On the Nation piece: "I Can No Longer Justify Voting for Joe Biden in 2024"

First off, here's the link to the Nation piece. I was attracted to this piece because CJ from RBN discussed it. You may want to multitask the RBN video with something interesting because it, the video, isn't. At any rate, here's a link:

There are some interesting parts of the Nation piece, however.

Let's start with the beginning. Ahmed Moor says:

I first had serious doubts about Joe Biden when I learned he self-identified as a Zionist. For me, as a Palestinian American, and for the millions of Palestinians living through apartheid, Zionism isn’t a way of seeing the world. It’s a political theory that establishes Jewish dominance over the people and land of Palestine/Israel, based on a Jewish majority in that land. It seeks to justify, unsuccessfully, repeated bouts of ethnic cleansing, occupation, and inequality before the law.

That's a predictable response given the author Moor's background, yet astute observers might consider that it wasn't Biden's friendship with segregationists, nor his sponsorship of the Crime Bill (1994), nor his sponsorship of the Bankruptcy Bill of 2005 that gave Moor any doubts about Joe Biden. Joe Biden has been dreadful for a very long time, now.

Moor has a history of Green Party voting. That's good.

Moor then states:

The past three weeks have transformed me. I’ve viewed shocking, nauseating videos documenting the genocide underway in Gaza.

A year and a half of pointless proxy warfare in Ukraine, prior to the genocide in Gaza, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian troops in "counter-offensives," didn't have the same effect upon Moor. Sure, we can cite Moor's background. But perhaps this was also the case because there wasn't anything in the way of video footage upon this earlier US-supported idiocy for him to find?

We must nonetheless applaud Moor for his decision and for his courage in writing in The Nation about it.

Here is a piece on Biden polling weaknesses: 6 warning signs for Biden in new battleground state poll. Biden is minus-42 on "too old." This will become even more apparent when Biden is campaigning in an election run-up next year. Opinion polling will also not favor Biden on economic issues, in which Biden is -24. The official "economy," it would seem, mainly measures the well-being of the well-off, and swing states are not wealthy states (Florida excepted). So the election will be decided on this sort of stuff. At any rate, the election will not be decided by how many ATACMS Team Biden sends to Ukraine, nor by Joe's virtue-signaling in Tel-Aviv.

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because he was seen as a better option(or lesser evil, same thing)than the Other guy. Given his unwillingness/inability to fix the damage that will be a harder sell this time around. People who knew who he was but voted for him anyway are finding this harder to do when they add his new policies to the mix.
There's nobody worth voting for yet, and Biden can't even pass for the least bad anymore.

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They say that there's a broken light for every heart on Broadway
They say that life's a game and then they take the board away
They give you masks and costumes and an outline of the story
And leave you all to improvise their vicious cabaret-- A. Moore

Cassiodorus's picture

@Johnny Q Is Biden really the lesser evil?

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'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill

which seems to be hoarding the minds of real humans. No way Jose
has been beyond toast for about 75 years and yet, here they still are.
Continuous pumping of blood and treasure into the American scheme.
Rational minds ain't buying, but given the choice of the devil or satan,
ballot marks mean mostly nothing.

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Cassiodorus's picture

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'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill

Cassiodorus's picture

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'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill

confirmation that The Nation mag is hardly in the vanguard of progressive-left thinking, as that piece appears just after DP hack James Carville expressed concerns and doubts about Biden running again, and just before another party hack David Axelrod tweeted similar concerns. When party loyalists like Carville and Axe are speaking openly about Biden stepping aside, we know such conversations have been had for weeks among Beltway party insiders.

I think the DP, given Joe's continuing dismal poll numbers, will have no choice but to try to persuade him to step aside as otherwise Biden appears poised to lead the party to a dismal defeat across the board in 2024. The DP may be stupid and corrupt, but I don't think it's suicidal.

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@wokkamile

a Zelensky and just cancel the election?

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@QMS tried to cancel the primaries, which some of the Biden doubters in the party now regret. He and the DP did succeed in effectively cancelling or neutralizing the first two contests in IA and NH, an antidemocratic Democratic Party move that party automatons like Simone Sanders still applaud. I think that by Nov 2024 the party will greatly regret disrespecting NH.

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Cassiodorus's picture

@wokkamile basically this Ahmed Moor piece was something anyone could have written, and it gets published because its basic points were pre-approved by someone whose job is to make sure official publications such as The Nation echo a party line. Here one thinks of Pravda in the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union. Maybe Moor gets to add some personality to the mix, with permission.

Figures.

The primaries will, to continue the analogy, also be Soviet primaries, no? One candidate on the ballot, one candidate to unite them all. Joe Biden is our Leonid Brezhnev or Konstantin Chernenko, only Joe is far more violent than any post-Stalin Soviet leader ever was, and we're certainly not getting the Soviet Union's offer of social benefits.

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'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill

@Cassiodorus the official party line is still that Grandpa Joe must be re-nominated w/o dissent and then re-elected, it's probably more likely that 1) someone in the Fake Lefty Media Dept at Langley gave the order to publish a piece that would at least allow The Nation to maintain its false position as an independent progressive outlet, a/o 2) gently prepare The Nation's dwindling elderly readers for the time when the official line is no longer that Joe Biden must be re-nominated and re-elected.

As for the primaries, please, let's not forget people will also get a chance to vote for Cenk Uyghur (sp) or Marianne Williamson, either of whom are a threat to catch fire and go all the way!

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@wokkamile the Nation was deservedly renowned for its coverage of foreign affairs. That was in the 1960s, under the editorship of the legendary old leftist, Carey McWilliams.

Then the mag eventually into the hands of well meaning but dense Victor Navasky and it has been downhill ever since. sigh

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Mary Bennett