1
You can't be bigger than the Beatles by imitating the Beatles.
There was only one Beatles, we haven't seen an act that big, with that kind of impact, since. Their music will maintain whereas the rest of the British Invasion has almost already disappeared.
I loved "Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter." "I'm into Something Good" was resuscitated by its inclusion in the movie "The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!" thirty five years ago, and it has sustained as a result thereof, albeit not as impactfully as "Bohemian Rhapsody" after its inclusion in "Wayne's World." I did the Freddie, does anybody remember what that was? Eric Burdon and his Animals had a unique sound, the only problem was the songwriting, they never grew into great scribes, unlike the Beatles. Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders had a great cut, but the band split, Fontana ran out of gas and ultimately Eric Stewart had a hit with the Mindbenders, but he's most remembered for his work in 10cc, if he's remembered at all. There were a couple of acts that followed in the Beatles' direct footsteps, mostly by utilizing their songs. Peter & Gordon... The world certainly lacks love, but Peter Asher made his rep as a record producer and manager. And Badfinger might have broke with "Come and Get It," but they explored new territory thereafter. (Does anybody realize that "Without You" was a Badfinger song, opening up the second side of "No Dice"? Most people think it's a Mariah Carey cover of a Nilsson number, if they think about its writer at all. And I love "Day After Day" and "Perfection" from "Straight Up," but it's "Without You" that has carried on, illustrating the power of a great song.)
And then there were the Rolling Stones. They used to have battles on the radio between them and the Beatles. And although plenty of people did love both, there were people who loved the Stones and hated the Beatles, as well as vice versa. The Stones were an alternative. Dark and dirty, playing blues-influenced numbers. They might have begun with a Beatles cover of "I Wanna Be Your Man," but they grew from there quickly, and when they tried to imitate the Beatles they failed miserably, with "Satanic Majesties," a poor imitation of "Sgt. Pepper." But "Beggars Banquet"? Completely different from what the Stones had done before, more acoustic, and even more dark and dirty, the album got reviews just as good as the White Album. And then came "Let It Bleed," and when the Beatles had exhausted their run there was "Sticky Fingers," the true breakthrough, the album that made the Stones truly iconic, because it contained the ubiquitous hit "Brown Sugar."
Mick Jagger won't sing "Brown Sugar" anymore, with its lines about slavery. That was fifty years ago, times have changed. But the Stones are not set in amber, they're still doing it, they even have a new album in the wings.
2
So last night there were constant references to St. Reagan. You know, the guy whose tenure as president ended in 1988, a mere thirty five years ago. Think about that. You'd have to be at least forty five years old to have any remembrance at all of the Reagan era. But the so-called Party of Lincoln keeps trotting him out. It'd be like constantly talking about the IBM Selectric in the era of computers, never mind smartphones. That was then and this is now. The Selectric was a keeper in its era, better than everything else on the market, but typewriters...do they even sell them anymore?
The Democrats are too hung up on Obama. I'll argue, quite strongly, that Biden has been a better president that Obama. Because Biden woke up and realized the opposition was unmoveable, and instead of trying to appease the Republicans, instead of constant gridlock, Joe marched forward and got things done.
But the Democrats don't bring up FDR or Kennedy. That's too long ago, a completely different era. If you were aware in the Reagan era you know the eighties were a time of celebration, MTV was the heartbeat of not only America, but the world. We can criticize the eighties as the beginning of income inequality, because of the greed, because of the hedonism, but things didn't really turn dark until the nineties, with the Branch Davidians and Oklahoma City and even O.J. So why are the Republicans continuing to pay fealty to this old dude who was president once?
Because the people in control, the party apparatus, is out of touch with the young demographic. But there are more people on earth who don't remember Reagan than do.
This has hamstrung the Democrats too. The party apparatus. Completely clueless. After 2022 AOC declared the party was out of touch, that it needed to advertise online, to give up on TV, its old methods. What happened to AOC? She was shouted down.
As was Vivek Ramaswamy last night.
Man, I was grinning when Vivek owned TikTok. Like that old Sam Kinison joke about buying the starving residents of Africa suitcases, so they could move where the food was, Ramaswamy was speaking truth. But Vivek was shouted down. Doesn't he know that TikTok is controlled by the Chinese, the enemy, and it must be shut down immediately? It's got all the kids mesmerized, it's got all the data... Yeah, the younger generation does not hate China the way the older one does, never mind paying attention to how China is failing economically. As for privacy? That ship sailed long ago. Google knows more about you than your spouse.
Now this happened once before, when Johnson came to the baby boomers' door. The younger generation saw the light, that Vietnam was a folly, that the country needed a new direction. Today Vietnam is a tourist destination, Americans go there on a regular basis. The Domino Theory, like the Trickle Down Theory, proved false. The kids were not only alright, they were right. Johnson walked away, Humphrey lost and the Republicans gained control. The Democrats misread the room. Even worse, they went so far into Vietnam, were so committed, that they lost the youth and more, Humphrey could not convince these people he was alright.
Both parties are completely ignoring the younger generations, who can now vote at eighteen, and contrary to conventional wisdom do, vote that is. They're shaking their heads... Two old men running for president who don't understand their lives whatsoever. They'd like an alternative.
But the Democratic party brass says they've got this. To look at the data. Examine the past. No matter how much the music business self-analyzed, and it didn't, there was no way it would have foreseen Napster. Which might have been defeated in court, but there was no return to the old days. And at this point the new days, the new paradigm, are much better than the old. I won't try to convince you if you are not in agreement, I'll just dismiss you, like I do with the oldsters complaining about Spotify payments, never mind the Luddites who keep telling me they need to own their music. Do you need to own "White Lotus"? Everything is on demand, at your fingertips today, ready to be delivered from the cloud. Are these the same people who refused to get a telephone, listen to the radio, never mind not buy a TV? There are always buggy whip acolytes, they get too much airtime.
3
So what do we know about today? No one is happy. Except maybe the aforementioned party brass that believes it is in control, the same Democratic party brass that put all their faith in Hillary Clinton, who couldn't read the room, seeing she'd been branded by the right, was seen as inauthentic. Trump didn't win, Clinton lost, remember that.
Just like we get these idiots saying to put our faith in Kamala Harris. I've got no faith in her and I'm never going to vote Republican. She was bad in the 2020 debates and she's not demonstrated any great skill, certainly not in communication with the people, bedrock in winning races, and she's been branded by the right too.
As for Old Joe... Man, I saw him walking the other night and... He looked like an eighty year old man, shuffling, like he needed to hold on to someone's arm. I'm not saying the brain doesn't work, but if you think Joe inspires confidence, you're delusional.
As for Donald Trump... It's over, he's sinking. Have you noticed there's been little right wing blowback about the fraud decision? Oh, they come up with some cockamamie stories why he shouldn't be liable, like Trump's attorneys, who were sanctioned for it, but no one is sitting there saying the properties were worth what Trump said they were. That doesn't square with anybody. Everybody who's ever bought or sold a house, gotten a mortgage, knows that you can't get an appraiser to value your property at a zillion times beyond what's accurate. Forget the papers in Mar-A-Lago, the other indictments, the fraud just makes Trump look bad.
And now Trump is unhinged. Like a kid in high school making his last defense before punishment. Executing Milley? Never mind buying a gun in South Carolina, never mind all the insanity on Truth Social. Trump is spiraling out of control, and everybody, on the right and left, can see it. Sure, there is a core of Republicans who will never waver, who will support the man, then again there are friends and family members who will support the most heinous murderer, we don't let the criminal off because he's got a core constituency who will deny his behavior.
Yet the Democrats keep pushing Biden and the Republicans are shrugging their shoulders and saying their man is Trump. It's bizarroland. Other countries are laughing. Hell, I'd be laughing if it wasn't so damn scary.
Now if you've been paying attention, the Democratic journalists, the opinion-makers, have started to throw the long ball. The drumbeat is growing, there have been numerous articles recently about how Democrats don't want Biden, that he needs to step down. Will he? He should. And there's a strong chance he will. Like Johnson, too late in the game to allow the new candidates to gain attention and ground so they can win in November. But at least there were new candidates in 1967-68, today the Dems are too afraid to break ranks. But we must unleash Newsom, Whitmer, Polis and Pritzker, let them start duking it out now, because we need a new candidate.
The Republicans are letting candidates duke it out, but all you've got to know is Trump won't show up. The same Trump who wouldn't commit to supporting the ticket in 2016 if he wasn't on it.
Now in the old days, the political party would make the candidate show up. But today Trump is bigger than the Republican party. It's the Trump party, not the Republican party. So many of the things the Republicans stood for Trump is against, never mind the looney-tunes. The lunatics have taken over the asylum. It's raw chaos.
But no one will stand up to Trump, other than Chris Christie, who cavorted on a beach he closed, who was behind Bridgegate... Christie is a smart guy but those were dumb moves and you don't have to be an insider to be aware of them, I see interviews with people all the time where they reference Christie's shenanigans on the beach, Christie crossed a line, as bad as Billy Squier jumping on that bed in that red tank top, there's no coming back. Finito.
History repeats, but with a twist. You need to study history to win in the future, albeit not be beholden to it. Don't the Republican candidates know there was never a new Beatles? That to win you must take a different path?
Doesn't seem like it.
4
The first forty five minutes or so were positively insane. If you were a Democrat or were undecided your head was spinning. All we heard were right wing tropes. Biden's a criminal, the main issue is the border... It's like these people weren't even living in the same country.
But if I forgive all that, and consider the remaining hour and fifteen minutes...
It's all about electability. That's what you're looking for. What they say is secondary to how they deliver it. Doug Burgum was actually pretty good, but when he got the mic he was so thrilled that he spoke so quickly that you couldn't catch everything he was saying. Burgum looked desperate. That's a bad look. Forget it.
Mike Pence? Man, he was o.k. in the first debate, last night he looked like a gasoline car in an electric world. Electric cars feature incredible acceleration off the line. It always took Pence a while to get going. And he spoke slowly. And he got nailed on the Obamacare question. Like a typical weasel he avoided the query, but then Dana Perino came back to it, stuck the needle in him and it was over. Pence is a joke. People don't want puritanism. Most people want abortion. They don't want a second-rate religious zealot to be their president.
Vivek? He was scared straight. He got so much negative blowback from the first debate that he was more controlled, to his detriment. He listened to conventional wisdom, he should have stayed the course, confident young man on the verge of insanity. Vivek did himself no favors.
As for Nikki Haley... She made some good points in the first debate, attacking Trump for his flaws with the economy, admitting we're never going to get a national law prohibiting abortion after a short period of time. But this time... She focused on attacking Vivek. Made her look small and irrelevant.
Tim Scott. Wow, he rose from the ashes. This guy could be a contender. I doubt it, but he was one of the stars last night, if not the star.
As for Ron DeSantis...he had a good night. It wasn't so much the details, more the confidence. By the end you could see how this guy won so big in Florida. But DeSantis is not a winner, he's the robotic military freak who lives next door, a man who flies straight in a direction you don't agree with and doesn't waver, serious all the time. No masks? New College? Disney? I could go on and on, DeSantis may have won in Florida, but he can't win nationally, well at least I don't think he can, but he surprised me last night, in a good way.
5
So what are the alternatives?
I don't see any. I mean it's Trump or...
Now the newspapers have addressed this too. That you can't win by being Trump light. You've got to be different. But what we got was the same.
Now you should read yesterday's story in the "New York Times," "Trump and the 2024 Republican Primaries: 13 Voters Discuss":
tinyurl.com/3sp3kz7x That's a free link, you should click, it's got pictures and everything, it's not a hard read. Bottom line, these people don't want Trump. And you might think they are handpicked, but then they utter some right wing tropes and you know they were not. These people want an ALTERNATIVE! And the Republicans refuse to give them one.
It's not too late for a new candidate, the election is over a year out. Chris Sununu said he wouldn't run, but he spoke English on Bill Maher's show, this guy is smart, articulate and knows how to fight, this guy could be a contender.
Then there are those who say the Republican candidates are not fighting that hard because they're waiting for 2028, when Trump is gone. This is always bad strategy, Biden ultimately became president, but he should have run against Hillary, this is not about friends, politics is cutthroat. And who knows, if Trump wins there may not even be an election in 2028. Don't laugh, did you believe he would refuse to concede in 2020? Don't look at America, look at authoritarians around the world.
But the odds of Trump winning are infinitesimal. Well, not that low, but close.
Ignore the polls.
First and foremost, you've got to pick up the call. I won't. Most people won't. Who has time for a pollster? And these pollsters, who have consistently gotten it wrong in the past decade keep telling us about their adaptations, their changes in modalities, and then they point to the margin of error to say they were right when they were really wrong. The election seems to always be decided within the margin of error, so what use are the polls?
But like I said, they're often just plain wrong.
Trump is not beating Biden, nowhere close. But who in the hell is going to pick up the phone and say they want Biden? I don't. I'm not going to testify to some pollster. I'll vote for Biden reluctantly. I'm not going to vote for a third party, I'm not going to sit at home, but Biden is too damn old, period. Sure, he could keep his marbles for another half decade, but that's not a bet I want to make. Athletes retire... It's a rare person who continues to work into old age. And based on my inbox, so many oldsters are completely out of touch with what's going on in America.
Like "The Voice."
Wanna know why no one can break from that show? The core audience is over sixty years old! Yes, network television now plays to the boomers, the oldsters, because who else is going to watch TV in real time...ALMOST NOBODY! In an on demand world you're going to sit through commercials? At a defined time? And it's not like "The Voice" is so hot that you need to record it, you're better off spending time on TikTok, which the rulers of our country pooh-pooh. I'm sick and tired of people pontificating with no experience. My accountant told me she was all about free speech, that she endorsed Musk's take on and ultimate changes to Twitter. I was kinda shocked, because Twitter is now a completely different experience. I asked her, has she been on the new Twitter? She hasn't been on Twitter at all, not even once. I mean you're not entitled to an opinion if you don't play. But oldsters do this constantly, think they're familiar when they're not, they think by getting plastic surgery and owning a smartphone they are hip, but it's all exterior, inside they're clueless. Oh, they have some wisdom, some experience from being on the planet so long, but they're overwhelmed with change, and they want to do different things with their time, like watch network TV.
Trump can't win. Not that he'll admit defeat if he loses. But if the Republicans nominated almost anyone else, they'd have a chance. Because Biden is not beloved.
Not to mention it's over a year out. Please tell me what is going to happen in Trump's life to his advantage politically. Do you think there are undecided independents at home saying this guy has been indicted four times, he's a fraudster...HE'S MY MAN! Not a single one. Period. But that's speaking English, and you can't speak English in politics today. Today it's all about authenticity, credibility, and the more last night candidates talked, the more they sacrificed it, never mind it being a charisma free zone.
6
How come I can see all this and nobody else can? Well, the truth is everybody can see this, but those inured to the process, the party apparatus, don't want to admit it. Biden beat Trump once so he can do it again. My mother started losing it in her eighties... Repeating herself a bit. And you'd be in the car with her and she'd be straight and then...she'd do it again and you'd wince. You were hoping and praying the previous events were anomalies, but they weren't. Biden's gait and intellect are not going to get better in the next year. Never mind when he was young he was a faux pas machine. And he may not campaign from the basement this time, but if he's on stage with almost anybody he's going to look bad. How come I know this and nobody else does? Once again, everybody knows this.
The only way you can win against Trump is by being different. Not being hamstrung by his acolytes. The Stones didn't care about the Beatles' audience, they grew their own. There was enough room for both. And then the Stones crossed over a couple of times, with "As Tears Go By" and "Ruby Tuesday," and those who thought they hated the Stones suddenly cottoned to them.
There are so many problems in America today. Bush II won by saying he was a uniter, not a divider, even though that was completely untrue. Why is there all this hate on the right, where is the optimism? Who is speaking to those who have not drunk the kool-aid? Look into the camera and tell us that there needs to be child care, that there needs to be Obamacare, don't be beholden to the orthodoxy, most people want Obamacare, why are you speaking to the tiny minority who don't? They're not going to vote for a Democrat ever, they're locked in, you don't have to pander to them.
Politics is ripe for disruption. Just like Napster with the record industry. Actually, it's already happened. With Trump. He said the unsayable, turns out people don't really care how many times you're divorced. And he appealed to the workers who were ignored by the Democrats, who thought they had this constituency locked up.
But that was back in the teens, and now we're in the twenties. Disruption looks different. When an industry is calcified, set in its ways, overcharging the same damn customers, opportunities for the new are ripe. And the new always start outside the system, and are rough around the edges, but they appeal to early adopters and then overnight, the new triumphs. Just like Napster. First only on college campuses because of high speed connections, and then everybody got a high speed connection at home to download music. Like AOL before that. People saw no use for a computer, and then everybody bought one. Like digital photography. Remember Fotomat? It's not coming back. And Blockbuster? Who knew that Netflix, a DVD by mail company, would end up implementing this new paradigm, streaming, and become the biggest force in content distribution, never mind production?
Our politics are certainly calcified. Set in the old. Run by the old. Appealing to the old, with the canard that oldsters vote and youngsters don't. With old candidates... If you don't see a landscape ripe for disruption, you're probably part of the apparatus, never mind clueless.
Look at it this way... How did Vivek Ramaswamy go from nowhere to somewhere almost overnight? By being different. He might have overplayed his hand, squandered his chance, but that doesn't mean someone smarter can't win. Never forget, Rhapsody predated Spotify.
And it's all about exposure. And that first debate got in excess of twelve million viewers, never mind those who saw clips after the fact, online. Ramaswamy got more exposure, was better known to the public, than Taylor Swift. It's always been about mass. And right now that's what people care about, politics, not music. Everyone thinks their life, their future, hangs in the balance. There's a vacuum, ready to be filled by someone living in the present who is not beholden to orthodoxy.
Don't say it can't happen. Never underestimate the power of the individual. And no one can predict the future.
It can't go on this way.
--
Visit the archive:
lefsetz.com/wordpress/ --
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart:
ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj -Apple:
apple.co/2ndmpvp --
www.twitter.com/lefsetz --
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1 If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters,
Unsubscribe To change your email address
this link 