Fake and Fateful Debates

by G. Murphy Donovan

“The duty of a true patriot is to protect his country from its government.”– Thomas Paine

A tired American political axiom claims that “money talks and bull s–t walks.” Clichés are, unfortunately, often the most pernicious varieties of bravo sierra. Presidential primary “debates” are examples of politically correct party-sanctioned scat festivals.

Most of the inquisitors hail from the American left. The institutions that provide debate “moderators” represent heritage networks, urban print media, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. These demographics, for the most part, are an “A” List of the usual suspects, the liberal or leftist establishment.

Historically, the presidential debates are staged, literally and figuratively.

The 2020 Democrat primary debates are no exception, predictably an exercise in cooked books. Never mind the hysteria, Trump hate, Putin bashing, Russophobia, envy, pandering, racism, amateur analysis, sexism, or even socialism scares. The trope list is infinite. The 2020 DNC clown car had one common denominator; most candidates were professional politicians.

Late entry Bloomberg was a hybrid, a political oligarch; first a Democrat, then a Republican, then an Independent, now a Democrat again.  He ran as an American oligarch, dispensing cash with abandon.

Bloomberg’s campaign slogan might have been “Call Me Ambiguous.”

The 2020 Democrat primaries may look like a clown car, a food fight, or even a blood bath, but all that noise just masks the real signal. Few moderators ask relevant questions on the left – or of the left.

Who asks about the Biden shenanigans in Ukraine and Obama era quid pro quo, nepotism, and bribery? Who asks about the DNC role in the Steele dossier? Who asks about Warren faking the race card at Harvard and elsewhere? Whence Pocahontas? Who asks about the Obama DNC fix in 2016 when the primary was tweaked to exclude Sanders. 

Who asks about toxic political partisanship at CIA, FBI, and State before and after 2016. Who asks about the subsequent partisan Russia/Ukraine hoax and the impeachment fiascos since 2016?

Who asks why there are no FOX, Breitbart, Newsmax, or other conservative moderators?  Who asks why Norah O’Donnell (CBS) wore an all-white Me-Too clan suit to referee the “impartial” Charleston debate?

What’s next for the distaff press, pink pussy hats?

The inquisitors are called “moderators.” Historically, there is nothing moderate about the politics of the American media corps. The bias of press panels is best revealed in subjects avoided, questions not asked, the elephants in the room, if we can abuse another cliché.

Bernie Sanders, an out Socialist, is now running behind Joe Biden. In Charleston, Sanders doubled down on Communism and Fidel Castro’s literacy program. The question not asked is how do “literacy brigades” matter in a country like Cuba with no free speech or free press?

The space between Bloomberg and Sanders was, if we are honest, a distinction without a difference. One sought to buy a nomination with his money and the other seeks to buy an election with your money, with promises of “free” stuff.

Sanders, at best, is an idiot savant, a comic character out of a Kosinski novel. Alas, the truth about socialism and associated civic mandates is deadly serious.

Social mandates require coercion.

Bernie’s favorite political exemplars all come from the wide white world of social Scandinavia, a demographic collective, we might add, that collectively capitulated to, or collaborated with, National Socialism in Hitler’s time.

The European north prospers today, in part, because with Nazi era collusion, northern Europe escaped the worst of WWII. When push comes to shove, the anti-Semitic ghettos of Scandinavia are not where you are likely to discover any probative models for American social justice.

This is not to minimize the Sanders game. With a strong running mate, his ticket would be formidable, a populist pair who would represent many of the statist, globalist, dependent, if not the grifter, sentiments that thrive in urban America.

If Sanders were to get the nomination, beating him in the 2020 general election would not be a layup.

A Sanders/Trump finale in 2020 would represent a culture clash that has been in the making since Karl Marx worked a soapbox. If you believed that the fall of the Soviet Union was the “end of (totalitarian) history,” you are wrong.

For the moment, Milwaukee in 2020 is shaping up to be a liberal cage match where only one geriatric snowflake will be left standing, possibly followed by a rerun of “back to the future.” After the Michigan win, Biden still has the delegate edge. That, combined with super delegate insurance, now makes Joe the favorite. Surely, Sanders will still provide some color, but in the end, like 2016, Bernie will be swallowed by the DC swamp.

If and when Biden gets the nomination, his campaign slogan will be “open for business as usual – again.”

                    

When the summer heat subsides, there is no reason to believe that historical bias in the forthcoming fall presidential debates will be any different unless Trump changes the rules of engagement. The general election debates are the big leagues, a ring where referees matter.

If Trump lets the usual suspects, left or right, select the inquisitors, he comes to the 2020 debate stage with another handicap. Joe Biden already has the media, the swamp, and Silicon Valley in his pocket.

General election debates are “managed” by a body called the Commission on Presidential Debates, a Washington non-profit which in theory represents both parties. In practice, the CPD represents the DC establishment. The main accomplishment of the CPD to date has been to keep third party candidates off the national stage. Commission membership reads like a Who’s Who of Beltway camp followers, a demographic demonstrably hostile to Trump in 2016 and maybe more so today.

President Trump needs to remake the moderator selection process to insure that conservative as well as liberal voices are represented among 2020 debate referees. The usual suspects from CPB, CNN, CBS, NBC, and ABC need to be leavened by moderators from Fox, Breitbart, EIB, Newsmax, and Judicial Watch.

A fifty-fifty split would be nice.

If Trump has done nothing else in his first term, he has exposed egregious media bias, aka fake news, inside the Beltway. We now know where the shills work. The president now has the power to level a traditionally partisan presidential debate stage.

Trump should insist on an ideologically diverse panel of 2020 debate moderators or leave the media spinners and shills to talk to each other.

Donald Trump doesn’t need debates in 2020 as much as the Democrats need another rigged election.

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G. Murphy Donovan writes about the politics of national security.