CT Blue

I’ve mentioned before that my wife and I helped found a chapter of Drinking Liberally which has (hopefully) survived to this day, as we are very much hoping to leave the confines of Zoom and meet in person soon, and actually drink, albeit not all that liberally.

One of the regulars has been faithfully attending since the first meeting, many a year ago. I won’t mention his name, as I don’t want to needlessly embarrass him given the revelations I’ll be making about him. I’ll just call him “Mr. S”.

Now, you would think that when a bunch of liberals get together to talk politics they would agree about just about everything, but when it comes to Mr. S and me, that’s simply not the case. We disagree all the time. In fact, it is a provable fact that he’s always wrong, a fact demonstrated by the fact that he insists that I’m always wrong, which of course is totally absurd. It doesn’t bother me that he insists I’m always wrong, because since he’s always wrong, it follows logically that I must, in fact, always be right.

That conclusion certainly seemed to follow logically, based on all the evidence, but lately, I’ve come to the conclusion that he may actually have been right about something fairly recently! It therefore follows that on at least one occasion I may have been wrong!

You see, he backed Joe Biden right from the start, while I had to force myself to get enthusiastic about the man once it was clear I had no choice.

I now am coming around to the view that for a number of reasons, Biden was the best choice available. In an ideal world, either Bernie or Elizabeth would have made better presidents, but it may come as a shock to some that this is not an ideal world. So, here are some of the reasons Biden may have been the best choice:

First, he was eminently electable, as it never looked like they’d be able to make the Hunter stuff stick. Second, he has actually, so far, been reasonably progressive. For this, I think, we have the likes of Bernie and Elizabeth to thank, for pushing him in that direction. Third, it appears he listens to reason, for he clearly came to realize that the Republicans were not going to have the come to Jesus moment he once predicted they would have if they lost the election. He made no attempt to attract Republican support for his program, did not allow any of them to hold it hostage, and did not neuter it in order to get a meaningless vote or two. Finally, it is likely the case that if either Bernie or Elizabeth had been elected, and they had proposed the same $1.9 Trillion dollar rescue package, upwards of fifty Congressional Democrats would have considered it their solemn duty to water it down in order to show that they didn’t share the President’s wild eyed socialism. Those same Congress members were perfectly happy to vote in favor of such a bill with Biden’s moderate image tacked onto it. Politics is the art of the possible, and it’s just possible that it would only have been possible to pass that bill with Biden in the White House. If that bill works as well as folks like Krugman expect, it just may enable the Democrats to maintain their majority in the House, and expand it in the Senate.

So Mr. S was right(!), though I can take comfort from the fact that though he may have been right, he was, surely, right for all the wrong reasons. I say this even though he never told me his reasons. Also, even though he may have been right this once (after all, even a stopped clock…), he was still wrong all those other times, as history has shown. I can also take comfort from the fact that it is a certainty that he will go back to always being wrong, and this one time that he got it right will recede into the dim and distant past. So, I look forward to our next in person DL, when I can lift a glass to him and greet him in our time honored fashion by proclaiming emphatically: “You’re wrong!”

AFTERWORD: As I’ve mentioned in the past, the comments aren’t working on this site, and I still haven’t gotten them fixed. So, if Mr. S happens to read this, and feels he must defend his honor by making some pathetic attempt to prove that he’s not always wrong, he can send me an email and I promise to post it, even though it will be completely wrong, as usual, as will be obvious to anyone who reads it.