Notice anything in the news today?
It’s kind of hard to miss.
If you watched the debate last night, you know now that everyone recognizes Joe Biden is functionally incapable of leading the country. (Counter observations are welcomed in the comments section 🙂)
So of course, people want an alternative.
But do you believe that this concept of “replacing Joe Biden” was a spontaneous revelation?
Do you believe this idea was something that struck the hearts and minds of viewers like a surge of divine inspiration emerging from some nebulous ether?
I believe there are three patterns suggesting advanced planning or intentional “inception” of this idea.
Before I mention these, allow me to offer you a framework for navgitating these types of situations:
Understanding Intentional Planning Through Probability
To determine if there's intentional planning behind an action, consider the following approach:
Identify Significant Events: Look at the major events linked to the action you're investigating.
Assess Probability: Evaluate how likely these events would occur by chance, based on your existing understanding.
Look for Patterns: Focus on events that have a low probability of happening independently.
When multiple low-probability events occur together, it becomes increasingly unlikely that they are random. For instance, flipping a coin and getting heads 10 times in a row is highly improbable if the coin tosses are fair. If this happens, you should question whether the coin is biased.
Applying this method can help reveal whether the idea of "replacing Joe Biden" emerged spontaneously or was strategically planned.
Ok, so let’s look at some of the patterns that took place:
The fact the debate even occurred in the first place.
The dog that didn't bark: The Democrat Party had enough moral cover to skip the debate and sell the story of: "We're not going to engage with an insurrectionist felon who is a threat to democracy and the world order."
Basic strategic thinking suggests that having Biden be vulnerably exposed on a public stage for 90 minutes would have far more downsides than upsides for his campaign. (Question to ask yourself: When was the last time you saw Biden do an interview?)The moderators were actually fair.
The dog that didn't bark: Media sycophants have displayed no limit to their shameless willingness to unilaterally ask loaded questions or cut the unfavored candidate off, even when called out for such exercising of imbalanced scales.
But yesterday, they not only avoided pressing Trump in the manner they've gladly done so in the past, but they also challenged Biden.
All the right-wing complaining about “unfair treatment” in the last decade has fallen onto deaf left-wing ears, and there’s no new information nor reason to believe that all of the sudden, now, CNN would have a change-of-heart.
Does this fair display of moderation benefit CNN’s brand? Sure.
But would the organization be willing to materially hurt the Democratic candidate’s polling as a cost for achieving this brand benefit? Absolutely not.
Or at least, I’ve never seen a left-wing mainstream media organization do this before.Immediately after the debate, when viewers were most primed to accept an interpretive framework to process what they just saw happen for the last 90 minutes, CNN commentators unanimously piled on to roast Joe Biden.
The dog that didn't bark: Biden's behavior was nothing new. Nothing he did last night was surprising to anyone who has been paying attention to him for the last 12-18 months.
So given that his cognitive lapses were as reliable as the law of gravity, you would have expected at least some prepared rationalization from his advocates.
But no—everyone pushed the anti-Biden narrative unanimously.Almost nothing is left to chance for professional PR and marketing organizations.
Do you really think these political pundits were just winging it, speaking stream-of-consciousness? . . .
On the whole, what is the probability that the mods would be fair (bordering on favorable towards Trump), that there would be instantaneous and unanimous (and coherent) promotion of the “replace Joe Biden” idea, AND that no commentator would talk about Trump being a felon and danger to democracy (but instead eagerly highlighting Trump as victor)?
Maybe it’s all a coincidence.
Multiple, unrelated, pattern-defying, low probability events do happen from time to time. . .
Perhaps you’re not convinced that Biden was ritualistically scapegoated last night, and that’s fine.
Even if there wasn't a pre-planned institutional effort to replace Joe Biden, the virality of the ordinary citizen now talking about this replacement will, on its own, serve as enough "evidence" to pressure Joe Biden to step aside.
And why is such pressure important? Because it seems to me that the main reason Biden wouldn’t be replaced is if he refused to abdicate his candidacy.
But if he loses the support of the people through further “Replace Biden” institutional narratives, how much longer will he dogheadedly hold on for?
I suppose if his handlers really wanted him removed, there is plenty of Biden “meat” they can open up legal investigations on.
For now, Game Theory suggests trying the less invasive, “Did you watch the debate? It’s obvious we need to replace Biden”, strategy.
Let’s see how long this lasts.
—Drago