I was a huge fan of Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. His style of attacking Republican politicians and other right-wing nuts was basic and perfect—he quoted them, and then brought the receipts in the form of video showing how wrong/stupid/dishonest they’d been. Jon did his homework. As far as I’m concerned, he showed exactly how to respond to the crazies.
So I was really looking forward to his part-time return last night. Imagine my disappointment when he spent half the show on a classic “both sides” attack on the age and competence of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Jon’s audience is of course heavily skewed toward Democrats, and his vicious "reporting” on Biden is unlikely to convince any of them to vote for Trump. But if he induces any voters to just stay home, or vote for a third party, or cast no vote for President, that amounts to supporting Trump.
Concerns about Pres. Biden’s age and faculties are not in themselves illegitimate. If we were in a contested primary, with other progressive Dems running against Mr. Biden, fine. But we all know, and Stewart acknowledged, that the candidates are already in place. There’s only one choice—Biden or Trump, and anything less than full support of Biden is support of Trump. There is absolutely no issue on which Trump is better than or even as good as Biden for progressives.
I simply cannot imagine what the hell Stewart was trying to do. He even had Jordan Klepper do a mock attack on him, which included referring to his both-siderism in the Bush v. Gore election, so it’s not as if Stewart was unaware of the criticism he was likely to draw.
It’s a helluva drag when your idols show they have feet of clay.