On Joe Biden's "Brain"

For as long as I can remember I have despised the horse race-style coverage of electoral campaigns so beloved by the news media, which reflects the absolute worst in them, not least the preference for talking about politics rather than policy that is not just a matter of idiots being dazzled by "showbusiness for ugly people," but outright evasion of . . . everything else. Naturally they have delighted in President Joseph Biden's by-all-accounts disastrous performance in his unusually-early-for-the-season debate with the Republican nominee Donald Trump--because it gives them the chance to fill up the headlines with a virtually unprecedented turn in this horse race, namely an incumbent appearing mentally unfit for reelection and being publicly pressed to drop out of the race by his colleagues in his party and their backers, affording lots and lots of opportunity for the kind of palace intrigue crapola and sterile speculation about "what it all means" for how the horse will go with which they love to deluge their readers, listeners and viewers.

Indeed, the coverage has been so obsessive that Rebecca Solnit understandably characterizes "the pundit class" as "desperate to push Biden out of the race," with their eagerness here plausibly having consequences different from what they claim to desire. Moreover, even after this story's monopolizing American headlines for two weeks there is no sign that it is about to end any time soon. The New York Times and its far-from-the-worst-of-rather-a-bad-lot writer Ezra Klein do not impress me as sources of fact, truth or insight--but when the latter writes in the former that "The Nomination Crisis is Far From Over" I see no reason to doubt them, not least because the Times is all by itself in a position to do a very great deal to keep that crisis at the top of the news, all as the rest of the major media outlets of the country, across the painfully narrow portion of the political spectrum the mainstream heeds, show every sign of being happy to help in the performance of that particular task.