Bid(en)ing His Time

Kamala gives good theatre. There's a reason nobody makes movies about lawyers like me, who sit by themselves writing briefs all day. 

With a carefully rehearsed and impeccably delivered surgical strike, Kamala pretty much broke the applause meter with her take down of Joe. Her voice was quivering but strong, and her eyes, though on the verge of tears, were laser focused on her target, and if the pundits are to be believed, she won the battle. But can she win the war, where the only thing Joe Biden has in common with the real enemy is his old, white, maleness? 

I thought the debate format was stupid, pitting so many relatively smart and qualified people against each other with little time available to any of them do to much to advance anybody's cause but their own? Kamala -- and many of the others -- were representing a constituency of one. And Kamala, the masterful prosecutor, was damn good. Damn good. 

Does anybody really think that Joe Biden would not be a champion of civil rights? Does anybody really think that his vote, 45 years ago, on bussing, is indicative of how he would represent us? Does anybody really think that working across the aisle with segregationists, long ago, means that Joe Biden endorsed their positions? Did anybody notice that Joe got a little shot in, drowned out by the food fight, reminding Kamala that he had been a defense attorney, not a prosecutor? I would imagine Joe is biding his time, as much as it killed him not to get drawn into the food fight. 

Bussing is complicated, by the way. I remember watching the buses arrive in my Brooklyn school yard in the sixties. I remember playing with the white kids on one end, struggling to master a single jump rope while we watched the black girls do double-dutch on the other end. Hardly an across the board cure for segregation, from my perspective. 

Experience and long records are certainly double-edged swords. But I have no reason to believe, going forward, that theatrical prosecuting and flashy stagecraft and taking full advantage of identity politics will help us to win the war. 

In the middle of the night, unable to sleep, I turned on the television to see Donald Trump "making history," crossing the demarcation line into North Korea. I suppose that is making history, in the sense that we have never had a president ring up a murderous dictator to tell him hey I'm in the neighborhood, let's take a short walk and grab a spot of tea. And pose for a few pics. Maybe just a quick hello, maybe even a hug? Talk about stagecraft. We've already lost our collective soul; have we now lost our minds? 

I hope the next debates will really be debates. Not just pronouncements about all that is obviously bad and promises that cannot be kept and strategic take downs that have nothing to do with where we are headed.