While the Democrats Debated, the Incumbent President Was Ranting About Household Appliances

From Esquire

A bit of perspective is always important, particularly in a presidential primary. The remaining Democratic candidates who took to the debate stage in Des Moines Tuesday night have real differences, and we should vote accordingly. But in the heat of battle—and amid the media quest for clicks and ratings—they start to appear diametrically opposed to one another. Never mind that they all say they want to expand access to healthcare coverage, even if some may be more committed to that goal than others. You might think Amy Klobuchar's platform lacks ambition, or Bernie Sanders' goes too far, but an overarching consideration in all this is that these people appear to be sane. In the Year of Our Lord 2020, that is part of the discussion.

While the six candidates were rehashing many of the familiar debates over, say, Medicare For All vs. a public option, the incumbent president they all want to run against was having another episode in Milwaukee. The sitting president, you see, is certifiable. For whatever reason, people who report on him every day are reluctant to point out that he is more than a few bulbs short of a chandelier. When he's not engaged in some racist propagandistic tirade about undocumented immigrants, he is ranting about household appliances. This is not a joke, or some sort of code.

This is the president's way of waging the culture war against snooty coastal liberal elites who want you to "manage your water usage" or "try to save energy." And in fairness, a shower with bad water pressure is indeed terrible. (Is he suggesting that's a problem at the White House? Mar-a-Lago? Or is this just a bit?) But it does feel like we've lost our grip on normal.

This rant is approximately what it would look like if Andrew Dice Clay had to perform a standup routine Jerry Seinfeld wrote on Klonopin. (Next up: "What is it with airplanes these days? I can't feel the left side of my face.") It's a fascinating look into how Trump channels the everyday frustrations of the modern world into weaponized resentment, but it's also just nutso. The President of the United States is raving about how you have to turn the knobs, and it's not really working, there's no water, and you have to run the dishwasher five, six, seven, eight, nine, TEN times, and the light bulbs make "you" look orange, and he can't say anything about toilets at the State of the Union because "these people"—the press—will give him bad reviews. That last part was a reference to his previous rant about how "people are flushing 10 times, 15 times." In that same speech in December, the president announced he's "looking very strongly" at sinks and showers.

In reality, the press has proven remarkably tolerant of a national leader who presumably took some time away from yelling at passing cars on a street corner to theoretically run the country. Yes, he's relentlessly fact-checked because he lies constantly. Yes, journalists do great work digging into his blatant corruption. Yes, people have raised a stink over his decision to extort a foreign government until it attacked American democracy for his personal benefit. But really, he mostly gets a pass on the core point that he is very publicly insane.

That's part of why there are really very few questions at the Democratic debates that seek to contrast the Democratic field with the incumbent president. Most of the framing is meant to, in the best cases, illustrate real differences between the candidates, and in the worst, to drum up bullshit beefs. But the fact is that all of the people on the debate stage last night accept that climate change is an existential threat to human civilization as we know it and must be combatted. (Again, some have shown more comprehensive commitment to that than others.) The president spends his time complaining about environmentally inclined consumer products. He's also said windmills cause cancer. The most important consideration as we approach the actual voting season is that the Democratic candidates mostly appear to be sane. That would be different.

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