Jesus. Even in the moment of donald trump's self-crowning - with an oversized bandage on his ear and every lapdog at his feet - at an overtly racist and sexist RNC, the Democratic Party cannot get out of their own way.
WaterGirl over at Balloon Juice is feeling the same frustration I am about the Dem party leadership buying into the mainstream media freakout and getting caught in more rumor-mongering to force Joe Biden to step down from the 2024 re-election bid:
I am heartsick at the spiraling anxiety, and angry at the own-goals. This madness needs to stop – if not in the media, then at least in Balloon Juice threads that I put up.
So until something changes, this will be my last post related to “Biden, will he or won’t he, should he or shouldn’t he”.
We are wasting so much time and energy on this, at a time when there is so much work to be done. There is so much work to be done. So much work, and so little time.
I’m sure there will still be plenty of Balloon Juice threads where anyone who wants to can continue to endlessly hash this out, with both sides endlessly repeating the same things, over and over, sincere people and trolls, alike. But I’m done. And I’m pretty sure the other side is laughing...
This panic - which echoes a lot of the Dem panic from 2004 when they worried Howard Dean was more vulnerable than John Kerry all because Karl Rove made them second-guess themselves - isn't doing them any favors. It's feeding into the Beltway narrative of "Dems In Disarray" and is going to upset / discourage millions of primary voters who already sided with Biden as their choice.
If anybody is thrilled to the idea of an "open convention" this August, please punch yourself in the face. This 2024 primary season didn't present the party with any strong alternatives to Biden, and such a convention between up-and-comers like Governors Newsom or Whitmer or some third person suddenly flush with questionable dark money will turn bloody and divisive, which once again favors the goddamn trumpsters.
Anybody thinking that things will get easier if Biden steps aside for his Vice President Kamala Harris need to remember just how racist the mainstream media let the Republicans play it when it was Obama as the candidate in 2008 and 2012, and will just as easily allow trump and his cohort to attack Harris over the same goddamn racist dog-whistles bullhorns. And Harris is going to face the same kind of sexism that Hillary faced in 2016, by the same mainstream media that cannot overcome their own misogyny when dealing with "ambitious women" as candidates. You know how many reporters are itching to jump on the stories that came out during 2020 about the bad blood within Harris' primary campaign back then, eager to pull that same shit if she becomes the ticket headliner?
We've gotten 81 million voters to side with Biden in 2020 and a supermajority (90 percent or more) of primary voters to stick with Biden against the likes of Dean Phillips (a conservative congresscritter who got talked into undermining party incumbancy), and yet the Democratic party leadership is getting brow-beaten by a hostile Beltway media desperate to keep their horserace and "Dems in Disarray" narratives going until November.
There's a reason why I've got "Democrats Are Cowards" as a blog label, and you're watching it as it happens. Goddamn them.
Man up. Support Biden, here and NOW. Get the vote out. Get those 81 million voters back. Get every man and woman who supports abortion rights. Get every man and woman who opposes even one tidbit of that hideous Project 2025 agenda. Get every American voting for a unified Democratic Party.
For the LOVE OF GOD. Turning on each other now does not help.
1 comment:
I read that Obama is saying Biden should stand down, although I don't know for sure if it is true. All I can say is that if it is true, I hope they know what the hell they are doing.
The only real alternative is Harris, and we all know how America treats female candidates for president. She would probably make a fine president, as that job generally requires some of the characteristics she used to display as a prosecutor, but I have more concerns about her (or any other female) being able to win the election than I do about her fitness for the job, which is a damn sad state of affairs, really.
That said, I was a Warren supporter in the 2020 primary, so I must feel on some level that a woman could win.
I just remember Melissa Harris Perry after the 2016 election being angry that Biden didn't run that time because his son had just died: "White women vote their race over their gender." is what she said at the time. Can project 2025 and the fall of Roe reverse that enough to make history? Are we willing to risk it? I would be more comfortable just fighting like hell to re-elect our president, but my comfort is not the top factor in anyone's electoral strategy...
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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