Biden, Shouting, Looks Good Compared to Cringe-inducing Republican Overacting
Let’s face it, the state of the union is scary. So should be the conclusion from last night’s disingenuous exercises in reading off teleprompters.
First, President Joe Biden. If the main qualification to be president is to walk without tripping, to stand for over an hour without falling, while reading somewhat fluidly from a teleprompter, I guess Biden is still qualified. I found this summary from Biden-friendly NBC News to be revealing:
Biden flubbed a few prepared lines and stumbled a bit during ad-libs — notably when he said drug prices in Moscow are lower than in the U.S. — but he belied the GOP caricature of him as an enfeebled old man who needs to retire.
“No one’s going to talk about cognitive memory now,” Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., told the president after he finished the speech and made his way out of the House chamber.
That was, of course, the idea when Biden’s speechwriters worked on the draft. The prepared text included 80 exclamation points — cuing Biden to when he needed to raise his voice and project strength. By contrast, there were no exclamation points in last year’s text.
Can somebody please tell me how cognitive memory is tested by reading from a prepared script? Also, can you imagine reading a speech with 80 (!) exclamation points embedded in it? No wonder Biden was shouting.
Incredibly, the Republican response was worse. Far worse! (Exclamation points are a virus.) Alabama Senator Katie Britt gave the response from a kitchen, but she couldn’t stand the heat of the moment. The speech was a master class in bad acting. It was so bad that it exceeded by light years the worst hamming of William Shatner in “Star Trek.” Judge for yourself:
If Katie Britt had spoken informally from her kitchen set about the rising cost of food, the difficulties of making ends meet, due to so-called Bidenomics, maybe she could have been effective. But this self-own was truly cringe-worthy.
Turning to content, Biden’s speech was replete with lies, half-truths, and misleading claims. Surprise! He’s a politician, after all. Lisa Savage does a great job of highlighting many of them here.
When all is read and done, America heard an experienced and angry old man competing with an amateurish younger woman over which one of them could mislead (certainly not lead) the American people best.
Oh for the days of JFK, Reagan, even Obama. At least they could deliver a speech. And without 80 exclamation points!
Today is Super Tuesday in America, where sixteen states go to the polls, including mine. At the presidential level, the expected winners are Joe Biden and Donald Trump, setting up a grim rematch of their 2020 contest, won by Biden, who campaigned mostly in Covid lockdown from his basement.
Down in the basement, we hear the sound of machines …
The revolution America needs, of course, isn’t going to take place at the ballot box. The big money and powerbrokers make sure of that. The DNC has acted to ensure a one-horse race for Biden, as Marianne Williamson has noted. Biden should perhaps be put out to pasture, if not sent to the glue factory, but the horse is not dead yet. Even if it stumbles to the finish line in November, losing to Trump, that’s still a win for the DNC, whose main job it is to ensure no progressive Democrat ever wins the nomination. No matter who wins in November, with Biden the DNC has already won.
On the Republican side, Trump should win easily over Nikki Haley, who’s basically a younger female version of Biden when it comes to fighting wars, kowtowing to Israel, and serving Wall Street and big finance. A conundrum in American politics is that a Con Man is the most genuine mainstream “big party” candidate, the one most likely to blurt out uncomfortable truths.
Speaking of Con Man Trump, he said something the other day that was so outrageously Trump that I had to laugh. Naturally, it was about immigrants (recall in 2015 how Trump said Mexico was sending drugs, crime, even rapists, to America, but “some I assume are good people”). This time he hit a Trumpian home run describingthe languages young immigrants speak in New York schools:
“Pupils [come] from foreign countries,” Trump explained, “from countries where they don’t even know what the language is. We have nobody that even teaches it. These are languages that nobody ever heard of.”
Something about “languages that nobody ever heard of” tickled my funny bone. OK, maybe if these young people were from previously uncontacted tribes deep in the Amazon rain forest, or perhaps from the lost island of Atlantis…
I know, maybe it’s not that funny, but if I couldn’t laugh I’d go insane, to quote the late great Jimmy Buffett.
Killing Russians and Palestinians–A Growth Industry for America
To sell the Biden administration’s $95 billion arms package (the big pieces are $60 billion to Ukraine and $14 billion to Israel), Democrats and Republicans alike are celebrating the fact that genocide in Gaza and more war in Ukraine will create jobs for Americans.
The honest (not used) slogan: Wars and genocide create jobs in America!
Of course, they don’t couch it quite this way. The $14 billion to Israel is touted as “defending Israel’s right to exist” and the $60 billion to Ukraine is sold as defending democracy in that country while thwarting evil Putin, a dictator “worse than Hitler.”
Yet, as an article in Politico put it back in October, as quoted in The Nation: “The White House has been quietly urging lawmakers in both parties to sell the war efforts abroad as a potential economic boom at home. Aides have been distributing talking points to Democrats and Republicans who have been supportive of continued efforts to fund Ukraine’s resistance to make the case that doing so is good for American jobs.”
Talk about a win-win! Creating jobs by killing and wounding Russians and Palestinians in large numbers. I’m finally proud to be an American, where at least I know I can profit prodigiously from other people’s pain and anguish.
Death—it’s a jobs program.
Sullivan and Blinken, more than willing to sell genocide and war as jobs programs
Selling this “jobs program” are diplomats and civilians like Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. I wrote about these two paragons of non-virtue soon after Joe Biden was elected president in November 2020. Here’s what I wrote then (citing some sharp-eyed critics):
At TomDispatch.com, Danny Sjursen gives a sharp-eyed summary of the typical Biden operative in the realm of military and foreign affairs. Here’s what Sjursen has to say:
In fact, the national security bio of the archetypal Biden bro (or sis) would go something like this: she (he) sprang from an Ivy League school, became a congressional staffer, got appointed to a mid-tier role on Barack Obama’s national security council, consulted for WestExec Advisors (an Obama alumni-founded outfit linking tech firms and the Department of Defense), was a fellow at the Center for New American Security (CNAS), had some defense contractor ties, and married someone who’s also in the game.
It helps as well to follow the money. In other words, how did the Biden bunch make it and who pays the outfits that have been paying them in the Trump years? None of this is a secret: their two most common think-tank homes — CNAS and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) — are the second- and sixth-highest recipients, respectively, of U.S. government and defense-contractor funding. The top donors to CNAS are Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and the Department of Defense. Most CSIS largesse comes from Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon.
With the news that Tony Blinken will be Biden’s Secretary of State, Caitlin Johnstone makes the following salient point:
Blinken is a liberal interventionist who has supported all of the most disgusting acts of US mass military slaughter this millennium, including the Iraq invasion which killed over a million people and ushered in an unprecedented era of military expansionism in the Middle East. So needless to say he will fly through the confirmation process.
Meanwhile, Julia Rock and Andrew Perez note the incestuous nature of this process, or how the national security revolving door keeps spinning:
On Sunday, Bloomberg reported that Biden has chosen his longtime aide, Tony Blinken, to serve as Secretary of State and will name Jake Sullivan, his senior advisor and a former Hillary Clinton aide, national security adviser. Former Obama Defense Department official Michèle Flournoy is considered the favorite to be Secretary of Defense.
After leaving the Obama administration, Blinken and Flournoy founded WestExec Advisors, a secretive consulting firm whose motto has been: “Bringing the Situation Room to the board room.” Flournoy and Sullivan have both held roles at think tanks raking in money from defense contractors and U.S. government intelligence and defense agencies.
Biden has been facing calls [Ha! Ha!] from Democratic lawmakers and progressive advocacy groups to end the revolving door between government and the defense industry. One-third of the members of Biden transition’s Department of Defense agency review team were most recently employed by “organizations, think tanks or companies that either directly receive money from the weapons industry, or are part of this industry,” according to reporting from In These Times.
Meanwhile, defense executives have been boasting about their close relationship with Biden and expressing confidence that there will not be much change in Pentagon policy.
Please forgive the “Ha! Ha!” parenthetical, but all this was predictable based on Biden’s record and his statement that nothing would fundamentally change in his administration …
Progressives have essentially no power in the Democratic Party. Look at who the Speaker of the House is! Nancy Pelosi, once again, the ultimate swamp creature.
Expect no new ideas from this bunch, meaning grim times are ahead…
My prediction in November 2020 that “grim times are ahead” was hardly a moment of psychic power. Sure, we didn’t know we’d have an ongoing genocide in Gaza and a godawful war of attrition in Ukraine, but we knew some bad decisions were going to be made by the likes of Biden, Blinken, and Sullivan. And so they have been made.
History teaches that you can have genocide without war, you can have war without genocide, and you can have war and genocide together. In Gaza today, the right-wing Israeli government is clearly engaged in a war on the Palestinian people that amounts to a genocide.
The horrific face of genocidal war
Of course, Israeli leaders claim they are engaged in a war against Hamas, and Hamas alone. Events, however, prove they are engaged in a genocidal war of annihilation.
A few harrowing data points: Israeli forces have already killed or wounded 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Journalist Chris Hedges reports that Israel:
has damaged or destroyed all 12 of Gaza’s universities. Some 280 government schools and 65 UNRWA-run schools have also been destroyed or damaged, often resulting in dozens of fatalities. About 133 remaining schools are used to shelter those displaced by the assault. More than 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes amid continued Israeli ground and air offensive that has killed more than 25,000 [now more than 28,000] people, including 10,000 [now more than 12,000] children.
Clearly, Israeli leaders are using war as a means of genocide, an excuse for it, as well as a form of camouflage for it. Don’t be deceived. War and genocide can and do coexist and feed off each other, as did the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews during World War II. As Israeli leaders readily admit to war while dissembling about genocide, at least they can be justly accused of war crimes while being held to international agreements governing the conduct of war, such as the Geneva Conventions.
Israel’s genocidal war, if left unchecked, will eliminate Gaza and its people. That is the stated intent of the Netanyahu government, which spouts the worst kind of eliminationist rhetoric, rhetoric that amounts to a “final solution to the Palestinian question.”
Any country that arms Israel in its genocidal war is complicit. Guess which country is clamoring to send another $14 billion in weaponry to Israel so it can pursue its war/genocide in Gaza? Yes: The United States of America.
In Gaza, both Hamas and Israel may act savagely and cruelly, but only one side truly has the means at its disposal to slaughter the other, and that side is Israel. Meanwhile, the mainstream media reserves words like “slaughter” for Hamas, even as Israeli forces kill Palestinians on a massive scale.
Clearly, the current strategy of the Israeli government is to destroy Gaza, making it uninhabitable, forcing the Palestinians in Gaza to leave or die.
When Israel is done in Gaza, they will turn to the West Bank. As Netanyahu said, Israel’s goal is to dominate Palestine “from the river to the sea.” Palestinians “in the way” are being killed, or starved, or expelled, or (if lucky) reduced to subjects under intolerable conditions of apartheid.
The Israeli government is getting away with this because it has the legal, military, and propaganda cover of the U.S. and much of Europe as well. The Biden administration complains about the worst excesses of Israel’s genocide while sending its leaders the weapons they need to continue the killing. Members of Congress like Nancy Pelosi suggest that earnest Americans calling for a ceasefire in Gaza are the useful idiots of Vladimir Putin.
It seemingly never occurs to Biden and Pelosi that they are the useful idiots of Bibi Netanyahu.
Stop the war in Gaza. Stop the genocide.
Postscript: The “Words About War” Team have posted ten suggestions for writing and talking more clearly, honestly, and accurately about Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. Please go to https://www.wordsaboutwar.org/gaza.html.
America desperately needs a new generation of leaders
President Biden sees dead people. Recently, Biden resuscitated François Mitterand, the former leader of France who died in 1996. He’s made references to Helmut Kohl as being Germany’s leader in 2021 (he died in 2017). Yesterday, he tried to reassure Americans his memory is just fine; it didn’t go well, as CNN reported this morning:
President Biden in a speech forcefully rejected what he said were inappropriate and incorrect statements about his memory lapses. But just minutes after defending his cognition, the president misspoke and called President of Egypt Abdel Fattah al-Sisi the “president of Mexico,” a moment that undercut his forceful pushback against the report.
The report CNN is referring to is by a special counsel who investigated Biden’s illegal holding of classified information. The special counsel decided not to charge or prosecute Biden, partly because he believed a jury would sympathize with the president, seeing him as an old, forgetful man who probably made an honest mistake due to his deteriorating memory and cognitive skills.
Here’s how the British Guardian reported this yesterday:
Special counsel worried jurors would see Biden ‘as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’
Special counsel Robert Hur wrote that he was concerned jurors would not believe that Joe Biden “willfully” kept classified documents, and that was one of the reasons why he does not think the president should face charges.
“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur writes.
“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him – by then a former president well into his eighties – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
Hur wrote that: “Mr. Biden’s memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023. And his cooperation with our investigation, including by reporting to the government that the Afghanistan documents were in his Delaware garage, will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully – that is, with intent to break the law – as the statute requires.”
Special counsel Robert Hur wrote that in an interview last year, Joe Biden struggled to recall key chapters in his personal and professional life:
In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (“if it was 2013 – when did I stop being Vice President?”), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (“in 2009, am I still Vice President?”). He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he “had a real difference” of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Eiden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.
Biden’s lack of ability to remember things would make it hard to prosecute him, Hur said:
We also expect many jurors to be struck by the place where the Afghanistan documents were ultimately found in Mr. Biden’s Delaware home: in a badly damaged box in the garage, near a collapsed dog crate, a dog bed, a Zappos box, an empty bucket, a broken lamp wrapped with duct tape, potting soil, and synthetic firewood.
A reasonable juror could conclude that this is not where a person intentionally stores what he supposedly considers to be important classified documents, critical to his legacy. Rather, it looks more like a place a person stores classified documents he has forgotten about or is unaware of. We have considered – and investigated – the possibility that the box was intentionally placed in the garage to make it appear to be there by mistake, but the evidence does not support that conclusion.
*************
Box of classified documents stored haphazardly in Biden’s garage (FBI photo, 12/21/22)
Now, it’s certainly possible that some of Biden’s memory lapses were tactical in nature, i.e. better to say “I don’t remember” rather than to lie or admit a mistake that could lead to criminal charges. Still, there’s been plenty of evidence, over the last several years, that Biden is under increasing mental and physical strain due to his age, not surprising for a president in his early eighties.
My criticism is not so much directed at Biden as the DNC and media sites like MSNBC that tell us that Biden is doing just fine, that he’s still on top of his game, that we shouldn’t worry at all about reelecting a president who would be 86 at the end of his term. That, based on the evidence before us, is total BS.
Also, my criticism of Biden and his age-related gaffes does not imply an endorsement of Trump. Far from it. Trump is no spring chicken; though four years younger than Biden, Trump has a family history of dementia and recently confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi.
Outspoken as usual, Caitlin Johnstone may have put it best: “A Dementia Patient Is President Because It Doesn’t Matter Who The President Is.” Real change in America will have to come from us. The so-called Deep State isn’t about to allow the election of anyone with fresh perspectives and a truly populist agenda.
America desperately needs a new generation of political leadership. Both Biden and Trump should be passing the torch to younger public servants who actually want to serve the working and middle classes. The rich, after all, can take care of themselves.
Then why is bombing the option that’s always chosen?
There they go again. The geniuses inside the DC Beltway are bombing the Middle East again, specifically 85+ targets in Iraq and Syria allegedly supported by Iran. It’s funny: I don’t recall a Congressional declaration of war against Iraq and Syria (or Iran, for that matter), but who needs to be limited by the U.S. Constitution, am I right?
After the recent attack that killed three U.S. soldiers, I heard again that hackneyed expression from DC that “all options are on the table” in response. Amazing how the option that’s always picked by U.S. presidents is the military one. If it’s not “bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran,” as John McCain once jokingly sang, it’s bomb Iranian-backed units in Iraq and Syria, because that’s the best way toward greater stability and peace in the Middle East. Perfectly logical.
Yes, he died in 2018, but he’s America’s most likely presidential winner in 2024.
Speaking of John McCain, I like the joke that’s making the rounds that no matter who Americans vote for as president, they get John McCain, which is a shorthand way of saying that the National Security State is the unofficial fourth and most powerful branch of the U.S. government. Or, if you prefer, the MICIMATT, the military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academe-think-tank complex.
Speaking of the media, you can always count on U.S. media talking heads issuing resounding hosannas to the highest whenever a U.S. president bombs a foreign country. Remember when reporters gushed that Donald Trump had finally become a real president in 2017 when he bombed Syria? Trump, who expressed his contempt for John McCain, finally became him—and earned the MICIMATT’s approval—when he started bombing and launching missiles to kill foreigners.
Finally, we often hear the expression from U.S. government-types that the only thing “they” understand is physical violence and war. It’s often far more accurate to say that the only thing “we” (the MICIMATT, that is) understand (and profit from) is physical violence and war.
For Democrats, it’s Trump; for Republicans, it’s immigrants; for Americans, it’s a wasteland
The 2024 presidential election: What a wasteland.
Democrats want to make the election about Donald Trump. And abortion access. Republicans want to make it about immigration. And Joe Biden’s fitness for office.
Please, for the love of Mike, make it stop.
The Bernie Sanders of 2016 is much missed. Sanders challenged war-hawk Hillary Clinton on issues that mattered to Americans. Issues like a $15 federal minimum wage. Affordable health care for all. Comprehensive student loan debt relief and more affordable college education. Policy proposals that actually helped working-class Americans. Those issues are now dead in 2024.
Foreign policy is especially bleak. The Biden administration is enabling genocide in Israel; most Republicans fully support this. Biden is planning a military strike of some sort against Iran; most Republicans are urging him to strike harder. The bipartisan consensus in DC is to rubber-stamp whatever Bibi Netanyahu wants, to give the Pentagon everything it wants, and to pursue more wars overseas. The only debate is over which foreign country is more dangerous to America. China? Russia? Iran? Maybe even North Korea? It doesn’t matter. The result is the same: more money for war, no money for peace.
I can’t recall an election season less connected to the concerns of middle- and working-class Americans. Democrats are fundraising by stressing fears about Trump and abortion access; Republicans are fundraising off fears of America being swamped by immigrants due to the Democrats’ “open border” policy.
Meanwhile, this is a sample of headlines from mainstream media coverage of the election, taken from NBC News this morning:
Where are the issues that matter to Americans? The “cash dash” is what matters to NBC, not issues like health care, wages, inflation, personal and national debt, the availability of affordable housing, mental health care, and so on.
Meanwhile, I can’t recall the last time I saw an article in the mainstream media that seriously argued for major reductions to Pentagon spending and concerted efforts in diplomacy instead of constant warmongering and weapons exports.
Trump-Biden is a wasteland. Don’t vote for the tools and fools. Find candidates who actually want to help America without killing massive numbers of foreigners overseas.
The Costs of Blanket Support of Israel and Ukraine
This morning, three headlines caught my eye from the various news sources I subscribe to. The first came from Reuters: “Israeli tanks batter hospital districts” in Gaza. Here’s the short synopsis from Reuters:
Israeli forces relentlessly bombarded areas around two hospitals in Gaza’s main southern city Khan Younis, pinning down large numbers of displaced people, residents said, in an offensive to take Hamas’ main stronghold in the enclave’s south. Follow the latest on the conflict.
The United Nations said that Israeli tanks struck a huge U.N. compound in Gazasheltering displaced Palestinians, causing “mass casualties.” Israel denied its forces were responsible and suggested Hamas may have launched the shelling. The attack prompted rare outright condemnation from the United States.
The second headline came from CNN and also focused on Gaza: “Red Cross warns of complete medical shutdown in Gaza.” Here’s a short synopsis of that story:
The Red Cross has warned that Gaza faces a complete medical shutdown unless immediate action is taken to safeguard essential services. “Every functioning hospital in the Gaza Strip is over-crowded and short on medical supplies, fuel, food and water,” said William Schomburg, the head of the Red Cross office in Gaza. This comes as Israeli forces have insisted that Hamas systematically operates in Gaza hospitals and adjacent areas, “using the residents as human shields.” Meanwhile, a United Nations building sheltering displaced Palestinians was hit by Israeli tank fire on Wednesday, killing at least 12 people and injuring 75 others. The White House said it is “gravely concerned” by the strike as Israel pushes forward with its military campaign.
It’s nice to know the U.S. government is “gravely concerned” even as it sends more tank shells to Israel so that the destruction of Gaza and its hospitals can continue apace.
The third headline came from journalist Aaron Maté and focuses on the almost forgotten war in Ukraine: “Biden’s $60 billion plan for Ukraine: prolong the war through 2024: As US weapons shipments to Ukraine dry up, Biden’s $60 billion request faces new hurdles in Washington.”
And then I saw this image on Twitter/X. Given the horrendous events in Gaza, this satirical image doesn’t seem that extreme to me:
Biden’s unequivocal support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza gives the lie to the concept of a “rules-based order” that America allegedly upholds and protects. As Biden expresses his “grave concern” about Israeli war crimes in Gaza, he keeps sending the weapons that make possible the very crimes he allegedly deplores. At the same time, his administration is opening a new front in this war with its deadly attacks on Yemen. Biden has said the bombing raids against Yemen aren’t stopping attacks on shipping even as he vows to continue them.
Meanwhile, Biden continues to fight for at least $60 billion for Ukraine in a stalemated war that’s killing untold thousands of Ukrainians and Russians. The aid that Biden wants to send this year won’t end that war; it won’t even give Ukraine a decisive edge. Most experts believe this aid will merely prolong the fighting, meaning more destruction and dead bodies on both sides.
The Biden administration’s embrace of genocide in Gaza and brutal indecisive war in Ukraine highlights the moral bankruptcy of its foreign policy. On the campaign trail, Biden is increasingly being confronted by protesters calling him out for his brutal and militaristic foreign policy. “Genocide Joe” is a nickname that stings because there’s truth in it.
When the main message of the Biden campaign is “Vote for Joe because Trump’s worse” and yet Joe’s latest nickname is linked to genocide, it doesn’t bode well for electoral victory in November.
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.
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.
Bracing Views 