With one of the worst debate performances in recent history, Biden’s campaign stands on shaky ground. Will the democrats decide it’s safer to dump genocide Joe and if so what will the implications be?
President Joe Biden’s catastrophic performance in the first U.S. presidential debate on 27 June was global news within a few minutes of its start. It only grew worse for his campaign as the night wore on. By daybreak on the 28th, when major U.S. media outlets posted their editorials and those of their leading columnists, many were calling for Biden to step aside. Led by the New York Times, it posted in bold: “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race.” The Times editorial writers characterized his performance in devastating terms:
“The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.”
Coming from one of the world’s most important media outlets and the leading Democratic newspaper in the country, this was extraordinary. The editorial writers made their political loyalties clear, but also expressed the solemn tasks and risks at hand:
“If the race comes down to a choice between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, the sitting president would be this board’s unequivocal pick. That is how much of a danger Mr. Trump poses. But given that very danger, the stakes for the country and the uneven abilities of Mr. Biden, the United States needs a stronger opponent to the presumptive Republican nominee. To make a call for a new Democratic nominee this late in a campaign is a decision not taken lightly, but it reflects the scale and seriousness of Mr. Trump’s challenge to the values and institutions of this country and the inadequacy of Mr. Biden to confront him.”
The absurdity of the debate, however, was best captured by comedian and liberal commentator Jon Stewart, who declared, “This cannot be real life.” Right. This cannot be real life, but it is deadly serious business.
Many liberals were frustrated by the immediate calls for Biden to withdraw from the race. Led by Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor who put herself forward a few years ago as an evangelist for the Biden administration in her popular Substackcolumn “Letter from an American”, wrote:
“At the end of the evening, pundits were calling not for Trump—a man liable for sexual assault and business fraud, convicted of 34 felonies, under three other indictments, who lied pathologically—to step down, but for Biden to step down…because he looked and sounded old. At 81, Biden is indeed old, but that does not distinguish him much from Trump, who is 78 and whose inability to answer a question should raise concerns about his mental acuity.”
Obviously, the reason that there were calls for Biden to withdraw was that he was supposed to save us from Trump, and now it appeared that he was serving us up to him on a platter. Meanwhile, a sense of dread has begun to take grip on a large section of the population due to the Supreme Court decisions that have most likely certainly brought to a screeching halt the upcoming federal trials and may wipe away Trump’s previous conviction. For many people, these trials were seen as the best option for knocking Trump out of the race.
Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the high court’s six to three rulings have enhanced presidential power and immunity to the shock and horror of the liberals. President Joe Biden responded to the high court’s rulings by arguing that they have “handed Donald Trump the keys to a dictatorship.” He’s not wrong. The Supreme Court, once a respected body in the past for its historic rulings on human rights, civil liberties, and press freedom, has become better known lately for its corruptionand coup plotting.
The calls for Biden to withdraw were initially confined to editorial writers, reporters, and a handful of Democratic politicians. Former President Barak Obama quickly rushed to defend Biden, while members of “The Squad,” according to Slate magazine, “have been surprisingly mute on this whole affair, at least for now.” The major constituencies of the Democratic Party have also remained silent. Trade unions, civil rights and Feminist groups, and environmental organizations, who have the most to lose from a Trump presidency, have said nothing publicly so far. Many unions, including the National Education Association (NEA), the largest union in the U.S. and the UAW, had the opportunity to rescind their endorsement of Biden earlier in the year over Gaza but refused.
It appears right now that the longer the Democrats hold on to Biden, the prospect of a Trump victory—if not a landslide—looms large on the horizon.
Genocide Joe
The sudden reassessment of Biden’s viability as a candidate rests on a narrow sliver of ground, on his inability to defend his record in office or the bizarre outburst, “We beat Medicare” during the debate. Medicare, once a beloved program providing medical care for the elderly, has been hollowed out by privatization for decades under Democrats and Republicans. No amount of Monday morning quarterbacking by the White House press office can change that, “Well, he meant to say blah, blah, blah.” Biden’s support for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza is never mentioned by mainstream commentators and politicians for his reversal of fortune since the debate debacle.
Now dubbed “Genocide Joe” by millions around the globe, his literal collapse of his support among many Arab-Americans, especially in crucial states like Michigan, or among younger voters of color is directly a product of his support for the war in Gaza, including the tens of billions of dollars in aid and opening up the American arsenal. Opposition to the Biden administration’s support for Israel has created the largest antiwar movement in decades, along with an unprecedented shift against Zionism among younger people, especially among a younger generation of American Jews.
The mainstream already has developed a case of political amnesia and forgotten that prominent national Democratic leaders have gone out of their way to antagonize pro-Palestine activists. Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi attacked pro-Palestine demonstrations as being “connected to Russia.” Biden himself tried to smear pro-Palestine campus activists as “anti-Semites.” He declared in early May:
“On college campuses, Jewish students [have been] blocked, harassed, attacked, while walking to class. Antisemitism, antisemitic posters, slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state. Too many people denying, downplaying, rationalizing, ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and Oct. 7… It is absolutely despicable, and it must stop.”
No one among the professional talking classes thought he wasn’t up to the job then, or uttered a word of criticism over his continued support for Israeli genocide, despite twelve resignations since the beginning of October from his administration over his Gaza policy. The twelve issued a joint statement on July 2 titled “Service in Dissent,” declaring:
“America’s diplomatic cover for, and continuous flow of arms to, Israel has ensured our undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation of a besieged Palestinian population in Gaza. This is not only morally reprehensible and in clear violation of international humanitarian law and U.S. laws…
Yet, rather than hold the Government of Israel responsible for its role in arbitrarily impeding humanitarian assistance, the U.S. has cut off funding to the single largest provider of humanitarian assistance in Gaza: UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinians.”
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris may have beaten Trump by seven million votes nationally in 2020, but Biden has proven to be an unpopular president. His approval ratings peaked early in his administration, and continues to hover between 36% to 38%. By comparison, President Jimmy Carter had a 34% and President George Bush H.W. Bush in June 1992 had a 37% approval rating when they were running for a second term. Both went down to defeat in their respective November presidential elections., largely due to the terrible state of the economy, which is also working against Biden.
Carter lost to Ronald Reagan in a landslide that also heralded an historic realignment of U.S. politics, where the Democrats, the long dominant party in national politics since the New Deal, were weakened significantly, ushering in Republican domination of the presidency for the next generation. It is worth noting that the last time a sitting Democratic was seriously challenged for the party’s nomination was during Carter’s presidency that was.
In 1980, Senator Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter, who is considered almost a living saint today. Carter, however, was widely despised by the Democratic base and Kennedy (despite his cowardly and despicable behavior at Chappaquiddick that led to the death of a campaign worker) represented the liberal heart of most Democratic voters at the time. Kennedy went on to win twelve contests (primaries and party caucuses) and win seven million votes. Kennedy refused to concede and took it to the convention, which was by all accounts the nastiest since 1968.
Ultimately, Kennedy conceded, Carter was nominated, and went on to lose in a landslide against Ronald Reagan. Why didn’t Kennedy win? A big part of the answer is that he couldn’t say what would be different under a Kennedy presidency. In a now famous interview with CBS’s Roger Mudd, he asked Kennedy, “Why do you want to be president?” and “What would you do differently from President Carter?” He stumbled and had no answers, only platitudes. If a reporter asked the same questions today of Gavin Newsome, Kamala Harris, or JB Pritzker, what would they do differently from Biden, especially on Gaza, what would they say?
What we have learned from elections in many countries during the last decade or more is that the parties of the incumbent parties—which are always moving to the right—are playing the weakest hand in politics. Defending the political establishment and their record may allow them to occasionally survive an election or not get wiped out, like the 2022 mid-term elections for the Democrats, but the long term prognosis is the continued growth—however halting and riven with their own faction fights—of the mainstream and far right.
Right now, Joe Biden and many others recognize that he is fighting for his political life. While efforts—some serious but still largely fractured—are in motion to push Biden out, this week at least he seems determined to remain on the ballot. If the forces that the largely marginalized Left have been able to muster in the growing Palestine solidarity movement are to have an impact, they will have to push for something more than a cosmetic shift directed by Democratic Party bosses.
