Tale #1: Sometime around the turn of the century, I was in love. She may have been too. Or maybe it was just a dysfunctional period of mutually assured destruction we’d suffered together. Anyway, we made each other laugh, which is nearly always how my problems began.
Neither of us was involved with anyone else, but, because of what then passed as our careers, any relationship between us would have been a literal conflict of each other’s interests. It was the only reason we even knew each other.
Although we considered our relationship, such that it was, utterly clandestine, everyone in both of our overlapping worlds knew something was going on (probably more than actually was), although I’m not certain that we always did. And, every once in a while, someone would say something, setting us back into a tizzy until we decided to once again pretend the elephant in the room didn’t exist.
Anyway, it became a thing, though what sort of thing was a bit unclear, but it was a running thing for nearly half a year when it reached the point of this anecdote. I would call it friends with benefits, though I’m not sure what the benefits were, or who was getting them, and it wasn’t really friendship per se. You couldn’t call it the friendzone, because, much of the time, it wasn’t all that friendly. Think a less pretty, more Jewish Tracy and Hepburn film with dialogue by Sorkin instead of Gordon and Kanin. There was always this erotic tension, but it wasn’t usually very erotic. The vibe was always a bit wary.
Eventually, we began and ended every day on the phone to each other, and talked several times each day. Our lives seemingly revolved around each other. I could not tell sometimes whether I was a friend, a boyfriend, or an emotional support animal. We circled around the topic, but never really discussed it. It just lingered. An awful lot of sparks flew, albeit sporadically, but never really ignited, Life was edgy, which may have heightened the mutual attraction. The arguments were the fights of a couple, but there weren’t the nights of a couple.
On occasion, I’d push for more, both emotionally and physically, with both lesser and greater degrees of subtlety; she generally attempted to avoid the topic, sometimes more fervently, sometimes far less so, and sometimes in an almost kittenesque manner, which probably signaled qualified agreement. At any rate, she didn’t leave. If I didn’t call, she did. On occasion, our libidos rose and fell like a volatile stock exchange, but very few trades were made on the floor. If it were solely about lust, it certainly wouldn’t have been worth the schtuss.
But, I couldn’t break away from my addiction to her; and she seemingly had nothing better to do than to keep spending the time.
After one attempt to convey my romantic feelings, she responded “I’m not that smart, I’m not that funny, I’m not that pretty, and I’m not that nice.” It took me decades to learn she had stolen the line, though I’m convinced she thought she’d made it up at that very moment. At any rate, the Hepburnesque delivery was perfect, but its effect was the opposite of what she’d intended; or maybe it was exactly what she intended; maybe she didn’t know herself.
One afternoon, frustrated with me, she yelled, “you are the most demanding person I’ve ever gone out with!”
I responded, “We’re going out? Thanks for letting me know; it’s been five months and we’ve not yet been to bed (perhaps untrue in the most literal sense, but close enough for jazz), and I’m still here. If we are actually going out, I’m not the most demanding person you’ve ever gone out with; I’m the least demanding person you’ve ever gone out with!”
“You may be factually accurate,” she answered, “but if I feel differently, what does it matter?”
Of course, she was right.
A MAYORAL INTERLUDE: Now, to switch topics, but not really, I’m no fan of our Mayor, but when some Democrats blamed him for last year’s New York State Democratic election losses, saying that the Mayor’s assertions about crime were playing into GOP narratives and had convinced people that crime was rising, when statistics proved otherwise, I felt compelled to respond that the mayor hadn’t gotten his narrative from the GOP, he’d gotten if from what he’d heard in the streets.
Voters didn’t fear crime because Adams told them so; Adams told them so because voters feared crime.
The Democratic critics may have been factually accurate, but the voters felt differently, so it didn’t matter.
TALE #2: As Matt Yglesias noted the other day, “the United States has had the strongest inflation-adjusted recovery from the pandemic of any major global economy and has the lowest inflation rate in the G7 this year. Since the pandemic, wages have risen faster than prices…More people are employed today than at any previous time in American history, and the share of working-age people with a job is higher than at any point in the Trump administration. New small businesses have been forming at a record pace during the Biden administration.”
But, in spite of the facts, people feel the economy and the country are going to hell in a handbasket.
Economic stats show the economy is (more or less) pretty great, but if voters feel otherwise, what does it matter?
The President, a stutterer with a lifelong history of malaprops, appears frail, elderly and halting, though his ability to speak in crisp sentences is only incrementally worse than it has ever been, and his health and stamina are remarkable for a man of his age, especially with his daunting work schedule.
By contrast, his likely opponent, only four years younger, spent his White House years lounging in “executive time” while binge watching Fox and other junk-TV; he is grossly obese and out of shape, and his sentences, though sounding less halting, are usually just nonsensical streams of incoherent word salad, when they aren’t cribbed from the speeches of the Fuhrer and Il Duce (and sometimes, even when they are).
But, in spite of the truth, voters feel the President is a doddering old man, while his predecessor is seen as the picture of vim and vigor. If voters feel the truth is not truthful, what does the truth matter?
The President, faced first with his party’s paper-thin Congressional majorities subject to the whims of iconoclasts, and then with a House with no majorities at all, managed to push through major legislative victories by practice of the art of the possible (of which he is a patient Zen master), while restoring America as leader of the free world. And yet, he is perceived as weak and ineffective.
Contrast this his likely opponent, a man whose major legacy is the curtailment of women’s right to control their own bodies, and who prepares to return to office promising to ruthlessly crackdown on dissent with armed force, to jail or financially ruin his enemies, to replace the professional Civil Service with partisan ideologues and blind loyalists, while taking away people’s healthcare. The only reason not to expect him to fulfill his nightmarish promises is the blithering incompetence he has demonstrated previously.
But, while this is all factually accurate, even factoring out my own ideological biases, such as they are (mainly, that, as an election lawyer, I can only make a living if we continue to be a democracy), if the voters feel otherwise, what does it matter?
Joe Biden may arguably be the best President of my 65 year-old lifetime. Reluctantly, running, while implying a promise of a caretaker administration to restore our national dignity out of the depths of depravity and degradation in which it had been dragged, he has succeeded admirably and gotten us through a pandemic into as soft an economic landing as was manageable under the circumstances.
But, except for his Vice President, he is probably the potential Democratic nominee most likely to go down to defeat, putting our government solidly into the hands of a Party headed by a fascism-adjacent madman and controlled largely by ultra-right wing ideological fanatics.
TALE #1; THE DENOUNCEMENT: Shortly after the argument which forms this essay’s leitmotif, my turn of the century inamorata and I did proceed further in our relationship, but we ultimately, and somewhat rapidly, moved on. Perhaps the considerable erotic tension we’d suffered could never hope to survive the reality of the fulfillment of the expectations that tension had generated, but, when I think of it all these days, I still credit the nosy and noisy bystanders, who could not mind their own business, and had once again intruded, providing us the excuse we needed to call half a year a day. Though, at the time, I was less than thankful, and more than a bit furious, it was almost certainly for the best. A bit more than a year later, I was engaged and she was with child. I certainly don’t regret my marriage, and she certainly doesn’t regret her children, and I wonder whether we’d have gotten there if we’d not first survived each other.
And mostly, what I got left with was a deep and penetrating observation, which almost, but not quite, made it all worthwhile: “You may be factually accurate, but if I feel differently, what does it matter?”
TALE #2; THE DENOUNCEMENT: Perhaps perception is more important than reality after all.
And that is what I fear is the case in our national politics.
Specifically, l worry that, in contrast to the personal rebounds I’ve documented for the protagonists of my other story, the denouncement of our national story will be far less happy.
Nearly every national Dem won’t say publicly what they know in their hearts and minds.
Voters’ perceptions of Joe Biden may not be factually inaccurate, but voters clearly feel otherwise, so what does it matter?
Not to mention one factually accurate factor, which anyone with very elderly parents doubtless already knows. At a certain age, old folks, no matter how sharp and healthy, can turn awful frail, awful fast. Actually, as Hemingway noted about bankruptcy, it happens gradually, then suddenly.
Yet, for intra-party opposition to this impending disaster, Dems are presented with an eccentric, well-meaning, but out of her depth, self-help author (Marianne Williamson) and an unknown Democratic Congressman from Minnesota (Dean Phillips), who, fearing the dawn of authoritarianism on the horizon, attempted to ask every prominent national Dem to run in the President’s place, and getting the cold shoulder everywhere, when he was even acknowledged at all, finally decided to run himself, in the hope that it would open up the field.
Phillips has even foresworn his safe relatively seat in Congress. A profile in political courage for our times, and like all such profiles, he’s the object of scorn, when he is noticed at all.
The Dem establishment response to this cry for a clarifying moment, when not dismissive laughter or ad hominin attacks, has been to join arms to stop it. In Michigan, Phillips’ ballot access is being challenged based upon technicalities stemming from his attempt to participate in the party-forbidden New Hampshire primary; in Florida the Party’s State Committee decided not to have a primary based on its conclusion Biden is unopposed. .
In New York, some Democratic political operatives approached to conduct Phillips’ ballot access work have looked at the significant money being offered and turned it away, for fear of the consequences to their business if they dare to take it.
It is as if establishment Dems consider Joe Biden to be a frail hothouse flower who cannot be exposed to the cold, harsh air of intra-party competition, lest he wither and die, requiring that he be protected at all costs.
They may be right about that, but if they are correct, then that is not, as they seem to believe, an argument for Biden’s renomination.
Rather, it is an argument to rethink.
When someone tells you, “You may be factually accurate, but if I feel differently, what does it matter?,” maybe you should listen and learn.
