thependulumswings

Oxygen, as you know, is most essential to living.  So, when last Friday’s monsoon passed by and brought fresh air to Saturday morning, this BBR staff member decided more was better.  After a week of incessant buffoonery in the political arena a short but brisk run would be the(non political) ticket to even more fresh air to clear the head and pump the lungs.  But, the favored outdoor trail was still swamped.  Plan B took us to the treadmill in the gym.

Many others had the same idea.  The one we quickly took had, you guessed it, MSNBC on the monitor ten feet in front of us.  Evidently, there is no rest, nor exercise, for the weary.   And there they were, all of them.  It was five guests and the very partial host Joy Reid.  A split screen of six in total had each of them screaming about AG Barr’s refusal to appear again before Congress, a “Constitutional Crisis,” Trump’s tax returns, etc.  We couldn’t hear it, but the closed captioning told all.  There isn’t enough oxygen on a show to support six “experts.”  We wondered, how many people across the US would be watching at 9AM Central Time on a Saturday?  We wondered, did the six “experts” out number their entire audience?

After a commercial break, the panel shrunk to a mere four.  Those four discussed the merits and opportunities for the crowded field of 21 Democratic presidential nominee hopefuls.  There isn’t near enough oxygen for all in a race of 21 is there?  The four discussed how Senator and announced candidate Amy Klobuchar had performed on rival Fox News’ town hall last week.  Would you know Senator Amy if she was on a treadmill next to you?  Qunnipac polling shows Amy trailing nearly everyone except Michael Dukakis.  Oops, he’s not running is he?  We think he tanked in his race a while back.  She’s polling at 1.3%.  One point three percent.  And four panelists wondered how she did.  You need a lot of O2 to keep a 24/7 newsroom humming all day when CO2 fills the air.

When Joe Biden entered the race a lot of “want to be’s” started gasping for air, too.  Biden’s playing ping pong.  How far to the left will he need to serve to gather all of the minions necessary to give The Donald a good go?  Well, last week he decided to tell America that Trump was making a mistake in this trade war dance with China.  This came just a week after he seemed to express the opposite.

“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man!” Biden exclaimed at the time. “The fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the East — I mean in the West. They can’t figure out how they’re going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. They’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what, they’re not competition for us.”  East, west?  Tomatoe, tomato?  Next thing you know the Germans will be blamed for bombing Pearl Harbor.

The campaign trail is long and the job is tough.  Ask Hillary.   “Sleepy” Joe, as at least one has called him, might need some O2 along the way himself.

Meanwhile it seems like President Trump feels the fresh air.  With one huge post Russian Collusion exhale he seems invigorated.  In his ping pong match he just took five serves from every angle the Democrats could slap at him.  Now, it’s his turn to serve.  We think that he thinks that  Biden is his only competition worth worrying about.  Trump also knows that China is good at ping pong too.  Actually they are very good at it.  Yesterday, they volleyed back with a few tariffs of their own.  The stock market was watching the match from Wall St.  They don’t like long unpredictable matches.  Trump doesn’t like what Wall St. doesn’t like.

The farmers and others in the mid west are watching too.  They played a huge (yuge) roll in Trump’s 2016 election.  China’s tariffs are aimed strategically right at them.  Trump quickly announced yesterday that some of the tariffs that the US is collecting from China will go directly to the farmers in these tough times.   It’s never to early to pump some oxygen into the rust belt.

It seemed like a good time to take a deep breath and go for a run.

2020 is so far away, yet so near.