In Reply to: I love the double standard on Biden posted by russsmith on June 01, 2025 at 10:09:25
There is a looooooot to criticize when it comes to the Biden presidency. My frustration with this new Jack Tapper instigated CNN "bravery" reporting about Biden's mental acuity is that the whole thing about Biden's fitness is such a minor part of the bigger story that needs to be discussed, that a lot of Democrats have declared the third rail of Democratic Party politic.
First there is the Democratic Party leadership, which is insanely ineffective, pathologically anchored to neoliberalism and other parts of 20th century politics, who let Biden's own ambitions take over instead of holding him to his word that he would be a transitional president. Then there is the political consultant crowd around that inner circle who enabled the worst instincts of the old guard gerontocracy and milquetoast, more of the same leadership figures like Jeffries while constantly undermining the party's rising stars on the left.
Label this the "passivity problem".
Then there is the whole "complicity problem", the way Biden in particular, but also the leadership of the Democratic Party allowed, nay, actively supported the genocide in Gaza time after time, politically and economically. They did not back free speech when pro-Palestinian protests emerged. They did not let an elected Palestinian representative speak during their convention. They muzzled speech, and we all paid the price for it.
There is also the whole Merrick Garland thing, which I am sure is self-explanatory. That also goes under the "complicity" heading.
Wrapped up in all this is the "naivite problem": thinking that it was actually possible that Biden had any chance to win, despite 2024 being an obvious change election. 2020 was a change election too, and Biden was the change. I don't mind that Harris ended up being the party candidate in 2024, which was the only rational step forward when Biden withdrew so late in the game and god bless her, she did the best she could before she was actively sabotaged by the consulting class. Once you process 2024 as a change election, you want your candidate, whether she has been the VP for the past four years or not, to start delineating herself from the administration and forge a separate political identity that in some way repudiates Biden. Joy did that. Weird did that. But then ... we know how that went.
The naivite problem also appears in the context of the Democratic Party's unwavering belief in the virtues of Reagan style capitalism that goes back to Bill Clinton and never quite got updated since then, except for Joe Biden's occasionally nostalgic tip of the hat to old school unionism. There has been no bold economic or political break from that anachronistic and dilapidated view of capitalism that *even the MAGA base* now recognizes as hollow. You can't respond to the crisis of the collapsing coal industry in West Virginia by telling them they could retrain and become code-writers. And yet, that's how we got here. That separation did not sit well with the party's powers that be.
So I think there is a lot to talk about. And I don't think Democrats talk enough about the underlying issues their party has, while their paid consultants are telling them that what the party really needs is to find a liberal Joe Rogan, start occupying masculine spaces (code for "no more female candidates"), and throw trans people under the bus.
My position has always been to treat MAGA, the Republican Party, and the fascist movement as the predators in the woods. They are what they are and they do what they do because it is in their nature to be so. Our real problem is not with them. They just are. Our problem is that we, the ordinary folks, do not have a protective layer between us and those forces of nature out there. When they take over the village and start eating our friends and neighbors, it is because the people who we elected to protect us from them are busy navel-gazing and wondering whether it's all worth the effort in the first place.
Yes, Donald Trump is a massive disaster. He is incredibly dangerous. So is the Federalist Society. So is ICE. So are a bunch of other things out there who now have a free reign under Trump. But we are where we are simply because the Democratic Party failed, and the actions of Biden and his cabinet are a key reason. We need to learn a lesson from that episode just in case we ever have the chance to come out of the hell we're in today.
I know I'm like a broken record, saying the same things over and over again, but this is what I truly believe.