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Of Bats and Debates

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How batty is 2020’s politics?

Adding one absurdity upon another, a minor party candidate got attention this weekend for something even more bizarre than Biden’s bumbling or Trump’s trolling:

She got bit by a bat and is now undergoing painful treatment for rabies.

Her name is Jo Jorgensen, Libertarian Party presidential candidate. 

So far, reports on this development have focused on her Twitter account, where jokes abound. 

But what dominates her Twitter feed are the usual-for-Libertarians demands that she be included “in the debates.”

What debates?

Is anyone certain that there will be debates at all? Behind in the polls, Donald Trump seems eager to debate, but . . . Joe Biden?

Well, the Biden camp has agreed to three debates and the candidate says he is “so forward looking [sic] to have an opportunity to sit with the president, or stand with the president, in debates.” But Trump wants more.

And some Democrats want none, for in that same interview (which has gone more viral than rabies), as elsewhere, Biden made so many bizarre gaffes that most folks are beginning to assume that, against the Donald, Biden might wilt worse than a vampire in sunlight.

Biden, who will not even attend his own ostensible nominating convention, remains largely sequestered, under cover of panicky pandemic protocols. Unless the Democrats somehow replace him, the odds of there being debates at all seem low. 

And if Trump’s too much for Biden, what is a Libertarian to the two major parties? The Libertarians have been excluded for a reason.* Introduction of substantive, orthogonal-to-the-duopoly ideas into a national debate might show the major parties for what they are: cognitively challenged.

What a year! Bats.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* Amusingly, Donald Trump called the exclusion of challenger parties “disgraceful” . . . back when he was in the Reform Party. I doubt he’d be on board the #LetHerSpeak campaign today — unless he was certain there would be no debates.

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2 replies on “Of Bats and Debates”

What, no lockdown? Where was the lady when she was bitten by a bat?
I can’t imagine what the debates will be like this year. No studio audience, unless it’s remote. All of the candidates and the press will be in separate studios. Just how many pictures will we see on the screen?

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