SvennoJ said:
Still the best choice, but after Gaza that's all repeatedly proven lies. |
It's the classic dilemma of moderation: you either please everyone or no one and Biden finds himself trapped in the latter situation. I don't see a moral way out for Biden. The fact is that the public writ large isn't following the war closely and more or less just supports Israel on instinct and accordingly leans toward Trump's simplistic, racist position thereon that simply does not value Palestinian life, let alone sovereignty. But the people who are the most doggedly pro-Israel, as in to the point of being aggressively anti-Palestinian, in this country are evangelical Christians more than Jewish people. They have their own twisted theological end-times reasoning for their position.
Actual Jews (at least in this country) are mostly ideological liberals who voted for Biden by an overwhelming margin last time. Losing them is a matter of choice that has little to do with supporting everything Netanyahu's shrinking war cabinet does and authorizes and a lot more to with defending anti-Zionists, the BDS movement, and people morally equating the war to the Holocaust. That crowd should have no political home outside the margins and should not be validated.
But let's be real: Where Biden stands on the issues (especially ones of more secondary consideration to most voters, like the Israel-Gaza war) is practically immaterial in light of what we just saw yesterday. What we saw today from Biden was a scripted act (like the State of the Union Address). Last night was the unscripted version of the Democratic candidate for president. That's Biden's actual normative state. And that's the problem. People can't imagine him effectively managing the country for another four and a half years, which is what the ask is here. That is an endemic problem that's going to keep resurfacing. The only way to get rid of it is to nominate someone else at the convention. And that's what I think should be done. And it seems today that I am far from alone in that sentiment. In fact, such sentiment has now made its way to a New York Times Editorial Board collective call for Biden to drop out of the race, for example.
I marvel when people claim that only Biden can beat Trump and not only because I seriously doubt he can anymore. How about the most popular Democratic governor in the country, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, who enjoys a job approval rating of 65 percent in a ruby red state that gave Trump one of his biggest margins of victory? Kentucky perfectly exemplifies the kind of voters the Democrats used to win by landslide margins all the time but conversely struggle with the most of all today (a topic near and dear to my heart). Kentucky is coal country, especially in the east, which includes part of Appalachia. It's a very white, rural, working class state in long-term decline, the root cause of which is the long-term decline of coal and manufacturing jobs, which residents tend to blame on green politics and free trade policies that they associate specifically with the Democratic Party. Before the green politics takeover of the party in the 21st century though, the Democrats used to carry the state easily by running as supporters of labor. Lots of people with opioid problems there these days. Loads of Trump voters too. One of Trump's best states really. Like just generally, Appalachia in particular is the archetypal definition of Trump country. And there's a Democratic governor who's overwhelmingly popular there in 2024. Think about that. I could go into a spiel here about the importance of moderation on energy politics and gun control and of embracing a reasonable dosage of patriotism rather than the opposite to winning over more rural support and how the Democratic Party needs to shift course in that direction or else risk becoming an exclusively bourgeois party that only thinks it cares about working people, but that is a topic for another time (perhaps November 6th), but for our purposes here the important point is that the Democrats have far better options available to them than Biden should they prove willing to dare the brokered convention route (which they probably won't be). And I'm just throwing a name out there into the ether.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 29 June 2024
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