Ceausescu's Last Debate

Economist Timur Kuran came up with the concept of a “preference falsification cascade” in 1987: one of those moments when people en masse suddenly get the courage to say what’s really on their minds. A classic example occurred two years later on December 21, 1989 during Ceausescu’s Last Speech, when the Bucharest crowd suddenly realized: “Wow, it’s not just me: practically everybody hates this guy!”

A few days later, the old tyrant was executed.

Hopefully, Joe Biden will be allowed to retire in peace. But, I presume that Democratic and media insiders have been worried for quite awhile that Biden was in decline and that it was horrifying, from the perspective of the national interest, to contemplate him being President into 2029. But, Joe is a stubborn egomaniac, so he was never likely to decide all by himself to do the right thing for the good of his country and party and graciously step down after one term at the age of 82.

And, Joe had booby-trapped the conventional succession by appointing a dud, Kamala Harris, as his Vice President for putatively feminist and Summer of Georgeist reasons.

A fascinating question remains whether in August 2020 Joe believed the Theory of Intersectionality arguments for nominating a black woman, or whether he cunningly thought the madness of the times would be an excellent cover for nominating an incompetent as his designated successor so that his party would have no alternative but to give him a second term.

We don’t know, in part because there is very little reporting on Democratic political machinations because most journalists are Democrats and the few who are not, such as myself, do very little original reporting. (My assumption is that nobody would believe me, so I rely on utterly respectable government and Establishment sources. Aaron Sibarium is a rare conservative reporter.) So much of the inside story of 21st Century American history is unknown.

But, clearly, the growth of subscription-based news media economics in this century means that there is an increased incentive to not report news that offends and/or depresses New York Times subscribers, who mostly want to hear that their side deserves to win and therefore will win.

Personally, I subscribe to the New York Times because it provides me a vast amount of useful material, especially down toward the end of its articles when its reporters tend to spill the beans about what’s really going on. But the great majority of its 10,500,000 paying subscribers want to hear about how their candidates are right and are therefore going to crush their foes. The sport section of newspapers are less homers these days than the news sections: thus, the NYT has cancelled its sport section.

So, it came as a big shock to NYT subscribers when their guy, whom only evil Trumpists thought was over the hill, turned out to be over the hill.

Professor Kuran tweets tonight:

“Everyone knows” & “everyone knows that everyone knows” & “everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows” ad infinitum. Within a few minutes of the Presidential Debate, it became common knowledge that Biden is too frail and too confused to win. That common knowledge triggered the ongoing cascade of open Democratic opposition to Biden’s candidacy.

Until the debate, Democrats were afraid to say what they knew about Biden’s physical and mental health. They were afraid to express a preference for him to step aside. They falsified their knowledge and their preference because that’s what other Democrats were doing.

During the debate, fear among Democrats switched sides. Now, Democratic opinion leaders are rushing to say that they’ve been worrying all along. And every Democratic leader who articulates what is now common knowledge makes it even harder for Biden’s remaining supporters to vouch publicly for his fitness.