Not everyone who has lived an extraordinary life is an extraordinary person.
And not every extraordinary person has lived an extraordinary life.
Bill Bradley is, truly, an extraordinary person who has lived an extraordinary life.
He’s of course best known as an NBA Hall of Famer and United States Senator.
But he’s also a storyteller, a listener, a visionary, an author, and, now, the star of the film version of the (yes) extraordinary one-man show he has performed over the last few years, “Rolling Along: An American Story.”
The movie is scheduled to begin airing in early February on HBO/MAX.
If you want to understand the promise, potential, and peril of America, as seen through the eyes of one of the most human and humane figures of the last 100 years, I would urge you to do two things:
1. Subscribe to Senator Bradley’s new Substack here.
2. Watch “Rolling Along” when it debuts next month.
As Senator Bradley wrote in the first edition of his Substack this week:
I’m reaching out because I value our relationship, and I wanted to share what I’ve been up to. A few years ago, I wrote a play about my life called Rolling Along, which I performed in New York as a one-man show for the stage. It's what I call a "performative autobiography." It explores my beginnings as a young boy in Crystal City, Missouri; to my years with the Knicks; to my time on Capitol Hill and as a candidate for president; and into my post-politics life. It is the story of a human journey – more a celebration of our common humanity than of individual triumph. It is my attempt to share all I’ve learned and experienced, and hopefully encourage others to share their stories too. Collectively, I believe that can be a healing experience, and maybe even an antidote to our wildly polarized times.
Today, I'm thrilled to announce the release of Rolling Along: An American Story on HBO/MAX in early February 2024. This film version of my stage show will bring Rolling Along to many more people, and hopefully inspire conversation and reflection on some of life’s most important themes. Brilliant partners including Frank Oz, Spike Lee, and Mike Tollin helped make this possible, and I’m grateful for their support.
My hope is that people will see a story that’s really about all of us – a story about love of the game of basketball and love of our country; a story of forgiveness and perseverance, triumph and loss, joy and sadness. I’ve tried to make it an honest portrayal of one American's life. I’ve found joy in my work to make this country a better place, and I believe we all can rediscover that same joy and sense of purpose.
I definitely couldn’t have said it better (or written it better…) myself.
I’ve been a big fan of Bill Bradley’s writing for a long time and am so pleased to see him on Substack now. So subscribe to read his thoughts. You can also find and follow him on Facebook and Instagram.
I am now also a big fan of Bill Bradley, performer on stage and screen, and you will be too after you watch “Rolling Along” and get to experience its power, emotion, and humanity.
I will have more on this special film, including a new trailer and information about some special events around the premiere, throughout the month.
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I get the sense that a lot of people in media and politics believe they have a pretty good sense of the what the daily rhythms of a Biden-Trump general election would look like, always with the caveat that everyone seems to be expecting a wild ride of unexpected twists and turns.
Of course I share the belief that shocking developments galore could occur that will reshape the contours and potential outcome of such a race. But I also think there’s a good chance that a Biden versus Trump rematch mostly follows a pretty predictable path, one we have all been traveling down for the last year or so.
Friday, both men gave signature speeches that are pretty good roadmaps to both their current candidate skills and priorities – as well as how they see their final battle.
It will take you about two hours, I know, but if you have haven’t sat and watched Biden in Pennsylvania and Trump in Iowa from yesterday, I recommend you make the time for both:
It is a crude way to measure both perception and reality, but perhaps the most telling way to view the time between now Election Day is this: Can Biden win enough news cycles to overcome Trump’s current lead?
The answer is that he definitely can, as Friday’s events, and the coverage of them, built around the 1/6 anniversary, demonstrate.
I heard from three readers that Mr. Biden’s remarks represented one of the best speeches in substance and performance of his presidency, maybe even of his career.
Watch it and see if you agree.
The subject of his address definitely reflects three positive advantages for the incumbent, as compared to say, his talking about the economy or immigration.
First, this topic of Trump and democracy and norms is clearly where Biden’s passion is, and candidates almost always are better when they are talking about something that animates them.
Second, the Dominant Media (definitely and decisively) and the general election electorate (unambiguously if not necessarily dispositively) are more with Joe Biden on this matter over Donald Trump than most anything else (besides abortion).
Third, because of the first two reasons, talking about 1/6 and democracy gives Biden a chance to win a news cycle even when he is behind in the polls.
And that, for now and maybe a long time, is one of Biden’s biggest challenges. It is VERY hard to win a news cycle when trailing (as Ron DeSantis and, more than most realize, also Nikki Haley, can tell you).
Until and unless the incumbent goes ahead, even the Dominant Media, which will root hard for him to win until the very end, slants its coverage away from him.
And that slant takes away one of the advantages Democratic presidential candidates have almost always had (except in 2000, 2004, and 2016).
Biden’s partial loss of that advantage is one of the three most important developments in the otherwise largely static Biden-Trump rematch over the last several months.
The second key development is the rallying around Trump that has occurred inside the party and from independents over the efforts to disqualify Trump from the ballot, a backlash against woke, and, for some, the criminal prosecutions.
The third development is Biden’s grave problems with elements of the Obama Coalition of the Ascendent, including young, Black, and Hispanic voters.
Until and unless Biden goes ahead, you are going to hear Democratic fretting over his decision to seek reelection; over the presence of Vice President Harris on the ticket; over Biden’s age, mental health, and physical appearance; over his light campaign schedule; over his campaign team’s messaging around the economy; over his failures on immigration; over his stance towards Israel; and more.
Team Biden, out of conviction and necessity, is planning to run largely on anti-MAGA and abortion, with a side of seeking more credit on the economy.
As of now, most Democratic strategists and officials are good with that plan, but if it hasn’t produced a comeback by mid-summer, expect the level of anxiety to rise, along with public declarations of fear and concern.
Trump plans to run on immigration, crime, social issues, foreign policy and national security, comparing voter satisfaction with his presidency over Biden’s, and, of course, inflation and the economy. The entire center-right coalition is all good with that plan, even if many of the Establishment members would prefer a different messenger.
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If you want to know how the Dominant Media is currently viewing the rematch, the coverage around 1/6 is instructive: Most often fact-based but with a clear pattern of breaking all “ties” in favor of the Democrats.
So, for instance, see the Washington Post story about the Republican attempts to rewrite and whitewash history, or Politico on the kind of public polling which reflects the reason the White House is so keen on this theme for the reelect.
Then there is the essentially reading New York Times story that smartly frames the whole race:
Rarely in American politics has a leading presidential candidate made such grave accusations about a rival: warning that he is willing to violate the Constitution. Claiming that he is eager to persecute political rivals. Calling him a dire threat to democracy.
Those arguments have come from President Biden’s speeches, including his forceful address on Friday, as he hammers away at his predecessor. But they are also now being brazenly wielded by Donald J. Trump, the only president to try to overthrow an American election.
Three years after the former president’s supporters stormed the Capitol, Mr. Trump and his campaign are engaged in an audacious attempt to paint Mr. Biden as the true menace to the nation’s foundational underpinnings. Mr. Trump’s strategy aims to upend a world in which he has publicly called for suspending the Constitution, vowed to turn political opponents into legal targets and suggested that the nation’s top military general should be executed.
The result has been a salvo of recriminations from the top candidates in each party, including competing events to mark Saturday’s third anniversary of the attack on the Capitol.
The eagerness from each man to paint the other as an imminent threat signals that their potential rematch this year will be framed as nothing short of a cataclysmic battle for the future of democracy — even as Mr. Trump tries to twist the very idea to suit his own ends.
These other two paragraphs from the Times story are two of the three most important of the day:
Polling has suggested that voters still prioritize issues like the economy over concerns about democracy. But Mr. Biden’s aides say their campaign data shows that his supporters are concerned about the risk of political violence and that Jan. 6 remains a resonant moment for the Democratic coalition.
While Democratic voters appear wary of Mr. Biden’s age and relatively unenthusiastic about his candidacy, they are firmly united by the idea that Mr. Trump has broken the public trust.
The other key paragraph of the morning comes from the Washington Post’s write up of the Biden speech:
The two events [Friday’s and Monday’s in South Carolina] could provide insight into whether the Biden campaign can build boisterous crowds for a candidate with notably low approval ratings; the approach his aides will take to combat concerns about Biden’s age; and what messages they hope will resonate with the many voters who are unenthusiastic about a Biden-Trump rematch.
Maureen Dowd puts in sharp relief two strands that are crucially important.
First, Team Biden feels they need to work the refs hard on democracy, for fear that process stories driven by the current state of the race via polling will crowd out Biden’s chances to win news cycles:
On Thursday, the Biden-Harris campaign blasted out excerpts from a Margaret Sullivan column in The Guardian, upbraiding the media on its tendency to fall into “performative neutrality,” focusing too much on Biden’s presentation and poll numbers and not enough on stressing what a second Trump presidency would mean.
Journalists should not fear looking as if they’re “in the tank” for Biden if they zero in on Trump’s seditious behavior, Sullivan said; the media should worry less about the horse race than about underscoring that many of Trump’s threats are authoritarian.
She is right that the media must constantly remind itself not to use old tropes on a new trollop like Trump, particularly since the media is in a confluence of interest with Trump — as he himself has pointed out….
[T]he media must pound on. The duplicitous enablers at Fox News aside, journalists learned a lot in 2016 and have changed practices to better fence with Trump, fact-checking him more closely, engaging in defensive reporting, no longer covering every tweet like holy writ. Threats to democracy now count as a beat, just like schools and courts; The Times uses the rubric “Democracy Challenged.”
When Dick Cheney was a deranged vice president, I was not permitted to call him a liar in my column. But now The Times lets columnists call Trump a liar. We have learned to separate the man from the office. Just because someone sits in the hallowed White House doesn’t mean he deserves the respect of the office. Not if he’s ginning up a fake war or if he’s flirting with treason and white supremacy….
Second, Maureen is smart, experienced, and honest enough to know that Biden is going to have to raise his game to win this:
[T]he Biden-Harris campaign’s trumpeting of Sullivan’s column gives the impression that it expects the media to prop up Biden.
Biden has to press his own case and not rely on the media or Trump’s fatuousness to win the election for him.
People don’t want to vote against somebody; they want to vote for somebody.
The president must continue to be aggressive in convincing people he’s the best alternative; that, at 81, he’s not too old for the job; that he has solutions to stop the chaos on the border and relentless death in Gaza.
One last bit of essential reading is Barton Swaim’s column in the Wall Street Journal, vital for two reasons.
First, these two paragraphs of truths familiar to all Wide World of News readers:
As a matter of cosmic justice, the Democrats, particularly Mr. Biden, deserve a Trump victory in 2024. They have done everything possible to ensure his nomination—funding his preferred candidates, no matter how crazy, defaming his sane Republican opponents, hounding him with spurious lawsuits. They assumed he was unelectable. Thanks to them, he isn’t. He will likely win the nomination.
And, as a consequence of Mr. Biden’s plenary incompetence and perverse refusal to exit the scene, Mr. Trump may win the presidency.
Second, Swaim did something that anyone – citizen, journalist, activist, strategist, pundit, elected – who wants to understand the current face and state of the Trump Movement needs to do: He went to a Trump rally.
Swaim describes the phenomenon with perfect pitch and attention to detail the energy around the Movement and how Trump continues, nearly ten years later, to harness it.
I will leave you today with ten other Biden versus Trump storylines I am thinking about this morning – and will of course write more about in the days and months ahead:
1. When and how well will Trump switch to his general election mode rhetoric, including and especially on abortion?
2. When and how do Hunter’s criminal cases and the impeachment investigation play out, implicating both Joe Biden’s psyche and potential Republican overreach around the same bundle of history?
3. When and how does the Supreme Court rule on all the various Trump criminal issues?
4. Can Judge Chutkan get her trial started before June – and, if not, what are the political implications of holding that trial so close to the general election? (I continue to think these matters might turn out to be the single most important in determining who wins the election…)
5. Can Team Biden get anything done on immigration to reduce the political pain, especially now that, as Rich Lowry points out, the Dominant Media has somewhat turned against them?
6. What happens with and in Ukraine?
7. What happens with and in the Middle East?
8. Can Team Biden raise its game and match or at least somewhat neutralize the ferocious online meming of Team Trump?
9. Who will win the political fight over China?
10. Can the RNC and Team Trump get it’s early vote game going?
All of this assumes that Trump wins the nomination.
All of this assumes that the economy will be front and center in a rematch.
And all of this assumes that my head still says there will be a rematch but my gut still says that there is just no way that there can be a rematch!
Something has got to give.
To be continued…
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Mario members of Concierge Coverage: Please join us this Tuesday night at 6pm ET for our monthly salon, where our focus will be on Iowa, New Hampshire, and beyond, with special guests including John Sununu, Meghan McCain, Doug Sosnik, Doug Gross, Dave Urban, Mark McKinnon, John Ellis, and more to come.
RSVP via your calendar invite, please.