Here We Go Again
In September of 2012 I initiated a series of posts that, collectively, I titled “Election 2012: Image World,” in which I addressed the imagistic components of Barack Obama’s second run for the White House. (Premiering as it did in mid-2009, this blog missed covering his first campaign.) Since most of the election-related imagery came in lens-derived form — still photos and videos — this seemed an appropriate subject for critical analysis at this photo-centric blog. Beginning with the Republican National Convention and ending with the official photos of Obama taking the oath of office for a second time, that resulted in 19 posts over a five-month period.
I followed that up with Election 2016: Image World, an equally long series of posts that I kicked off in late July of 2015, with the following premise:
“[I]n reviewing that series I realized that I’d come out of the gate late. With my commentary based primarily on issues relating to visual imagery, I have to acknowledge that the construction and planting of such imagery in the minds of the electorate commences way before the conventions. Indeed, it kicks off when the first hats get tossed into the rings of the respective parties, if not before, so I need to begin not long after.”
Trump Plaza Implosion, 2-17-21 (screenshot)
Regrettably, though I tracked it closely I opted not to engage here with the imagery of the 2020 election. I find Donald Trump so repulsive in every regard that the prospect of yet again studying and discussing imagery of him for months on end so distressing that I couldn’t bring myself to launch that effort. In retrospect, I wish I’d had the stomach for it; the visual imagery of that campaign proved consequential, if not determinative, and merited more analysis than it received. So it goes.
In any case, I’ve decided to throw my photo-critical hat into the ring once more on this subject, and to do so even earlier this time around. With Nikki Haley’s announcement of her candidacy the 2024 campaign has officially started. And, in my opinion, the imagery that will affect this election has already begun to emerge. More on that in a moment. So the time is right.
One prefatory note: I absolutely refuse to use the trendy term “optics” in place of “appearances.” The way things look are not their “optics.” A measurement is not a “metric.” A calculation is not a “calculus.” These and other related abuses of language represent embarrassing attempts on the parts of talking heads in the mass media to scientificate their opinionating and thus sound more knowledgeable than they are. Count me out.
•
I commence with the following assumptions:
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Herbert Cole, The Ancient Mariner (1899)
Donald Trump will not win the Republic Party’s nomination again. Indeed, he may not even get nominated. He lost his bid for a second term, and has proved himself toxic to all but the MAGA component of the electorate. An albatross around the GOP’s collective necks, he doth, like the Ancient Mariner, “stoppeth one of three” to pour his stale tale of woe into their ears, alienating mainstream Republicans and independents even further. The party may simply snub him at the July 2024 convention in Milwaukee. Moreover, by early 2024 Trump will be either convicted, on trial, or charged and pending trial in at least three jurisdictions, as will any number of his partners in crime. Those legal proceedings will provide continuous headline news and online clickbait for the foreseeable future — certainly through the next election.
- However, Trump’s hold on the Republic Party’s base will remain so strong that they cannot formally repudiate him. Unless, that is, he responds spitefully to rejection as their nominee by either running as an independent or urging his followers to boycott the election in protest, thereby fatally splitting the right-wing vote — either way a consummation devoutly to be wished. Regardless of that, the GOP’s tacit endorsement of his policies will endure. Thus, one way or another, both Trump and the neofascist ideology dubbed Trumpism will play prominent roles in this election cycle.
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QAnon Shaman, January 6, 2021, screenshot
Trump, his henchpersons, and the insurrectionist mob he unleashed on January 6, 2021 will thus maintain high visibility during this election cycle. The imagery with which Trump’s failed 2020 campaign ended — the various seditious efforts to deny and reverse the election results, the treasonous day of rage outside the Capitol and in the halls of Congress — will form the visual backdrop for the 2024 election, embedded in our cultural consciousness so vividly that their evocation will not require mention.
- The Republicans will not dare to trot out any of their older and (at least by comparison) moderate figures like Mitt Romney, whose times have passed and all of whom Trump and his cult have already denounced as RINOs. Yet they have no one younger of national stature to offer, no one with serious legislation-passing and/or international-diplomacy chops, much less bankable charisma.
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Donald Trump and Nikki Haley, screenshot
To win back the White House — indeed, to have even a chance of winning — they need to cobble together a pairing that checks off a number of incompatible boxes: moderate but thoroughly pro-life, acceptable to (white) soccer moms and MAGA cultists alike, appealing to both racists and people of color, attractive to younger voters while also homophobic and censorial, fundamentalist Christian yet somehow convincingly not crazy. Aside from Tim Scott, I don’t know who they’ve got who fits that bill. So it’s either something like a Haley-Scott ticket (in which two lightweights don’t add up to one heavyweight) or else cave to the wingnuts and go full-MAGA with a DeSantis-Greene team or some equivalent thereto as a Hail Mary pass.
- On the Democratic side, unless health issues preclude it I expect Joe Biden to run again. With Kamala Harris a repeat as his running mate. Biden’s age will certainly prove a factor in this campaign, and I’ll have more to say about that in the near future. But accomplishment outweighs it, and the Biden presidency has done wonders so far, with even more already set to come.
In the Red Corner
From my perspective, then, the Election 2024 campaign has now begun, with Biden-Harris against Repub-whoever, even if Biden himself has yet to formally announce his candidacy. What images of both parties currently predominate?
Convicted felon Matthew Mazzocco, U.S. Capitol, Jan 6, 2021, selfies
For the Republicans, I’d have to say it’s three-tiered. As a constant, still images and videos of the Jan. 6 insurrection will persist. Their prominence in the mass media and social media did not diminish when the Jan. 6 Committee issued its final report and disbanded. Trials and sentencing of the insurrectionists will continue at least through the end of this year. Overlapping that we will have the charging, arraignment, and trials of the high-level conspirators in election denial and insurrection: Mark Meadows, Lindsey Graham, Rudy Giuliani, et al, all the way up to Trump himself. Thanks to the newsworthiness of their forthcoming legal travails, those images will replay steadily right through November 2024.
All right-wing efforts to pin blame for the attack on the Capitol on Nancy Pelosi, Democrats in general, Antifa, BLM, and other left-wing targets have failed utterly to persuade the rational general public. Especially given the ongoing knee-jerk defense of the attempted coup offered up by the majority of Republicans, the Republic Party owns the insurrection. Its related imagery will haunt them through this election cycle and many more to come.
“Day of Rage,” U.S. Capitol riot, Jan. 6, 2021, video screenshot
•
MT GReene, SOTU, 2-7-23
The second currently defining batch of Republican imagery comprises the still and video coverage of the antics of the wingnut howler-monkey contingent: Empty Green, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Gym Jordan, and others. With the scam-artist crew led by George Santos as an auxiliary thereof. Their committedly oafish behavior has become the dependable opening-monologue fodder that late-night hosts dream of, which encourages them to egg each other on. This plays well only with the “basket of deplorables” that Hillary Clinton dared to name out loud, yet these goons have become the public face of the Republican Party, which dares not disavow them. Look for ever more rude, vulgar, and arrogant (and photogenic) displays during this election cycle.
•
And the third component of Republican imagery consists of still and video images of Trump himself — the Republicans’ very own one-term, twice-impeached, soon to become thrice-indicted nominal party head. I’ll gladly admit I’m extremely prejudiced in this regard, but neither he nor his visual appearance have aged well. Clearly overweight, more oatmeal-complexioned than ever, maintaining that ridiculous comb-over, noticeably less articulate and coherent by the day, he has become a walking caricature of himself. All attempts to Rambo-ize or otherwise heroicize him instantly turn into unintended parody.
Donald Trump announces donation of collectible bottles of vintage Trump Water, East Palestine, Ohio train derailment, 2-22-23, screenshot
Yet, given his insatiable appetite for attention, on top of the attention that the media and the legal system will turn his way for the next two years, his face, his figure, his actions and words will become inescapable unless and until he’s actually incarcerated for his criminal enterprises. So, even if they shunt him aside or actively disown him, the Republicans will find themselves bound to him forever in the public consciousness.
In the Blue Corner
If the attack on the Capitol forms the visual backdrop to the Republic Party’s next attempt at the presidency, then the unprovoked and illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine has become the visual backdrop of the Biden presidency. Never mind that many Republicans support Ukraine; enough don’t, and indeed unabashedly support Russia and Putin, that Democratic unity on this score makes the leadership on this issue inarguably theirs.
Biden’s decision to anticipate and publicly predict the invasion and side unhesitatingly with Ukraine made the issue his. Doing so while quickly uniting NATO behind the Ukrainians expunged the shameful isolationism of the Trump regime in record time, while simultaneously reestablishing the U.S. as the leading voice of the free world, connecting the fight for democracy here to the fight for it worldwide. A master stroke.
U.S. Pres. Joe Biden and Ukraine Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Kiev, 2/21/23. Official White House photo.
If that’s the backdrop to the international component of the imminent Biden 2024 campaign, then the foreground images to go with it come from Biden’s surprise stealth visit to Kiev on February 21, 2022. A brilliant piece of political and diplomatic theater, it not only reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Ukraine but also confirmed Biden’s physical and mental fitness to lead on the national and international stages. With the calculated additional benefit of stealing the spotlight from Putin’s lame speeches the next day and shortly thereafter. The photos and videos of Biden and Zelenskyy indoors and walking the streets of Kiev — perhaps especially the outdoor videos, with the air-raid sirens blaring — show Biden as a political and moral figure of global stature, his age, if relevant, a positive aspect of his identity.
(Not to mention the physical demands of the trip itself: a 7-hour nighttime overseas flight followed by a one-hour drive to the train station and then a 10-hour train trip to Kiev — then hours of private talks with Zelenskyy and ritual public appearances for the cameras, after which a trip back to Poland for more public and private sessions, plus a speech. A “whirlwind 72 hours on the ground in Europe,” bookended by transatlantic flights. However comfortable his accommodations along the way, that’s a grueling voyage; I’d hesitate to undertake it myself, and I’m a year younger than Biden and in reasonably good physical condition. So hats off on that score alone.)
Which only reinforces the image of strength, tenacity, and aplomb that Biden projected with his February 7, 2023 State of the Union address. Given just two weeks earlier than his trip to Ukraine, this first punch in a one-two combination showed him effortlessly and even gleefully dominating an obstreperous Republican Party, adroitly turning the howler-monkey faction’s inept lunges against them to solidify, on the spot and on the record, unanimous support for Social Security and Medicare.
Pres. Joe Biden, SOTU, consensus on Social Security, and Medicare, 2-7-23, screenshot
On one level, then, Biden has become the Democrats’ Yoda, their venerable, modest, unassuming instructor in the artful intricacies of political kung fu. Undeniably a good thing. But not quite the image we need for a president in his eighties — especially an incumbent one seeking reelection. The situation calls for something more dynamic.
Enter Dark Brandon
Which brings us to “Dark Brandon.” This genius meme neatly coopted the MAGA slogan “Let’s go, Brandon!” — unsubtle MAGA code for “Fuck Joe Biden!” — and turned it into a refrain evoking a secret Biden alter ego, an identity as a superhero whose aviator glasses mask powerful eyebeams. Poster-like still images of this meme abound, and it got memorably animated in a pseudonymously created fall 2022 update of Spike Jonze’s classic 2001 video of Christopher Walken dancing to Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice,” with Joe Biden’s face imposed on Walken’s body.
Joe Biden, “Weapon of Choice” remix (2002), screenshot
•
This meme’s entertainment value — and especially its utility in social-media contexts — makes it especially valuable as a means of communicating Biden’s optimistic, high-energy aspect and outlook to a young demographic otherwise inclined (and not unreasonably so) to view him as a geezer irrelevant to their generations. The meme turns him into a hip, 21st-century version of “Foxy Grandpa,” always outsmarting the whippersnappers trying their best to trick him.
Foxy Grandpa, cartoon strip (1904)
Throw in Biden-administration legislation and executive action that speaks to the concerns of the younger demographic and directly affects them — decriminalization of marijuana, forgiving student debt, protecting voting rights, etc. — along with authentic empathy and plain-speaking and you get an image of the elder we all wish we had in our families. With his enthusiastic embrace of the “Dark Brandon” meme icing the cake.
•
So there we have the contest of images for Election 2024 at the present moment. The Republicans present visually as not just in disarray but fractured, the most prominent faces among them (Trump included) angry, ill-mannered, domineering, and unapologetically so. Were I hawking those T-shirts that read “Fuck you you fucking fuck” they’d be the customers I’d expect.
Reluctantly or not, they are all joined with Trump at the hip. Whatever he says and does between now and November 5, 2024 affects them directly; whatever happens to him during that time reflects on them. Which includes not only his decades-long private crime spree but the insurrection he fomented and the consequences resulting therefrom for all who participated, at every level. In effect, there’s a movie running non-stop in the heads of every American of voting age, featuring Mango Mussolini and his Clown Car in one horrendous scene after another. The Republicans can’t distance themselves from that, but they also can’t claim it proudly. In chess that’s called a pin.
The Democrats, by contrast, have Fightin’ Joe Biden, a/k/a Dark Brandon, mild-mannered but hardly meek, with a string of legislative triumphs, important executive orders, notable judicial appointments, and diplomatic achievements under his belt already. Each with its own photo-op moments. From where I stand, at this juncture he and his party have left their opposition in the dirt insofar as positive visual imagery goes.
•
For an index page with links to all posts in this series, click here.
•
This post sponsored by a donation from Carlyle T.
•
Special offer: If you want me to either continue pursuing a particular subject or give you a break and (for one post) write on a topic — my choice — other than the current main story, make a donation of $50 via the PayPal widget below, indicating your preference in a note accompanying your donation. I’ll credit you as that new post’s sponsor, and link to a website of your choosing.
And, as a bonus, I’ll send you a signed copy of my new book, poetic license / poetic justice — published under my full name, Allan Douglass Coleman, which I use for my creative writing.
SPJ Research Award 2014
Election 2024: Image World (1)
In September of 2012 I initiated a series of posts that, collectively, I titled “Election 2012: Image World,” in which I addressed the imagistic components of Barack Obama’s second run for the White House. (Premiering as it did in mid-2009, this blog missed covering his first campaign.) Since most of the election-related imagery came in lens-derived form — still photos and videos — this seemed an appropriate subject for critical analysis at this photo-centric blog. Beginning with the Republican National Convention and ending with the official photos of Obama taking the oath of office for a second time, that resulted in 19 posts over a five-month period.
I followed that up with Election 2016: Image World, an equally long series of posts that I kicked off in late July of 2015, with the following premise:
“[I]n reviewing that series I realized that I’d come out of the gate late. With my commentary based primarily on issues relating to visual imagery, I have to acknowledge that the construction and planting of such imagery in the minds of the electorate commences way before the conventions. Indeed, it kicks off when the first hats get tossed into the rings of the respective parties, if not before, so I need to begin not long after.”
Trump Plaza Implosion, 2-17-21 (screenshot)
Regrettably, though I tracked it closely I opted not to engage here with the imagery of the 2020 election. I find Donald Trump so repulsive in every regard that the prospect of yet again studying and discussing imagery of him for months on end so distressing that I couldn’t bring myself to launch that effort. In retrospect, I wish I’d had the stomach for it; the visual imagery of that campaign proved consequential, if not determinative, and merited more analysis than it received. So it goes.
In any case, I’ve decided to throw my photo-critical hat into the ring once more on this subject, and to do so even earlier this time around. With Nikki Haley’s announcement of her candidacy the 2024 campaign has officially started. And, in my opinion, the imagery that will affect this election has already begun to emerge. More on that in a moment. So the time is right.
One prefatory note: I absolutely refuse to use the trendy term “optics” in place of “appearances.” The way things look are not their “optics.” A measurement is not a “metric.” A calculation is not a “calculus.” These and other related abuses of language represent embarrassing attempts on the parts of talking heads in the mass media to scientificate their opinionating and thus sound more knowledgeable than they are. Count me out.
•
I commence with the following assumptions:
Herbert Cole, The Ancient Mariner (1899)
Donald Trump will not win the Republic Party’s nomination again. Indeed, he may not even get nominated. He lost his bid for a second term, and has proved himself toxic to all but the MAGA component of the electorate. An albatross around the GOP’s collective necks, he doth, like the Ancient Mariner, “stoppeth one of three” to pour his stale tale of woe into their ears, alienating mainstream Republicans and independents even further. The party may simply snub him at the July 2024 convention in Milwaukee. Moreover, by early 2024 Trump will be either convicted, on trial, or charged and pending trial in at least three jurisdictions, as will any number of his partners in crime. Those legal proceedings will provide continuous headline news and online clickbait for the foreseeable future — certainly through the next election.
QAnon Shaman, January 6, 2021, screenshot
Trump, his henchpersons, and the insurrectionist mob he unleashed on January 6, 2021 will thus maintain high visibility during this election cycle. The imagery with which Trump’s failed 2020 campaign ended — the various seditious efforts to deny and reverse the election results, the treasonous day of rage outside the Capitol and in the halls of Congress — will form the visual backdrop for the 2024 election, embedded in our cultural consciousness so vividly that their evocation will not require mention.
Donald Trump and Nikki Haley, screenshot
To win back the White House — indeed, to have even a chance of winning — they need to cobble together a pairing that checks off a number of incompatible boxes: moderate but thoroughly pro-life, acceptable to (white) soccer moms and MAGA cultists alike, appealing to both racists and people of color, attractive to younger voters while also homophobic and censorial, fundamentalist Christian yet somehow convincingly not crazy. Aside from Tim Scott, I don’t know who they’ve got who fits that bill. So it’s either something like a Haley-Scott ticket (in which two lightweights don’t add up to one heavyweight) or else cave to the wingnuts and go full-MAGA with a DeSantis-Greene team or some equivalent thereto as a Hail Mary pass.
In the Red Corner
From my perspective, then, the Election 2024 campaign has now begun, with Biden-Harris against Repub-whoever, even if Biden himself has yet to formally announce his candidacy. What images of both parties currently predominate?
Convicted felon Matthew Mazzocco, U.S. Capitol, Jan 6, 2021, selfies
For the Republicans, I’d have to say it’s three-tiered. As a constant, still images and videos of the Jan. 6 insurrection will persist. Their prominence in the mass media and social media did not diminish when the Jan. 6 Committee issued its final report and disbanded. Trials and sentencing of the insurrectionists will continue at least through the end of this year. Overlapping that we will have the charging, arraignment, and trials of the high-level conspirators in election denial and insurrection: Mark Meadows, Lindsey Graham, Rudy Giuliani, et al, all the way up to Trump himself. Thanks to the newsworthiness of their forthcoming legal travails, those images will replay steadily right through November 2024.
All right-wing efforts to pin blame for the attack on the Capitol on Nancy Pelosi, Democrats in general, Antifa, BLM, and other left-wing targets have failed utterly to persuade the rational general public. Especially given the ongoing knee-jerk defense of the attempted coup offered up by the majority of Republicans, the Republic Party owns the insurrection. Its related imagery will haunt them through this election cycle and many more to come.
“Day of Rage,” U.S. Capitol riot, Jan. 6, 2021, video screenshot
•
MT GReene, SOTU, 2-7-23
The second currently defining batch of Republican imagery comprises the still and video coverage of the antics of the wingnut howler-monkey contingent: Empty Green, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Gym Jordan, and others. With the scam-artist crew led by George Santos as an auxiliary thereof. Their committedly oafish behavior has become the dependable opening-monologue fodder that late-night hosts dream of, which encourages them to egg each other on. This plays well only with the “basket of deplorables” that Hillary Clinton dared to name out loud, yet these goons have become the public face of the Republican Party, which dares not disavow them. Look for ever more rude, vulgar, and arrogant (and photogenic) displays during this election cycle.
•
And the third component of Republican imagery consists of still and video images of Trump himself — the Republicans’ very own one-term, twice-impeached, soon to become thrice-indicted nominal party head. I’ll gladly admit I’m extremely prejudiced in this regard, but neither he nor his visual appearance have aged well. Clearly overweight, more oatmeal-complexioned than ever, maintaining that ridiculous comb-over, noticeably less articulate and coherent by the day, he has become a walking caricature of himself. All attempts to Rambo-ize or otherwise heroicize him instantly turn into unintended parody.
Donald Trump announces donation of collectible bottles of vintage Trump Water, East Palestine, Ohio train derailment, 2-22-23, screenshot
Yet, given his insatiable appetite for attention, on top of the attention that the media and the legal system will turn his way for the next two years, his face, his figure, his actions and words will become inescapable unless and until he’s actually incarcerated for his criminal enterprises. So, even if they shunt him aside or actively disown him, the Republicans will find themselves bound to him forever in the public consciousness.
In the Blue Corner
If the attack on the Capitol forms the visual backdrop to the Republic Party’s next attempt at the presidency, then the unprovoked and illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine has become the visual backdrop of the Biden presidency. Never mind that many Republicans support Ukraine; enough don’t, and indeed unabashedly support Russia and Putin, that Democratic unity on this score makes the leadership on this issue inarguably theirs.
Biden’s decision to anticipate and publicly predict the invasion and side unhesitatingly with Ukraine made the issue his. Doing so while quickly uniting NATO behind the Ukrainians expunged the shameful isolationism of the Trump regime in record time, while simultaneously reestablishing the U.S. as the leading voice of the free world, connecting the fight for democracy here to the fight for it worldwide. A master stroke.
U.S. Pres. Joe Biden and Ukraine Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Kiev, 2/21/23. Official White House photo.
If that’s the backdrop to the international component of the imminent Biden 2024 campaign, then the foreground images to go with it come from Biden’s surprise stealth visit to Kiev on February 21, 2022. A brilliant piece of political and diplomatic theater, it not only reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Ukraine but also confirmed Biden’s physical and mental fitness to lead on the national and international stages. With the calculated additional benefit of stealing the spotlight from Putin’s lame speeches the next day and shortly thereafter. The photos and videos of Biden and Zelenskyy indoors and walking the streets of Kiev — perhaps especially the outdoor videos, with the air-raid sirens blaring — show Biden as a political and moral figure of global stature, his age, if relevant, a positive aspect of his identity.
Which only reinforces the image of strength, tenacity, and aplomb that Biden projected with his February 7, 2023 State of the Union address. Given just two weeks earlier than his trip to Ukraine, this first punch in a one-two combination showed him effortlessly and even gleefully dominating an obstreperous Republican Party, adroitly turning the howler-monkey faction’s inept lunges against them to solidify, on the spot and on the record, unanimous support for Social Security and Medicare.
Pres. Joe Biden, SOTU, consensus on Social Security, and Medicare, 2-7-23, screenshot
On one level, then, Biden has become the Democrats’ Yoda, their venerable, modest, unassuming instructor in the artful intricacies of political kung fu. Undeniably a good thing. But not quite the image we need for a president in his eighties — especially an incumbent one seeking reelection. The situation calls for something more dynamic.
Enter Dark Brandon
Which brings us to “Dark Brandon.” This genius meme neatly coopted the MAGA slogan “Let’s go, Brandon!” — unsubtle MAGA code for “Fuck Joe Biden!” — and turned it into a refrain evoking a secret Biden alter ego, an identity as a superhero whose aviator glasses mask powerful eyebeams. Poster-like still images of this meme abound, and it got memorably animated in a pseudonymously created fall 2022 update of Spike Jonze’s classic 2001 video of Christopher Walken dancing to Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice,” with Joe Biden’s face imposed on Walken’s body.
Joe Biden, “Weapon of Choice” remix (2002), screenshot
•
This meme’s entertainment value — and especially its utility in social-media contexts — makes it especially valuable as a means of communicating Biden’s optimistic, high-energy aspect and outlook to a young demographic otherwise inclined (and not unreasonably so) to view him as a geezer irrelevant to their generations. The meme turns him into a hip, 21st-century version of “Foxy Grandpa,” always outsmarting the whippersnappers trying their best to trick him.
Foxy Grandpa, cartoon strip (1904)
Throw in Biden-administration legislation and executive action that speaks to the concerns of the younger demographic and directly affects them — decriminalization of marijuana, forgiving student debt, protecting voting rights, etc. — along with authentic empathy and plain-speaking and you get an image of the elder we all wish we had in our families. With his enthusiastic embrace of the “Dark Brandon” meme icing the cake.
•
So there we have the contest of images for Election 2024 at the present moment. The Republicans present visually as not just in disarray but fractured, the most prominent faces among them (Trump included) angry, ill-mannered, domineering, and unapologetically so. Were I hawking those T-shirts that read “Fuck you you fucking fuck” they’d be the customers I’d expect.
Reluctantly or not, they are all joined with Trump at the hip. Whatever he says and does between now and November 5, 2024 affects them directly; whatever happens to him during that time reflects on them. Which includes not only his decades-long private crime spree but the insurrection he fomented and the consequences resulting therefrom for all who participated, at every level. In effect, there’s a movie running non-stop in the heads of every American of voting age, featuring Mango Mussolini and his Clown Car in one horrendous scene after another. The Republicans can’t distance themselves from that, but they also can’t claim it proudly. In chess that’s called a pin.
The Democrats, by contrast, have Fightin’ Joe Biden, a/k/a Dark Brandon, mild-mannered but hardly meek, with a string of legislative triumphs, important executive orders, notable judicial appointments, and diplomatic achievements under his belt already. Each with its own photo-op moments. From where I stand, at this juncture he and his party have left their opposition in the dirt insofar as positive visual imagery goes.
•
For an index page with links to all posts in this series, click here.
•
This post sponsored by a donation from Carlyle T.
•
Special offer: If you want me to either continue pursuing a particular subject or give you a break and (for one post) write on a topic — my choice — other than the current main story, make a donation of $50 via the PayPal widget below, indicating your preference in a note accompanying your donation. I’ll credit you as that new post’s sponsor, and link to a website of your choosing.
And, as a bonus, I’ll send you a signed copy of my new book, poetic license / poetic justice — published under my full name, Allan Douglass Coleman, which I use for my creative writing.