Surprise! The results are in from New Hampshire and Donald Trump won a clear victory over Nikki Haley and Joe Biden won with write-in votes. Dean Phillips (Biden 2.0) was a distant second and Marianne Williamson a disappointing third. Interestingly, even though Phillips had a respectable showing, the Democratic chair in New Hampshire suggested he should drop out of the race to ensure a Biden/Harris victory in November. In short, there should be no alternative to Biden/Harris because that’s how democracy works best!
A “strong second” for “scrappy” Haley?
Nikki Haley, though losing in NH, did fairly well because a lot of independent and “undeclared” voters decided to cast their lot with her. Trump, exit polls show, held a commanding lead among self-identified Republican and conservative voters. Trump commands the base, the most strongly committed Republican voters, so it’s difficult to imagine a path for Haley to the nomination.
Trump versus Biden redux is looking very likely for 2024, a Caligula versus Nero scenario for the new Roman Empire. I get to cast my primary vote on Super Tuesday early in March, and the only thing I’m certain of is that I won’t be voting for Trump or Biden.
Never has it been so glaringly obvious that America needs an alternative to the duopoly and the “choices” it provides for POTUS.
America may be deeply in debt, but we the people of the United States are totally bankrupt politically.
Iowa and New Hampshire get sidelined in the cause of propping up Joe Biden
This past week’s Iowa Caucuses ended with a clear winner, Donald Trump, over the undynamic duo of Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. Meanwhile, nothing happened on the Democratic side. The same is likely to be true next week, when New Hampshire goes to the polls. The DNC is refusing to recognize the NH primary; Joe Biden isn’t even on the ballot, though there is a campaign to write-in his name.
You’re not doing America (or “democracy”) favors by propping them up
The first primary that matters according to the DNC is South Carolina on 2/3, followed by Nevada on 2/6 and Michigan on 2/27. These states are supposedly more representative for the Democratic Party than Iowa and NH, meaning they are more racially and ethnically diverse, though to my mind any candidate running for president should be seeking to put his or her best foot forward in all fifty states. No matter. Apparently, the DNC believes this is the best way to shore up support for the Biden/Harris ticket.
Perhaps the DNC is right, but their plan has a serious drawback. If the DNC had kept the old schedule of Iowa and NH, and Biden had performed poorly in both states, it would have allowed the DNC more notice and time to pivot, or perhaps to craft a message more appealing to voters. Privileging states that are expected to support Biden, in contrast, may breed overconfidence that his support remains strong and his candidacy remains viable against the clear Republican frontrunner, Trump.
If you really want to defeat Trump in November, you need the most rigorous vetting process for the Biden/Harris ticket. Rigging the primaries for Biden by deleting Democratic rivals from the ballot, as the DNC has done in Florida, North Carolina, and elsewhere, while effectively throwing out results in Iowa and NH, may ensure both that Biden/Harris win renomination and lose the general election in November.
At which point the DNC will likely blame Jill Stein, RFK Jr., Susan Sarandon, Vladimir Putin, and white supremacists, instead of blaming themselves for putting forward a losing ticket.
Trump is not to be underestimated. The time to discover that Biden/Harris just don’t have it is now, not in October. If Trump is THE existential threat to democracy that the Democrats claim he is, why are the Democrats rigging the field to put forward what may prove to be a weak and losing ticket against him?
A friend of mine thinks Joe Biden has a strong chance of winning reelection in November. He thinks the economy will continue to get better and that Donald Trump may yet be convicted of, well, something. I am far more skeptical about Biden’s chances of victory this fall. Here’s what I wrote to him this morning:
You’re betting on an improving economy and the conviction of Trump as the catalysts for another Biden win. To me, economic growth is very uneven, with an “improving” economy measured mainly by the performance of Wall Street. Few benefits are trickling down to the working classes. Meanwhile, we don’t know if Trump will be convicted of anything; also, I don’t think a conviction that’s seen as politically motivated will hurt Trump. If anything, depending on the conviction and its seriousness, it could even help him.
The largest bloc of voters are those Americans who don’t vote. You have to give people a reason to get off their duffs and vote for you. For Obama, it was “hope” and “change” and idealism. Biden won in 2020 because of the pandemic and Trump’s incompetent leadership. In 2024, Biden is increasingly “Genocide Joe” for youth and progressives; he’s taking his own base for granted, thinking that people will opt for him over Trump because the latter is too divisive.
But what may happen is that Democrats and Independents just stay home, or vote third party, while Trump loyalists show up at the polls.
We can bookmark this conversation if you wish and come back to it this November. We are, after all, trying to predict the future. My guess is that Biden loses; you’re guessing he’s going to win. We’ll see.
I also believe that if Trump wins, the DNC will blame the voters rather than the weakness of the Biden/Harris ticket. I’m sure Putin will also be blamed, as will any 3rd-party candidates like Stein of RFK Jr. The DNC will then fundraise off of fear of Trump. No matter what, the DNC will win. What counts as a “loss” for the DNC is allowing a progressive to run.
It’s some “democracy” we live in when voters are shamed for voting for someone other than Joe Biden. (The Trumpers, of course, are universally dismissed as irredeemable deplorables.) So I know I will be shamed for not voting for Joe (or the Don) this November.
As Yoda the Jedi Master said: “Difficult to see. Always in motion the future.” I just don’t see a lot of enthusiasm for Biden. I see Biden as a figurehead of Neo-liberal economic policies at home and Neo-conservative war policies abroad. Otherwise known as Dickensian conditions for the working classes here and lots of bombs and artillery shells falling on “foreign” peoples of color.
Meanwhile, I doubt the DNC will allow Biden to appear in any presidential debates. Too risky. Biden will largely “campaign” by reading from teleprompters at carefully staged appearances.
The shadow of Trump looms again (photo from 2020)
Biden, to state the obvious, is not in his prime. If reelected, he’ll be 82 and will serve until he’s 86. Voters have legitimate concerns about his health and his endurance. Meanwhile, his vice president, Kamala Harris, isn’t popular and lends little credibility to the ticket. It doesn’t bode well.
I already had four years of Trump; they were more than enough for me. I’ve had three years of Biden and they’ve been more than enough. Yet the RNC and DNC want to offer me a Trump/Biden rematch, and I just can’t stomach it.
MLK recognized the evils of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism
Martin Luther King, Jr., hero for peace.
It’s sad that the word “hero” is so often modified by or married to “war” in history. He’s a war hero, we say, without giving it too much thought. As if wars are somehow ennobling and sublime.
Waging peace is far more noble than waging war. MLK Jr. recognized this in his famous speech against the Vietnam War on April 4, 1967. Back in 2015, I posted this article on MLK and his warning that America was close to suffering a spiritual death in its constant warmongering. Today, we see America enabling genocide by Israel in Gaza with nary a complaint from those in power. Spiritual death, indeed.
*****
On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. gave a powerful speech (“Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence”) that condemned America’s war in Vietnam. Exactly one year later, he was assassinated in Memphis.
What follows are excerpts from MLK’s speech. I urge you to read it in its entirety, but I’d like to highlight this line:
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
MLK called for a revolution of values in America. In his address, he noted that:
There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.
MLK didn’t just have a dream of racial equality. He had a dream for justice around the world, a dream of a world committed to peace, a world in which America would lead a reordering of values in the direction of universal brotherhood.
Both of MLK’s dreams remain elusive. Racial inequalities and biases remain, though America is better now than it was in the 1960s in regards to racial equity. And what of a commitment to peace? Sadly, America remains dedicated to war, spending nearly a trillion dollars yearly on defense, Homeland Security, nuclear weapons, and “overseas contingency operations,” i.e. wars.
America has failed to dream the dreams of Martin Luther King, Jr., and we are the worse for it. (Bolded passages below are my emphasis.)
Excerpts from MLK’s Speech on Vietnam, April 4, 1967
At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called “enemy,” I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak of the — for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours…
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war…
It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin…we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
Perhaps it seemed in 1967, even to MLK Jr., with all his experience to the contrary, that America could lead the world in a revolution of values, a pursuit of peace. MLK’s dream of such a revolution is dead, drowned in the vast profits of the merchants of death.
The bizarre opening weeks of the Democratic primary season
Democracy, President Joe Biden has said, is on the ballot this year. But often his Democratic rivals won’t be on the ballot, nor is Biden himself officially on the ballot in New Hampshire in two weeks. (Indeed, the DNC refuses to sanction, i.e. support, the NH primary.) What gives?
Next week (1/15), the Iowa caucus for president is being held for Republicans and Democrats. Apparently, official results for Democrats won’t be available until March. Then there’s the famous New Hampshire primary, always the first in the country and this year on 1/23; Biden’s name isn’t even on the ballot for Democrats there.
The first Democratic primary that apparently counts for the DNC is in South Carolina on 2/3. Why is that?
You’ll recall that in 2020 Biden lost the Iowa caucuses to Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg. In New Hampshire in 2020, Biden came in a distant fifth. But he was able to win in South Carolina with a big push from Barack Obama and Congressman James Clyburn, a major powerbroker in SC, even as other candidates like Buttigieg were pressured to drop out and throw their support to Joe. (Buttigieg’s reward was a cabinet post as Secretary of Transportation for which he is eminently unqualified.)
The fix is in for Biden in 2024, to state the obvious. Iowa and New Hampshire are both being sidelined because the DNC knows Biden is vulnerable in these states. But South Carolina, the DNC believes, can be controlled, can be counted on for a decent showing for Old Joe. Thus South Carolina was moved up in the 2024 primary calendar precisely to demonstrate allegedly strong support for Joe.
This weekend, Biden was in South Carolina, the only primary that seems to matter
I was listening to a podcast with Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn as they discussed some of these Democratic (but not democratic) machinations:
Matt Taibbi: And by the way, not just with Trump, with people like Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips. I mean, they just got wiped off the ballot in Florida, which seems crazy to me. Then there were these other machinations going on in the Democratic side with New Hampshire and Iowa. The Iowa caucus results. The Iowa caucus is the easiest thing in the world. It used to be the simplest, most beautiful, I think, expression of democracy in America. You could go to it. You could sit there and watch people argue and horse-trade and do all that stuff, and everybody would move to one side of the gym, and then there’d be other crowds in other places.
And then at the end of the night, they would call up one phone number and there would be a human being at the other end of the line who would tabulate a pretty small number of districts, and you would get a result. And there’s absolutely no reason why that should take a lot of time. Now, they’re announcing that they’re not even going to have results for the Iowa caucus until March 15th or some ridiculous thing.
Walter Kirn: Who announced that?
Matt Taibbi: Iowa.
I hadn’t heard that Biden’s two main Democratic challengers, Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips, had been “wiped off the ballot in Florida.” But it’s true: Biden’s name was the only one submitted by party apparatchiks there.
Biden just might win the Democratic primary in Florida. Ah, sweet victory, and against such long odds!
As Biden claims “Democracy is on the ballot” in 2024, the DNC and establishment Democrats are doing everything in their power to deny democratic choices to their voters.
Are you confused? Deflated? Tired of the BS? Look over there: Trump! Bad! Vote for Joe: he’ll save “democracy” from Trump!
As my dad taught me, sometimes you have to laugh to hide the tears.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin went into the hospital both before Christmas and on New Year’s Day, apparently not informing the White House and Congress on either occasion. Other than the president as commander-in-chief, SecDef Austin is the senior civilian in the U.S. military’s chain of command.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin looks on during a joint press conference with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at Israel’s Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, Israel December 18, 2023. REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura/File Photo
Austin’s medical condition is serious, most recently requiring four days in an intensive care unit. A blindsided president has already declared he won’t fire Austin, nor will Austin resign. No big deal, then?
I’m amazed. One of the first and most valuable lessons I learned in the military was to keep your boss informed. Tell her if the project is behind schedule. Tell him if you’re missing critical spares that would hamper the combat performance of your unit. Don’t let your boss be blindsided. Most obviously, under combat conditions, failing to keep your boss informed of critical information is an almost certain way to get your people killed.
When I was a lieutenant, I served on the “battle staff” for exercises in Cheyenne Mountain. This was in 1986 at the tail end of the Cold War. During one exercise, a friend of mine, another LT, witnessed the commanding four-star general chewing out a colonel on his staff. The colonel had failed to tell the general that AWACS planes were unavailable during the exercise. (Remember, this was an exercise, i.e. “fake.”) My friend told me the general reamed the colonel a new one for failing to inform him of what in wartime would have been a critical piece of information.
Lloyd Austin, it seems, has been MIA for several days without keeping his immediate superior, Joe Biden, in the loop, potentially threatening the national security of our country. Yet Austin has no plans to resign and Biden has no plans to take action.
It’s a bad example to our military that something so critical as a failure to respect the chain of command is being dismissed as a trivial matter. A blindsided Biden should not turn a blind eye here. If Austin has honor, he should resign to avoid further embarrassment to his boss. If he doesn’t, Biden should fire him.
Incremental Genocide and Displacement and Replacement in Gaza
Courtesy of OpenSecrets.org, I saw a chart on AIPAC contributions to U.S. senators that showed that all 100 senators have taken AIPAC money. Leading the way are senate “giants” like Mitch McConnell (nearly two million dollars) and Chuck Schumer (roughly $1.7 million). Talk about bipartisanship! I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the U.S. Senate is so strongly pro-Israel. It obviously has nothing to do with the power of AIPAC and all that money.
Bipartisanship and no divisiveness. Who says we have a dysfunctional and divided Congress? Nonsense!
Here’s how AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) describes itself on its own web site:
The Largest Pro-Israel PAC in America
WE STAND with those who stand with Israel. The AIPAC PAC is a bipartisan, pro-Israel political action committee. It is the largest pro-Israel PAC in America and contributed more resources directly to candidates than any other PAC. 98% of AIPAC-backed candidates won their general election races in 2022.
That last sentence is a killer. AIPAC is reminding Members of Congress that if you want to be elected, or win reelection, you very much want AIPAC on your side. And if you don’t kowtow to their agenda, they will do everything in their power to defeat you.
Imagine if there was an American Palestine Public Affairs Committee, an APPAC, that contributed hundreds of thousands if not millions to every U.S. senator and that boasted of a 98% success rate in getting APPAC-anointed candidates elected or reelected. Do you think maybe the U.S. Senate would have a different position on Gaza and the West Bank?
Speaking of Gaza, I watched Chris Hedges interview Ilan Pappé, an Israeli historian. Pappé put it simply and clearly: Israel is engaged in “incremental genocide” against the Palestinian people, a genocide in slow motion, a strategy of “displacement and replacement.” The “displacement” of the Palestinians is done by mass bombing, mass destruction, mass death, and (hopefully for the Israelis) mass migration, and the “replacement” will come when Jewish settlers take possession of Gaza (after a lot of munitions cleanup and infrastructure redevelopment, I suppose, probably paid for by the U.S. taxpayer).
There’s an Orwellian term for this. For mass death followed by forced expulsion, Israel is using the term “voluntary migration” (or “voluntary” emigration). But of course there is nothing “voluntary” about any of this.
If U.S. government officials appear clueless about what’s happening in Gaza, they’re not. They’re just bought and paid for.
Yesterday, Joe Biden kicked off his reelection campaign by visiting Valley Forge and echoing the dark times of George Washington in 1777-78 during the American Revolutionary War. In a campaign speech that lasted about 30 minutes, Biden declared that “Democracy is on the ballot,” by which he meant Trump is on the ballot. Biden denounced Trump and his MAGA supporters for the “insurrection” they launched on January 6, 2021, when “hell was unleashed” at the Capitol. We nearly lost America on that date, Biden opined, due to the Trump-inspired “violent assault” on democracy.
As a teenager, I loved to collect stamps, just like FDR did
Going further, Biden described Trump as “sick” and “despicable” and noted how recent language about “vermin” and “poison” echoed that of Nazi Germany. Trump and MAGA, Biden said, seek to “bury history” (or “steal” it) and “ban books,” with Trump himself being a sore loser who refused to admit defeat. Biden reminded the audience that being president is about duty and service to your country, including the willingness to walk away peacefully, relinquishing power gracefully when you lose.
All in all, it was a coherent speech that Biden read competently from the teleprompter. He occasionally came across as angry, especially when shouting for emphasis, but overall Biden, though he looked his age, appeared to be committed and engaged.
To me, the main problem with Biden’s speech was that it focused almost entirely on Trump. The essence was “Trump bad,” therefore vote for me, Joe Biden, to secure America’s future, with that “future” left entirely unspecified. The Trump future would be violent, racist, and divisive, marked by vitriol and vengeance, so Biden claimed. A Biden future wouldn’t be that, apparently, but no other details were offered. Biden offered no positive vision.
Biden closed his speech with the usual boilerplate: that America is “the greatest nation on the face of the earth” and “the greatest nation in the history of the world.” Biden said “We know America is winning,” but what exactly we’re winning was left unspecified. Rhetorically, Biden asked “Who are we?” then enjoined us “Just remember who we are.” Huh? Then he said we’re the people who emerge stronger after every crisis. Does that mean we should wish for another Trump crisis so we can emerge stronger still?
Finally, Biden used a phrase that Hillary used to use for us commoners: “everyday people.” Remember when presidents used to say, my fellow Americans, when addressing us? Now we’re “everyday people” as opposed to what, exactly? Someday people? In Washington, I gather there are special people, the elites, the best and brightest, like Joe Biden, and then there are the masses, the everyday people, like you and me.
And I think that’s a big problem for the Beltway crowd: the “everyday people” might just prefer Trump and the chaos he represents. Come November, we’ll find out.
Another “emergency” shipment of arms to Israel: What a way to end the year! First, the Biden administration sent $106 million in tank shells to Israel without Congressional approval. Now, the government is sending $147.5 million in fuses, charges, etc. to Israel for 155mm artillery shells, also without Congressional approval. Mind you, Hamas doesn’t have tanks or heavy artillery, so these shipments aren’t for “defense.” Tank and artillery shells are really for one thing: urban destruction. Artillery is the very definition of an area weapon, i.e. imprecise. Yet, even as the Biden administration sends this weaponry to Israel, which will enable more killing on a mass scale, it expresses concern that Israel is ethnically cleansing too fast, killing too many innocent civilians too quickly.
Along with bombs, this is what tanks and artillery shells are good for
You can’t have it both ways, obviously. You can’t send heavy calibre weaponry to Israel and then complain when they use it. And to justify this aid as an “emergency” for America’s national defense interests! If democratic processes can be bypassed simply by declaring an emergency that clearly doesn’t exist, there is no democracy. Thanks for making that obvious, Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, Gaza continues to be pounded into rubble. Casualties there will soon exceed 100,000 as nearly half a million Palestinians begin to starve. The Israeli/US end game is clear: render Gaza uninhabitable, forcing the Palestinians to make a choice: leave or die.
The two self-declared democracies of Israel and the USA are combining to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians with the goal of incorporating its territory into Israel. Now I know why the world hates us: for our freedoms, right?
How can Israel commit such a crime? I suggest you watch the interview below with Gideon Levy, who explains it plainly and succinctly. As he notes:
Israeli Jews generally believe they are God’s Chosen People.
Israeli Jews generally believe they are the real victims here (the Holocaust; Hamas attacks).
Palestinians have been dehumanized as barbarians, as worse than animals.
The Chosen People, the eternal victims, are tired of the beasts in Gaza and are getting rid of them, one way or another.
“We [Israelis] live in denial,” Levy says. Ignorance is combined with nationalism. Most Israelis simply don’t want to know what their government is doing in their name. To that end, media coverage in Israel is entirely one sided; the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza is almost never shown. The only people who suffer are Jews.
To Israelis, life is precious and dear; but Israel acts to show Palestinians their lives are cheap. Gaza, Levy says, was a “cage” for the Palestinians living there; Israel has now decided to empty that cage.
Levy has no illusions about the nature of the Israeli government under Bibi Netanyahu, which he calls a brutal dictatorship. And, if we accept him at his word, for he is an Israeli Jew who knows his country, America is aiding a brutal dictatorship in its goal of clearing the Gaza ghetto irrespective of the cost in lives of innocents.
What does that make the Biden administration? What does that make us?
Note: the video link below contains a warning about graphic material. It’s apparently designed to discourage viewing. There is nothing “graphic” about this video except the truths that Levy speaks.
News that the Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that Trump is ineligible to be included on the presidential ballot due to his encouragement of and participation in “insurrection” during the January 6th Capitol riot is being greeted as tidings of comfort and joy in many quarters, especially among Democrats facing lengthening odds in the 2024 election. Is this the way to beat Trump: to bar him from the ballot due to his alleged crimes against the Constitution and the country?
Readers of Bracing Views know that I’m not a Trump supporter, nor for that matter do I support Joe Biden. Trump, I wrote back in March of 2016, disqualified himself from office when he boasted during a debate that U.S. troops would follow his orders irrespective of their legality. The man is most definitely an ignoramus and therefore is a menace to himself and to others.
That said, being an ignoramus is not disqualifying for the presidency.
After a swift appeal, I’d wager the U.S. Supreme Court will reverse the decision of the Colorado Court, putting Trump back on the ballot. What then?
I think it’s relatively easy to defeat Trump in November 2024: run a candidate whose views and deeds correspond to the views and desires and priorities of the vast majority of Americans. The working and middle classes.
Cartoons like this one are frankly unconvincing
If I were a candidate for the presidency, and wanted to maximize my vote vis-a-vis Trump, here are a few things I’d support:
Higher wages for American workers. A hike in the federal minimum wage to at least $15 an hour.
Health care for all. Use the common wealth for common health.
“Free” college education at state colleges and universities. (By “free,” I mean subsidized at a tolerable level for students, with tuition and fees capped at $2000 a year.)
Legalization of marijuana for personal use across the USA.
Criminal justice reform that would greatly reduce the number of non-violent offenders held in prison.
Major reductions in military spending and a commitment to peace and diplomacy.
With the hundreds of billions saved from reductions in war spending, a major commitment to rebuilding American infrastructure, including the creation of a new Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) tied to alleviating damage due to climate change.
An end to divisive rhetoric and talk of “deplorables” and “blue and red” America. A national celebration of and renewed commitment to the U.S. Constitution.
The salute of brave people willing to inform Americans of crimes being committed in their name. The return of Edward Snowden to America and a celebration of his patriotism and service to America. The pardon and release of Daniel Hale from prison. The dropping of all charges against Julian Assange. A commitment to freedom of speech, the press, and indeed of all Constitutional rights.
Privacy for the people; transparency for the government.
That’s ten positions that I believe would garner the support of a majority of Americans in the 2024 election.
The problem is that the main rival to Trump in 2024, Joe Biden, is a “nothing will fundamentally change” guy who lacks the will, energy, and wherewithal to motivate and unify the American people behind these and similar popular positions.
What does Biden have going for him? Well, he’s not Trump. That’s seemingly the beginning and the end of Democratic messaging. And it’s not enough. Which is why Democrats are so excited about the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling.
That court ruling isn’t going to stop Trump. What will stop Trump is a candidate of courage and conviction who truly wants to serve the people. All the people, equally. The obstacle to be overcome is a Washington establishment, including most especially the corporate owners and donors, the big money people, that is determined to block any candidate or any party that is truly dedicated to the Constitution and to the needs of the people writ large.
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