Democrats don't lose elections, they throw them away.
Yeoman.
July 10, 2024
House Democrats met privately yesterday with a majority of those who spoke expressing the opinion that Joe Biden needs to drop out of the race. Sen. Michael Bennet became the first Senator to do the same, noting; “Donald Trump is on track, I think, to win this election, and maybe win it by a landslide, and take with him the Senate and the House"
That he get out is obvious.
Biden has defiantly been refusing to do so.
It's nearly a symbol of his generation, one which simply won't yield when prior generations did. This pattern repeats itself everywhere in current American society.
In other news, it was revealed that Biden cancelled an early evening meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during the G7 conference as he had to go to bed. The same source reports that he had trouble working outside of the 10 to 4 time frame.
More locally, out of state lobbying group Make Liberty Win has been sending around mailers on candidates it endorses noting them as "100% pro gun", a pretty absurd claim in a state in which every candidate can claim the same thing. For the most part, the endorsed candidates are from the far right, with one single exception.
I looked up one candidate on their flyer that I received. The candidate indicated that he though Reagan and Trump were the two greatest Presidents the country had ever had. What a jarring comment. While I feel that Ronald Reagan, who was a much more cynical campaigner than people want to believe, can be blamed for the rise of the populists were now experiencing, he was a true conservative, a relatively decent President, and a necessary economic correction for the time. He was also not afraid to use American power overseas. Trump's a liar whose embraced populism and isolationism. I don't really see the two of them getting along well, if they were in a private room discussing politics, or in a debate.
Congressman Hageman has indicated that she's spoken to Donald Trump about drug problems on the Wind River Reservation. This is a topic that needs to be addressed, but it is a symptom of our current politics that an incumbent Congressman would discuss a current problem with a prospective chief executive, rather than the current one.
July 11, 2020
George Clooney wrote an op ed in The New York Times urging President Biden to drop out of the race.
I really debated posting this item here as, by and large, I really don't care what celebrities have to say about anything whatsoever. But ultimately, I decided to note this as Clooney, who had recently held a fund raiser for Biden that Biden was at, wrote an article that was observational. Praising Biden, whom he considers a friend, he noted:
But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can. It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.
Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw. We’re all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign. The George Stephanopoulos interview only reinforced what we saw the week before. As Democrats, we collectively hold our breath or turn down the volume whenever we see the president, whom we respect, walk off Air Force One or walk back to a mic to answer an unscripted question.
Clooney knows Biden, and he's right.
Mostly right anyway. George F. Will's scathing article urging Biden to do the same thing, which was blunt and not kind, argued the following point:
The compassion owed to someone apparently in the cruel grip of an inexorably advancing disease that destroys selfhood should not obscure this fact: Biden’s malady is not robbing the nation of either an impressive political talent or a singularly public-spirited official. Biden was a mediocrity in his 1980s prime, when his first lunge for the presidency quickly collapsed, as his second would in 2008, and as his third almost did after he finished fifth in New Hampshire’s primary in 2020. In the office he eventually attained, he has chosen his defining legacy: the self-absorption of his refusal to leave the public stage gracefully.
Biden was only elected in 2020 as he seemed to be a safe, one term, President when it was assumed that Donald Trump would go away. Not gracefully, but still away. That's proven false. Biden is four years older and no longer the hope that he once was. Democrats have had four years to find a replacement for the aging Biden, but Biden is standing in the way, just as Trump refuses to go away and allow his party to form into something stable.
Also blistering was the article from the slightly left of center Atlantic, which noted, in an article using a Biden line as its title C'mon Man!:
Never underestimate the destructive power of a stubborn old narcissist with something to prove.
Ideally no one gets hurt along the way: Maybe grandpop refuses to give up his license, drives into an oak tree, and only the car gets totaled. But sometimes there are casualties: Maybe a pedestrian gets hit.
President Joe Biden, 81, is acting like one of history’s most negligent and pigheaded leaders at a crucial moment, and right now, we are all pedestrians.
In contrast to this you have those Democrats boldy saying "nothing to see here". An interesting example of that is the most recent post of Robert Reich which insists its only Democratic donors who want Biden out.
Not hardly, Bob.
cont:
The editorial board of The New York Times has declared Donald Trump "unfit to lead".
cont:
The GOP has released its platform:
2024 GOP PLATFORM
Protecting the unborn, save for banning late term abortions, long a Republican policy, is notably out of the platform this year. A promised mass deportation figures prominently.
July 14, 2024
In one single horrific terroristic action, 20 year old Thomas Matthew Crooks almost certain guaranteed the election of Donald Trump.
Crooks attempted to murder Donald Trump yesterday. The details are not in, no doubt conspiracy theories are already circulating like mad, and we don't really know what caused this to occur. Crooks was killed by security.
Trump was in the midst of a speech in which he had apparently been decrying the dangers of illegal immigration.
Whatever the motivation for the assault may be, and we may never know them, the campaign language on the far right, and to a degree the far left, has been heated now for at least three election cycles, with this one taking the top. Trump supporters have grown increasingly aggressive in their speech. It is, therefore, not a really a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention that a violent action occurred.
Indeed, while I haven't posted anything on it here, I've been expecting something like this to occur, although I thought it most likely to occur if Trump was reelected. Repeated resort to violent and extreme language, in and of itself, provokes violence, and the far right has not only used that language, but on January 6, they acted upon it. Trump's citation to authoritarianism, which is extreme, nearly made such an action inevitable.
The fact that this occurred will make Trump sort of a hero martyr and carry him back into the Oval Office. A certain section of Trump's supporters from the Evangelical right will see this as proof that his mission is ordained and protected by God. The dramatic photograph of Trump rising his fist in defiance will now be seen on campaign posters from here on out. Like so many violent actions, whatever Crooks was attempting to achieve, it likely achieved the opposite.
One thing that will be interesting to see is how the Republicans now treat the topic of gun control. Numerous mass shootings have done nothing to cause them to move, but the party now so slavishly follows Trump, and Trump is now a shooting victim, that I expect the hardline position that has been taken by the GOP to be abandoned, much like their long standing positions on abortion have seemed to, and their position on national defense did before that.
July 15, 2024
President Biden addressed the nation last night.
THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Last night, I spoke with Donald Trump. I’m sincerely grateful that he’s doing well and recovering. And we had a short but good conversation.Jill and I are keeping him and his family in our prayers.We also extend our deepest condolences to the family of the victim who was killed. He was a father. He was protecting his family from the bullets that were being fired, and he lost his life. God love him.We’re also praying for the full recovery of those who were injured. And we’re grateful to the Secret Service agents and other law enforcement agencies who — and individuals who risked their lives, literally, for our nation.As I said last night, there is no place in America for this kind of violence or for any violence for that matter.An assassination attempt is contrary to everything we stand for as a na- — as a nation. Everything. It’s not who we are as a nation. It’s not America, and we cannot allow this to happen.Unity is the most elusive goal of all, but nothing is important than that right now — unity.We’ll debate, and we’ll disagree. That’s not — that’s not going to change. But it’s going to — we’re going to not lose sight of the fact of who we are as Americans.Look, Vice President Harris and I were just briefed in the Situation Room by my homeland security team, including the director of the FBI, the secretary of Homeland Security, the attorney general, the director of the Secret Service, my homeland security advisor, the national security advisor. And we’re going to continue to be briefed.The FBI is leading this investigation, which is still in its early stages. We don’t yet have any information about the motive of the shooter. We know who he is. I urge everyone — everyone, please, don’t make assumptions about his motives or his affiliations.Let the FBI do their job, and their partner agencies do their job. I’ve instructed that this investigation be thorough and swift. And the investigators will have every resource they need to get this done.Look, as this investigation continues, here’s what we’re going to do.First, Mr. Trump, as a former president and nominee of the Republican Party already receives a heightened level of security, and I have been consistent in my direction to the Secret Service to provide him with every resource, capability, and protective measure necessary to ensure his continued safety.Second, I’ve directed the head of the Secret Service to review all security measures for the — all security measures for the Republican National Convention, which is scheduled to start tomorrow.And third, I’ve directed an independent review of the national security at yesterday’s rally to assess exactly what happened. And we’ll share the results of that independent review with the American people as well.And, finally, I’ll be speaking more about this tonight at greater length from the Oval Office: We must unite as one nation. We must unite as one nation to demonstrate who we are.And so, may God bless you all. And may God protect our troops.Thank you very much.
cont:
Trump has chosen J. D. Vance to be his running mate. Since switching his earlier views and deciding to favor Trump, Vance has been nothing if not fanatically pro Trump.
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