they have this fixation on carter.

listen. i'll be 40 in a few months, and jimmy carter had been removed from office before i was even born. it's a matter of days, but it's true. that means that nobody under 40 has the slightest recollection, and you'd really have to be pushing into your 60s...

is that the point, though? is this really about older voters? it's a playbook that's running thin, to say the least. they said clinton was just like carter, and to an extent he actually was, but it didn't help them win (ross perot, notwithstanding). they said obama was just like carter, and he won twice on the back of a youth vote that probably largely couldn't tell the difference between carter and clinton if you held up pictures of them - something that is only more true now. if this is the best they got...

it's not. it's a lazy article, and that in itself may be reflective of something.

honestly? if i was a hawk, i would pick biden. trump's decision to not bomb iran at the beginning of the year really turned him into a paper tiger. he's not remotely scary to anybody, because everybody knows that he bluffs 100% of the time, and folds 100% of the time. he's actually probably the most predictable commander-in-chief, ever - and the predictability is around the reality that he's both an isolationist and a pacifist.

biden, on the other hand, like clinton one may recall, is getting the endorsement of neo-cons and interventionists more or less across the board. he's not likely to base his foreign policy on bluffing, and he's far more likely to actually utilize the substantive hard power at his availability, to advance the interests of his clients (who is whose client, really, though?).

it's a very hard choice, if you're standing outside the country and primarily concerned about international issues, including global warming and foreign policy. nothing i said should be meant to even suggest that trump won't cave and do something stupid at the last minute. an invasion of the faulklands, or maybe grenada if they can't even figure out how to get by the argentinians, is increasingly seemingly less like satire - it's exactly the kind of surreal theatre that this administration would see the upside in.

but, despite being abominable on the climate, trump's track record and general demeanour seems like the less scary option, in the long run, if you're looking to seriously minimize war over the next 4-8 years. he's the isolationist, here; biden's the internationalist. and, i hope the country at least understands the decision it has in front of it, if this becomes a ballot issue, which it likely won't.

the election is probably going to mostly be about the virus, and in the end may largely reduce to a referendum on forced distancing measures and mandatory mask use. the talking heads may not even get a microphone, this time - americans are going to have more pressing details directly in front of them than trying to sort through an altruistic decision about empire-building.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/12/biden-is-wrong-choice-lead-west-through-cold-war-20/