Over a year ago, when I was discussing the upcoming presidential election with friends, I said that Biden would probably pick a successor and bow out of the race. It made perfect sense. He had already been a senator for most of his adult life, a vice president for eight years, and president going on four years. What more could he want? He was over 80 years old and he had done it all. Surely he would not be so selfish - like Ruth Bader Ginsburg - to press his luck with his health and want a second term.
Well, I was wrong. He was that selfish, and even after his debacle at the presidential debate, he still wants a second term and refuses to bow out! As a result, the Democratic Party is shell-shocked and in disarray. What to do!?!
The good news for the Democrats is that Trump did not distinguish himself at the debate either. Many viewers in focus groups proclaimed they could see through Trump's lies and said they would not vote for him under any conditions.
Nevertheless, the most recent polls show that Biden's disastrous performance at the debate has pushed Trump further ahead in the race.
But let's be clear, the worst part of the debate -- which really wasn't a debate at all, since it followed none of the rules or conventions of even a high school level debate -- was the forum itself.
In reality, it was a media show put on by CNN, a private corporation owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, one of the six mega-corporations that own almost all the mainstream news media in the country. Packaged and advertised like a sporting event, it was moderated by two mainstream journalists (Jake Tapper and Dana Bash) who acted more like feckless referees at a professional wrestling match than hard-nosed journalists in search of the truth.
For example, according to my own observations and several fact-checking sites, Trump blatantly lied dozens of times during the debate. And when he wasn't lying he was exaggerating, self-aggrandizing, or obfuscating. Even worse he rarely answered the questions that Tapper or Bash asked him. Instead he just rambled on about how great he was or how Biden was the worst president of all time.
Because of this, "low information" viewers, namely all Trump supporters and many Independents who don't bother to read any non-corporate news publications or watch any alternative news podcasts, assume that what Trump said was true.
After all, he wasn't called out on his lies. Not once did I hear Tapper say something like: "Now hold on, Mr. Trump, what you just said about everybody, including most legal scholars, wanting to end Roe v. Wade is simply not true!"
And if Trump continued to reiterate his lie, Tapper could have looked into the camera and said, "To everyone watching this at home, please go online and google this statement and you will see that it is a lie."
Even Biden proclaimed that Trump was a liar and had lied about several of his positions. But it wasn't effective because Trump controlled the arc of the conversation and steamrolled over everything Biden said.
Only once did Bash confront Trump when she asked him three times whether he would accept the results of the coming election. Of course Trump never gave her a straight answer, and Bash, unabashedly, let him off the hook.
Unfortunately, this is nothing new for mainstream news. For decades, even on faux hard-hitting news shows like "Meet the Press," nothing of substance, least of all truth, presents itself to the viewer. The game goes like this: The moderator asks a politician a tough question. The politician dodges the question and gives a rehearsed answer. The moderator then asks a follow-up, which the politician ignores and rambles on about his own agenda. The moderator gives up and moves to the next question.
So it really is like a professional wrestling match. It's just a show, an exhibition of news, not actual news. And Trump knows this and uses it to his advantage. But here's the really important point: the six mega-corporations that own the mainstream news media know this too, and they continue to perpetuate the farce.
After all, it's just a game to them. It doesn't matter who wins or loses the presidency (or any other political office) as long as they continue to control the arc of the political/economic narrative and make huge profits from their programs.
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