The late-night comedy shows sound like they all received an email from the Biden campaign requesting they tout the latest economic numbers. There's really nothing funny about growth in the Gross Domestic Product, or oil production, or manufacturing jobs. But the comedians tried to apply their comedic skills and strategies to give Biden a PR win with low-information voters:
-- Saturday Night Live over the weekend had a little joke about how the economy is booming, but Fox News could only obsess over illegal aliens and transgender activism.
-- CBS host Stephen Colbert pulled out the bongo drums on CBS and pretended to be a beatnik to try to make it cool to like Bidenomics. This, like his "Vax Scene" dancers sketch from 2021, carried a Sixties vibe, like he's watching reruns of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.
-- NBC host Jimmy Fallon, who's less political than the others, nevertheless tried to impress one of his band members with all the good news, and the man kept saying "Say whaaaat?"
One of the headlines on Colbert's show was goofy: "The vibecession is over because the economy now slays." It was a Washington Post opinion-section newsletter by Drew Goins. In discussing Biden's primary challengers, Goins wrote, "If a Democratic primary falls in the forest but the DNC doesn’t allocate any delegates accordingly, does it even make a sound? No sane challenger would take on Biden in the committee’s tailor-made sweep of states he’s strong in."
But MSNBC's The Weekend granted an interview on Sunday to Biden challenger Dean Phillips, Democratic congressman from Minnesota. Michael Steele asked him bluntly, "What the hell you doing?" Phillips said Biden shouldn't have run for re-election, and hammered the White House for hiding Biden. "This notion of encapsulating him -- don't debate, don't appear in front of voters, don't do anything unscripted, don't do interviews, don't do town halls -- he's gonna have to! And when people see it, it's going to be REALLY difficult to overcome."
As Phillips suggested, Democrats are much more pessimistic about Biden in private than they are in public. On television, they have to make jokes about how wonderful he's doing.
Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
