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Did Biden Quit?
Given the headlines which say he did you might wonder why I ask if Biden has quit his attempt to get reelected.
But look at 'his' rather weird letter which was distributed via the Joe Biden campaign X/Twitter account.
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There is no official letterhead. The formulations are obviously not by Joe Biden and the signature looks canned.
I doubt this Politico account which claims that Biden posted the letter all by himself:
Steve Ricchetti, who’s been with Biden since his days in the Senate, drove to see the president at his house on the Delaware shore on Friday.
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In addition to presenting new concerns from lawmakers and updates on a fundraising operation that had slowed considerably, they carried the campaign’s own polls, which came back this week and showed his path to victory in November was gone …
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The only other people with Biden in the residence when he arose Sunday were first lady Jill Biden and two other trusted aides: deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini and assistant to the first lady Anthony Bernal. At 1:45 p.m., he notified a somewhat larger group of close aides that he had decided the night before to end his quest for another term, reading his letter and thanking them for their service. A minute later, before any other campaign and White House staffers could be notified, he posted the historic letter from his campaign account on the social media site X.
This says that Ricchetti, Biden's aide, wrote and posted the letter.
There was no speech and no press conference. People working on Biden's campaign had no pre-warning.
Biden allegedly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the new Democrat candidate for the presidency.
Let's remember that Harris, of Asian/Indian decent but playing black, is a former California prosecutor who failed in 2020 to get any votes in the primaries. Biden selected her as his vice because she was a woman of color not because she is a person fit for the job.
What does it say about a democracy when some obscure party functionaries and billionaire donors contradict the will of the primary voters and decide against another presidency for Joe Biden?
What does it say about a democracy when similar powers install a new candidate who is by no means qualified and has never received any votes?
Biden won the vote in 2020 because he was not-Trump and had enough big money donors and connections to survive the early primaries, which were won by Sanders (with Buttigieg a close second.) Then the built-in advantage of the primary system favoring the right kind of candidate kicked in. It’s doubtful Harris has much personal popularity. But then, VP, despite the oddest thoughts about Vance’s prospective rise to power, is not, not, not a position of power. But for the general, the thing is, Harris is also not-Trump. She is going to get votes, assuming the Democratic Party doesn’t explode so forcefully it cannot even nominate her. My guess is there will be enough Red State shenanigans in their counts to raise questions about the Electoral College, as in 2000. Blue States all have Reds taking part in the vote counting, making it more likely I think they will prevent the tactics the Reds will use in states where they are the de facto one party. I can even imagine Harris winning the EC but “losing” the popular vote overall due to Red thumbs on scales.
Expanding? The MoA commentariat is infested with Trump idolators but the simple fact is, millions of people despise Trump. And this is personal, not some crazy PMC/Deep State/woke conspiracy thing. Being a Trumper is very much like being the member of any other religious denomination, those who regularly attend the services and put money in the plate simply are not the majority. They are not even that representative of the bulk of religious people. The ones who believe in God but don’t go to church, don’t shell out when their pastor holds out his hand, don’t read the Bible, who just go to church for weddings and funerals are not in a bit hostile to the “real” Christians, but when confronted with a different religious denomination are put off by the holier-than-thou bigotry, as those lukewarm “spiritual” people might put it. And practically none of those other who aren’t militant and get turned off by militants, again, none of them are Satanists or Wiccans or atheistic Communists.
So far as I can tell, many militant Christians are confused by the loose and informal commitment of outsiders to their particular congregations that they confuse this sentimental attachment for genuine fellow travelers. Since it seems like everybody agrees, then they, the faithful, must be the real majority. They get outraged their (idiosyncratic) theology isn’t in power. They get even more outraged when society somehow keeps getting “woke” or whatever, women get divorced or Blacks vote or whatever national sin burns in their mouths, contriving mysterious conspiracies to explain the perversion of democracy where the majority, the true believers, are somehow stymied in their building of the New Jerusalem. Trumpers seem to imagine the same thing, they really are the majority, when they’re not. Hence they share the persecution mania, the self-pity at being martyred by not being listened to, despite their superior holiness. All I can say is, when anti-Christian tracts equivalent to, say, 1984, are required reading, they will at least have a case. To my eyes, as of now, they are just touchy. Trumpers have their own church and they seem to labor under the same misunderstanding, that rejection and condescension are persecution of the majority.
(For those who have installed their own memory hole, Biden won the South Carolina primary, which is to say, the majority of the Democratic Party vote in a small state that wasn’t going to vote for him in the general, which translated into, no point in the donor party wasting money on people like Buttigieg or worse, Sanders. One of the structural barriers enforcing the duopoly is the vital need for big bucks as essential building blocks in a marathon national campaign. Tagging the retail politicians who won Iowa and New Hampshire as losers dried up the flow. Campaigns that get enough small donations to go the distance are rare, very rare. Even with federal matching funds, big donations are cornerstones, or maybe, keystones. Plus the private campaign, the publicity from the mass media, is equally dominated by the wealthy, either as owners or as the customers. They of course suffocated Sander’s campaign under a blanket of silence, unlike their help to Trump, whose demented stream of unconsciousness was publicized. There’s a lot of truth to the old saying, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.)
Posted by: steven t johnson | Jul 22 2024 18:21 utc | 147
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