Mr. Vice President, I’m here to help you prepare for the presidential debates — not an easy assignment, given your propensity to be you.
First the basics: Your name is Joe Biden and you’re running for president of the United States. Your opponent, the incumbent, is Donald Trump. Please don’t say that you’ll “beat Joe Biden” – it sounds like you’re either hopelessly muddled or into self-flagellation.
You have a problem with math. Avoid it, if possible. If you must use statistics, remember 150 million people did not die of “gun violence” since 2007 (it’s really about 40,000 a year, and 60% of those are suicides).
And 120 million did not die from COVID-19 in the United States. At the time you uttered this absurdity in June, it was 119,000. Today, it’s 200,000. Two hundred and seventy million would amount to the demise of roughly 80% of the population, and that’s before Medicaid-for-All.
Regarding the riots that are tearing America apart, you’re doing a great job of saying nothing while sounding serious; keep it up. Your cliched statement that “all violence is wrong,” without mentioning specifics (Antifa, Black Lives Matter, Democrat mayors who sympathize with the mob, the murders of cops in the course of the mayhem, etc.) should satisfy the hoi polloi without offending your party’s politburo.
But you’ve taken it a step further with the allegation that the president has failed to control his right-wing “militia.” Yup, it’s disgraceful — all of those guys marching around with White Power signs in the midst of the burning and looting.
Another of your classic lines, “Do I look like a socialist?” and “I beat the socialists” (in the primaries) sounds good as long as it’s accepted at face value. Who looks like a socialist – a guy with a beard in a cheap suit? If you beat the socialists, why are they all supporting your campaign – Bernie Sanders, AOC, Elizabeth Warren and even the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party?
Let’s hope most voters won’t ask: Does a guy who says he wants to pile on taxes during an economic downturn, destroy domestic energy production, kill innovation and do another shutdown if unspecified scientists tell him to, look like a socialist? Gee, he sure doesn’t look like John D. Rockefeller.
Keep hammering away at Trump’s alleged responsibility for the coronavirus. “He didn’t take it seriously.” “He failed to act promptly.” “He didn’t listen to the scientists.” “He ‘lied’ to the American people.”
It’s best to stick to bloviating. You don’t want voters to dwell on the fact that the president shut down travel to China almost immediately, while leaders of your party urged tourists to come to Chinatown in New York and San Francisco, and called Trump a racist.
We also don’t want them thinking about the president’s successful crash production of face masks and ventilators, praised by the Democrat Governor of New York. Equally uncomfortable are questions about why deep-blue New Jersey and New York have the most COVID-19 deaths in the nation or why Governor Dumbo stuck coronavirus patients in nursing homes with the most vulnerable population.
Another subject to avoid is your record.
These problems that you say we urgently need to solve: what did you do about them during your 36 years in the Senate and 8 years as Vice President? And why did your running mate practically call you a racist during one of the Democrat debates?
Remember, your son Hunter did nothing wrong. That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it. What’s suspicious about Burisma paying the then-vice president’s son $50,000 a month (through a U.S. company) from 2014 to 2019, even though he knew nothing about energy?
Whatever happens, don’t be intimidated by the president, even though he’s smarter than you, faster on his feet than you, and has a more impressive résumé. Okay, be intimidated.
Finally, when the markets crashed in 1929, Franklin D. Roosevelt did not go on television to reassure the American people.
That was Teddy Roosevelt.
Leave a Reply