This is such an excellent, wise, compassionate and humane, powerful and spot on piece! Thank you, Michael Moore!! — Molly
Please go here for the original article: https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/we-are-asking-the-wrong-question
Holding a vision of a world that works for all..... "Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love." ~ Rumi
This is such an excellent, wise, compassionate and humane, powerful and spot on piece! Thank you, Michael Moore!! — Molly
Please go here for the original article: https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/we-are-asking-the-wrong-question
Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts speaks at an event in Washington, D.C. on October 19, 2022. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images) |
By JAKE JOHNSON
The president of the right-wing group spearheading Project 2025 raised the specter of violence Tuesday against those who refuse to capitulate to what he characterized as "the second American Revolution" ushered in by presumptive GOP nominee and would-be authoritarian Donald Trump.
Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, said in an appearance on "Real America's Voice" that the coming "revolution" will "remain bloodless if the left allows it to be"—a thinly veiled threat against those who resist the far-right's efforts to seize power.
Trump said in April that whether there is violence surrounding the 2024 presidential election "depends" on the "fairness" of the contest and the outcome.
Watch Roberts' remarks:
The president of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, which is behind Project 2025:
"We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be." pic.twitter.com/g0oKslNwkA
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 3, 2024
"We are going to win. We're in the process of taking this country back," declared Roberts, who has said Project 2025 is "institutionalizing Trumpism" in preparation for a possible victory in November.
The Heritage Foundation president also hailed as "vital" the U.S. Supreme Court's decision earlier this week bestowing what analysts and critics described as king-like powers on the presidency—powers that Trump is already planning to exploit.
Project 2025, a sweeping 922-page document, provides Trump with a detailed blueprint to advance his far-right agenda, including by purging career federal civil servants and replacing them with loyalists and centralizing power in the executive branch.
Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has called Project 2025 "a blueprint for autocracy," characterizing it as "a direct copy of the plan that Viktor Orban used to take over the Hungarian government in 2010."
"If it is carried out, Project 2025 will concentrate huge power in the hands of the president, giving him the power to control the whole federal government at his whim," Scheppele added.
Scheppele's assessment echoed that of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which warned in an analysis published late last year that "the entire project is devoted to aggrandizing executive power by centralizing authority in the presidency, and a key aspect of democratic backsliding is viewing opposition elements as attempting to destroy the 'real' community, an essential aspect to quashing dissent."
"Project 2025 paints progressives and liberals as outside acceptable politics, and not just ideological opponents, but inherently anti-American and 'replacing American values,'" the analysis said. "Targeting vulnerable communities is a core tenet of Project 2025. Project 2025 is very clearly on a path to Christian nationalism as well as authoritarianism."
Please go here for the original article: https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-project-2025
This powerful piece from 2000 by Howard Zinn — reflecting the voice of Frederick Douglas — is something I have been moved to post again and again. Howard Zinn has been among my great teachers who have taught me to question, question, question. To be curious and explore and research, deeply. To embrace humility and to see with new eyes. To be rooted ever more deeply in the courage and ongoing commitment to truth. To recognize and shed layer after layer of my ignorance, indoctrination, and illusions. Howard Zinn has been among those great visionary truth-tellers, activists and authors, elders and wisdom holders who has empowered me to awaken more deeply, to experience and grow my heart larger, and to expand my circle of caring — recognizing and experiencing my interconnection with all of life. May he inform and inspire us all. And may we remember that what we deny cannot heal and be transformed. Truly, only the truth can set us all free. — Molly
By Howard Zinn
In this year 2000, I cannot comment more meaningfully on the Fourth of July than Frederick Douglass did when he was invited in 1852 to give an Independence Day address. He could not help thinking about the irony of the promise of the Declaration of Independence, of equality, life, liberty made by slaveowners, and how slavery was made legitimate in the writing of the Constitution after a victory for “freedom” over England. And his invitation to speak came just two years after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, committing the national government to return fugitives to slavery with all the force of the law.So it is fitting, at a time when police are exonerated in the killing of unarmed black men, when the electric chair and the gas chamber are used most often against people of color, that we refrain from celebration and instead listen to Douglass’ sobering words:
“Fellow citizens: Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
“What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration s a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.
“Go and search wherever you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, American reigns without a rival….”
This post by Howard Zinn from many years ago remains deeply relevant to today. Howard Zinn will always remain a national and international treasure. His wisdom and integrity, courage and truth-telling, relentless call to our higher nature and greater consciousness, and his big and passionately caring heart for all of life lives on. I miss Howard Zinn deeply. And I will always, always be eternally grateful to him. What an amazing, beautiful soul. May we listen and heed the deeper truths that Howard Zinn illuminated throughout his lifetime. Another world is possible. — Molly
According to the Declaration of Independence—the fundamental document of democracy—governments are artificial creations, established by the people, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and charged by the people to ensure the equal right of all to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Furthermore, as the Declaration says, “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.”
It is the country that is primary—the people, the ideals of the sanctity of human life and the promotion of liberty. When a government recklessly expends the lives of its young for crass motives of profit and power, always claiming that its motives are pure and moral (“Operation Just Cause” was the invasion of Panama and “Operation Iraqi Freedom” in the present instance), it is violating its promise to the country. War is almost always a breaking of that promise. It does not enable the pursuit of happiness but brings despair and grief.
Mark Twain, having been called a “traitor” for criticizing the U.S. invasion of the Philippines, derided what he called “monarchical patriotism.” He said: “The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: ‘The King can do no wrong.’ We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: ‘Our country, right or wrong!’ We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had—the individual’s right to oppose both flag and country when he believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it, all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.”
If patriotism in the best sense (not in the monarchical sense) is loyalty to the principles of democracy, then who was the true patriot, Theodore Roosevelt, who applauded a massacre by American soldiers of 600 Filipino men, women, and children on a remote Philippine island, or Mark Twain, who denounced it?
Today, U.S. soldiers are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan are not dying for their country, they are dying for their government. They are dying for Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld. And yes, they are dying for the greed of the oil cartels, for the expansion of the American empire, for the political ambitions of the President. They are dying to cover up the theft of the nation’s wealth to pay for the machines of death. As of July 4, 2006, more than 2,500 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq, more than 8,500 maimed or injured.
With the war in Iraq long declared a “Mission Accomplished,” shall we revel in American military power and—against the history of modern empires—insist that the American empire will be beneficent?
After World War II, Henry Luce, owner of Time, LIFE, and Fortune, spoke of “the American Century,” in which this country would organize the world “as we see fit.” Indeed, the expansion of American power continued, too often supporting military dictatorships in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, because they were friendly to American corporations and the American government.
The record does not justify confidence in Bush’s boast that the United States will bring democracy to Iraq. Should Americans welcome the expansion of the nation’s power, with the anger this has generated among so many people in the world? Should we welcome the huge growth of the military budget at the expense of health, education, the needs of children, one fifth of whom grow up in poverty?
Instead of being feared for our military prowess, we should want to be respected for our dedication to human rights. I suggest that a patriotic American who cares for her or his country might act on behalf of a different vision.
Should we not begin to redefine patriotism? We need to expand it beyond that narrow nationalism that has caused so much death and suffering. If national boundaries should not be obstacles to trade—some call it “globalization”—should they also not be obstacles to compassion and generosity?
Should we not begin to consider all children, everywhere, as our own? In that case, war, which in our time is always an assault on children, would be unacceptable as a solution to the problems of the world. Human ingenuity would have to search for other ways.
— Howard Zinn
I am grateful for all those who are flashing neon warning signals over and over and over again that there is one path forward in beating Trump — and that is for Biden to step down and be replaced by someone who would energize and galvanize the voting public to fight together for ourselves, our nation, and the world. It also needs to be noted that the calls for someone other than Biden to run on the top of the ticket began well before the debate. This is much bigger than any one performance on any one night. There have been those who have been warning us for months that a Biden-Trump run would result in a second Trump presidency — something which terrifies me and millions of others in our country and worldwide. As a mother and grandmother and an elder who cares so deeply about all of life on Earth, I am inspired to repeatedly speak up on behalf of preserving and strengthening the threads of democracy which remain in our nation. — Molly
(Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images) |
By JAKE JOHNSON
President Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance Thursday evening against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump—an unhinged, would-be authoritarian whose lies were glaring and constant—sent much of the Democratic Party establishment into a spiral of panic and ignited calls for the incumbent to step aside to allow another Democratic candidate to take on the former president in November.
The alarm began to set in just minutes into the CNN-moderated event in Atlanta, with Democratic operatives and lawmakers exchanging despairing texts with reporters and each other after the president declared—after appearing to lose his train of thought—that "we finally beat Medicare," an absurd line that followed his stumbling attempt to explain that the nation's ultra-rich pay far too little in taxes.
"For example, we have a thousand trillionaires in America—I mean billionaires, in America," said Biden, his voice raspy from what his campaign says was a cold. "And what's happening? They're in a situation where they, in fact, pay 8.2% in taxes. If they just paid 24% or 25%, either one of those numbers, they'd raised $500 million—billion dollars, I should say, in a 10-year period."
The beltway access outlet Politico reported that the text message inboxes of its journalists quickly blew up with expressions of dismay from Democratic lawmakers and the names of potential options to replace the 81-year-old incumbent, who cruised through the primary process without a serious challenge.
"I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue," an unnamed member of the House Democratic caucus wrote to Politico. An anonymous Democratic insider told the outlet that they believe "there are short lists being made" for Biden's potential replacement, lists that reportedly include Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
An unnamed Democratic lawmaker told The Financial Times that "many House Democrats tonight, representing a wide cross-section of the Democratic caucus, were privately texting one another that Biden needs to announce he's decided not to run for reelection"—a belated conclusion that drew disdain from commentators who have been warning for months that a Biden reelection bid could be calamitous.
"Hilarious to watch elite consensus shift and see all the media folk who knowingly created the Biden 2024 catastrophe now desperately try to maintain credibility by depicting themselves as the courageous voices demanding a course correction when it may already be too late," The Lever's David Sirota wrote Friday morning.
The frenzied discussions of a last-ditch replacement effort spilled over into the editorial pages of major newspapers, panel discussions with former White House officials and ex-lawmakers, and the segments of prominent corporate television shows, including MSNBC's "Morning Joe"—which Biden reportedly watches obsessively.
Morning Joe, Biden’s favorite show, is wavering.
“If he were CEO and he turned in a performance like that, would any corporation in America, any Fortune 500 corporation in America keep him on as CEO?”
pic.twitter.com/bSZisE3FDU
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) June 28, 2024
In a panel discussion following Thursday night's 90-minute debate, CNN national political correspondent John King said that "there is a deep, a wide, and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party" that began shortly after the debate kicked off and "continues right now."
"It involves party strategists, it involves elected officials, and it involves fundraisers. They are having conversations about the president's performance, which they think was dismal, which they think will hurt other people down the party in the ticket," said King. "And they're having conversations about what they should do about it. Some of those conversations include should we go to the White House and ask the president to step aside. Other conversations are about should prominent Democrats go public with that call."
Dire concerns about Biden's performance and broader readiness to compete in the November election were amplified by Trump's showing during Thursday night's debate, which further showed that the presumptive Republican candidate poses a grave threat to democracy, the climate, workers, and fundamental rights.
"Tonight put on full display how broken our political system is. Our generation deserves better," Stevie O'Hanlon, communications director for the youth-led Sunrise Movement, said in a statement. "The debate also made it undeniable that a Trump presidency would be a climate catastrophe. When Trump was asked if he would address the climate crisis, he ignored the question completely—because he can't answer it. He has promised oil and gas CEOs that he will expedite drilling permits, hasten fracked gas pipeline approvals, and release 'vast stores' of oil and gas on public lands. In return, they're bankrolling his campaign."
"Biden touted achievements that young people fought hard and long to win: the Civilian Climate Corps and the Inflation Reduction Act. Like in 2020, we will fight like hell to defeat Donald Trump so we have the political conditions to end the fossil fuel era and win a Green New Deal," O'Hanlon added. "But President Biden and the Democratic establishment's choices have made an election against a convicted felon dangerously tight. Young people have offered Democrats the vision, energy, and policy on which to beat Donald Trump. They have turned away from it. If there is to be any chance of beating Trump this November, they must listen to young voters."
"Biden is manifestly not up to the task of combating Trump's lies, vitriol, and neofascism—nor is he capable of articulating a coherent progressive vision capable of galvanizing voters this fall."
It's far from clear that mounting calls for Biden to end his reelection campaign and clear the way for a viable replacement will move Democratic leaders or the White House, which has been adamant that the president will be on the ballot in November even as Democratic voters indicate they would prefer someone else as their nominee.
A Gallup survey released ahead of Thursday's debate showed that just 42% of Democratic voters are pleased with Biden as the nominee and a majority want a different candidate.
But Robert Costa of CBS News reported in the debate's aftermath that unnamed sources close to Biden said there is "zero chance" the president "steps away from running."
Newsom, one of the Democrats most commonly floated as a potential alternative to Biden, came to the president's defense Thursday night, urging the party to rally behind the incumbent.
"You don't turn your back because of one performance," Newsom said. "What kind of party does that?"
Alex Wagner presses Gov. Gavin Newsom on questions about whether Biden should step down.
Newsom: “You don’t turn your back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?”
“This president has delivered. We need to deliver for him at this moment.” pic.twitter.com/J5G9XGNYWn
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 28, 2024
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) also stood by the president, telling reporters on Friday that he should not drop out of the race even as one unnamed House Democrat—described as an "outspoken defender" of Biden—told Politico's Jonathan Martin that Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) should seriously consider a "combined effort" to convince the incumbent to step aside.
"The movement to convince Biden to not run is real," the lawmaker said.
However, Martin noted, "many top party officials" feel that "Biden can't be persuaded let alone pressured."
"One Democratic governor called the debate 'beyond bad,' but said it was 'too late' to nominate a new standard bearer," Martin reported.
But analysts argued Thursday's debacle solidified the case that a Biden candidacy is untenable—and could gift Trump and his far-right allies another four years in power, which they're planning to use to unleash a massive assault on reproductive rights, public education, immigrants, environmental regulations, and more.
"I'm not saying that Joe Biden is going to lose the presidential election because of tonight's debate. The race is still ridiculously too close to call at this point," said Zeteo's Mehdi Hasan, a former MSNBC host. "But it's not looking good. And what I am saying is that you're deluded if you believe Joe Biden, at this stage of his life, is the best person Democrats have to offer against Donald Trump, against a fascist."
"Small-d American democracy, if it is to survive, needs Democrats—big-d Democrats—to put their big boy pants on and get their act together," Hasan added.
I have spent months, both on MSNBC and at Zeteo, refusing to obsess over Biden’s age and fitness for office. But no longer. Not after tonight’s car crash of a ‘debate’.
It’s time for Biden to step aside. The Democrats need to find a new nominee. https://t.co/20UUcW06TK pic.twitter.com/oMtRbED3Bx
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) June 28, 2024
After acknowledging that "a comatose Joe Biden would make a better president than Donald Trump," Vox's Eric Levitz wrote Thursday that even though "there is no way for the Democratic Party to deny Biden the nomination at this point," party leaders could "personally lobby the president to step aside and endorse his preferred successor, preempting the hazards of a contested Democratic convention in late August."
"Waiting months to anoint a presumptive nominee would be highly risky. Rallying around Biden's handpicked heir now would be much less so," Levitz added. "The president's policy positions and governing record matter more than his current skills as a rhetorician. But precisely because of how much is substantively at stake in this election, Democrats cannot afford to wager it on American voters changing their minds and deciding that Biden isn't too old for his job after watching him struggle to remember the topics of his own sentences."
RootsAction, a progressive group that urged Biden in late 2022 not to run for reelection and has been calling on the president to step aside for more than a year, said in a statement that Thursday night underscored the incumbent's "severe liabilities as a candidate."
"Biden is manifestly not up to the task of combating Trump's lies, vitriol, and neofascism—nor is he capable of articulating a coherent progressive vision capable of galvanizing voters this fall," the group said. "There is still time before the party convention to decide on a different nominee for the party. Democratic leaders must finally heed the clear preference of Democratic voters and reconsider their backing of Biden's candidacy."
"We need a swift intervention to make Biden voluntarily a one-term president so a Democratic nominee can be up to the job of defeating Trump," RootsAction added. "The stakes could not be higher for the future of the United States, and the world."
Please go here for the original article: https://www.commondreams.org/news/biden-step-aside
This article from The Nation illuminates once again the vital importance that Biden see the writing on the wall and and do the most patriotic thing of his lifetime — step down and pass the baton to someone far more qualified and empowered to beat the alternative on the top of the Republican ticket. In my perspective, and that of countless others, that is the only way to protect us all from the catastrophic horrors of another Trump Presidency. — Molly
At last night’s debate, the president could hardly get through an answer to a question without seeming to get confused.President Joe Biden participates in the CNN Presidential Debate at the CNN Studios on June 27, 2024, in Atlanta, Georgia. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
June 27, 2024, may well be remembered as the day the great fiction of Democratic credentialism unraveled, in full view of an American nation watching the first presidential debate of the election cycle. To say that President Joe Biden was not up to the challenge is to be incredibly generous. From the moment he walked onstage, muttering, “Hello, folks,” to no one in particular, he was a man out of sync with everything. He stumbled over nearly every reply to questions from CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, consistently losing his train of thought, and landed several times on a complete malapropism. In an early question about tax policy, Biden finished with this out-of-nowhere formulation: “We finally beat Medicare.”
That provided Trump with the very thing Biden didn’t need to give him: ample ammunition. “He’s right that he finally beat Medicare,” Trump rejoined, launching one of the countless demagogic assaults on border enforcement that was the mainstay of his performance. With “all these people coming in…. This man is going to single-handedly destroy Social Security. He will wipe out Social Security, he will wipe out Medicare. He was right the way he finished that sentence.”
The ensuing hour-plus was little more than an extended variation on that exchange: Biden rattling through under general anesthesia, and Trump pouncing with the élan of a man who cannot believe his good fortune. When the moderators brought up border policy, Biden trailed off into half-baked policy-speak, citing the “total ban relative to the total initiative,” in a context no listener could parse. Trump once more lowered the boom: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows either.” He then once more whaled away at the rally-tested word-picture of a border producing mass bankruptcy and sociopathy. When he disputed Biden’s (accurate) claim that he, not Trump, had won the endorsement of the Border Patrol union, Trump slid into pure derision: “Just talk to them, Brandon.”
In an earlier exchange about abortion rights—far and away the Democrats’ strongest issue in this election—Biden inexplicably brought up the rape and murder of a young woman by an undocumented immigrant, seemingly to segue into a discussion of the failure of Republicans to allow an exception to abortion bans in cases of rape and incest. But to viewers, the moment just registered as a bizarre digression by a candidate who was too unfocused on the question at hand—all while he cynically sought to demagogue the nonissue of immigrant violent crime in a Trumpian register.
At times, Biden was provoked into more lucid and less somnolent modes of expression, calling out Trump’s battery of criminal and civil offenses by announcing that the presumptive GOP nominee has “the morals of an alleycat,” and rightly denouncing his notorious libel of dead soldiers as “losers and suckers.” “My son was not a loser and a sucker,” Biden said, referring to his late son, Beau, who had served in the Iraq war. “You’re a loser and a sucker.”
But those flashes of righteous outrage were woefully few and far between. Most of the time, a president who has repeatedly depicted this election as an existential battle for the soul of the country and the fate of American democracy simply fell into rote formulations of exasperation—replies that did nothing to dispel the qualms of an electorate over his waning powers of recall and expression. Over and over again, Biden began his ripostes with the hauteur-heavy phrase “the idea that,” as though Trump’s offenses had more to do with breaches of etiquette than with scorched-earth assaults on democratic traditions and practices. Biden also repeatedly proclaimed in disbelief, “We’ve never had a president talk this way before”—a formulation that is scarcely news to anyone who’s paid attention to American politics over the past eight years. When Trump dropped the bombshell revelation that he’d consider jailing members of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, it wasn’t Biden who followed up on the ominous implications of the executive branch seeking judicial retribution—it was the debate moderators.
The urgent question before the Democratic Party is whether to keep Biden at the top of the ticket in what had been, prior to last night’s calamity, a closely fought election. But the person of Biden is less a cause of the party’s woes than a symptom. Biden, after all, can claim the same status that Hillary Clinton routinely did during her candidacy against Trump in 2016—that’s he’s preeminently qualified to be president, and that his long policy résumé and dealmaking track record in Washington are more than sufficient to earn voters’ trust for a second term. Clinton’s candidacy was perfectly summed up in its tone-deaf rejoinder to Trump’s campaign slogan: “America is already great,” with the unspoken disclaimer, “and we’re the people keeping it that way.”
Biden tried to project the same image of omnicompetent management, even as he struggled to make it through a coherent reply. When Trump declared that Biden’s backing of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza were bound to set off a third world war, Biden went reflexively back into résumé mode, sputtering “the idea… ” twice before landing awkwardly on this meritocratic flourish: “I can’t think of a major leader in the world who wouldn’t want to trade places with me.”
The worship of credentialed achievement is a long-standing vice of the modern Democratic Party, going back to Adali Stevenson’s doomed egghead crusades against Eisenhower, and Michael Dukakis’s buttoned-down pitch as the “competence candidate.” But the glum moral of Biden’s disastrous debate performance is that the whole elaborate mythology of résumé-driven leadership is propping up a candidate who is clearly not qualified to be heading the party’s ticket in an election that the republic can’t afford for the party to lose.
This moment of reckoning could not be more poorly timed, but Biden’s performance has driven it home in unmistakable terms. The meritocracy was always a self-serving lie, permitting party donors, a distressingly affluent suburban voting base, and a vast retinue of consultants and message-wizards to conjure up an imaginary electorate to follow the lead of its credentialed betters. Once more, Hillary Clinton provided one of the most cogent summaries of this fancy in her 2017 campaign memoir What Happened:
One of the most important but least recognized facts in American politics is that Republicans tend to win in places where more people are pessimistic or uncertain about the future, while Democrats tend to win where people are more optimistic.… There are plenty of thriving communities in both blue and red states that have figured out how to educate their workforces, harness their talents, and participate in the twenty-first-century economy. And some of the most doom-and-gloom Americans are relatively affluent middle-aged and retired whites—the very viewers Fox News prizes—while many poor immigrants, people of color, and young people are burning with energy, ambition, and optimism.
This was yet another Democratic lurch into demographic determinism—just let the Fox News devotees die off in their dens, and the new nation of educated and tolerant entrepreneurs will move into their rightful perches atop the new information economy. Among other things, it’s a vision in which the work of politics is sidelined into the sort of placid modulation of outputs that Biden evoked when he recalled pet talking points about Pell Grants or prescription drug pricing. But politics is not ultimately about the niceties of policy administration—it’s about telling a story of what the country aspires to be, and where it needs to go. For all of his boorishness, bigotry, and rancor, Trump understands this, and while the stories he told from the debate podium were vile and untrue, they spoke directly to the ugly fears of a significant slice of the electorate. Based on the dismal opening debate of the 2024 presidential season, the country could well have to get used to hearing a president talk this way for a very, very long time.
Please go here for the original article: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/biden-debate-performance/