"Don't Run Joe" is thin soup

I just received an email from "RootsAction" with a silly "Q & A" for one of its pet causes, "Don't Run Joe," a piece of pleading before the emperor which aims to persuade Joe Biden not to run for re-election. This stuff is pretty thin soup -- they could, for instance, run someone now against him, or, better yet, run a whole slate intended to get the worst few hundred offenders out of the Federal government. And someone needs to have their back -- at this point it will have to be a few million someones.

Honestly I really don't understand why working people in America think they have anything of a future with the current political crop. Gee, you might retire so you can receive Medicare, except they will have privatized it by then. And of course there are always those perennial plans to cut Social Security. Remember, folks, you earned that money! The political class's messaging is incoherent, and it seems to be running on the strength of the police powers of the status quo, with its endless refills for defense budgets, police budgets, FBI budgets, and the CIA, whose black sites, torture programs, and general behind-the-scenes Gestapo work are intended to let the world know that "today it's just foreigners, but tomorrow it may be you." No doubt they share data with the NSA, who listens in on your phone conversations. And then there are the cops, who kill about a thousand people each year. While we're at it, let's criticize a social reality that gave us 49 mass shootings last month. And don't forget the poverty draft!

At any rate, that's how the system works these days. The Federal government exists to hand more of your money to the already-rich, while the nice people in the militarized society with guns keep you afraid. In light of this reality, the people might consider some convincing, rational form of civil disobedience against, say, stuff like this. What we get, however, is today's "rebellion" du jour, which is "Don't Run Joe," riding on a wave of poll suggestion that majorities in the US do not want Joe to run again.

Here's their silly Q & A's most amusing question:

If Biden announces he’s not running in 2024, won’t that undermine Democrats and possibilities of progressive reform by making Biden a powerless “lame-duck” president?

And here's their most amusing answer to that question:

As a number of Democrats have pointed out, such an announcement would actually empower Biden to present himself as less political -- interested only in the public interest and not his own personal ambition. The wise thing for Biden to do would be to say that he’ll concentrate on being the best president he can be until Inauguration Day in January 2025. The tone-deaf thing for him to do would be to soldier on -- insisting that he should be president until January 2029 -- while damaging the party’s prospects in the process.

I'm sorry. Was there ever a time when Joe Biden didn't appear tone-deaf to the public interest? I must have missed it.

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Cassiodorus's picture

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Cassiodorus's picture

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

It’s never been about a Left vs. Right. That’s a ruse to neuter the electorate and keep them rooting for ‘their team’ and against the other team. The real struggle is about Up and Down, something that will never be addressed in our democratic process, an endless loop that goes nowhere.

Meanwhile the rich get richer ….. quelle surprise!

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

Bob Dylan

Perhaps when the wheels fall off the bus, then we will actually have the possibility, building from the rubble, to form a peaceful and compassionate society. Or not. C’est La vie.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

Cassiodorus's picture

@ovals49 It had to do with the seating chart of the Estates-General in the ancien regime of France. If you were seated on the left-hand side of the seating chart for the building, you stood with the people, and if you sat on the right-hand side, you were with the nobility and clergy. So that scheme was also a sort of down versus up.

Except, of course, when the men (18th-century Europe was a male-chauvinist universe) in charge of the French Revolution decided to disestablish the clergy and strip the nobility of its privileges, up was all of a sudden cast down. That would be a good aim for us -- cast down those who are currently "up." Why should our universe be a plaything of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and the other subjects of Peter Phillips' "Giants"?

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

it will be away from his misadventure in Ukraine.
Run, Joe, run!
to China?

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be a much greater movement to Dump Joe if there were an obvious one or two presidential-timber candidates willing to step up as challengers, esp 1-2 who had more progressive creds without necessarily being or being perceived as an across-the-board prog, if any exist. If there were an RFK or even maverick Gene McC type carrying an antiwar banner for instance, someone bold enough to oppose Biden's bringing the country to the brink of WW3 w Russia, then this would all seem realistic. But I don't see anyone, and the small prog group cited in the OP doesn't have a recommendation either.

Not Pete Buttigieg, certainly not Kamala, and whoever might be on what looks to be a depressingly short list of potential bold challengers. Kamala in fact is at risk of being dumped, per some rumors which seem not entirely irrational. FDR got rid of 2 of his VPs. Good evidence exists that JFK was going to dump Lyndon in '64. So there would be precedent. It just hasn't been done lately, but it's been done, and we're in an era when many of the old rules and standards of political behavior have fallen away so tradition counts for little these days.

If the gerontocratic Dem Pty cannot find anyone to replace Joe, who will be nearly 82 at the time of the next election, they should at least insist that a replacement be found for Kamala, who is unpopular and not ready to step up into the top spot. But again the question is who would that be?

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