I’m still in the camp with those convinced that POTUS Joe Biden is a man of integrity who’ll put the well-being of the US peoples before himself. If and when he figures out that he can’t cut it, based on high quality polls that are at least four weeks post- debate, or even on other sound evidentiary data, he’ll choose the gentlemanly way to exit the presidential stage. He’ll do so by passing the torch to his VP Kamala Harris. To do anything less would amount to a slap in the face of POTUS Biden’s most ardent loyal constituency, Black voters.
I echo House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi thinking, as reported by AP. She said merely “it’s up to the president to decide.”
I’ve been critical of the punditry/ donor class for over hyping President Biden’s age issues since 2022. When Bidden fell flat on his face during the first 2024 presidential debate, it seems like this same fixation over his age issues started up again, just at an even more intense level.
I feel that my vote, voice is being nullified without sufficient justification that’s logical to me. Americans still live in a democracy where they’re supposed to have the power of the last word with their votes. During the 2024 US primary elections’ process, millions of democrats chose POTUS Biden to be their standard bearer, despite being fully aware of his signs of aging.
See: President Biden’s Current Health Summary, February 2024/ The White House
For me, the reasoning behind asking POTUS Biden to exit the race to allow for a replacement candidate would be more persuasive, if there had been equal coverage by media gurus of the elderly GOP MAGA ex-president who’s made numerous mistakes due to the aging process observed by anyone watching his rally videos on C-Span.
The other reason, I’m resistant to POTUS Biden being forced to step down instead of granting him space to come to a decision on his terms based on evidentiary data, is that the punditry/ donor class haven’t appeared totally onboard with him passing the torch to VP Kamala Harris. There appears to be a push for an open convention.
Today, I was reminded by a fellow blogger that if for some unforeseeable reason, President Biden should step down post-election season, the VP Kamala Harris would automatically step into the role of US president. So, why are the elites up in arms, pushing so hard for him to exit the presidential campaign stage, post his debate fubar?
And oops, on June 11, 2024, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” hosts reported that the WAPO/ ABC News IPSOS Poll has the two presidential candidates tied at 46% among registered voters. I suspect that there must be some underlying polls showing swing state voters dissatisfied with their economic conditions under POTUS Biden. This reality is the same post-debate as it was pre-debate, and a change in presidential nominees won’t fix this.
Because 6 corporations own/ control over 90% of the US media market, I worry that it’s the corporate donor class that has been driving the narrative that POTUS Biden is too old and unfit to execute a winning strategy for democrats to win overwhelmingly in November 2024.
As per a June 24, 2024 (pre-debate) Media Matters report, “Top newspapers fixate on Biden’s age, ““In total, among the five major newspapers, nearly 10 times as many articles focused on just Biden’s age or mental acuity as focused on just Trump’s.”
These business titans have never warmed up to POTUS Biden. They’d prefer a democrat party candidate who’s more business friendly which could account for why they’ve been mum on the subject of VP Kamala Harris being a replacement candidate.
They don’t like him being in favor of increasing their taxes from 21% to 28%, blocking mergers, and for his public rhetoric about companies “ripping people off” by raising prices and shrinking product portions. And he’s dared to chastise chief executives for their lavish pay packages, a sentiment shared by most Americans. These CEOs live in a bubble, well separated from 50% of US population, earning an annual salary of less than $50,000 and so, they’re clueless about the anger and sense of unfairness felt by so many voters.
As per a recent NY Times report, “Many CEOs Still Support Biden Over Trump,” ”The executives at the Business Roundtable, a group representing some of the country’s biggest corporations, objected to Biden’s proposals to raise taxes. They questioned the lack of business representation in the Cabinet. They bristled at what they called overregulation by federal agencies.”
Now, many in the donor class are putting a stop to donations until POTUS Biden steps down or proves that he’s up to the job, whatever that means.
There’s a must-watch documentary film for all CEOs, “America’s Burning.” It deserves lots of positive attention, as it premieres at the Tribecca Film Festival in June 2024. The film presents the divergent economic views between essential workers and corporate CEOs, and how the income disparity is a major reason for the polarization, Americans are experiencing today.
As per June 2024 Tribecca Film’s website regarding the 83 minutes Tribecca Premiere documentary film of America’s Burning:
“Acclaimed macroeconomist David Smick has a big answer to the question of America’s seemingly unbridgeable political divide: the economy. From the disappearing middle class to the corporate elite disenfranchising our political decision-making, Smick is concerned that the current state of economic affairs may just be urgent enough to sound the warning shots of a second civil war. Delving into the economic disparities fueling a profound political schism throughout the nation, this documentary offers electrifying insight from both ends of the political spectrum.”
“Narrated by Michael Douglas, Executive Produced by Barry Levinson and Douglas, and featuring a diverse mosaic of expert voices including James Carville, Leon Panetta, and Hank Newsome, America’s Burning offers a piercing imperative for greater empathy across the economic gap, ultimately offering an optimistic take on the possibility for reconciliation across American democracy.”
As per the write-up by “Rotten Tomatoes,”
“From Executive Producers Michael Douglas and Barry Levinson, America’s Burning draws on an amazing collection of thinkers and strategists, as New York Times best-selling author David Smick guides the viewer on a journey to discover the reasons for today’s hate and division — and rising risk of civil war. For 40 years, the US economy has been a paradox. It’s been an extraordinary wealth-creating machine, but only for the half of the country that owns stocks. Capitalism has, as James Carville put it, become “a racket” — the ultimate corporate insider’s club, a system centrally controlled by the well-connected few. As a result, the middle class is shrinking and the American Dream’s promise of social mobility for all who work hard is dying. A new Velvet Rope Society of brains and money has cut itself off from the rest of America. Working families feel forgotten and angry, but it doesn’t have to be this way. America has an impressive history of resilience. Narrated by Michael Douglas, the film shows why our best days still lie ahead.”
The reason that I’m enthralled by this film is because of how income inequality has created the groundwork, ripe for a strongman like the GOP MAGA ex-president to take full advantage of peoples who feel, left behind and forgotten.
Heather Cox Richarson describes this concept well…
“In a Foreign Policy interview, Heather Cox Richardson describes how strongmen play on the minds of groups that think they’ve been left behind.” If you get a population that is dispossessed in some way economically, politically, religiously, socially, culturally, they’re ripe for the picking by a strongman who offers to return them to relevance again. That strongman offers to do so by saying, “I can fix the problems by getting rid of those people who caused them, and it doesn’t matter who those people are.”
“Biden is overturning the past 40 years of American history, in which an economics-based Republican vision was employed to get rid of the New Deal state. Between 1933 and 1981, we had what economists call “the Great Compression,” which is when government regulations and the social safety net compress the difference between the incomes and wealth of people at the bottom and at the top. That turns into the “Great Divergence” after 1981, with regulation and the set of tax cuts under Reagan.”
“We now have this extraordinary gap between the very wealthy and the rest of us. Biden is quite explicitly trying to overturn that, using what he calls a “whole of government” system. What they’re trying to do is to restore the idea of a great compression, but also a government that works for ordinary Americans.”
“He is also recovering the old New Deal vision, but I don’t think he is embracing it the way it looked under FDR, because FDR all focused on white men primarily. It was very much a nuclear family-based, heteronormative, white vision of American society. The Biden administration has shifted that profoundly by centering children. Once you’ve centered children, you’ve gotten away from heteronormativity, you’ve gotten away from race, you’ve gotten away from everything that previously had defined that.”
Gronda Morin