From Coffee & Covid:
Jon Stewart does not look well. He’s also struggling with overwhelming emotions that should feel familiar to regular readers of this Substack: political helplessness. “Seventy-five million Americans voted for a Democrat in this last round of presidential elections,” he complained bitterly on his latest show, “and there has not been a moment of conciliation or concern about the issues and policies that drove those seventy-five million votes.”
In other words, it isn’t fair. He failed to see the irony of the last four years, while Democrats practically stuck needles into our eyeballs, ransacked our CVS’s, and otherwise made our day-to-day lives as miserable as possible. All Republicans are doing is fulfilling Trump’s campaign promises, and too slowly for most conservatives, at that.
Stewart was wrong in another way, too. Democrats aren’t that helpless. After all, they shut down the federal government. At least, I think it’s still shut down— how can anyone tell?
Anyway, loyal progressive soldier that he is, Stewart was really just pushing the complicated progressive narrative that the shutdown, with the blame now firmly pinned on Democrats, is all about “preserving healthcare.” Ironically, while complaining that Republicans are ignoring the losing party’s medical care preferences, he was simultaneously advocating for an overpriced government healthcare plan that Democrats pushed through without a single Republican vote.
You can’t make this stuff up. I might be speaking out of turn here, but it seems to me that Republicans happily allow Democrats to keep Obamacare; just don’t force us into the useless program along with you.
Whatever else Stewart’s annoying emotional outburst was, it wasn’t funny. Bring back real comedy.