What do you do when nobody cares what you are saying? When they even hate the sound of your voice?

If you are an attention starved brat–or a Democrat these days–you scream louder and louder and hope that screeching sound will make the crowd turn around and listen.

Joe Biden did his share of (metaphorical) screaming last night in what was a repetitive, poorly written, and clearly panicked speech last night. Ed gave his take earlier today, and here I give you my infinitely superior one. (Boss? Boss? It was a joke! Really!)

I actually sat down to watch the awful speech–I did it for you, because I sure as hell would not have chosen to spend 20 minutes getting lied to otherwise. It has been years since I watched a presidential speech from beginning to end because they really only exist for the media to excerpt a few snippets to run on the news. We live in a sound bite culture, and I am all-in on that with presidential speeches. They suck.

Oddly, there were actually no great soundbites that I caught while watching the speech. It was more a plea than an argument. A repetition of the same tired talking points about how bad Orange Man and his supporters are, with a desperate and worthless attempt to inject some Pelosi pathos into the mix.

It could be summarized as:

C’mon, man. I keep telling you that Democracy is at Stake™. Don’t you get it? Bad Orange Man. Economy sucks, but Democracy, man! You like democracy, right? Right?!

If somebody can find another message in the speech, please tell me.

Even the media seems tired of this, although they have been compliant about spreading it for their allies in the White House.

The Democrat message for this election has been bizarre and politically worthless. We get endless stories about Election Deniers™ on the ballot, political violence of dubious provenance, transgenders at risk, and perhaps the imminent return to slavery and the forced impregnation of women.

But nobody is buying it. It is a word salad of mixed phrases sprinkled with some spicy anger, the rancid oil of panic and cheap vinegar of spoiled hopes. It is the verbal salad bar at a gas station with no sneeze guard. Unappetizing would be a kind description, and even the hungry  hobos of the media don’t really want to eat it.

The New York Times tried to cast Biden’s speech in the apocalyptic terms Biden wanted, but it rang pretty hollow:

While candidates and voters have focused on economic and other issues, Mr. Biden sought to use a nationally televised evening speech to put the future of the nation’s system of elections front and center for the final days of debate before midterm elections on Tuesday that will determine control of Congress and numerous state offices.

“As I stand here today, there are candidates running for every level of office in America — for governor, Congress, attorney general, secretary of state — who won’t commit, they will not commit to accepting the results of the elections that they’re running in,”

The bite they chose to lead their story? The “election deniers” bit–which Biden also led with. It falls flat because the Democrats spent years denying the legitimacy of Trump, promising to impeach him even before he was inaugurated. Election denying has become as American as Apple Pie.

Americans are rightly sick of it, and are unsurprisingly more concerned about the fact that both at home and abroad Biden has been systematically dismantling an American empire that took nearly 250 years to build. Our economy is in shambles, the lights are dimming in Europe and around the world, it will be a literal cold, dark winter for millions of people, and inflation is leaving people hungry and angry.

What is striking to me is how universal the sense is among Democrats that their political problems would be solved if they cracked the messaging problem. Their belief in the power of Narrative™ is so strong that they attribute to it magic properties. Gavin Newsom, who will almost certainly run for president in 2024, said as much.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said Democrats are getting “destroyed” on messaging and “crushed on narrative” with the November midterms less than a week away. 

“We’re getting crushed on narrative. We’re going to have to do better in terms of getting on the offense and stop being on the damn defense,” Newsom told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett in an interview that aired Wednesday.

The Democrats’ problem is not that they are getting crushed on narrative. They have the House, the Senate, the White House, and every damn cultural institution in the country singing off the same song sheet. The problem they have is that they are singing endless verses of “99 bottles of beer on the wall” in the back seat as the car speeds toward a cliff.

America is in trouble, and Americans are angry about it. Democrats have screwed up everything, lied about it (inflation is “transitory!”) and now they want to be rewarded?

No. Hell no!

We still don’t know the scale of the electoral disaster Democrats face, but it will almost certainly be epic. As it should be. Democrats have focused entirely on issues that don’t matter to Americans much, and even in those they chose the worst possible policies. The only mystery is why anybody approves of Joe Biden after his performance.

It is a sign of how polarized the country is that Biden’s approval hasn’t dropped into the 20’s. George H.W. Bush–no Reagan, but a surprisingly good president compared to most–averaged 61% approval during his term, but when the economy hit the skids his approval dropped to 29% at one point.

In a sane world Biden would be much lower than that. Bush won Desert Storm, Biden lost Afghanistan to the f’ing middle ages Taliban. Bush’s recession was relatively mild with low inflation; Biden is turning our economy into a dumpster fire.

Democrats are holding together their base with fear, and even that has been losing its potency. It has been enough to keep 40% of the country chanting that they really approve of the disaster.  But they are losing parts of their coalition. White women are defecting. Blacks are unexcited to vote. And even the media is making noises that Biden has lost it.

Is the fever breaking? Is Biden so awful that the coalition collapses entirely? Who knows? But what is clear is that the 6 year run of Bad Orange Man politics is over as a winning message for Democrats. Shouting the same message louder is not working.

UPDATE: You know the president’s speech is a dud when it doesn’t even make the RealClearPolitics lineup of headlines:

UPDATE 2: Charlie Crist has picked up Biden’s winning message and running with it:

I’m going to go head-to-head with one of the biggest threats to democracy this country has seen: Ron DeSantis.

We have 6 days to build the people-power we need to fight back his MAGA extremism — who’s with us?!

— Charlie Crist (@CharlieCrist) November 3, 2022