My friend Michael Elkon introduced me a few years ago to the concept of a “banked win,” which I discussed in A FAN’S LIFE:

A banked win happens when as a psychological matter fans treat a game as already won, even though the contest isn’t actually over.  This of course creates the possibility of the most painful of all losses: the revocation of a win that, for psychological purposes, has already been banked.  Elkon is an Atlanta Falcons fan, so he offers up the example of Atlanta leading New England by 28-3 in the Super Bowl.  Atlanta fans were understandably, but oh so recklessly, already celebrating that championship, only to see it snatched away in what was for them a kind of slow-motion nightmare.

I’m thinking right now about the psychological state of Trump Land, which in a matter of two days has gone from hubristic triumphalism to overwhelming panic and fear.

Just last week, their Anointed Savior had, after miraculously dodging a literal bullet, appeared before them to claim his long-ordained nomination to the presidency, which at the moment he seemed overwhelmingly likely to recapture. His opponents were demoralized and desperate; his fortunes were ascending by the hour; the sweet ambrosia of ultimate victory seemed almost close enough to taste.

And then everything went very, very wrong.

I don’t think it’s possible to overestimate the complete mental breakdown that the right wing in this country is going to undergo over the course of the next three and a half months if, as seems quite possible at the moment, the prospect of Trump being defeated, perhaps even in a resounding fashion, by of all people a Black woman, begins to look more and more likely.

This would be an almost unendurably horrible event for the right in this country under any circumstances. But these are not any circumstances. They are the specific circumstances in which a banked win is taken from these people, in a kind of slow-motion three-month nightmare. as their lord and savior is humiliated — as they themselves are humiliated — by a candidate who is the literal embodiment of everything they most hate and fear.

What we could well be headed for is a nationwide crack up of an entire political movement, and the tens of millions of people who support it, triggering all kinds of irrational conspiracism, and potential stochastic violence.

Another thing that’s likely to get triggered is an all-out pseudo-legal assault, as the Republicans try desperately to cash in on having appointed so many reactionary hacks to the federal judiciary.

I see two routes in particular by which the latter may end up being manifested.

First, the GOP may try to find another Aileen Cannon or Matthew Kacsmaryk — hell, given that these people aren’t noted for their subtlety, they will probably just move heaven and earth to get their case in front of one of those two judges — to hear a challenge to the utterly preposterous idea that Joe Biden doesn’t actually have the right to choose not to be the Democratic candidate for president. But doesn’t that sound completely insane you might ask?

Yet since when has that been a barrier to the new breed of right wing judges, nurtured over the last generation like so many Alien egg pods in the Federalist Society hatcheries? Election law expert James Gardner:

If the Republican Party sues to block Biden from stepping down in certain states, does it have a case?

The Republicans have a track history here, and the track history is filing endless, frivolous, losing litigation. And that is the pattern they’re threatening to replicate.

Filing these lawsuits may be just for talking points. But it also may be that Republicans have been playing a very long game here, and that game involves essentially capturing the federal judiciary. I think maybe they’re hoping they’ll get lucky and get a judge they handpicked who will ignore the law.

We’re roughly a hundred days from the election. Is that a short enough time frame for Republicans to file a lawsuit, get lucky with a judge, and withstand an appeal?

I suppose it could be. I mean, there are examples we already have. The dismissal of the documents suit against Trump is an example of a handpicked Trump appointee doing what she was appointed to do. And if this reaches the Supreme Court, honestly, all bets are off. That is a court that is not impartial, not independent. But I think even the Supreme Court as it’s currently constituted might balk.

I always think it’s important in talking about stuff like this to keep the big picture in mind, which is that the Trump wing of the Republican Party has basically abandoned its commitment to democracy. And so whatever tools it can pick up to beat the system into submission are tools it will deploy.

The fact that such a lawsuit would have zero basis in any recognized source of law is not going to stop these people, because it never does. It probably won’t get anywhere, but it does have a real chance of generating a classic bogus right wing “controversy,” that might peel off some voters here and there, who read a post on Facebook from their aunt’s best friend’s college roommate, that Kamala Harris doesn’t even have the right to be on the ballot.

Speaking of which, the second line of attack, that is already being vomited up by the scream machine, is disbarred lawyer John Eastman’s 2020 Greatest Hit, Stairway to Birtherism, in which he argues that “some” people are saying that Harris isn’t a natural born citizen, because when she was born in Oakland in 1964 it’s possible that her parents were on temporary visas rather than being lawful permanent residents, and if you squint at the Constitution in just the right way . . . I’m not even going to bother with the details of this nonsense, except to remind everybody that this stuff is always out there, and it can’t be bargained with, or reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop… ever, until America is back in the hands of its rightful owners, which most emphatically do not include anyone even remotely like Kamala Harris.

Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy fall.

The post The coming Republican freakout appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

It was 4 AM when I first heard the tapping on the glass. I had been working for 30 minutes trying desperately to get everything from the back store room onto the sales floor when I heard a light knocking. Peeking out from the back I saw an old woman wearing sweat pants and a Tweetie bird jacket, oxygen tank in tow, tapping a cane against one of the big front windows. "WE DON'T OPEN UNTIL 5" shouted my boss, who shook her head and resumed stacking boxes. "Black Friday is the worst" she said to nobody as we continued to pile the worthless garbage into neat piles on the store floor.

What people know now but didn't understand then was the items for sale on Black Friday weren't our normal inventory. These were TVs so poorly made they needed time to let their CRT tubes warm up before the image became recognizable. Radios with dials so brittle some came out of the box broken. Finally a mixer that when we tested it in the back let out such a stench of melted plastic we all screamed to turn it off before we burned down the building. I remember thinking as I unloaded it from the truck certainly nobody is gonna want this crap.

Well here they were and when we opened the doors they rushed in with a violence you wouldn't expect from a crowd of mostly senior citizens. One woman pushed me to get at the TVs, which was both unnecessary (I had already hidden one away for myself and put it behind the refrigerators in the back) and not helpful as she couldn't lift the thing on her own. I watched in silence as she tried to get her hands around the box with no holes cut out, presumably a cost savings on Sears part, grunting with effort as the box slowly slid while she held it. At the checkout desk a man told me he was buying the radio "as a Christmas gift for his son". "Alright but no returns ok?" I said keeping a smile on my face.

We had digital cameras the size of shoe-boxes, fire-hazard blenders and an automatic cat watering dish that I just knew was going to break a lot of hearts when Fluffy didn't survive the family trip to Florida. You knew it was quality when the dye from the box rubbed off on your hands when you picked it up. Despite my jokes about worthless junk, people couldn't purchase it fast enough. I saw arguments break out in the aisles and saw Robert, our marine veteran sales guy, whisper "forget this" and leave for a smoke by the loading dock. When I went over to ask if I could help, the man who had possession of the digital camera spun around and told me to "either find another one of these cameras or butt the fuck out". They resumed their argument and I resumed standing by the front telling newcomers that everything they wanted was already gone.

Hours later I was still doing that, informing everyone who walked in that the item they had circled in the newspaper was already sold out. "See, this is such a scam, why don't you stock more of it? It's just a trick to get us into the store". Customer after customer told me variations on the above, including one very kind looking grandfather type informing me I could "go fuck myself" when I wished him a nice holiday.

Beginnings

The store was in my small rural farming town in Ohio, nestled between the computer shop where I got my first job and a carpet store that was almost certainly a money laundering front since nobody ever went in or out. I was interviewed by the owner, a Vietnam veteran who spent probably half our interview talking about his two tours in Vietnam. "We used to throw oil drums in the water and shoot at them from our helicopter, god that was fun. Don't even get me started about all the beautiful local woman." I nodded, unsure what this had to do with me but sensing this was all part of his process. In the years to come I would learn to avoid sitting down in his office, since then you would be trapped listening to stories like these for an hour plus.

After these tales of what honestly sounded like a super fun war full of drugs and joyrides on helicopters, he asked me why I wanted to work at Sears. "It's an American institution and I've always had a lot of respect for it" I said, not sure if he would believe it. He nodded and went on to talk about how Sears build America. "Those kit houses around town, all ordered from Sears. Boy we were something back in the day. Anyway fill out your availability and we'll get you out there helping customers." I had assumed at some point I would get training on the actual products, which never happened in the years I worked there. In the back were dust covered training manuals which I was told I should look at "when I got some time". I obviously never did and still sometimes wonder about what mysteries they contained.

I was given my lanyard and put on the floor, which consisted of half appliances, one quarter electronics and then the rest being tools. Jane, one of the saleswomen told me to "direct all the leads for appliances to her" and not check one out myself, since I didn't get commission. Most of my job consisted of swapping broken Craftsmen tools since they had a lifetime warranty. You filled out a carbon paper form, dropped the broken tool into a giant metal barrel and then handed them a new one. I would also set up deliveries for rider lawnmowers and appliances, working on an ancient IBM POS terminal that required memorizing a series of strange keyboard shortcuts to navigate the calendar.

When there was downtime, I would go into the back and help Todd assemble the appliances and rider lawnmowers. Todd was a special needs student at my high school who was the entirety of our "expert assembly" service. He did a good job, carefully following the manual every time. Whatever sense of superiority as an honor role student I felt disappeared when he watched me try to assemble a rider mower myself. "You need to read the instructions and then do what they say" he would helpfully chime in as I struggled to figure out why the brakes did nothing. His mowers always started on the first try while mine were safety hazards that I felt certain was going to be on the news. "Tonight a Craftsman rider lawnmower killed a family of 4. It was assembled by this idiot." Then just my yearbook photo where I had decided to bleach my hair blonde like a chonky backstreet boy overlaid on top of live footage of blood splattered house siding.

Any feeling I had that people paying us $200 to assemble their rider mowers disappeared when I saw the first one where a customer tried to assemble it. If my mowers were death traps these were actual IEDs whose only conceivable purpose on Earth would be to trick innocent people into thinking they were rider lawnmowers until you turned the key and they blew you into the atmosphere. One guy brought his back with several ziplock bags full of screws bashfully explaining that he tried his best but "there's just no way that's right". That didn't stop me from holding my breath every time someone drove a mower I had worked on up the ramp into the back of the truck. "Please god just don't fall apart right now, wait until they get it home" was my prayer to whatever deity looked after idiots in jobs they shouldn't have.

Sometimes actual adults with real jobs would come in asking me questions about tools, conversations that both of us hated. "I'm looking for a oil filter wrench" they would say, as if this item was something I knew about and could find. "Uh sure, could you describe it?" "It's a wrench, used for changing oil filters, has a loop on it." I'd nod and then feebly offer them up random items until they finally grabbed it themselves. One mechanic when I offered a claw hammer up in response to his request for a cross-pein hammer said "you aren't exactly handy, are you?" I shook my head and went back behind the counter, attempting to establish what little authority I had left with the counter. I might not know anything about the products we sell, but only one of us is allowed back here sir.

Sears Expert

As the months dragged on I was moved from the heavier foot traffic shifts to the night shifts. This was because customers "didn't like talking to me", a piece of feedback I felt was true but still unfair. I had learned a lot, like every incorrect way to assemble a lawn mower and that refrigerators are all the same except for the external panels. Night shifts were mostly getting things ready for the delivery company, a father and son team who were always amusing.

The father was a chain-smoking tough guy who would regularly talk about his "fuck up" of a son. "That idiot dents another oven when we're bringing it in I swear to god I'm going to replace him with one of those Japanese robots I keep seeing on the news." The son was the nicest guy on Earth, really hard working, always on time for deliveries and we got like mountains of positive feedback about him. Old ladies would tear up as they told me about the son hauling their old appliances away in a blizzard on his back. He would just sit there, smile frozen on his face while his father went on and on about how much of a failure he was. "He's just like this sometimes" the son would tell me by the loading dock, even though I would never get involved. "He's actually a nice guy". This was often punctuated by the father running into a minor inconvenience and flying off the handle. "What kind of jackass would sort the paperwork alphabetically instead of by order of delivery?" he'd scream from the parking lot.

When the son went off to college he was replaced by a Hispanic man who took zero shit. His response to customer complaints was always that they were liars and I think the father was afraid of him. "Oh hey don't bother Leo with that, he's not in the mood, I'll call them and work it out" the father would tell me as Leo glared at us from the truck. Leo was incredibly handy though, able to fix almost any dent or scratch in minutes. He popped the dent out of my car door by punching the panel, which is still one of the cooler things I've seen someone do.

Other than the father and son duo, I was mostly alone with a woman named Ruth. She fascinated me because her life was unspeakably bleak. She had been born and raised in this town and had only left the county once in her life, to visit the Sears headquarters in Chicago. She'd talk about it like she had been permitted to visit heaven. "Oh it was something, just a beautiful shiny building full of the smartest people you ever met. Boy I'd love to see it again sometime." She had married her high school boyfriend, had children and now worked here in her 60s as her reward for a life of hard work. She had such bad pain in her knees she had to lean on the stocking cart as she pushed it down the aisles, often stopping to catch her breath. The store would be empty except for the sounds of a wheezing woman and squeaky wheels.

When I would mention Chicago was a 4 hour drive and she could see it again, she'd roll her eyes at me and continue stocking shelves. Ruth was a type of rural person I encountered a lot who seemed to get off on the idea that we were actually isolated from the outside world by a force field. Mention leaving the county to go perhaps to the next county and she would laugh or make a comment about how she wasn't "that kind of person". Every story she would tell had these depressing endings that left me pondering what kind of response she was looking for. "My brother, well he went off to war and when he came back was just a shell of a man. Never really came back if you ask me. Anyway let's clean the counters."

She'd talk endlessly about her grandson, a 12 year old who was "stupid but kind". His incredibly minor infractions were relayed to me like she was telling me about a dark family scandal. "Then I said, who ate all the chips? I knew he had, but he just sat there looking at me and I told him you better wipe those crumbs off your t-shirt smartass and get back to your homework". He finally visited and I was shocked to discover there was also a granddaughter who I had never heard about. He smirked when he met me and told me that Ruth had said I was "a lazy snob".

I'll admit, I was actually a little hurt. Was I a snob compared to Ruth? Absolutely. To be honest with you I'm not entirely sure she was literate. I'd sneak books under the counter to read during the long periods where nothing was happening and she'd often ask me what they were about even if the title sort of explained it. "What is Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era about? Um well the Civil War." I'd often get called over to "check" documents for her, which typically included anything more complicated than a few sentences. I still enjoyed working with her.

Our relationship never really recovered after I went to Japan when I was 16. I went by myself and wandered around Tokyo, having a great time. When I returned full of stories and pictures of the trip, I could tell she was immediately sick of me. "Who wants to see a place like Japan? Horrible people" she'd tell me as I tried to tell her that things had changed a tiny bit since WWII. "No it's really nice and clean, the food was amazing, let me tell you about these cool trains they have". She wasn't interested and it was clear my getting a passport and leaving the US had changed her opinion of me.

So when her grandson confided that she had called me lazy AND a snob my immediate reaction was to lean over and tell him that she had called him "a stupid idiot". Now she had never actually said "stupid idiot", but in the heat of the moment I went with my gut. Moments after I did that the reality of a 16 year old basically bullying a 12 year old sunk in and I decided it was time for me to go take out some garbage. Ruth of course found out what I said and mentioned it every shift after that. "Saying I called my grandson a stupid idiot, who does that, a rude person that's who, a rude snob" she'd say loud enough for me to hear as the cart very slowly inched down the aisles. I deserved it.

Trouble In Paradise

At a certain point I was allowed back in front of customers and realized with a shock that I had worked there for a few years. The job paid very little, which was fine as I had nothing in the town to actually buy, but enough to keep my lime green Ford Probe full of gas. It shook violently if you exceeded 70 MPH, which I should have asked someone about but never did. I was paired with Jane, the saleswoman who was a devout Republican and liked to make fun of me for being a Democrat. This was during the George W Bush vs Kerry election and she liked to point out how Kerry was a "flipflopper" on things. "He just flips and flops, changes his mind all the time". I'd point out we had vaporized the country of Iraq for no reason and she'd roll her eyes and tell me I'd get it when I was older.

My favorite was when we were working together during Reagan's funeral, an event which elicited no emotion from me but drove her to tears multiple times. "Now that was a man and a president" she'd exclaim to the store while the funeral procession was playing on the 30 TVs. "He won the Cold War you know?" she'd shout at a woman looking for replacement vacuum cleaner bags. Afterwards she asked me what my favorite Reagan memory was. All I could remember was that he had invaded the small nation of Grenada for some reason, so I said that. "Really showed those people not to mess with the US" she responded. I don't think either one of us knew that Grenada is a tiny island nation with a population less than 200,000.

Jane liked to dispense country wisdom, witty one-liners that only sometimes were relevant to the situation at hand. When confronted with an angry customer she would often say afterwards that you "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" which still means nothing to me.  Whatever rural knowledge I was supposed to obtain through osmosis my brain clearly rejected. Jane would send me over to sell televisions since I understood what an HDMI cord was and the difference between SD and HD television.

Selling TVs was perhaps the only thing I did well, that and the fun vacuum demonstration where we would dump a bunch of dirt on a carpet tile and suck it up. Some poor customer would tell me she didn't have the budget for the Dyson and I'd put my hand up to silence her. "You don't have to buy it, just watch it suck up a bunch of pebbles. I don't make commission anyway so who cares." Then we'd both watch as the Dyson would make a horrible screeching noise and suck in a cups worth of small rocks. "That's pretty cool huh?" and the customer would nod, probably terrified of what I would do if she said no.

Graduation

When I graduated high school and prepared to go off to college, I had the chance to say goodbye to everyone before I left. They had obviously already replaced me with another high school student, one that knew things about tools and was better looking. You like to imagine that people will miss you when you leave a job, but everyone knew that wasn't true here. I had been a normal employee who didn't steal and mostly showed up on time.

My last parting piece of wisdom from Ruth was not to let college "make me forget where I came from". Sadly for her I was desperate to do just that, entirely willing to adopt whatever new personality that was presented to me. I'd hated rural life and still do, the spooky dark roads surrounded by corn. Yelling at Amish teens to stop shoplifting during their Rumspringa where they would get dropped off in the middle of town and left to their own devices.

Still I'm grateful that I at least know how to assemble a rider lawnmower, even if it did take a lot of practice runs on customers mowers.

Nanaimo RCMP says a man was walking his dog when an unknown person confronted and tried to stab him.

On July 11 around 9:30 a.m. a man was walking in the wooded area behind the Northfield Rotary Lookout Park.

Another man approached and confronted him wielding two knives. Nanaimo RCMP says the suspect “swung the knives” at the dog walker and tried to stab him.

“In response, the dog lunged at the assailant and bit him on the right leg,” RCMP says in a news release.

“The dog’s owner, who is trained in martial arts, was able to incapacitate the assailant and take possession of the knives.”

Neither the walker nor the dog were injured in the incident, RCMP confirmed to CHEK News.

RCMP says the suspect is described as a Caucasian man with shoulder-length brown hair between the ages of 30 and 40.

He was wearing dark clothes and had a bra on his head. He left the area with a red suitcase and a red mobility walker.

RCMP says officers were unable to find him despite “extensive” patrols by police dog services.

Anyone with information on the suspect is asked to call Nanaimo RCMP at (250) 754-2345.

READ ALSO: Dog owner upset RCMP won’t charge man who stabbed dog in Coombs

The post Man attempts to stab dog walker in Nanaimo: RCMP appeared first on CHEK.

How does Joe Biden plan on beating Donald Trump? Twelve days after the worst debate performance in American history, we still have no answer to that pressing, existential question.

For nearly two weeks now, Democrats have been in a (wholly justified) panic. On June 27, Biden raised alarming concerns about his physical and mental fitness as he repeatedly failed to answer simple, predictable questions with anything approaching coherence. It is not clear if he has the ability to finish out this term, let alone another one. It is certainly not clear that he can undergo the rigors of a presidential campaign, let alone one with these extraordinary stakes. If he loses, the federal government may very well be transformed. Millions may be deported. The Supreme Court has given Donald Trump carte blanche to behave like a king.

But as voters and elected Democrats have raised serious concerns about Biden’s ability to serve both as the party’s nominee and as president, Biden is the one behaving like a monarch. He is barely attempting to alleviate concerns about his stamina or health. Instead, he has, Trump-like, been on an imperial ego trip. Far from trying to assuage worried Democrats, he is giving the party an impossible choice: It can remain behind him as the party’s nominee, or he will tear down any possible replacement.

He has, during this period of crisis, surrounded himself not with cool-headed advisers but with family members, including his son Hunter, who was recently convicted of several felonies. These family members have convinced him that everyone is out to get him: his fellow Democrats, the media, anyone rational enough to see the dangers of running an 81-year-old who struggles to string two sentences together. Little, if any, work has gone into answering the questions Biden’s debate performance raised. Instead, we have had a petulant and pathetic display from a president who had promised to serve as not only a public servant but a “bridge” away from rule by a megalomaniac bent on twisting the presidency for his own craven purposes.

Biden has, over the last two weeks, isolated himself from voters and from his party. He has made a handful of public—or public-ish—appearances that have done little to inspire renewed hope in him. These have consisted of friendly interviews—some of which only featured questions that had been preselected by the White House—and brief speeches with the aid of a teleprompter. A 30-minute television interview may have staunched the bleeding, but it provided little evidence that the president can speak for any significant amount of time without raising concerns about his age.

He has been far from convincing—stumbling, muttering, losing his train of thought. He is still 81 years old and will be until Election Day. (He turns 82 in December.) If you are concerned about the president’s age—and three-quarters of voters are, according to polls—there has been nothing to convince you that he can withstand a full campaign schedule. There has certainly been nothing to assure you that every public appearance or speech will not be accompanied by evidence of his advanced age.

There has been quite a lot, however, to assure you that Biden intends to destroy the party if anyone works to convince him that it is best not just for his party, but for the nation, to step down. He has made it abundantly clear that he does not plan to go down without a fight—even if it wrecks him, his party, and the nation together. He has succeeded in making this election an impossible choice, between lining up behind an increasingly feeble octogenarian who is losing—and chaos.

Behind all of this is Biden’s considerable ego. There is a kingly insistence that only he can do the job of the presidency and that only he can take down Trump. There is little reason to believe that either thing is true. His vice president, Kamala Harris, is fully capable of both jobs. A number of prominent Democrats, including Harris but also several governors, are running ahead of Biden in some polls. You can be certain that these challengers would face some scrutiny if they became the nominee but also that they would not be hounded by a vulnerability that cannot be addressed. All of them are in their fifties and sixties. They are all capable administrators. They can do the job of the presidency. And they can beat Donald Trump, a historically weak candidate whose popularity has never risen above the low 40s.

Biden and his team have succeeded in holding onto the nomination by framing questions about his ability to continue as a battle against elites. On the one hand, there is Biden, his family, and a handful of vocal defenders. On the other hand, there is the commentariat, donors, and a large number of elected Democrats who happily grouse to reporters anonymously about their dire interpretation of the president’s reelection chances but say little publicly. That silence helps Team Biden dismiss the worries as coming from a panicky ruling class disconnected from actual voters. Biden has, in a very Trumpian turn, painted himself as not just an underdog but a victim—someone fighting elites and special interests who have it out for him, often in vague, sinister, and unspecified terms.

The fact that Democrats are roughly evenly divided over whether he should continue as the party’s nominee—and that 80 percent of voters have concerns about his age—has rarely factored in. No one wants to publicly come out against Biden continuing because the potential consequences are significant. An elected Democrat would face personal and professional risks for saying what is obvious to so many. There would be blowback. If Biden continues as the nominee and loses, they will be blamed. Efforts to organize opposition to his candidacy have largely fizzled for this reason.

Biden and his team have, in other words, successfully made this a very Trumpian palace intrigue story. Voter anxiety is discounted in service to the warring-elites narrative. It is a performance as selfish, pathetic, and histrionic as any of the Trump era. And yet this man will almost certainly be the Democratic nominee.

Four years ago, he was a very different nominee. For one thing, he could reassure voters who were concerned that he would take office as the oldest president in American history. Bit he was also an ideal contrast to Donald Trump: Someone who credibly make the case that he could return a spirit of decency and selflessness to the office of the presidency, someone who could be consistently relied upon to put the interests of the country above his own.

The case against Donald Trump is as simple and easy to make now as it was then: He is not and has never been popular, and for good reason. He is incompetent, venal, narcissistic. He is a convicted felon, certified con man, and abuser of women. He puts himself before everything else.

Here’s the big problem, though: Joe Biden is just as unpopular. He has spent the last two weeks on a salted-earth campaign to ensure that he remains the Democratic nominee. Instead of demonstrating that he has the energy to prosecute the case against Donald Trump, he has been holed up in the White House, surrounded by sycophants and loyalists, all of them lashing out at “elites” and “the media.” It’s Trumpian—and it should be disqualifying.

That it isn’t should raise serious concerns about Biden and Democratic leadership writ large. We are in a moment that recalls the Trump era. The president is engaged in a vitriolic campaign against a shadowy cabal of enemies in the media and his own party. He has transformed his political project into one built on his own grievances. There are significant questions about his competence and his ability to lead the country. Democrats should line up behind a candidate who can run as a contrast with Donald Trump—not behind one who increasingly resembles him.