America's ready 'to turn the page' on Trump's 'same old show'

I usually write what I hope are thoughtful pieces about American politics that feature something like a beginning, middle and end. But today, I’m going to comment on short videos I have seen throughout the week.

Some refer to the news. Others refer to universal themes of our democratic condition. Either way, I think they say something interesting and important about our country, our politics and the moment we’re in.

I’ll start with Kamala Harris. The vice president held two rallies in North Carolina on Thursday. In this clip, she talks about health care, a serious issue deserving serious thought. Before she gets that far, however, she respects the gravity of the subject by identifying what’s not serious.

Meaning Donald Trump.

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During the debate, he was asked a simple question: "What’s your plan for health care?" He gave a long, rambling joke of an answer but what everyone remembers is the punchline. “Concepts of a plan!” Harris said, quoting Trump. “I mean, we’re 54 days from this election. Concepts of a plan!”

https://x.com/johnastoehr/status/1834606247544295913

Then, and only then, does she herself become serious. “There’s no actual plan,” she said. "Despite 45 million people depending on it, he’s going to get rid of Obamacare," she said, and “take us back when folks were suffering.”

“We’re not going back.”

The point here is that Harris is doing two things at the same time to push back against Trump’s authoritarian tendencies.

First, she mocked him. She said in effect, sure, Trump wants us to take him seriously. He wants us to believe American greatness will be restored once he’s president again. But then, when it comes to serious problems, like affordable health care, what does he bring? “Concepts of a plan!”

Second, after mocking him, she dismisses him. He doesn’t have a plan, she said. He has nothing, except a desire to “take us back” to a time when insurance companies could legally deny coverage due to “preexisting conditions.” If you want that, vote for Trump. Otherwise, vote for me.

We’re used to the second part, but not the first, though the first is vitally important. Freedom and small-d democratic values are eroded when absurd spectacles like “concepts of a plan” are taken seriously.

Harris could waste her time deconstructing Trump’s position on health care, but there is no position to deconstruct. If he can’t be bothered to take the subject seriously, why should anyone take him seriously? The only thing serious about him is the grave consequence of electing him.

He’s a joke but a dangerous one.

She’s treating him like both.

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In this clip, Harris taunts Trump into having a second debate, knowing full well the former president doesn’t want a repeat of the beating he got from her this week. But then she moves on to use a brilliant turn of phrase that’s beguiling in its simplicity and snaps our politics into focus.

At the debate, Harris said that we saw her talk about issues that matter, “like bringing down the cost of living, investing in America’s small businesses, protecting reproductive freedoms, and keeping our nation safe and secure.” But, she said, that’s not what we heard from Trump.

She said, “I called it at the beginning of the debate.” She added that Trump had “no plan for how he would address the needs of the American people.” She said it was the “same old, tired playbook we’ve heard for years.”

It was, Harris said, “the same old show.”

And because of that, it was “time to turn the page."

“Turn that page.

“Turn that page.”

Has a presidential candidate ever done that?

I don’t only mean the hand gestures and facial expressions familiar to anyone who’s watched a sit-com in which characters throw shade.

I mean capturing the feelings of anger, frustration and fatigue that come from watching a reality-TV actor become the president, and dominate our attention with one absurd spectacle after another for nearly a decade.

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I’ll conclude with this clip featuring Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg speaking to Kaitlin Collins. The subject is affordable child care.

Buttigieg says Donald Trump “seems literally, almost physically, incapable of talking about” the issue. Every time he gets a question about it, Buttigieg said, we get “a strange ramble that raises the question of whether he’s ever actually considered childcare policy seriously.”

He says Kamala Harris, however, is “very serious.” She wants to expand the child tax credit and “make sure we have paid parental leave.”

Collins then clarifies that Buttigieg is referring to a moment last week when Trump was speaking at the Economic Club of New York. She said the answer he gave “didn’t really provide any concrete legislation.”

Buttigieg jumps in to say that’s being polite.

“It was gibberish.”

In this, Buttigieg is tiptoeing around something that neither he nor Harris is going to say directly, but everyone understands clearly. Trump isn’t just “the same old, tired playbook.” He isn’t just “the same old show.”

He’s old.

He’s an exhausted man who’s losing his mental faculties. When asked serious questions about child or health care, we get “a strange ramble” that not only raises the question of whether he’s actually considered policy seriously, but whether he can still consider anything at all.

Maybe “concepts of a plan” wasn’t a dangerous joke but rather the ravings of a man who has spent far too long in the public eye and has no one around him who loves him enough to help preserve his dignity. Instead, they’re letting him go on national television to embarrass himself, last week at the Economic Club, then this week at the presidential debate.

On Tuesday, he said:

Obamacare was lousy health care. Always was. It’s not very good today. And what I said that if we come up with something and we are working on things we’re going to do it and we’re going to replace it but remember this: I inherited Obamacare, because Democrats wouldn’t change it. They wouldn’t vote for it. They were unanimous. They wouldn’t vote to change it. If they would have done that, we would have had a much better plan than Obamacare. But the Democrats came up. They wouldn’t vote for it. I had a choice to make when I was president. Do I save it and make it as good as it can be, never going to be great, or do I let it rot? I felt I had an obligation, even though politically it would have been good to just let it rot and let it go away. I decided and I told my people the top people and they’re very good people I had a lot of good people in that administration you read about the bad ones we had some bad ones too and so do they they have some really bad ones the difference is they don’t get rid of them but let me just explain: I had a choice to make. Do I save it and make it as good as it can be or do I let it rot? And I saved it. I did the right thing, but it’s still never going to be great and it’s too expensive for people and what we will do is we’re looking at different plans. If we can come up with a plan that’s going to cost our people our population less money and be better health care than Obamacare, then I would absolutely do it, but until then I’d run it as good as it can be run. … I have concepts of a plan. I’m not president right now. But if we come up with something I would only change it if we come up with something that’s better and less expensive and there are concepts and options we have to do that and you’ll be hearing about that in the not too distant future.

It was gibberish.

Trump isn’t going to debate Harris again.

He can’t afford giving TV viewers reasons to turn off his show.

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