The Democrats’ Selfishness Continues?
Joe Biden is now “selfless,” and Kamala Harris is being coronated without any kind of “process.”
July 23, 2024 — This is a postscript to my essay three weeks ago when I decried Joe Biden’s very bad idea to run again for president, calling him and his family and ardent supporters very selfish. Mind you, his is just the latest in a long series of selfish betrayals by individual Democrats that would set back the liberal cause. I also noted that Biden has been one of the luckiest politicians ever, through a series of fortuitous breaks parlaying his charisma-challenged, mediocre mind and talent straight into the White House.
Well, Joe Biden’s luck ran out. Thankfully, it happened months before November’s election. There were concerns that Joe was too old to run for president in 2020! Hello, it’s now 2024. After reassuring us all with a stupendous turkey of a debate performance, flunking a couple of one-on-one network interviews, calling Ukraine President Zelensky “Putin” and America’s Vice-President Harris “Trump,” yet still emphatically insisting he was the one person in all of America who could beat Donald Trump, Joe finally capitulated. With donations and support within the party quickly evaporating, assailed by visits and phone calls and a rising chorus from Democrats telling him to “let it go, Joe,” last Sunday Biden finally announced he was “standing down” from the reelection campaign to focus entirely on finishing out his term in office. Ah, common sense at long last.
Whew. OK. We’ve stopped the bleeding. We can take a breath. Step back. Assess the situation. Take a few days to get our bearings. We’ll have an organized, fair, open process and figure out just which Democrat actually has the best chance to beat Donald Trump. Can’t be slow about it, the clock is ticking, but can’t rush into a mistake either. Barack Obama expressed my own notion, “I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.”
Oops. Scratch that.
Promptly after announcing his exit, Joe Biden sabotaged such an idea, putting his finger on the scale by endorsing his vice-president Kamala Harris for president.
Oh, for crying out loud. Is there no end to this man’s selfishness? He pre-empted a real primary season this time last year, sucking all the air out of the room in saying he was running again. He brags that he racked up 14 million primary votes. Yet nobody of note ran against him. Now, he’s derailing whatever micro-primary or wise council’s selection or other system to carefully, rationally select the best way forward.
And, get this. Many outlets are praising Joe Biden’s selflessness in bowing out. He has “gracefully put nation before ambition, and relinquished power.” Really? It was all his idea? You can’t make this stuff up. It’s like these pundits were born yesterday. He and his family made what now is clearly revealed as a horrid, utterly selfish, mistake in deciding to run again, then bumbled and stumbled and fumbled the party into teeth-gnashing and despair, while the Republicans used the apparent weakness and disarray of the Dems to ramp up “can’t-lose” momentum and rack up campaign donations. Joe stubbornly refused to go… until he was forced out, kicking and screaming. And then he undermined any other option by effectively crowning Harris as the nominee. The old, dying king anoints his protégé. Screw any that actually might be more capable. And screw “the People.” This is somehow “graceful” and “selfless?”
With the President of the United States, as the titular head of the party, having made his endorsement, choosing a side, he has therefore immediately instigated a “division” within the party between his desire and that of a more controlled process to determine who, really, might best take it to the reprehensible Republicans.
What are Democrats left to do? Go against Joe… now that he’s out, the guy being praised as a great civil servant and hailed as “selfless?” That really would initiate an internal feud. Instead, predictably, a floodgate of clone endorsers have quickly jumped on the Harris bandwagon. In one day, she racked up half the delegates she needs to secure the nomination. She and the party also took in over $80 million in donations in 24 hours, a record. There remain a few holdouts in favor of, you know, a fair process with input from more than two people. It sure looks like that quaint notion is kaput. Included among the hold-outs are the Obamas and Bernie Sanders. But they won’t long be able to resist if this jerk reaction continues to swell… and so far there is nothing to stop it.
Harris, of course, welcomed this dagger to the back of fairness, and was rarin’ to go, announcing “I’m running for president” before Joe ambled back to bed after his announcement, and showing off rooms full of “Harris for President” signs within hours, as if they had been printed and stacked, waiting for the inevitable. What was anyone else to do? If Kamala succeeds in her own selfish grab for this nomination, pouncing on the opportunity to immediately quash any possibility of considering anyone else, well, I guess that’s what we must expect from politicians.
This is not to say that Kamala Harris might not have won that open system. It is to register a complaint against this overnight coronation. It is to remind, at this grave hour, that she barely has better poll numbers than Biden, brings some concerning baggage along with her, has never fully enchanted the party spectrum, proving in the 2020 primary that she is not a particularly inspiring person, great campaigner, speaker or debater. Like Hillary Clinton, she rubs a lot of people the wrong way, not just conservatives, and not just because she is a woman (of course, there is plenty of that bias), or non-white (yep, plenty of that prejudice, too), but because she seems very smug and with a tendency to talk down to people… in that Hillary kind of way. She is no Stacey Abrams or Barbara Jordan or Shirley Chisholm.
All of this should be reason for caution to not barrel into a quick coronation. Think about it. We are facing two existential threats at once. Both the global temperature and fascism rising, fast. Conservatives caused and will accelerate both of these disasters. This election MUST BE WON! Is Kamala Harris the best person to achieve this goal? Really? Joe Biden thinks so, just hours removed from insanely thinking he was that person. Kamala Harris still agrees with Joe. And if you don’t get onboard with those two opinions, you are being “divisive.” Expect endorsements from every Democrat and no serious challengers within days. It’s a huge gamble. If it doesn’t work out, this will go on that long list of catastrophic individual selfishness torpedoing our collective best interest.
Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe an “open process” would inevitably flail into bitter divisiveness. Maybe rallying together almost immediately over someone, anyone, will prove to be the very springboard to victory in November. Tag, Kamala, you’re it! Maybe Kamala, based on who she is, will generate a wave of real excitement and enthusiasm and give voters something over and above just opposing Trump. She has the chance. Certainly Joe Biden was failing at that.
Maybe, just maybe, as Joe Biden’s luck runs out and he “passes the torch,” his golden horseshoe will go along with it to Harris. She, too, has been very lucky in her political career. We are going to need all the luck we can muster against the sinister, lying, cheating Republicans.
I will be voting Democrat, up and down the ticket, even if the candidates are Shrek and his forest friends. Though I was born into a Republican family, I’ve never voted for a Republican and never will. Even the mildest, most moderate, most common-sensical Republican (and those have gone extinct) is still a Republican for a reason. They are still conservative. What do they conserve? Their own advantage, privilege and power. They are a card-carrying member of the Ideology of Selfishness.
If only more people understood that essential truth, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
No Hate.
No Violence.
All Life is Sacred.
The Universe is Magnificent & Beautiful.
Love is the Way.
Copyright 2024, Rusty Reid
