The Biden Thing
All politics is stupid, and political media is worse
The recent spate of physics-y posting has, as I’ve said in the posts themselves, been largely driven by a desire to avoid engaging with the actual news. Since we seem to have reached a point of things Actually Happening, it’s maybe worth saying a little bit here, just to clear the decks, as it were.
On the whole, I’m happy to see both Biden stepping down from running for re-election, and the rapid coalescing of support behind Kamala Harris. To be clear, I would’ve voted for a four-year-old’s stick-figure drawing labeled “Joe Biden” in that little-kid writing where several letters are the wrong way round before I would vote for Donald Trump. But Biden is certainly old, and seems unwell, so stepping down in favor of somebody younger is the right move.
That said, this entire stupid episode has done an amazing amount to crystallize my utter contempt for the political media, especially the more social bits of it. Which is an impressive accomplishment, as my general opinion of political journalism was already exceptionally low, to a point where I’m genuinely surprised that it had depths yet to plumb.
The last month has really driven home the degree to which the entire enterprise of political media has devolved into nothing but the laziest sorts of theater criticism. Biden’s weakness was based not in anything relating to the actual job of being President— which he has been astonishingly good at— but to perceived deficiencies in the job of playing the President on TV. On the flip side, Trump’s strength has been based in his ability to say utterly incoherent horseshit in a confident manner, like he’s selling the Turbo Encabulator.
There’s been essentially no evaluation of anything substantive that Biden has done, just complaints about how he looks while doing it, and next to no acknowledgement that the few things Trump says that seem relatively coherent are horrifying to contemplate as actual policy. And it’s hard not to believe that this at some level reflects the level of effort involved— analyzing policy requires listening to and parsing speeches in chunks longer than 30 seconds, and, you know, learning stuff, whereas “Old man sounds old!” is trivially easy.
There’s also a level of naked self-interest on the part of the political media that’s been exposed by this whole business. As I said on ex-Twitter the other day, it’s really remarkable how closely the high-minded strategic advice being offered from the commentariat as to what course of action would be best for Biden and the Democrats and the nation as a whole has tracked what’s most fun and lucrative for people who make their living generating #content for political media. From declarations that the only way to redeem the bad debate performance would be to do lengthy sit-down interviews with political reporters to the more recent suggestions that the Biden replacement should be chosen through some farcical process involving Oprah fucking Winfrey hosting town halls, it’s hard not to notice that the common element is political pundits getting a shitload of free material with next to zero effort. The fact that people were promoting Michelle Obama— a woman who has been William-Tecumseh-Sherman-level clear that she wants no fucking part of electoral politics any more— shows he degree to which this episode was just fantasy sports for people with liberal-arts degrees.
(There’s also a lot of crass opportunism in a lot of the other people who latched onto the debate as a way to push Biden out, who were just using it as a new channel for their rage over Middle East policy or student loans or whatever. If your previous expert analysis was that Biden trailed in the polls because he was too pro-Israel, that’s your prerogative, but it’s going to push down the weight I assign to your current principled concern about his public speaking…)
It’s also depressing to watch how bad the commentariat is at their supposed area of expertise, namely understanding How Politics Works. To hop back on one of my own hobby horses, this was maybe most apparent in the timing of things: as usual, most of the commentariat did this phase change where they decided that Biden Must Go, and it instantly became “Why has this not happened yet?!?!?!1?” Which, as I’ve said numerous times in the past is absolutely and obviously Not How Any Of This Works. The call to withdraw is asking the sitting President to make one of the most momentous decisions a person in his position can make, and you think he’s going to do that overnight?
The way this has unfolded is pretty much how this was inevitably going to unfold, and moreover is how something like this should unfold. Just convincing Biden that this was genuinely necessary is a process that takes time— a number of pundits made the analogy to getting an older relative to stop driving, apparently without stopping to think how that would map onto a vastly more consequential decision. Lining up the smooth transition to Harris likewise takes time and actual political work— private meetings and back-channel calls to ensure that everyone was on board— and it would’ve been absolutely fucking insane for politicians as competent and seasoned as the Biden administration and their allies not to do that. Even if it would’ve been way more entertaining for people in the media had they behaved like the unprofessional lunatics in the Trump camp. Prior to the official announcement of Biden’s withdrawal it was also absolutely essential that every public-facing official statement be confidently and even combatively insistent that he was “in it to win,” because that’s how this is done in every other context where some organization is considering such a major change.
Even with all that, and the foot-stamping from pundits demanding action NOWNOWNOW, I would bet actual money that when Biden’s withdrawal was announced, a double-digit percentage of registered voters’ first reaction was “What the fuck? Where did THAT come from?” Hell, there’s probably another 5% who still haven’t heard that he’s out. The average voter is insulated from political scandals by a thick layer of Not Paying Attention that normally takes months to penetrate, which is why the relentless harping on “Project 2025” was only just starting to get traction for the Biden/Harris campaign.
All of this seems staggeringly obvious to me, and I’m not in the business. I’m just someone who’s old enough to remember multiple decades of actual news, and recognize that things always play out this way. For people touted as savvy insider experts to apparently not know that is either an indication that their commentary is, in fact, completely worthless because they’re idiots, or that they’re cynically pushing other agendas for personal gain. In which case, their commentary is, in fact, completely worthless.
To again repeat a bit that I’ve said on ex-Twitter multiple times, I hope one of the last concessions Biden extracted before handing things over to Harris was a promise to continue his practice of refusing to sit down with the New York Times politics team. She should, as numerous people have jokingly called for, absolutely go on Hot Ones and eat wings, and for that matter smoke dope with Joe Rogan. She should go on any and every podcast under the sun, so long as it’s not hosted by anyone with a White House press credential. She should even do other bits within the NYT empire— share some family recipes behind a paywall, or curate w special week of Connections puzzles. Just not a lengthy interview with the politics editors and reporters, because fuck those people, and their entire profession.
So, on the whole, I think we’ve ended up in a better place for the actual campaign to come. But the way that we’ve gotten here has been as disgusting and dispiriting as anything to happen in the last decade and a half of politics. It’s left me wishing for a way to wash my hands of the entire sordid business; alas, that’s not a reasonable option, so I may have to settle for just unsubscribing from a bunch of Substacks and podcasts.
So, yeah, that’s a little cathartic. Probably back to physics and/or academia after this. I have another video experiment queued up; if you want to see whether I get to that or end up ranting more, here’s a button:
And if you feel so moved, the comments will be open:
Really validating my priors that us Physics Guys™ are better at politics than Politics Guys™.
Stick to physics, you're good at it.