I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — the best stealth political candidate in modern American politics is Jon Stewart. When he gets mad, he is articulate enough to actually get things done.
So, if the United States was a functioning democracy — and if ding-dong Trump had never been POTUS — we would all be waiting with baited breath for Stewart to run for president. He would likely be a historically good president for a variety of reasons.
But.
Given the bad taste that ding-dong Trump has put in a lot of people’s mouths when it comes to celebrities running for office…meh. And I would prefer if Stewart would run for governor or senator from New Jersey before POTUS. There is a possibility when the “Fourth Turning” strikes the US in late 2024, early 2025 that it could be someone like Stewart suddenly has the Finger of God point at him, telling him to step into the political arena to make a difference.
But, to date, Stewart has shown no interest in running for anything, so, lulz.
When the history of the United States’ final lurch into autocracy is written, at least one chapter will be written about something that didn’t happen: Jon Stewart running for POTUS.
Jon Stewart
I have long believed Stewart would make an excellent POTUS for a number of reasons. There’s evidence to suggest that he’s a great manager. And he’s a great speaker and he’s very articulate when something makes him angry. I have repeatedly suggested in the past that Stewart should run for the U.S. Senate or governor of New Jersey first before any running for POTUS.
Given what is known about Stewart now, he is almost a 1-to-1 with another Jewish comedian who rose to the occasion to be a great leader: Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.
And, yet, for all his passionate anger over this pet causes now and again, Stewart has show no signs of wanting to anything else politically. He is content to run a glorified petting zoo and live a semi-retired life.
Having said all that, the United States, as I mentioned, is sliding into autocracy. And either Stewart might be able to slow that slide into autocracy some or he could very well become a Blue State leader should Blue decide to secede from the Union when it comes clear that Reds are determined establish an autocratic white Christian ethno state.
In the past, at least, Stewart has stepped out into the public eye for a political reason and then, when he grows too uncomfortable about it and begins to think people are taking him seriously — he cracks a fart joke.
I guess what I’m saying is — if anyone acted like Stewart is now and was as good at it, I would say, “He’s running.”
But even when people write Politico pieces about why Stewart should run, he’s gone all Gen. Sherman on us and said he has no interest in being POTUS whatsoever.
All I can say is — the moment Republicans take control of the House in January 2023, things are going to get very, very bumpy. And people like Stewart may find themselves doing things, like run for POTUS, that they might not otherwise be interested in doing.
Politico has run a piece suggesting Jon Stewart run for POTUS in 2024. I have long thought he would be a great president. But there is a problem — and that’s Jon Stewart.
He likes to have power but he doesn’t like the responsibility that comes with power. Time and again while he was hosting The Daily Show, the moment people pointed out how politically powerful he was, he would fall back to “but I’m just a comic” and tell a fart joke.
For him to run for office — especially high office like POTUS — he would have to grow a lot more comfortable with being taken seriously and with people being aware of his power. As it stands, he seems a lot more interested in having a middling podcast and playing with rescue goats in a glorified petting zoo.
But if you could get him out of that mindset, he definitely would be a great presidential candidate and a great president. Maybe Stewart / AOC 2024? But there is, of course the problem that the country is falling apart and Republicans are going to pretty much do everything in their power to steal the 2024 election. As such, we may have a civil war if we don’t turn into an autocracy.
One interesting thing about Stewart is he is far more a traditional liberal than one might think. He is tight with Dave Chappelle and for some of the people on the Far Left that, unto itself, would be a deal breaker. But it would also make Stewart more appealing to those 100,000 swing voters strone across five swing states that decide every presidential election.
I would prefer he run for governor or senator from New Jersey before running for POTUS, but, lulz, nothing matters. I really want Stewart to run — and win — but at the moment that seems very doubtful.
Larry King was a hallmark of CNN for decades. And then he just vanished. It was kind of weird. And, even stranger, CNN has completely ignored that for a lot of long-term viewers like me, having a breezy, value free chat show on during CNN’s weekday primetime was a rather comfortable thing to see.
Chris Cuomo just doesn’t do it for me. He’s strangely off putting for some reason, nowhere near as affable as Larry King was in his prime. I struggle to think of who CNN could replace him with, however.
The first person who comes to mind is Joe Rogan. I think Rogan can be a real idiot at times, but he is affable and given his alt-Right lite credentials, I could see his presence on the network doing a lot to bridge the gap between CNN and the rabid, bonkers MAGA shitheads who hate it so much. (Yet, who am I kidding — MAGA hates CNN because it’s objective and they crave to be fed the party line. But, luz.)
I suppose someone like Jon Stewart might be able to do the type of show I’m looking for, but that just doesn’t seem very practical. Neither Stewart nor Rogan seem really all that interested in being on CNN for various reasons.
Now that I think about it, given how King was not a traditional journalist and, as such, you could even draw from an unexpected place: SNL. There are a number of SNL-connected people who would be great as a potential Larry King-like interviewer. Kenan Thompson or Tina Fey would be just the right mix of regular person and interviewer-with-an-interesting-personality to bring back the same vibe as Larry King.
It definitely appears as though Tucker Carlson is zooming towards being the frontrunner in 2024 for the Republican nomination. He simply has too many viewers who watch him every night not to. Sure, Trump or one of his proxies might block him — or someone like Mike Pompeo might politically kneecap him in some way — but for the moment the nomination is his to lose.
Which brings us to Jon Stewart.
Stewart is unique because, in a sense, he’s the closest approximation to a Trump figure that the center-Left has. I only say that because if he did run for president he would have no political experience and would be coming from the infotainment industrial complex. Other than that, the two men could not be more different.
And, honestly, given that Stewart is actually smart unlike Trump it’s very possible he might run for, say, governor of New Jersey before president. And, given our choice in 2024 of either civil war or autocracy you could think up some pretty wild scenarios as to how, exactly, he might become a political figure.
Some of them are pretty dark, in fact.
Anyway. Keep an eye on Jon Stewart. He may pop up in our politics at some point over the next 10 years in a very unexpected fashion.
On 9/11, Rudy became America’s Mayor because he was a leader for one memorable afternoon. He soon became the toast of the nation and, but for him generally being a doofus otherwise, he might have even become president one day.
And now we have a new crisis on our hands. But this one is not one that will involve minutes or hours, but days, weeks and maybe even months. It’s not day-long event, it’s a month’s long process. This is when you have to start thinking about leadership on a practical level.
A fish rots from its head, so we can lulz the entire Federal executive at this point. And, really, I just don’t see anyone in the Legislation branch being in a position to step into the leadership void. So, it seems, it’s likely to be local and state leaders who may see their career’s taken to the next level. Leadership is like water — it flows wherever it happens to be. There thousands of qualified leaders on the local and state level and as it becomes apparent that the Federal government is brain dead a lot of talented people are going to find themselves pushed into the spotlight.
I’m still not totally prepared to say this is going to get as bad as it might. But the conditions sure are there. That people directly from the Wuhan hotzone essentially spread their version of COVID19 to people in California is, however, enough to give one pause for thought. The issue is because of how bad the Trump Administration is we’re giving COVID19 a lot more time to spread within the American population than it might otherwise. There are just so many social events taking place right now that once we finally realize we have The Stand on our hands, that it will be rather jaw dropping.
And that will be the moment when leadership will count most. And, yet, it won’t be just elected officials who will face a moment of truth. It will be people like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert who will find themselves required to address the nation in ways they never imagined. And all because we — or the Russians — elected a doofus Right-wing Twitter troll as our president.
I was born on a momentous day — Feb 26th. It was the day Napoleon escaped from the island of Elba. It was the start of The Hundred Days. It is within reason to believe that in real terms the worst of whatever pandemic strikes the USA will be about three months — a hundred days. Our fate, one way or another will be decided by the end of that period.
Either we finally start killing each other, or we renew our Union’s vows and, much like after the American Civil War, we enter a new era of peace and prosperity. For that to happen, of course, we’d need leadership. And, honestly, there’s only one person I can think of who has the oratory and leadership skills to help us get through what is shaping up to be a huge clusterfuck. Crisis management is about using what you have, not wishing about what you want. The first person who comes to mind when I think of leadership is Greta Thunberg, but she’s Swedish. The second person I think of is Jon Stewart.
He’s not a politician — yet — but he’s who we need right now. He’s funny, articulate and passionate. If we could somehow get him organizing things once we finally strike the pandemic iceberg, then maybe we could turn things around in 100 days and not, like, fucking implode into civil war. Or, put another way, we need some leadership immediately, off the bat the moment there’s panic buying. Passive-agressive tweeting isn’t going to cut it.
We need an actual leader. Someone who has a vision as to how we’re going to stay together as a nation and save as many lives as possible. No one listens to me, so I don’t know what we’re going to do. Besides, I have a novel to develop.
No one listens to me. No one. Absolutely no one. But one thing I am good at, at least I like to think I’m good at, is strategic thinking. I’ve mentioned the concept of Radical Resistance before and it was promptly ignored. But I have a bit of time on my hands and so here we go. Here is how I would push Donald J. Trump out of office sooner rather than later.
Pick A Leader I propose Jon Stewart. He’s the perfect guy to serve as the pointman for what happens over the next few days. And this plan would have to take place ASAP. If you wait until the politics are right, Trump will be comfortably in the middle of his second term. Anyway, someone ring Jon Stewart up and ask him to save the Republic. The hardest part might be getting him on Twitter.
A United Message Right now, Democratic candidates for president are in different universe. There’s a brief window of opportunity. If just a few days all the Democrat candidates for president united against the common foe of Trump in a demonstrative fashion, then there’s a chance they might be able to break through the white noise of modern life to get people to sit up and take notice. We’re in extraordinary times and extraordinary measures are needed. Rallying around someone like Jon Stewart would be a good way to put aside the native intercen conflict of the upcoming primary season. The key point of this share message would be: as a matter of principle, Trump has to go. Full stop. Screw the six dimensional chess. It’s time to act.
The point of Radical Resistance would be to focus the obvious public outrage over TrumpUkraine to a very specific point — building public support to impeach Trump even if he tries to slow walk release of the complaint against him. The law is clear — the DNI has to turn over the complaint. The administration is trying a bullshit interpretation of the law to weasel out of ever releasing the complaint. If Democrats could impress upon the public how urgent this crisis is, maybe we might get one of those moments like we had during the kids-in-cages crisis. For a day or so, the entire country stood still as everyone freaked out about that situation. Now, to be clear, Trump is never going to release the complaint, just like he will never release his taxes. But if you could rile people up enough, then that refusal to release the complaint would, in itself, be an impeachable offence. (The slow walk of its release is all part of the Stormy Daniels playbook that TrumpWorld is so fond of.)
Weaponise The Inteligenta While generally getting writers to do anything collectively is like herding cats, if you could kind of gently point the in the same direction with their columns, you might have a fighting chance to bend the arc of history towards justice.
It’s clear that we’ve reached a crucial moment in our nation’s history. This is an existential moment. It’s a moment when the ultimate judge of our success or failure will be history. Do we want to be remembered as not being willing to defend an attack on the Constitution by a TV Game Show host elected president with the aid and comfort of a foreign power, or do we want to stand our ground, damn the consequences?
I honestly don’t think this will happen, though. The DNI hearing on Thursday will be a dud, the energy for impeachment will fade and MAGA will crow about yet another “lie” on the part of the “lamestream media” has been exposed.
Anyway, I guess it was worth a shot to articulate a vision.
We all know that you’re enjoying the quiet life petting rescue goats, but your nation needs you. You are uniquely qualified to slice the boil of political paralysis the country is currently suffering as a result of the TrumpUkraine scandal.
When you get angry, things happen, things change. You are passionate and articulate and if you were to step forward to lead the Resistance in a final push to impeach Trump, then maybe it might happen. The only reason for this plea is right now we’re a would-be revolution without a leader. All the elements are there. We just need someone to strike the match.
You would have to step forward as a political figure, however. You would have to maybe even join Twitter. As it stands, no one is prepared to actually act against Trump in any meaningful way. Maybe if you spoke up clearly and forcefully, the now locked gears of the House might finally begin to move.
This is probably the most severe political crisis in the United States since the latter stages of Watergate. Unfortunately, this is not 1974 and Trump’s not Nixon. You definitely would have to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Only you, I believe, would be able to coordinate the type of attack needed on House Trump. For the time being, Democrats running for president would need to unite in one common call — Trump has got to go. The political energy is now there for that to happen, but there’s no one to direct it.
Anyway, maybe you’re not interested. But I would like to note that Will Rodgers was active in Depression Era Democratic politics before his untimely death. But whatever decision you made, you’d have to make it soon, like now. We have a limited amount of time before this becomes just another Trump scandal in the eyes of the public and the 2020 presidential silly season kicks in in full force.
This is just an idle daydream, but it seems to me that the ideal person to run against Donald Trump in 2020, should last that long, would be Jon Stewart. I say this because Stewart is everything Trump isn’t — funny, smart and self-aware.
Of course, Stewart, at least at this point, has zero political experience outside of his interest in 9/11 first responder rights and a little bit about veterans affairs. And, of course, there is the obvious issue that he appears to have zero interest in actually doing anything beyond running his petting zoo.
But the match up between Trump and Stewart would be one for the ages. And regardless, I think we would need someone like Stewart to take down Trump. Yet I honestly don’t know. The nation is so divided at this point that there’s no perfect person to do the job.
Trump is so powerful with 40% of the electorate and the economy is doing so well that it will be a difficult fight no matter what. Add to this the continuing struggle that The Resistance has with trying to find some sort of messaging beyond simply being against Trump and you have the makings of a pretty bad situation.
This doesn’t begin to address the issue of what happens if Trump wags the dog using Iran or the DPRk.
We’re going to have to just wait and see, I guess.
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