W.J. Astore

The Absurdity of Democratic “Strategy”

The vacuity of Democratic strategy is astonishing if you take at face value the claim that a Trump victory this November will “end democracy.” Apparently, Trump paying Stormy Daniels $130K in hush money, after which some creative accounting obscured the source of the payoff, renders him “unfit for office.” And that claim is now a “top 2024 issue” for Democrats, as The New York Times notes here:

Democrats Push Biden to Make Trump’s Felonies a Top 2024 Issue

Interviews with dozens of Democrats reveal a party hungry to tell voters that Donald Trump’s conviction makes him unfit for office, and hopeful that President Biden will lead the way.

Meanwhile, this was the lead headline in the NYT “top news” send-out this morning:

A Felon in the Oval Office Would Test the American System

Some are wondering how the Constitution’s checks and balances, meant to hold presidents accountable, would work if the next president elected were already a felon.

“Some are wondering”: What a vapid phrase!

I think there are more severe “tests” of the “American system.” How about a president enabling a genocide in Gaza, for example?

If you want to beat Donald Trump this November, how about running a more attractive, more dynamic, more charismatic, more populist and popular, candidate? Whatever else Biden is, he is very much lacking in dynamism even as his actions render him increasingly unpopular among key segments of the Democratic base.

My wife jokingly said today: Just what we need, another election featuring two tired and seriously old white guys. She has a point. It’s not that Trump is now a felon that renders him allegedly unfit. Trump is, in my view, constitutionally unsuited for the presidency. Biden, in contrast, is a fading political hack who will be 82 years of age at the end of this year. Yet, this is what the “American system” produces. Maybe that “system” needs an overhaul?

So, which tired and seriously old white guy do you want to vote for this year?

It seems hard to believe that in my lifetime we had a young, dynamic, and visionary president, JFK, who was 43 years of age when elected. A president who grew in office, rather than fading. A president who in 1963 made a commitment to pursuing peace with the Soviet Union. A man with flaws, but also one with potential.

Of course, the DNC with its superdelegates has created a system to deny anyone like a JFK (or even RFK Jr.) any chance at securing the nomination. Only corporate stooges need apply. That has allowed a populist-fraud like Trump to emerge from the right, a billionaire who poses as a man of the people. That Trump’s claim is plausible to so many is a measure of how far the Democratic Party has fallen.

It’s already been a very long election cycle, and it’s only early June. Five more months of total BS to go, America.