Allow me to present my case in response to Adam Serwer’s opinion piece “Biden Must Resign” - The Atlantic, July 3, 2024
President Biden should continue to unashamedly run for his second term as President of the United States.
To call for the president’s resignation from the Office of the President after a poor debate performance is ridiculous and offensive. Remember that President Obama lost his first Presidential Debate to Mitt Romney as he ran for his second term in 2012 and he performed poorly in several of the debates during his first primary season in 2008. After the Romney debate, democrats went into a panic not unlike we are seeing today with President Biden. They said Biden seemed tired at the debate just as they said of Obama after his debate. Obama went on to recapture the faith of the democratic party and I predict President Biden will do the same, provided he stands firm in his resolve to continue to run.
To suggest that the President ought to resign to clear the way for Vice President Harris to run for the Presidency gives no credence to the fact that at four months away from the election, many voters, though concerned, are still undecided and many will not focus their attention on the election and its candidates for at least another three months. In this sense, President Biden has plenty of time to recover.
The curative that I would recommend would be to hold as many unscripted appearances in front of television cameras at town halls as possible, responding to questions and concerns of constituents, perhaps give interviews with carefully selected and unbiased interviewers unlike the shameful badgering interview given last night where the President held his own against George Stephanopolis who for 22 minutes continued to harp on essentially the same question of whether President Biden was mentally healthy enough to serve the country. The President’s staff is partially to blame for allowing him to go on with Stephanopolis where they could have worked with a credible but less biased and antagonistic journalist like Jen Paski, or Rachel Maddow or an independent journalist like Ben Meiselas of the MeidasTouch network.
The mainstream media (MSM) has long had their knives out for President Biden, like they did for Obama, Clinton and others, but specifically, President Biden really raises their ire, perhaps because he knows how to play them better than most other politicians. The non-stop chant of “What about the debates” and “Is Biden mentally unravelling” is the 2024 campaign equivalent of “What about the emails” or “Obama’s birth certificate” or “John Kerry’s swift boat crisis” or any other number of made-up, unsubstantiated attack pieces against democrats and in particular democratic presidential candidates generated by the right wing and endlessly perpetuated by the MSM over the last several decades.
One industrious soul, Jennifer Schulze @NewsJennifer on Xwitter counted up the number of articles in the NY Times about President Biden’s debate performance in the eight day period from June 28 to 8 am July 5. The tally was an incredible 192 pieces including 142 news articles and 50 opinion pieces. Talk about Biden Debate Derangement Syndrome (BDDS). Parenthetically, she also noted there were 13 non-debate stories about President Biden in the same time period.
While right wing media, led by Fox News, Newsmax, ONN and many others are comfortable fabricating dirt on democratic politicians out of whole cloth, the supposedly “liberal” mainstream media including CNN which has been drifting rightward for years, New York Times, Washington Post, even MSNBC along with the three major broadcast networks prefer their slanted spin to be based in reality, but have been showing more right wing street-cred lately.
The last week since the debate, the MSM’s gloves are off with virtually every correspondent and journalist calling for President Biden to step away from the race. In the same time period there was hardly a mention of the gish galloping gusher of lies spewed by former President Trump at the debate, virtually no reporting on Trump’s physical and mental condition in the face of many examples of complete public incoherence and most recently the fact that Trump’s name occurs frequently throughout the newly released Jeffrey Epstein grand jury transcripts including accusations of juvenile rape.
Why is that? There are a few good reasons.
First, the near constant state of chaos that Trump so easily creates is great for ratings. In many instances it is similar to the gruesome act of rubber-necking at the site of a fatal automobile accident. Like him or not, people tune in just to see today’s episode of “How the Dumpster Fire Burns.” Former Chairman and CEO of CBS Les Moonves said the quiet part out loud back in 2016 when he said “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS” and that truism has only become more meaningful in the last eight years.
Second, there is good reason to believe that these corporate media proprietors are terrified of retribution from Trump and his right wing attack machine, in the media, in congress and state legislatures and in countless right wing think/attack tanks around the country.
But why be so hard on President Biden? There are some good reasons for that as well.
The first reason would be that he is boring or at least that is how the MSM thinks of him. President Biden skillfully goes about doing the people’s business of governance and while this is worthy of the perfunctory news coverage it receives, it is not necessarily a show-stopper ratings wise.
Second, perhaps for good reason and petty though it may be, President Biden has been hesitant to grant interviews or give press conferences over his first term. It could be because he has very skilled representatives like the former Press Secretary Jen (Press Jujitsu Master) Psaki or the very capable current Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to share his views with the press. But that hardly gives the press the opportunity to ask their pointed and often bias-loaded questions directly to the president. Perhaps it is those types of so frequently asked loaded questions that President Biden simply does not have the time for. Though it is always amusing to watch the president turn around one of Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy’s inane questions into a memorable zinger.
Characteristic of this discomfort between President Biden and his communications team with the MSM is the ongoing feud between the White House and NY Times Publisher A. G. Sulzberger who believes the president and the White House owes the “Gray Lady” a presidential interview and a president who does not care to do so.
However, the third and most important reason is that President Biden wants the billionaires, some may call them the “Oligarch Wannabes”, to pay their fair share in taxes and it just so happens that the major players in the MSM along with the owners of the major social media outlets just happen to be some of the most significant billionaires in that group with names like Bezos($194B), Musk ($195B), Zuckerberg ($177B), and lesser billionaires like Murdoch, Sulzberger, Malone, Roberts and Smith. This is where they all believe that President Biden must be replaced by the convicted felon Trump, no matter how dastardly his record may be or his intentions for democracy going forward because he intends to give this gentry class additional tax breaks amounting to trillions that will be paid for by cuts in social security, medicare and other critical social services.
The good news is that the MSM’s growing discontent with President Biden is becoming all that more obvious to the media consuming public, even those who hardly pay attention to the day-to-day political push and pull. That awareness is only going to grow in the coming months leading up to the November election.
But what about the polls? They say that President Biden is losing ground in the head to head polls, in the swing states and the democrats are worried his ratings are going to pull them down with him.
What about the polls? In short, they are wrong.
The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision changed the electoral landscape, so much so that even in red states, democrats have outperformed the pre-election polling predictions by 6-8 points or even more in some cases. Whatever the polling methodology is, it is not providing reliable and accurate predictions of how the elections will actually turn out. Add to that the fact that while the 2024 election is still four months away, polls don’t traditionally begin to zero in on the target until much closer to the date of the election.
An additional factor is that polls and polling design is both malleable and manipulatable both in terms of the specific questions asked and the tiny polling universe selected by the pollster.
Finally is the issue of self selection by the polling respondents. Polls are conducted using landlines and cell phones. With today’s ANI telephone technology (Automatic Number Identification) available for most cell phones and increasingly many landlines, potential respondents have an opportunity to see who is calling and refuse to answer if they do not know the caller.
So “the polls” are one of the most of the important tools used by the MSM pundits to make their case and to create drama inducing, ratings friendly narratives that they constantly stream over the media and much of that is based on the age old GIGO principle: Garbage In, Garbage Out.
There is a case to be made that the MSM is not exactly friendly to President Biden’s electoral ambitions and in fact they may be hostile to them but what if he were to take their advice and step aside and let someone else run? Before answering that question let me make a clear statement about why he shouldn’t.
The primary reason for President Biden’s admittedly incredible success at legislative achievements over the last three and a half years, in the face of nay-sayers who firmly believed that NO bipartisan progress could be made in this evenly divided congress is because he is a political man for all seasons, on par with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. President Biden has a fifty year history in politics as a Senator, a Vice President and a President. He has seen virtually every political trick that has ever been played as well as every maneuver around those tricks. While there are a few seasoned players on the other team, like Senate Minority Leader McConnell for instance, many in Senate and particularly in the House lack the experience and the expertise to play the political game at anywhere near the level that President Biden does. This is the secret of his political success and no one else comes close. He may move a little slower and speak a little more tentatively but listening to him, it is clear he still has control over that knowledge base of how to get things done in Washington, and in fact, on the world stage.
If it were to come to it and we had to select a replacement for the President, either because he voluntarily stepped aside or we had an open convention in August, who would that candidate be? Does it automatically fall to Vice President Harris? There are forces, even in the democratic party who would say no to that. And what of the selection process? Do we have a replay of some noteworthy fights for the nomination, and I do mean fights? Like Clinton vs. Obama, Biden vs. Sanders. Anyone who thinks that picking a replacement for President Biden will be a walk in the park, is very likely living in a fantasy land where the actual fight for the nomination could permanently fracture the democrats chances for a win in 2024, exactly what the ruling class wants. And recapping the argument in the previous paragraph: Who has the ability to govern with anywhere near the skill and expertise of the current candidate, President Biden?
Let me return to my main thesis: President Biden should continue to unashamedly run for his second term as President of the United States.
If he continues to do so, what should his message be?
- President Biden should clearly focus on his accomplishments in his first term;
- He should precisely elaborate on his objectives for his second term to, as he says, “Finish the job”;
- He should go scorched earth after Trump, including all of his crimes and misdemeanors past and present, his relationship with Putin, the Russians and other dictators, his sexual exploits with Jeffrey Epstein and any other documented catastrophies from his past;
- He should ring the bell loud and clear about the danger, not only of Project 2025, but also of the many billionaire funded anti-democratic think tanks and neo-nazi organizations that want to turn the United States into a christofascist, authoritarian oligarchy;
- He should emphasize the critical importance of a strong majority in the House and a strong enough majority in the Senate to reform the filibuster in order to get laws passed and sent to his desk;
- He should point out that the fight for democracy is not only taking place here at home, but also around the world. If Trump is allowed to team up with Putin, with North Korea’s Kim and potentially with China’s Xi, the ability of other democracies around the world to fight back without the power and assistance of the United States will see those democracies begin to fall like dominoes, one by one; and
- He should make it clear that the Supreme Court must be reformed with term limits and binding ethical standards and failure to do so while allowing Trump another term will seal the death of democracy for generations to come.
Let me close by sharing the conclusion of a piece by Jack Hopkins @TheJackHopkins on Xwitter that puts where we stand in the clearest perspective:
Not only do I think we will win, but I think President Biden will win by the largest margin in the last 100 years. I have no reason NOT to believe that and plenty of reasons to support it. But just one of those reasons will suffice: The American people refuse to live under a dictator. It's. Just. Not. Going. To. Be. Allowed. To. Happen.
Stand behind the President and Vote Blue up and down the line.
Biden Must Resign - Adam Server - The Atlantic - July 3, 2024
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/07/biden-resign-kamala-harris-presidential-candidate/678886/