"[E]ven if we spend another year between now and the election carefully analyzing the structure and shape of the madhouse we’re locked in, it’s still a madhouse."

"As infuriating as it is to admit the electorate may choose another Trump term, the only answer may be to hold on to that truth. Rejecting reality only replicates Republicans’ errors that led to Trump’s rise. Exercise your reason, stay informed, understand what’s happening in all its detail. But at those times when you want to scream in fear and anger, don’t think you’re being foolish or irrational. It just means you can see what’s in front of you."

Writes Paul Waldman, in "How not to have a psychic meltdown when you see new Trump-Biden poll numbers/As infuriating as it is to admit the electorate may choose another Trump term, the only answer may be to hold on to that truth" (MSNBC).

I can barely understand what Waldman in trying to say. He stresses "truth" and "reality," yet the truth/reality that he claims to see is that our country is a "madhouse." So hold onto that and never forget: We're locked in a madhouse! 

I guess one could approach life this way: I'm not crazy, the world is crazy. It allows you to distance yourself from other people: They're not worth understanding or even respect. You're right to fear and hate them. 

IN THE COMMENTS: Wince links to this:

  

And Quaestor adds:

"[C]onsider the case of [the] assistant principal... fired for reading a class a book called 'I Need a New Butt!'"

"[Toby] Price told us that last week, he’d been asked to schedule a Zoom meeting for another school official to read to all the second grade classes. But she didn’t show up. After this, Price says, his boss asked him to do the reading. So Price grabbed a nearby book which happened to be the tome on butts. Price said he has read this 'very silly, very funny' book to classes in the past without incident. 'After I read it, the principal called me into her office,' Price says, recounting that she warned him that parents were going to complain. Soon after, he says, he was placed on administrative leave while being investigated, and two days later he was informed that he’d be terminated. As Price put it, he was told that 'choosing this book showed a lack of professional judgment, because it included the words 'butt' and 'fart,' and different examples of butts like a robot butt and a bulletproof butt.' 'Stuff like "Captain Underpants" and "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" talks about more suggestive things than this book does,' Price told us."

From "Opinion: Teachers are under fire in increasingly bizarre ways" by Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent (WaPo).

"Maybe Democratic voters could hate Republicans if the media, including the Post and Waldman, were not always pointing the finger at 'Democrats' for not passing the things that people want."

"All Republican politician[s] are united in blocking any constructive things proposed by Democrats, and of course they are joined by Manchin and Sinema. Those people, not Biden or the majority of Democratic legislators, are why the program is not advancing. What if the Post and other papers ran true stories about how Republicans are preventing anything from getting done and encouraging Trumpism, instead of stories and columns about Democrats failing to remake the government without a real majority in the Senate?"

That's the top-rated comment on "Opinion: Democrats are being dragged down by their discontent" by Paul Waldman in The Washington Post.

Isn't that amazing — though, paradoxically, not surprising — that a WaPo reader perceives the newspaper as biased against Democrats and in need of a strong correction toward blaming Republicans? 

Only "true stories" are requested, so I presume the commenter feels centered on principles of good journalism.

The saddest part of the comment is the beginning: "Maybe Democratic voters could hate Republicans...." That seems to mean that the goal is hate. The Post needs to stop interfering with the flow of hatred. The commenter thinks that Democrats have a capacity for hate, but it's underdeveloped — underfed by The Washington Post.

"It’s not that there’s no sincere sentiment underneath the Republican reticence to do too much to save the economy."

"Republicans are genuinely fearful that people will be too thankful if government helps them too much and that the crisis will make the passage of stronger safety-net programs more likely in the future. But if you thought Trump could still win, your best move would be to give the economy the biggest short-term boost possible with massive government spending, then worry about cutting it back later. Doing nothing now, even if you’re planning to promote cuts in a year or two, suggests only that you think the Trump presidency is all but a lost cause."

From "Republicans have already decided Trump is going to lose" by Paul Waldman (WaPo). I've quoted the last 2 paragraphs, which account for the very dubious proposition in the headline.

"Wa pooped."/"What?"/"Wa pooped."/"I don't know what you're saying."/"That's Paul Waldman...."

That's Meade reading my first post of the day and vocalizing, to my puzzlement.

The line from the post is: "That's Paul Waldman in a WaPo op-ed, 'Get a grip, people. Oprah should not run for president'...."  See?

We love visual puns.

"Look, I get it. Democrats have been traumatized by recent events, and one of the responses is..."

"... to throw up their hands and say, 'Fine then. If all voters care about is whether somebody puts on a good show, we’ll just come up with a celebrity of our own.' They look to the recent past and see a bunch of serious, experienced public servants with a deep understanding of policy who would have made fine presidents but who lost in part because they failed to light up the TV screen: Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, Hillary Clinton.... It’s true that Democrats have underappreciated the importance of charisma in presidential politics. But the answer to those electoral failures isn’t to stop caring about substance. It’s to find candidates who are both charismatic and serious, who would be able both to win and to do the job once they took office."

That's Paul Waldman in a WaPo op-ed, "Get a grip, people. Oprah should not run for president," which I find outright insulting to the person who may be the greatest American alive today. How is she not serious? Why the presumption that people who've gotten into politics early in life and hidden within the structures of government, cosseted by aides and advisers and beholden to contributors, are the serious people? Why is he treating Oprah as if she is all surface, no substance? Take 10 minutes to read her Wikipedia page and come back and tell me she's an unserious mass of charisma and nothing more!

Waldman goes on to say that Democrats can win without stooping to Oprah by finding another Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. Those guys were "fantastically compelling candidates who could also talk your ear off about policy" and who "knew how to work the political system, and they also knew how to sell." What's so deep and substantive about that? With great advisers, any candidate can work up positions on the policy issues of the day, and isn't that what Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did?

I notice Waldman didn't say Bill Clinton and Barack Obama got law degrees from elite schools and jumped into government from there. I don't need to say that's a bad way to equip yourself for the presidency to be able to say that's not the only way.

Incidentally, I was about to type "Oprah" and I accidentally typed "Obama." The "O" is a powerful first letter. We feel it deeply in a part of our brain we cannot look at and analyze. Speaking of emotion, Oprah is (per Wikipedia) "criticized for unleashing a confession culture, promoting controversial self-help ideas, and an emotion-centered approach." There is no other approach, people. We are emotion-centered whether we admit it or not.

And Oprah has been loved by America for a long, long time. Longer than Bill Clinton, longer than Barack Obama. Compare these signatures:



Did he not copy her?

"During the 2012 campaign, I, like every liberal writer whose job it is to comment on politics every day, wrote many unkind things about Mitt Romney."

"Much of the time I found him more sad than despicable; politicians who nearly reach the pinnacle of their profession while being manifestly awful at politics are a rare and curious breed."

Writes Paul Waldman at The American Prospect in a post titled "New Documentary Threatens to Make You Like Mitt Romney."

Here's the trailer: