2024 Election Enters 'Who Can Do More Pushups' Stage

Cable news is a place where people in really nice clothes will survey the state of the world and argue that their octogenarian candidate of choice can perform more feats of physical strength than the other side's septuagenarian. It was Howard Dean's turn to do something like that yesterday while appearing on The Beat with MSNBC's Ari Melber.

“Haley’s hope has to be that she can present herself well as an alternative to Trump so that the convention can accept her should Trump have a health problem, which he certainly as likely as Biden to have if not more," Dean, who knows a thing or two about running for president and ending a speech on a weird note, said. "I’ll bet you anything that Joe Biden could beat the daylights out of Trump in a push-up contest, for example, and Trump knows it too. Although if it was a cheeseburger eating contest, it might turn out differently.”

Not to be the comedy police here but I have tremendous misgivings over someone who laughed at this joke. Not because of what they believe about politics. Because it's ... it's so bad. You can feel him leading up to the cheeseburger-eating contest and there's nothing to be done to stop him.

The real issue here, of course, is that we will never get to test Dean's thesis. Biden vs. Trump in some sort of physical competition would be tremendous television. In the pushup realm I think the oddsmakers would instill the incumbent as a slight favorite but the play might be to take the value on Trump. It would not shock me if he could do like 25 pushups somehow.

There should also be a cheeseburger-eating contest afterward for the gains. Neither party seems like they'd be particularly lightning fast like Joey Chestnut but they both seem stubborn enough to keep eating cheeseburgers well past the safety to prove a point.

Maybe one day.