This is Perfect

This has gotta be a bit, right?

But what if the show had gone another way?

What if, as a result of Bartlet revealing his illness, polling showed him losing to his likely opponent? And what if that opponent, rather than being simply unexceptional, had been a dump truck of ignorance and bad intentions? What if Bartlet’s opponent had been a dangerous imbecile with an observable psychiatric disorder who related to his supporters on a fourth-grade level and treated the law as something for suckers and poor people? And was a hero to white supremacists?

We’d have had Bartlet drop out of the race and endorse whoever had the best chance of beating the guy.

The problem in the real world is that there isn’t a Democrat who is polling significantly better than Mr. Biden. And quitting, as heroic as it may be in this case, doesn’t really put a lump in our throats.

But there’s something the Democrats can do that would not just put a lump in people’s throats with its appeal to stop-Donald-Trump-at-all-costs unity, but with its originality and sense of sacrifice. So here’s my pitch to the writers’ room: The Democratic Party should pick a Republican.

At their convention next month, the Democrats should nominate Mitt Romney.

That’s it. That’s the joke. 10/10, no notes.

[PC] Since LGM definitely does not need two separate posts about this particular idiocy, I’m going to add a couple of thoughts to this one.

(1) As frivolous and absurd as this is, I do think it’s symptomatic of the degeneration of politics into entertainment. Aaron Sorkin thinks about politics as a form of dramatic entertainment, which is fine for somebody who is in the business of creating dramatic entertainment, but not fine for somebody who is in the business of politics. Nominating Mitt Romney would, if we take this idea seriously for the nanosecond that it doesn’t warrant, would destroy Democratic voter turnout and hand the Republicans massive majorities in both houses of Congress. It’s an incredibly irresponsible and stupid idea, and it’s extremely irresponsible for the Newspaper of Record’s editorial page, which is on the record as seeing Donald Trump’s re-election as an existential threat, to broadcast it to the world. And treating it as oh come on it’s just kidding on the square don’t be so serious is even worse.

(2) I do think it’s worth noting the casual sexism here. Liz Cheney is a hardcore lifelong Republican who is both a prominent figure in national politics and has anti-Trump credentials that are approximately 10,000 times more impressive and authentic than Mitt I Tried Hard to Be Trump’s Secretary of State Romney. What could possibly explain the fact that Sorkin seems to have overlooked this when half baking his idea?