Biden Rises to the Occassion and LEADS the #BidenSoOld Movement to a Successful Resolution

Even though I anticipated it, and even thought to myself that it would be today, it still hit me like a ton of bricks. I sit crying into my morning coffee as I let the news wash over me and sink in. However, I realize quite quickly that with 106 days to the election, there is no time for grief for Biden’s unjust and unfair drubbing from the election.

He saved us and our economy from the #COVID19 debacle that the Felonious Rapist Traitor had created. He has effectively gotten us on the road to carbon neutrality to limit the damage of climate change. He has brought industry and good paying jobs back to America. Yet, we can’t look past his age and the Constitutional remedies for a president who can no longer fulfill his duties. We are taking the candidacy of a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, a serial bankruptcy abuser, pathological liar instead. I will never get over this moment of disappointment in the American character. Never. Cheezuz served up on a Ritz “That’s a good cracker ;)” cracker.

The AOC Instagram Video

As soon as I heard the news, though, my mind turned to the AOC Instagram video that had been making the rounds (#Spoiler, #Pro-tip: Don’t watch it, unless you enjoy about 50 minutes of, “I’m going to say this but I don’t mean to insult anyone and if you don’t agree with what I’m going to say, that’s okay…” and other hemming and hawing and caveating and pre-contexutalizing that had me tearing my clothes and scraping my boils with broken shards of pottery and shouting, “Jesus, just say it already!” at my computer and frightening the family, small animals, and the children swimming in the apartment pool.)

Biden’s withdrawal also ruins, and that’s the real sin here, isn’t it? two blog posts that I had been working hard on yesterday. First is one outlining AOC’s points, so you don’t have to watch the excruciating video that nearly convinced me that Biden would stick it out. That one, at least, is salvageable, and has morphed into this one. And, the second was a Call Your Members of Congress post urging you to call your MoC to publicly and vigorously voice their support for Biden. That one is no longer necessary. It looks like everyone is going to rally around Harris.

Sussing Out the Reasons Biden Quit Using AOC’s points

Why did Biden quit? Politico reports that the Biden campaign’s polling said that there was no current route to victory in November. That’s a lot like looking at a map in July for a trip you’re planning in November and noticing that there is road construction on the route. The question isn’t can I drive there today, the question is, will it be done by November? After all, in 2016 Trump’s numbers were so bad that his victory in November caught everyone, even him, by surprise.

I think they missed something there. I’ll go over the valid and compelling points that AOC makes and map them onto my projection of Biden’s personality and integrity. I say my projection because, obviously, I don’t really know the man, so it is all my conjecture. Here’s what she had to say:

Everyone Wants to Beat Trump

Well, no duh, but it is a point of common ground that we should all keep in mind. It is the panic and fear that Biden couldn’t beat Trump a second time around despite all of the consequential repairing of Trump’s damage to America and the world that Biden has accomplished that drove the #BidenSoOld calls for him to withdraw.

Common ground is important because it gives us a starting point for understanding the other side and developing a dialogue. This was going to be a major point in the call you MoC post that is now irrelevant. Thanks, Biden! Couldn’t you have waited until next week and let me get that post published? Would it have killed you to have thought of the struggling full-time citizen, part-time blogger in making your announcement? Hunh? Would it?

The point being that no matter what happens, we now come together to back the candidate that emerges from the convention. Updated to Biden’s withdrawal before the convention — Biden would’ve most assuredly won the nomination on the first ballot, BTW FWIW — and endorsement of Harris, we now have to rally to Harris. There can be no infighting over who the new candidate should be. There is no time to go through a process of a mini-primary or convention debate or whatever might happen.

There is NO Plan for Who or How

She confirmed what Ye Olde Blogge and others have been saying since this mishegas started. There was no clear plan or even a realistic path to select an alternative candidate and no consensus on who it should be. In fact, she pointed out that many from the donor-class — God the caveating around that explanation nearly killed me — don’t want the candidate to be Harris.

Part of the entire problem with #BidenSoOld was who should take up the mantle if not Biden. A year ago, this was a fight worth having. Now, it is just suicide.

There is no safe option

In electoral politics, there is no guarantee. No candidate the Democrats put forward has any guarantee to beat Trump. The only thing driving #BidenSoOld was the ASSumption that Biden was a sure loss and so taking a big chance was necessary.

This point is worsened by there being no consensus alternative. If there was going to be some fight or debate about who the candidate would be, it would just damage the eventual candidate more. That’s what happens in contested primaries and is part of the incumbency effect.

It is what the #BidenSoOld campaign did to Biden. It damaged him as a candidate and made it harder to win. If he had stuck it out, he would’ve won the nomination at the convention on the first ballot, but the damage was already done.

The Complexity of timing

Why the Democrats scheduled their convention for mid to late August AFTER the legal requirement of having a candidate nominated to get on the ballot in Ohio, is beyond me. I don’t know how this timing compares with conventions past — It seems pretty much in line with them, but I don’t know and I’m not going to run down that information. If you know, let us know in the comments, please. If anything the Republican convention seemed early.

However, it the timing of the convention put ballot access in jeopardy in two states: Ohio and Michigan. Even though Ohio passed some legislation that makes it seem okay, AOC points out that there is legal ambiguity there. Part of the plan to gain access to the Ohio ballot was to have a virtual roll-call vote by the state delegates. How could they have an open convention floor fight for an alternative nominee under those circumstances and still make it on the Ohio ballot? They couldn’t.

And, while the convention was scheduled to end before the legal requirements to access the Michigan ballot, if the delegate voting drug on past the scheduled end, which it could if there were no consensus candidate, then we might not have made it onto the Michigan ballot and had to rely on a write-in campaign.

They had two states in jeopardy right off the bat, and you know the Republican legal “geniuses” would find a way to put Rudy Giuliani in charge of litigating Democratic ballot access in other battleground states.

Republican Court Challenges to the Nomination

She also noted something that I was not aware of. Speaker Jeebus Johnson has said that the Republicans would challenge ballot access in the courts regardless of how the Democratic convention went and who the nominee is. This would throw the ballot access decision to the corrupt and openly partisan Robert’s Court — It was the Supreme Court in 2016 and we blew it then and we’re paying for it now. You want to roll them bones? Do you?

Regardless of how the Supreme Court would rule on any challenge, it would just create more chaos and confusion that would benefit Trump.

Serious Contenders Don’t Want the Nomination this Way

The last point I’ll summarize of hers is that no one who actually thinks they could become president wants to get the nomination in this manner. Whoever it is that ends up with the nomination starts out way behind. And, with early voting starting in late September, it gives them a month… a fucking month… to make their point about why they’re better than Trump. No one wants that.

I had wondered why the Gavin Newsoms and Gretchen Whitmers of the party hadn’t stepped forward and said, “Well, gosh, if it helps, I’ll be the candidate.” You know if this were happening in the Republican Party, everybody from the Florida GOP chair, Christian Ziegler, and his wife, Moms for Liberty co-founder, Bridget Ziegler, to Maddog Greene and Boobert would be trying for it.

I think it reflects how seriously the Democrats take democracy and governing and how irreverent the Republicans do. But, that’s just me and my conjecture. What’s yours?

Joe Biden’s Political Genius and Patriotism

I’ve long contended that Biden does not have president’s disease. That’s the condition in which once a person has convinced themselves they could be president and maybe tried to be president but lost, they cannot give up the ambition and will continue to try even past the point maintaining any dignity.

I think once Obama recommended Clinton over Biden in 2016, he reconciled himself to his presidential ambitions being over. The neo-Nazi march in Charleston really did spark in him the realization that Trump couldn’t have another term. The 2020 weak field of candidates, which included the quick flame-out of Harris’ campaign, just confirmed it.

The pros and Cons of a Kamala Harris Candidacy

I also think that had Harris proven herself to be a capable administrator during her vice presidency, Biden would’ve declined to run and handed the reins to her. Luckily for her and all of us, she inherits Biden’s campaign and cash. She’ll want to be setting up some of her own campaign infrastructure, but there is no time to do it all. She’s got to lean heavily on Biden’s organization.

Also, she’s the only candidate that can legally inherit his campaign money. He could give it to the national Democratic Party to re-distribute to candidates, but he couldn’t give it to anyone else.

Biden’s Sacrifice

His campaign aides presented him with evidence that currently, he had no viable path to victory and that his campaign donations, even from small dollar donations, were in free fall. Couple that with the difficulties of trying to find a replacement at the DNC, and Biden realized that this half-assed attempt to get him off the ticket was just viable enough to ensure that he or anyone else would be crippled in race.

If he was to stem the bleeding from where the #BidenSoOld folks had shot him in his gonads, it was going to be withdrawing BEFORE the convention and endorsing Harris. Any other course of action was to leave the convention open to a disastrous fight.

The #BidenSoOld folks had no plan to replace Biden that would actually get them on the ballot in all fifty states. They had no plan for who would replace Biden. They just had this idea that he couldn’t win, which was debatable at best. And, by 21 July, they had damaged his candidacy enough to make it very likely that he couldn’t recover.

Ironically, that made it Biden’s duty to lead the movement against him and make a decision that would ensure the Democratic candidate would be in the best position to win in November. What a fucked up thing to do to someone. They pushed a gun across the table and told him he had to do it for the good of the country because they couldn’t bring themselves to do it for him.

The contagion of Trump’s narcissistic delusional world has truly infected the entire country. To rid ourselves of it, we have to defeat him in November. The only choice left to us — remember mental health comes from having choices — is to rally around Harris and get the fucking vote the fuck out starting in September!

Image Attribution

This image was found on PNG All using a DuckDuckGo Creative Commons image search.