SONNY BUNCH: Why Hollywood Turned on Biden First.
“Hollywood hates nothing more than weakness. Unless there’s a montage of getting strong and winning. They know there’s no montage of Biden getting strong and winning, so time for a quick offscreen death and a recast,” he said. Even if he manages to turn in an impressive campaign stop or press conference here and there, everyone’s simply waiting for Biden to stumble again. And he will. He’s not getting any younger.
Even in an age of aging heroes—one in which the biggest box office draws are Tom Cruise (62) and Denzel Washington (69) and Will Smith (55) and Keanu Reeves (59)—what’s being sold is not that they’re old but that they’re effective, that they’ve got verve, that they can outperform men and women half their age. It’s why Biden embraced the Onion’s vision of him as the aging bro washing his Trans Am, it’s why he goes everywhere he can in Top Gun-style aviators. It’s why the Dark Brandon meme took off in certain quarters of the Democratic party: He’s not nearing death, he’s old and wily and still vibrant enough to crush his enemies.
Call it shallow, call it whatever you want: politics is the art of persuasion and perception, and people are less likely to be persuaded by someone they perceive to be incapable of doing the job. People are also less likely to be persuaded by folks who lie to their face and tell them everything is just fine with Biden, that he’s clearly together enough to get the job done. For what it’s worth, I am incredibly ambivalent about the effort to replace Biden: the unknown unknowns that come with either a mini-primary at the convention or simply replacing Biden with Harris atop the ticket are vast and, potentially, destabilizing. And maybe Biden rights the ship with a series of command performances in front of the press and population alike. Maybe it was a one-off thing and his standing will improve in the polls.
But pretending there isn’t a conversation to be had at all is foolish and self-defeating. The voters have seen what they have seen. Again: politics is perception. And right now, the perception is bad.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
Clooney on Wednesday added himself to the growing list of prominent Democrats who said he had concerns over Biden’s at-times frail condition, well before it spilled into public view at the debate.
“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F—ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020,” he wrote.
Campaign officials sought to intervene to prevent the piece from publishing, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
Combine that with reports that “Obama Knew Clooney Was Going to Call for Biden to Drop Out. He Didn’t Try to Stop Him,” which means that the in-fighting in the various factions of the White House and the DNC must be spectacular right now.
Sonny Bunch wrote above that “politics is perception. And right now, the perception is bad.” But just think — up until a month ago, that perception was 180 degrees opposite. Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reports: In New ‘Ocean’s 14’, George Clooney Pulls Off $30 Million Heist By Tricking People Into Giving Money To Politician Before Revealing He’s Demented.