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19 July 2024

The stab in the back

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, there's no mystery about why the mainstream media have been pushing the idea of removing Biden from the Democratic ticket.  It's worth reiterating the point:

The reason the media hacks are desperately trying to keep the dump-Biden meme alive is that the media's main interest is to maximize page views (which increases what they can charge for advertising).  Drama and controversy get clicks.  And if they did somehow get the party to remove Biden as its candidate, they'd have a feast -- a convention full of infighting and personality clashes as the various contenders for the nomination fought it out, plus endless opportunities for posting the "Democrats in disarray" screeds they love.  Don't be fooled.  None of this is in the party's interest, nor the country's.

However, the fact that a steady trickle of Democratic politicians have also been pushing for Biden to drop out -- and the fact that they've been doing it publicly, maximizing the damage to future party unity assuming Biden remains the candidate -- suggests that something else is also going on.

Based on reports at the Daily Kos and other places, it seems to be the big monetary donors to the party who are really the ones pushing this.  They're the ones urging politicians to take an anti-Biden stance, and there have been threats to withhold donations from the presidential campaign if Biden remains the candidate.  But why would they be doing this?

Big political donors are by definition wealthy, and a billionaire who votes Democratic is still a billionaire.  Biden has been talking about starting to roll back the decades of disastrous tax cuts for the wealthy which have brought us huge deficits and obscene levels of inequality.  And he has a track record of actually doing what he says he's going to do, despite the limitations imposed by the narrow Senate majority and the Republican-controlled House.  The billionaires have already had a mild foretaste, as increased IRS funding starts to bring in money from wealthy tax cheats.  And as I explained here, there are solid reasons for believing the Democrats could win a landslide victory this year, enough to gain solid House and Senate majorities and to enable a re-elected Biden to achieve more fundamental change -- including restoration of somewhat more reasonable tax rates for the wealthy.

So the billionaires, including Democratic ones, are getting worried.  They want Biden replaced by someone less determined to bring about real change.  His bad debate performance, and the ridiculous media overkill coverage of it despite his later successful public appearances, furnished a pretext -- and don't forget that most of the media are themselves ultimately owned and controlled by the wealthy.

They are surely not ignorant of how damaging this is.  I can't imagine anything more helpful to Trump's chances of winning the election than Biden dropping out.  Unless the party managed to immediately unify around Harris, there would be weeks or months of petty squabbling as various contenders vied to become the replacement candidate.  Most of the commonly-suggested options (Newsom, Whitmer, etc) are hardly known outside their home states and would need to be introduced to the country from scratch.  Many Democratic voters would be resentful that the clear verdict of their primary votes had been set aside in favor of some insider-controlled process.  If Harris were passed over, there would be a risk of disastrously alienating black voters, a critical part of the party's base.  Republican officials in several states are already gearing up to throw up obstacle after obstacle to getting a replacement candidate's name on the ballot, setting up legal fights that would go before the Trumpified Supreme Court.  And the Republicans would quickly come up with new lines of attack to smear a new candidate just as badly as Biden.  They always do.

Even the fact that this pointless fake controversy is dragging on and on is damaging.  Every prominent Democrat's words urging Biden to drop out will appear in Republican attack ads when the election gets close.  Every day wasted talking about this nonsense is a day not spent laser-focusing on the Republican threat to abortion rights and on Project 2025.  Trump could hardly ask for a more valuable political gift than opponents as self-sabotaging as this.

To be blunt, the oligarchical parasite class, including its Democratic members, is so determined to prevent any moves back toward a saner tax policy that they're prepared to wreck the Democratic presidential campaign and risk another four years of Trump in power.  If, as I think is still the most probable outcome, Biden remains in the race and is re-elected, he will owe it to the country not only to squeeze the bastards dry via tax policy, but also to push for real campaign finance reform to permanently break the power of big money to bring about this kind of manipulation.

And if the pressure becomes too great and Biden does drop out, then he needs to (a) do it as soon as possible so as to bring this whole idiotic discussion to an end, and (b) resign from the presidency itself, so that Harris has a few months of incumbency before the election, hopefully preventing a disastrous battle for the nomination between a passel of political dwarfs.  But even this wouldn't prevent all the other harmful consequences I mentioned above.

Thanks to blogger Green Eagle for this post which helped finally clarify some of these issues for me.

Update:  Further supporting evidence -- several politically-active billionaires have openly said that they're determined to stop not just taxes but other policy plans Biden has set for his second term.  The bad debate was never more than a convenient pretext.  This is almost as scary as Project 2025.  A group of oligarchs are plotting in plain sight to take down the president of the United States because he intends to rein in their greed and power, and all too many Democrats have fallen for it.

12 comments:

  1. Thank you for this. I'll be sharing it. I swear people just DO NOT THINK anymore. It's a wonder anyone in the media or far left OR far right has any facial features left... that knee jerk reaction occurs in them so frequently that it has to hurt to keep bashing themselves.

    I keep thinking that there *must* be enough people who don't want to have their rights taken away (not just women, although we're definitely in their sights) that shitbag trump can't win. But he's being allowed to RUN... a convicted criminal, a pedophile, a narcissistic piece of shit who doesn't care about our country at all. It makes me sick to see his face.

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  2. I don't think Biden will step down without a fight. At least the last thing I heard form him is that he has no plans on stepping down.

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  3. It's impossible to know whether Biden will win if he continues as President or whether a different candidate would do better. You make a good case for him carrying on. Interesting that Elizabeth Warren deals with Joe all the time and sees no sign of cognitive impairment.

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  4. It looks like Trump will win. So Biden or whoever else is a place-holder. Top Dems (the smart ones) are thinking 2028 already. As are the big-money donors. The big-money donors as well as the stuff about tax are also the sort of folks who don't like to be seen to backing the losing horse. It's not dissimilar here. I don't think anyone in their right mind wants to be the next Tory leader. Now, the one after that (if Starmer runs into problems - which he probably will)... Well, that could be tasty.

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  5. Ami: Thanks for sharing it. The more evidence comes to light, the more apparent it is that this whole dump-Biden thing is indeed just a billionaire plot to prevent real reform in a second term. I want as many people to know about it as possible.

    Unfortunately the only limits on who is "allowed to run" for president are those set forth in the Constitution. You have to be a natural-born citizen, and you have to be at least thirty-five. Trump qualifies on both counts. The Founders probably assumed there was no chance an educated electorate would ever vote in someone like Trump.

    Mary K: Biden certainly has plenty of fight in him. I wish I could say the same for the gelatinous party "leaders" who collapsed at the first hint of pressure from the oligarchs.

    Nick: I think I've made the case that a replacement candidate, if we could even agree on one, would almost certainly do a lot worse.

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  6. NickM: It looks like Trump will win. So Biden or whoever else is a place-holder

    Fuck off. I just ten days ago explained in elaborate detail the reasons why I believe Biden will most likely win and perhaps even in a landslide. If you're going to leave blatant (and deliberately antagonizing) fight-picker comments like this, at the very least you need to actually address the points I made there, in detailed specifics. For that matter, you're not addressing the specific points I made in this post either.

    Banned from commenting here for one month. One more fight-picking, or try to argue with me about this, and it's permanent.

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  7. Oh, btw, thanks for alerting me to Project 2025, which I wasn't aware of. A very scary, very right-wing project.

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  8. I have had the same thoughts; I've expressed them in my blog and in this post on Twitter, which responded to a very thoughtful sequencing of events suggested by Allison Gill of "Mueller She Wrote." I hope Gill's posting shows up in full.

    https://x.com/annieasksyou/status/1814106737231970487

    If Biden is forced to withdraw, AOC warned, based on what she's heard directly from the Powers That Be, that they would not stand behind Harris. I am casting about for a positive scenario at this point.

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  9. I wish they would make up their minds - all this indecision just looks weak. I am all for Harris running.

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  10. Nick: Very scary indeed. The implications of it run well beyond the US border.

    Annie: The positive scenario is that Biden sticks to his guns and stays in -- which so far he has. If he does drop out it's going to be a huge mess.

    Lady M: Well, Biden has made up his mind and has declared very clearly that he's staying in. The people trying to keep this a live issue are not acting in good faith.

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  11. Morning . . .

    One other factor I believe you may have missed (too many factors). The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act did not pay for itself over the last 10 years. Just a small matter of it being passed using Reconciliation which insists it pay for itself (being redundant here).

    The repeal of it impacts those in the upper 10% (or more) of the taxpayers and more so the 1 percenter who make up a million (taxpayers) or slightly more taxpayers having income far greater than the lowest ten percenter. Lest we forget, corporations, the management, and their stockholders have much to lose if the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is repealed.


    It is not just high rollers such as Jamie getting nervous, it is Corporations and all the stockholders domestic and abroad who have much to lose. But then again, this tax break should never have happened. Party line vote with 12 Repubs in the House joining Dems plus one Repub Senator.

    The corporate tax rate would revert back to 35% from 21% (CEPR or Brookings). Jamie would lose some of his bonus going forward.

    I believe this is where the influence to sh*t-can Biden is coming from today.

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  12. I did mention that hostility to the return of taxes (on the wealthy, including on the corporations they mostly own and control) to more reasonable levels was probably the main part of the reason why the scum were trying to take Biden down. I wasn't aware of the specific law you mentioned, but it's certainly one example of what I was talking about.

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