spoke to CNN, is based on a shared belief that a successful conviction is critical for the future of the Republican party. Multiple sources describe this moment as a reckoning for the party.... 

"Trump created a cult of personality that is hard to dismantle," said a former senior Republican official. "Conviction could do that."

It could. But it could also do something else. I'm trying to picture what Trump's defense will look like and how people will react to it. "Mitch said to me he wants Trump gone," but Trump is already gone. How "gone" do you need to render him? A big show of crushing someone beyond any real need can make onlookers side with him.

ADDED QUESTIONS:

1. Is "a successful conviction... critical for the future of the Republican party"? If the answer isn't "yes," then why would there be a "shared belief that a successful conviction is critical for the future of the Republican party"? Are you dubious that this "shared belief" exists?

2. How many of these "dozen sources" are Republicans? How many are members of Congress? At least one — unless CNN is wrong — is a "Republican member of Congress," but I'll bet he's not a Senator, or CNN would have said so. It seems likely that not one of the sources is a Republican Senator.

3. A successful conviction might be "critical for the future of the Republican party," but is an unsuccessful effort to seek a conviction more useful to the Republican party than avoiding the trial on a procedural ground?

4. What do you mean by "Republican party"? These people who are saying "a successful conviction is critical for the future of the Republican party" — if they exist — aren't they elite insiders talking about preserving their hold on a party that chose Trump rather than one of them? How will the trial reach out to Trump supporters as opposed to alienating them?

"Given the smaller number of seditious members in the Senate, McConnell’s task is far easier: Conduct a quick Senate trial; convict Trump and..."

"... ban him from future office; expel Cruz and Hawley; and then vote to censure others who tried to deny voters the president and vice president they chose. McConnell should do these things not because it is the only moral, decent course, but because he is smarter than McCarthy and knows that to do any less would starve his members of financial support and set them up for losses from pro-democracy primary challengers or Democrats. And we know one thing: McConnell is not dumb." 

From "Impeachment is just the start. Republicans must cast off the deadwood" by Jennifer Rubin (WaPo).

Don't misread "smarter than McCarthy." I myself did a double take. That's what I get for skipping right to the end of a column. In context, it's clear that Rubin is talking about House minority leader Kevin McCarthy. 

The headline is screwy. Deadwood?!

Anyway, what you see there shows the problem of starting something. If you do one thing, as soon as you do it, people will say, you haven't done enough. You've got to do one more thing and one more thing.

Me, I liked Mike Pence's letter rejecting the use of the 25th Amendment. He set the tone I like to hear. Maturity, moderation, future-looking optimism, order, working together.... I wish Joe Biden would say something like that. Where is he in all of this anyway?

"This was not a protest, this was a well-organized insurrection against our country that was organized by Donald Trump."

Said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, Chair of the House Rules Committee, opening the debate this morning on the Article of Impeachment, quoted in "The House begins debating impeachment charge against Trump." (NYT). McGovern asserted that he looked into some people's eyes and "saw evil." I'm seeing the live vote embedded at the Times, and it is strictly along party lines...

... even though the text of the article says "Republicans were fracturing over the vote." And:

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has embraced the effort as a means to purge Mr. Trump from the party, according to people who have spoken to him, and at least five House Republicans planned to vote to impeach.

I'm interested in seeing how the proof will be accomplished. McGovern sets a high bar in calling it "well-organized" and an "insurrection against our country" and saying that this organizing was done by Trump. 

ADDED: I'm interested in this notion that you can look into eyes and see evil. I remember how ludicrous it seemed when George W. Bush said he looked into Putin's eyes and "got a sense of his soul" — and decided he was "straightforward and trustworthy." 

But here's an article from 2011 in Scientific American, "The Eyes Have It/Eye gaze is critically important to social primates such as humans. Maybe that is why illusions involving eyes are so compelling." That's about the relatively objective issue of misperceiving where eyes are looking. Harder to study whether there is evil in there! 

Do courts allow witnesses to testify about what they feel they saw in someone's eyes? I have not researched this question, but I believe it would not be acceptable to testify "I looked into his eyes and saw pure evil." 

Divided government is "a ticket to obstruction and the very sort of partisan brawling that moderate voters can’t stand."

Argues E.J. Dionne in "The destructive myth about divided government."

I am a moderate voter — a voter who abstained this year — and I believe that divided government is a safeguard against extremism. I eagerly clicked on the column because of the title. I'm perfectly ready to have my belief challenged. 

The Dionne column is very short. His main point is that the GOP leadership is "committed to preventing a Democratic president from governing successfully — even when that president is willing and eager to compromise."

But what is the "myth" that Dionne is supposedly debunking? I had to go back and search for the word "myth." 

Here: "The belief that divided government guarantees moderate outcomes might once have been true when there was a solid moderate bloc in the Republican Party. But it should now be clear that it’s a destructive myth." The word "guarantees" makes Dionne's "myth" a strawman. Who believes in a guarantee like that?! Divided government can be a safeguard whether it's a perfect safeguard or not. The question is whether it's better than the alternative. Which risk would you rather take? 

The assertion I put in the post title uses a similar absolutism: "a ticket to obstruction and the very sort of partisan brawling that moderate voters can’t stand." If you want to know something this moderate voter can't stand, it's writing like that. 

To "shy" is "To take a sudden fright or aversion; to make a difficulty, ‘boggle’ about doing something; to recoil, shrink."

According to the OED, where I looked in an effort to understand the NYT headline "Who’s Going to Tell Him? Republicans Shy From Asking Trump to Concede." 

I get that Republicans are not telling Trump to concede, but I don't see the evidence that they are shying. Who's taking a sudden fright or aversion? Who's recoiling or shrinking?

You'd have to establish that there are Republicans who urgently desire to tell Trump to give up and just freaking out about it, like a horse spotting a snake. To "boggle" is "To start with fright, to shy as a startled horse; to take alarm, be startled, scared." The article identifies no one who's in this position. 

Are there even any Trump-allied Republicans who think it's past time for Trump to abandon his fight, when the votes are not yet fully counted and litigation routes remain open? Mitch McConnell acknowledged Trump's justification for continuing to question the results. Only 4 Senators have congratulated Biden, but all 4 are well-established in their antagonism toward Trump.

There's no suddenness, no fright and therefore no shying. Not that I can see from this article. Maybe somewhere in the dark indoor spaces of Washington, Republicans are cowering in fear, but even that has no suddenness about it. There's no shying. 

I'm going on about this because I am resisting getting drawn into the emotionalism. "Shying" is an absurdly overemotional word in that headline, and the appropriate assumption is not that emotions are raging everywhere among the Washington elite. It's that everyone is behaving strategically. The media's calling of the election when it did, the Biden supporters insisting on a concession now, the outrage that questions about voting are raised, the Trump's refusal to give up, the Republicans giving Trump his space to stir up his supporters — it's all cold, hard strategy. That's my assumption.

***

"It is no wonder, that men are generally very much unsatisfied with the world.... Either we are puffed up with pride, racked with desires, dissolved in pleasures, or blasted with cares; and, which perfects our unhappiness, we are never alone, but in perpetual conflict and controversy with our lusts. We are startled at all accidents; we boggle at our own shadows, and fright one another" — Seneca.

"Let’s not have any lectures about how the president should immediately, cheerfully accept preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election."

Mitch McConnell, the majority leader of the Senate, said today, quoted in the NYT. 

"President Trump is 100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options."

That's some big support for President Trump, and it severely undercuts all the news reports I've been seeing about various Republicans who've supposedly been leaning on Trump to concede. Only 4 Republican Senators have publicly congratulated Biden — Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, and Ben Sasse.

Here's something that occurred to me as I was recording my podcast today. (You can listen here.) I was reading this post — where I said I wanted "some clear-headed analysis of whether Trump's holding out and fighting will help or hurt the Republicans in the Georgia runoffs." 

House Democrats stunned that they didn't oust a single GOP incumbent.

Politico reports. 

[B]y Wednesday morning, party officials and the rank and file were in panic mode as they awaited the results of nearly 20 members of the Democrats’ historic freshman class that handed the party control of the House just two years ago. And already they were saying goodbye to at least a half-dozen of their centrist Democratic colleagues, who were stunned by GOP challengers on Tuesday, including Abby Finkenauer in Iowa and Donna Shalala in Florida....

“It’s a dumpster fire,” said one lawmaker, who declined to be named.... Democrats were already engaging in rapid-fire finger-pointing... Several centrist Democrats blamed their more progressive colleagues, saying moderates in Trump-leaning districts couldn’t escape their “socialist” shadow.... 

"The fact was, the Senate’s 'advise and consent' was intended, from the start, to forestall the President from remaking the Court in his image."

"The Senate had, for most of its two hundred years, scrutinized the philosophy and politics of nominees—not just their competence, or honesty. And when a President picked a justice for reasons of ideology, it was the Senate’s duty to examine that ideology. Biden spoke for an hour straight, and at the end, no one could lay a glove on him. Mitch McConnell, GOP from Kentucky, actually had written on this subject at law school ... but when he came at Biden, Joe hammered him with history. And Dole, who had to carry the flag across the aisle, had a little speech ready, with a couple of zingers about 'constituent groups' and 'campaign promises.' But he couldn’t really knock down Biden’s point ... so he ended up just insisting that Bob Bork wasn’t such a bad guy. Biden said not a word about Bork (save to note his nomination, in the first sentence of his speech). He was arguing high principle. Tell the truth, he liked the view from high ground—Joe Biden, Defender of the Constitution! Anyway, if he could set the ground rules, he could take the fight to Bork. Through the millions of words that Bork had written or said, Joe Biden would paint a picture of the judge for the American people. That was how he could win the fight. Problem was, he didn’t know how he could paint the judge, or paint him into a corner, intelligibly. Joe had to make it connect. And he would not know ... till he had to make another speech."

From Richard Ben Cramer's book "What It Takes: The Way to the White House" (about the 1988 campaign, published in 1992). President Reagan nominated Robert Bork to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by Lewis Powell on July 1, 1987, and Joe Biden, who was trying to get somewhere in the Democratic presidential primaries, as the new chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, needed to make his mark.

According to Cramer, Biden didn't know what he thought until he spoke it out loud and sometimes not even then. That's what Cramer meant by writing that Biden would not know if he could make the argument intelligibly "till he had to make another speech."

But the fact is, Joe out-argued the purportedly ultra-smart Yale law professor. And, according to Cramer, Joe had a real thing about the Ivy League elite:

"If you are between the ages of 18 and 29, I mean hell, even a little bit older. If you’re between the ages of 18 and 35, 40, you have the ability to turn the outcome of this election. Period. Period."

I mean, hell! I'm about to turn 70. My son is about to turn 40. My son is in her I-mean-hell zone. He barely counts anymore. Too old! Oldies step aside. The young ones are taking over, and they know what's what. Period. Period. Period.

And by "her," I mean Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, from "AOC Speech Transcript on RBG Death & What Democrats Should Do Next."

People say, “Oh my gosh, why is everyone in our government so old?” I don’t want to be ageist or anything like that, but we want a government that’s diverse....

So get out and vote for 77-year-old Joe Biden. Old white man Joe. It's your only choice. For diversity!

... I understand why people say, “I don’t vote. What’s the point?” I really empathize with it. I’m not here to dismiss you. I’m not here to poo-poo you. I’m not here to say you’re wrong or that you’re a bad person. What I’m here to say is that this year, this election, voting for Joe Biden is not about whether you agree with him. It’s a vote to let our democracy live another day. That’s what this is about....

You  have no choice.