THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARY DEBATE 

The Republican Party held its first 2024 presidential debate last night in Milwaukee and there were two winners.

Neither of them, however, were on the stage.

The first winner was Joe Biden.

Today's Republican Party is, to put it charitably, a mess.  

Its titular leader is a four-times indicted egomaniac who lies as a matter of course, envies and supports other fascist autocrats like Vladimir Putin, and literally tried to orchestrate a coup in the waning days of his presidential term to stay in office.  The party has lost or underperformed in the last three national elections, the two mid-terms in 2018 and 2022 and the presidential election in 2020.  It cannot control the one house of Congress it actually runs and, in post-Roe v. Wade America, it is the dog that caught the proverbial bus.  

As Maui melts, the south Atlantic boils, and Canadian forests burn, it is in denial on climate change. As America and Europe unite against Putin's plans to destroy the post-World War II international order, it is divided on Ukraine. And it is hamstrung by its MAGA base -- a grievance-laced amalgam of economically-challenged, non-college degreed, rural white men for whom it has no solutions and strident evangelicals who condemn everyone's sins but Trump's and would legislate no one else's religions but their own.

Against this motley crew of incompetence, anger and hypocrisy, Joe Biden is a giant.  

His no-drama administration governs and has delivered.  Unemployment is at 3.5%, manufacturing is returning, investment in critical infrastructure is exploding. His patient policies have  been rewarded as inflation abates and southern border crossings largely evaporate. Unlike Trump, he has delivered real benefits to those the neo-liberal consensus left behind -- loan forgiveness for overly indebted students, expanded health coverage for the un- and under-insured, and tax breaks that help cut utility bills.  Though his age is a negative and his relatives a challenge, so are Trump's.

So, the clear winner last night was Joe Biden.

The other one, unfortunately, was Donald Trump.

The two actual participants who said the most in last night's debate were Vivek Ramaswamy . . .

And the audience of about 4,000 in the Fiserv Forum where the debate took place.

Ramaswamy is a 38-year-old Ivy-educated billionaire. He has a knack for investing, was mega-rich before graduating from law school in 2013, and subsequently became filthy rich after Roivant Sciences, the company he founded in 2014,  sold its stake in various subsidiaries in 2019. The 2019 transaction made him $175 million in capital gains.  Along the way, another subsidiary cratered after its much-hyped Alzheimer's drug failed a clinical trial.  Though shareholders lost 75% of their value overnight,  Vivek's losses were cushioned because his ownership was through the parent.

So, he's one smart guy.

But he's also a bit of a dumb guy.

He hasn't voted in three of the last four presidential elections, has promised to pardon Donald Trump if Trump is convicted, and has also pledged to pardon Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.  He thinks climate change is a hoax and fossil fuels America's economic future. And in case you thought he might be consistent, he told Sean Hannity in a post-debate sit-down that he would not pardon Joe Biden for any of the fictitious crimes MAGA GOPers invent but no prosecutors have ever brought.  

Last night, he called Trump the "best president" of the 21st century.

This, of course, is not close to being true.  

Even allowing for the small number -- three -- of competitors. 

Donald Trump tried to overturn an election he lost in 2021.  Before that, the closest we came to disaster was in 2008 under George W. Bush.  Obama's scandal-free administration rescued the economy from near ruin, and in his two plus years Biden has actually improved the middle-class's balance sheet.

None of this, however, dented Ramaswamy's armor last night.  

Or his considerable ego.

Ditto any of the (largely) accurate broadsides levelled at him by Mike Pence ("rookie"), Chris Christie ("a guy who sounds like Chat GPT") or Nikki Haley ("you have no foreign policy experience and it shows"). Or that he was the only one who refused to admit Mike Pence did the right thing on January 6.

And the reason was . . .

The audience.

Ramaswamy was Trump's alter ego last night and the audience had his back.  

They erupted in applause the second Ramaswamy raised his hand saying he'd vote for a convicted Trump and cheered whenever he praised Trump. They booed whenever anyone else -- Christie and Asa Hutchinson fulsomely and Haley and Pence somewhat cryptically -- criticized Trump.  The booing was so loud and disruptive when Christie warned against "normalizing" Trump that FOX's Brett Baier had to turn around and stop them. Trump refused to show up last night because he is ahead by forty points in the polls and thought attendance would make him everyone's pinata.

He needn't have worried.

He won anyway.

Because . . .

Ramaswamy, who will not be president, continually praised him . . .

And the audience made sure no one else laid a glove on him.

Over the course of his campaigns and his presidency, Trump has made normal politics impossible. Among today's politicians, no others lie with his abandon.  No others are as self-absorbed.  No others, on account of the lying and extreme narcissism, are as disconnected from reality.  And none of them promote violent division,  give permission slips to the worst among us, or orchestrate coups.

But Trump has and always has had lots of enablers.  

You can count among them the House Republicans who now endorse him, the GOP Senators who in the wake of January 6 refused to impeach him, the cable networks that promote him, and the MAGA hordes that ignore reality and continue to support him.  Any of them could have rid the country of him and given his conduct, all of them should have. But they didn't.  And last night, Vivik Ramaswamy and the 4,000 who sat in the Fiserv Forum simply joined them.  

So . . .

The winners last night were two guys who weren't on the stage.

Joe Biden.

For all the right reasons.

And Donald Trump.

For all the wrong ones.