History’s lesson in Democratic suicide
The Twitter user (I refuse to say “X user”) known to the world as “BlackKnight10k” delineated the six salient political issues of the week. They are, in summary, that the GOP’s star impeachment witness is in pretrial detention, that Ken Chesebro says the fake electors were part of a coup, that Trump can’t afford his recent fraud and defamation trial judgements, that Trump’s PAC could face criminal charges in Wisconsin, that the RNC is almost flat broke, and that Trump’s criminal trial will begin in less than a month.
Any one of these knockout stories is worth a dozen headlines, a week’s worth of talking heads’ laments and one long, three thousand word article in the Atlantic or Vanity Fair. Instead we are treated to pablum, claptrap, irrelevancies. We get Biden’s age, Biden’s notecards, Trump’s “spectacular” win in South Carolina. It’s 2024 dressed up to look like 2016. It’s the deja vu of “But her emails,” all over again.
Set aside for dishonourable mention is Kristen Welker of Meet the Press. Welker referred to Trump’s anaemic, 59% win (against Biden’s breathtaking 96% win) in South Carolina as “crushing” and “dominating.” Her melodramatic inflection made her sound like a silly, star-struck MAGA fan-girl. It’s enough to make you puke. This is NBC not Fox News. Once again the rapist clown-shoes cretin is getting platformed by the mainstream media all over the place.
We already know why Trump’s moribund candidacy is receiving lifesaving transfusions from the major news organisations. They need to keep alive the narrative of a successful Trump candidacy and even a potential Trump win. It makes for exciting news. It’s about theatre. It’s about drama. Above all it’s about money.
Then there’s the infuriating narrative coming from the “intellectual” left, the likes of Bill Maher and Jon Stewart and Cenk Uygur. According to these mallet-headed yo-yos, Biden needs to step down and let a younger candidate take his place.
These ageist bigots think Biden can’t win because he is too old, and therefore he must step down “for the good of the country.” They lack the imagination to understand how disastrous such a move would be. They lack the foresight to comprehend that no one on earth can beat Trump more thoroughly than the sitting incumbent President.
They would turn Biden into a lame duck President and replace him with a dead-on-arrival candidate like Gavin Newsom or Marriane Williamson. Any new such candidate would have to start all over again without the benefit of the substantial war chest already raised by the DNC and, above all, without the overwhelming advantage of Biden’s spectacular record and incumbency. They are, in short, doing exactly what Trump would love them to do. Even Trump is smart enough to be afraid of Biden.
They are playing games with democracy in the name of profit. I know of no word to describe it. “Evil” is too tame. They have either forgotten their history or they just don’t care,
History should have taught us that every time the Democratic Party has been home to such suicidal ideations we have lost. Four years after Lyndon Johnson scored the biggest landslide in US history he chose not to run again because anti-war elements inside the Democratic Party destroyed him. Thanks to them we got Nixon.
In 1980 Teddy Kennedy tried to primary Jimmy Carter, the incumbent. Thanks to Teddy we got Reagan, his milquetoast Vice President George HW Bush and his idiot son George W, comprising 20 years of disastrous Republican presidents. In the revealing light of history it defies belief that suicidally misguided Democrats and a greedy liberal press would try to do it again.
The good news is that Biden’s lead is so strong I doubt that even these idiots can hurt it. But if you’re wondering why the mainstream media isn’t covering real news, the short answer is greed. And if you’re wondering why certain elements inside the Democratic Party want Biden to step down, the short answer is stupidity. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.