Seven Takeaways on Biden’s Withdrawal, Trump’s Unfitness, and The Dems Rising from the Ashes, Part II
If you missed Part I with the first four takeaways, please click here. Meanwhile, on to the final two.
- The Media Needs to Put Trump Under the Same Microscope
So quick to microanalyze every gaffe and instance of slow reaction on the part of Biden, the media now has to look just as carefully at the other old white guy (only 3-1/2 years younger than Biden). Since the debate, prominent media have harped over and over again on Biden’s fitness for office while giving far less attention to Trump’s far worse fitness level. This is something we can change with pressure! Every time you hear about a verified Trump non-lucid moment, every time you discover another one of his authoritarian policy proposals—if you don’t see it covered in the mainstream media you read, write to them and ask why they aren’t covering this important story.
First, let’s look at Trump’s public persona. Then his record as President. And third, his really scary policy plans.
Trump as a Campaigner
- For starters, Trump also mixes up names. If it’s fair to talk about Biden confusing one person for another, it’s also fair to point out Trump’s repeated instances.
- Trump has so much difficulty staying awake that he fell asleep repeatedly during the trial that could put him in prison for years. And the man who frequently derided Biden as “Sleepy Joe” may have also fallen asleep during his own Republican National Convention. I watched the video. It sure looked to me that he was sleeping, and it wasn’t during the prayer (as some have claimed). It was actually while the woman speaking was heaping praises on him.
- Trump’s speeches mix rambling incoherence, total falsehoods, and bloodthirsty claims that he will wreak vengeance and retribution on his numerous enemies. As recently as his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention a few days ago, he was still spewing the proven lie that the 2020 election was stolen—probably because he hates being the loser that he is—a lie that’s been debunked over and over even in the courtrooms of Trump-appointed judges. And even though it made him a laughingstock when he first said it, he returned during his convention speech to his admiration for the fictional villain Hannibal Lecter.
- Speaking of lies…Trump is a pathological liar on a scale exponentially beyond any other politician I’ve ever heard of. Just during his four years in the Oval Office, Trump was caught in more than 30,000 lies—that’s an average of 21 untruths every day he was in office.
Trump’s Record in Office
- Trump was a failure as President—and his term started when he was eight years younger than he would be in a second term. He would be as old in that second term as Biden was in his first term, but he would accomplish much less.
- His only significant accomplishment was the economy-wrecking tax cut for his billionaire friends. This CNN report shows that the tax cut increased deficits, briefly raised GDP by a mere 0.3 percent (less than a third of one percent), and drastically worsened income inequality.
- He failed to create his much-ballyhooed infrastructure package.
- He failed on his central campaign promise to secure the border (even discounting the ludicrous promise that he would make Mexico pay for a border wall. Even the conservative think tank Cato Institute called him out: “Trump oversaw a virtual collapse in interior immigration enforcement and the stabilization of the illegal immigrant population.” The same article notes that he did slash legal immigration. So he wrecked the successful policies of legal immigration that provided highly educated, highly skilled workers to industries who desperately needed them. Yet his draconian policies did not stem the tide of those coming here without papers—many fleeing for their lives due to conditions created by years of the US propping up dictators and gangs in their home countries.
- On foreign policy, Trump openly embraces enemies of the US like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un and authoritarian ally-in-theory leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Viktor Orban of Hungary, and Recep Tayyip Erdo?an of Turkey while destabilizing relationships with allies in western Europe.
- The Trump years were not good for the economy, and crime went up.
- Trump’s anti-science/anti-vaccination rhetoric and embrace of quack remedies during the COVID epidemic potentially contributed to the deaths of at least 319,000 people in the US.
- Trump’s judicial appointments have resulted in numerous terrible decisions that wrest power away from ordinary people, allow corporations and the Supreme Court majority’s favorite politician to run roughshod over the working class and middle class, and strip away many of the checks and balances that were supposed to prevent this. Recently, the Supreme Court has overturned women’s reproductive freedom, dissolved the legal basis for the EPA, OSHA, and other agencies that protect the public, and said that they can hold a president immune for “official duties” crimes he commits while in office. Meanwhile, Trump-appointed judges in lower courts have also been rewriting established law. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk “reinstated the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico”policy on behalf of Texas. He struck down efforts from the Biden administration to protect LGBTQ workers and trans youth. And he ruled that a longstanding federal program that gives teens confidential contraception violated state law,” while Judge Aileen Cannon threw out the case of Trump stealing federal documents and lying about it, I assert that these cases are not based on precedent but on a partisan agenda.
What Trump Wants to Do if He Gets Elected
If you’ve heard accusations that Trump and the Republicans want to bring back fascism, this is what they’re talking about. Here’s a tiny fraction of the antidemocratic policies they’ve proposed:
Over and over, Trump has made it alarmingly clear. He wants to be “a dictator on Day 1.” He wants to roll back the clock on progress in dozens of areas: climate, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights (including reproductive freedom), rights of people of color, of labor, of protestors. He has called for massive deportations of up to 15 million immigrants and mass detention of activists. He has called for Israel to “finish the problem,” implying he’s in favor of Israel exterminating Gaza. And with significant help from more than 100 former Trump administration employees, the Heritage Foundation has released 887 pages of repressive legislative proposals in a document called Project 2025. Trump has tried to pretend he doesn’t know anything about it, because he knows it’s going to be hugely unpopular. He’s been plugging the “kinder, gentler” version adopted as a platform by the Republicans and written with his active involvement—but make no mistake, Project 2025 will be his blueprint if he gets into office again. In fact, Trump’s VP pick J.D. Vance wrote a gushing foreword to Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts’ new book. And let’s not forget Trump’s constant cries for revenge and retribution and his open desire to illegally use the military to quash domestic protests.
- The Democrats Actually Manage to Unite
It’s not a surprise that the sitting vice president of a successful administration is the front-runner. But the immediate unity around her candidacy is a delightful shock. Before Biden’s withdrawal on Sunday, July 21, most pundits I read expected a brutal, damaging struggle for the nomination. But somehow, the party often labeled a “circular firing squad” managed to pull it together and instantly rally around a single candidate. It took her only ONE DAY to gain pledges from 2668 delegates—way more than the 1976 that clinches the nomination. By Monday, July 22, she also already gained the endorsements of Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Victory Fund, and the Latino Victory Fund, eight major unions. Of 47 Democratic US Senators, 212 Democrats in the US House, and 23 Democratic Governors, 42, 186, and 23, respectively, have endorsed her, along with most state party chairs. Fundraising is also record-setting, with over 888,000 individual small donors collectively donating $81 million while megadonors threw in $150 million more, bringing the total to $231 million just one day into her campaign.
A July 1 story on NPR named seven potential Democratic presidential candidates: Harris, Gavin Newsome, Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro, and J.B. Pritzker. When NPR updated the story Monday, Newsome, Moore, Buttigieg and Shapiro had already endorsed Harris. Later yesterday, Whitmer and Pritzker joined the chorus.
The unexpected unity is a feather in the caps of both Biden and Harris, could motivate disaffected votes unexcited by Biden, and could help to provide a comfortable margin of victory in November—which is absolutely necessary considering Trump already tried to steal one election.
- What Does this Mean for the Democrats and the 2024 Election?
With all this, I think Biden stepping down can provide some big opportunities for the Democrats. They have a chance to re-engage the progressives they lost over Gaza, push for meaningful gun safety after Trump himself was almost killed by a sniper, push for the same kind of scrutiny of Trump that Biden suffered through, and leave the party in strong, capable, younger hands. Let’s show them we have their backs.
