Is this a watershed moment in politics -- and in culture? Jon Stewart took up more than sixteen minutes on the Daily Show last night in dismantling the spin around the presidential debate, as well as the desperate defenses erected for Joe Biden. Stewart took his shots at Donald Trump too, as you'll see in the video below, but Stewart focused most sharply on the hypocrisy of Democrats screeching that Trump represents a threat to democracy that requires all hands on deck.

If that's the case, Stewart wonders, why are Democrats content to keep a clearly addled Biden in the race? The concern from Stewart may be belated, and he may still be buying in to that hysteria, but at least he can smell "blatant bull****" when it wafts his way:

“For a campaign based on honesty and decency, the spin about the debate appears to be blatant bullshit, and the redemption tour hasn’t gone that much better,” Stewart said. “We’re told that the threat of Trump is so great and the stakes are so high that even bringing up these absolutely legitimate concerns about the President’s ability to do the most vigorous job in the world for the next four years is enabling fascism. Yet even the president doesn’t seem particularly alarmed.”

Stewart then showed a clip of ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos asking Biden how he’ll feel if he stays in the race and Donald Trump wins in November. The president replied, “As long as I gave it my all and did as good of a job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.”

After screaming that "there are no participation trophies in end-game democracy," Stewart tackles the idea that the primary vote should be determinative. Again, Stewart comes close to the real issue when he calls Biden's cognitive incompetency "new information," but never connects the dots (11:24 in the video). Stewart spent a couple of minutes showing how it wasn't new information while using a rather amusing chart, and never gets to the point that Democrats conspired to hide the decline from the same voters they now cite as dispositive.

Nevertheless, Stewart does point out that seizing on primary results conducted before evidence emerged for incapacity isn't exactly a compelling argument. "There was no real primary," Stewart argues, although without noting that the DNC made sure there wasn't any competition for Biden in the 2024 election cycle:

“Authoritarianism and Donald Trump aren’t the only threats our democracy faces,” he said. “An arthritic status quo, unable or unwilling to respond in any way to the concerns of voters who just received new and urgent information about their candidate, also erodes confidence and faith in the system of government borders. Honestly, ‘get on board or shut the fuck up’ is not a particularly compelling pro-democracy bumper sticker.”

So Jon Stewart hasn't exactly been red-pilled. He's still not connecting all the dots, likely because he prefers the Trump Will Destroy Democracy narrative, but at least he's aware enough to realize that Democrats don't act as though they believe that. He also spends most of his time and ire on Biden and the Democrats attempting to run interference for him rather than pulling a "Republicans pounce®!" narrative for a distraction. He's calling for Democrats to take action to unseat Biden ... at least in the election. 

Given the late-night lip-lock on Biden's derriere, Stewart's lengthy rant certainly seems notable as a disturbance in the Cultural Force. Later today in our next episode of Off the Beaten Path, Christian Toto and I will talk about Stephen Colbert's tiptoe into Biden criticism last night as well, but Stewart's is likely the more impactful, thanks to its younger and more activist audience.  

For now, though, here's the entire Daily Show segment. You'll enjoy most of it, anyway.