So, Biden’s debate debacle clarified a number of things and opened a slew of bizarre and unprecedented questions that will have to be resolved quickly.
The first thing that’s been clarified beyond question is that Joe Biden, the President of the United States, is seriously cognitively impaired, suffering from a worsening dementia—as Seymour Hersh says: “simply no longer there…a captive [who has] rapidly diminished over the past six months.”
Also thus clarified is the fact that those of us who were saying this for years were correct, were capable of recognizing and telling the truth, and those who were denying it were wrong , were lying (perhaps to themselves first of all, but definitely to their audiences), and were engaged in a desperate program of gaslighting anyone who did tell the truth.
Let's be clear: No one in the Democratic, liberaloid cohort who claims to be shocked or surprised by what happened Thursday night deserves anything but scorn and ruthless critique. Here's a bit of what “dog-face pony soldier” Joe Biden was doing 4-5 years ago:
The entire CNN post-debate panel is talking about how incoherent Biden was. And they legitimately seemed shocked. Incredible stuff. It’s fascinating what it takes for liberals to catch onto something people have been talking about for 4 years now.
— keyvan (@still_oppressed) June 28, 2024
If you did not know—or, more precisely, did not admit that you knew—that Joe Biden had major, rapidly worsening, cognitive impairment, for at least the last few years, it's because you inexcusably refused to recognize what you were seeing with your own eyes, and attacked the people who were telling you.
It's you—not Russia, or China, or Donald Trump, or leftist extremists—who are responsible for the disaster that's befallen your party and the country. No surprise there.
This is, in fact, the end stage of the suicide of the Democratic party. We can say it began with the poisonous Clintonite abandonment of the working class, for which some mistakenly thought Obama would be an antidote. But the fatal dose was precisely the party, led by Obama, closing ranks behind “nothing will fundamentally change” Joe Biden in the 2020 primary, even though he was doing terribly electorally, even though we saw him constantly lying and exhibiting flashes of anger and incoherence. I said at the time that Biden was a “disaster percolating before our eyes,” prone to an “egregious, public...meltdown.” But the party leaders needed to kill the actually progressive and more electorally promising campaign of Bernie Sanders, and Biden was the best toxin available. Now they, and all who went along with them—including all the “progressives” and Bernie himself—are choking on it. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.
In fact, for the past four years, everybody knew what was happening—every US politician, and media personality, and world leader who interacted with him, who would all talk about it among themselves, to everybody but the American people. In the midst of multiple world-threatening wars and crises from Russia-Ukraine to Gaza-Palestine-Israel to China—not to mention the life-threatening social disintegration of the US itself— the Biden family, “team,” and administration, the entire Democratic Party (“progressives” included) and its entire allied mainstream media and commentariat were deliberately hiding from the people, and trying to prevent people from talking or even thinking about, the deteriorated and deteriorating mental state of the leader of the country—a more consequential political reality than which there is not. A more dishonest, deceptive, and anti-democratic activity than this there is not.
So, one thing this episode clarifies, beyond question, is that the United States is not a "democracy." Whoever’s in charge, it’s not the people. The people don't even know who's running the country, have been prevented by the supposedly "free" press from thinking about it, and have no power to determine who does or will. That's going to be done by what Obama guy David Plouffe Thursday night called the “muckety-mucks” and people “we gingerly call the donor class” and the NYT calls “The Democratic Party’s perennially nervous donor class …some of the wealthiest people in America.”
We’ve hardly ever seen a clearer confirmation that the United States is, as Jimmy Carter said, an “oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.” Per Caitlin Johnstone: “Literally anyone…A jar of kalamata olives could be president” and “it would make no meaningful difference in the way the US empire is run” because the “government is actually being run by unelected empire managers from behind the scenes, and…Biden [or any president] is just the official face on the operation.” /
Or, in my favorite rendering, reputed to have been said by Avis CEO Robert C. Townsend in the 70s, the president of the United States is “head towel boy”:
"America is run largely by and for about five thousand people who are actively supported by 50,000 beavers eager to take their places. I arrive at the round figure in this way: maybe 2500 megacorporation executives, 500 politicians, lobbyists and Congressional committee chairmen, 500 investment bankers, 500 commercial bankers, 500 partners in major accounting firms, 500 labor brokers. If you don't like my figures, make up your own. We won't be far apart in the context of a country with 210 million people. The five thousand appoint their own successors and are responsible to nobody. They treat the nation as an exclusive whorehouse designed for their comfort and kicks. The President of these United States, in their private view, is head towel boy."
Adjust for the new, generous, tipping etiquette, which gives towel boys and pool girls a path to junior membership. Adjust for the resulting political system that “is not only run by plutocrats, it’s become a system for making plutocrats,” with more than half of our legislators now millionaires – as I’ve said previously, “a government of millionaires hired by billionaires.” Adjust the ratio of tech and media corporations and hedge-fund/investment banksters, in an aggressively financialized economy. Adjust any way you want: In a population of 333 million people, it’s a tiny group that controls the country, and the president is their minion.
The only little thing is that the towel boy has to be able to distinguish a bath towel from a dish rag. When it becomes obvious to everybody that he can't, then the board of directors of the club has to step in, personnel have to be shuffled around, and the whole game, which is supposed to run smoothly and invisibly, gets exposed.
So, the quandary the directors are facing is what to do now that everybody sees Joe Biden is not doing, and cannot do, the job he was purportedly elected for.
Option one is to tough it out: Leave Joe in and try to re-tune the gaslighting bullshit—It’s OK, because he has a great staff! I just don’t think that’s possible, now that the entire CNN crew and NYT opinion page and editorial board have admitted the emperor is naked. The board of directors cannot have people asking: “I can’t afford to pay rent or buy eggs and we’re on the verge of nuclear war. Who’s running the country? Who’s making decisions? What voice, what power, do we have in this?” If they try this option, it will destroy the Democratic party, and may undermine the whole duopoly structure. If they try this option, the ruling class is either more delusional, or more thoroughly in control of people’s minds, than I thought.
The other option is to get someone in there right quick who can look and play the part, and does know how to sort the laundry. The impediment to this that seems to worry the Democratic commentariat is Jill Biden, who is indeed in control of literally every step Joe takes, and is said to be stubbornly set on continuing the re-election campaign and the elder abuse of her husband.
Let’s think about that: Jill Biden vs. “the Democratic Party’s … donor class …some of the wealthiest people in America.” Who gets what they want? They'll give her a week or so to make the right choice herself, then they’ll say, ever so solicitously, "We love you, Jill, but you are not getting another dime from us.” And Joe and Jill will tumble down the hill toward home, for the sake of the family. Democracy in action. They’ll insist they will never drop out until the day they do.
I repeat what I’ve been saying for over a year: Joe Biden will not be the Democratic nominee for president come August.
Again, if this does not happen, if the Democratic wing of the American ruling class is really so self-deluded as to refrain from doing what it must to try to save itself, I’ll be pleased to see the Democratic party, the duopoly structure of US politics, the hive mind of the ruling class, and the world standing of the United States melt like the Wicked Witches of the West they are.
Of course, the quandary offers no really good choice. The rocky roads that must be tread once Biden is out of the picture are filled with various pits and traps, and lead to no pleasant destination.
First, of course, is the Kamala impasse—another poison pill the party administered to itself. Like Jill, she’s going to be all resistant to being vomited up. And like Jill, she will receive from “what’s gingerly called the donor class” a very generous offer, including a nice political sweetener like governor or senator, that she just can’t refuse. It is what it is, Kamala. She’s got to be got out of the way.
Which leaves the question of who will be brought off the bench. There are a few equally obsequious “nothing will fundamentally change” candidates—starting with Newsom and Whitmer. It’s not as if they’re expecting a winner for November, just someone considerably more cognitively coherent and presentable than Slow Joe to re-establish the image of the game and keep the Party alive.
(I’ll repeat one more time that if they’re really smart, the Democrats will pick RFK, Jr. as their nominee. He’s the only one who could possibly win and restore some credibility to the Democratic (and American) project—precisely because they’ve been so adamantly fighting him, and would therefore present as succumbing to the necessity of change they resisted. And if they do, I would say it was planned that way all along, the mother of all psyops. But they are not that smart.)
The question of timing is extremely challenging. But trying to ignore Biden’s dementia gets more ridiculous every week that goes by. Given the situation in the country and the world, it is bizarre, and dangerous, and insulting to the citizenry to pretend that he is, or should be, making any decisions from now until January 2025. If this isn’t a situation calling for using the 25th Amendment, nothing is. It is damning to the party and the political culture of the country that everyone will avoid that. Really, it’s impossible to overstate how fucked-up we are by what the Democratic party, its media, and its sycophants have done by anointing and coddling Joe Biden.
In the alternative, it’s best if Biden drops out and releases his delegates before the unnecessary (the Ohio law was changed) but convenient Zoom convention on July 9th when the nominee will actually be chosen, thereby avoiding possible in-person embarrassments and demonstrations. Prolonging it to the August 19th Chicago convention risks very bad optics. Beyond that, well, September at the outset.
Arranging this Biden-Kamala-Replacement withdrawal-acceptance dance is going to require some deft choreography, and there is no guarantee some delegates or other klutzes won’t trip everything up. That’s what the party gets for choosing Biden as their lead. Shot themselves in both feet and the head. In order to stop a left-progressive challenge. Never forget.
But the ruling class, which needs the illusion of choice, has to try to get the Democrats off the floor where their self-inflicted wound has put them. Whatever they do, the Democratic party has deeply, perhaps fatally, damaged itself. It’s certain quick suicide with Biden’s wasting brain, or prolonging the agony for a chance of revival with an awkward and flamboyant fandango. In any case, it won’t be painless.
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