Like everyone else, I was not happy at President Biden’s weak performance at the June 29th debate. But the pre-debate hype didn’t help. SOTU Joe didn’t show up as the media talking heads all promised us he would. Some other guy did. Excuses were made (head cold, jet lag, over-prepped) but in the end, all it earned the man was a swift kick in the pants by former supporters, and pleasantly surprised jeers from the MAGA crowd.

As I poke this text into my phone, the tides of opinion are still rising and falling. Each day brings us another county heard from.

In a previous post, and in making a different point, I suggested that any Democrat could beat a serial rapist with 34 felony convictions. The point was that TFG is more beatable now than he ever was before. As I wrote after the debate: “No one who isn’t a captive of The Former Guy’s demagogery is saying I really want this guy to be president again.”

That, at least, hasn’t changed. Except now, we have talk of open conventions (from which no emerging candidate has ever been elected in modern times) or a new “real primary” (as opposed to the one I voted in).

This situation echoes one that I experienced in 2006. Tom DeLay (R TX-22) was my congressman then. He had a bad primary with three opponents trying to oust him, and he got “only” 62% of the vote. That was bad news for Tom, and fearing defeat, he decided not to run in the General Election. The Republican Party of Texas got busy looking for someone to replace him on the ballot in November.

Then, lawyers for the Texas Democratic Party, calling a halt to that utter nonsense, got that whole thing thrown out in federal court with the brilliant notion that nothing in the Constitution prevented DeLay from being the nominee.

As is the case now.

Do you think that for one minute the Republican lawyers, the Heritage Foundation, or both, will sit on their hands watching as we Democrats try and fix things by looking for a younger, better, “winning-er” presidential candidate?

Experience tells us that the answer is “what the H-E-double hockey-sticks made you think that?” Have we learned nothing?

Sorry. For just this one reason alone, a torrent of litigation, we have to leave this dance with the one who brung us. To top it off, we have a perfectly good, some say great, Vice-President to assure the continuity of an administration that has had huge legislative success thanks in no small part to Biden’s senatorial mojo.

But hey, if it turns out that, for one reason or another, we have a President Harris before 2029, we can reassure all who still have reservations about him, that a Vice President Newsom is as unlikely a possibility as a Vice President Rubio.

Like George Clooney, I love me some Joe Biden.  With decades of experience in the Senate, then as Obama’s VP, and then as President who pulled us back from the TFG and Covid abyss in 2020, Biden has been in the right place at the right time for years.  I supported him strongly in 2016 when Hillary boxed him out and handed the White House to TFG the first time.  I backed Biden in 2020 because he was the only Dem candidate running who had a chance of unseating TFG.  He succeeded magnificently and has done a great job shoveling out the manure that TFG piled into the White House the previous 4 years.  However, the Biden of 2024 is clearly not the Biden of 2008, 2016, or 2020.  Like many others whose opinions count for a lot more than mine, I agree that Biden cannot beat TFG, period.  Clooney says that, three weeks ago when he was with Biden in NY for a huge fundraiser, Biden was the same Biden we all saw on national television who totally and completely fumbled THE debate.  The orchestra is playing, and it’s time to gracefully exit the stage.

I know this is not a popular opinion among many of the party faithful and a lot of customers of the Salon, but the numbers support my opinion.  Though Biden is statistically tied with TFG in national polls, he’s LOSING EVERY SINGLE SWING STATE by an average of over 5 points.  At this point in the cycle, that almost guarantees, barring a miracle, a Biden loss.  To believe Biden can win the electoral college in 2024 requires complete suspension of disbelief and blindness to facts.  In a word, if Biden doesn’t drop out, and I mean RIGHT NOW, we’re all fucked in 2024, because we’ll not only lose the White House, but likely the House and Senate.  That means, especially with a packed and corrupted SCOTUS, that there will be no guard rails to stop the goons who will be running the entire federal government and most of the states.  That, my dear readers, is unacceptable risk.

Like LBJ, Biden must graciously withdraw and then actively support a plan to replace him as a candidate.  Carville published a great plan a couple of days ago that outlined a short, transparent primary process moderated by 42 and 44 to select a new candidate.  This opinion will also piss off some of our customers, but I disagree that Biden should just endow Harris with the nomination.  Her numbers are almost as bad as his and won’t garner the support of undecideds like an open process.  This needs to be thrown open to other very strong candidates like Witmer, Newsom, Buttigieg, Moore, AND Harris in a process that is public, transparent, and fair.

I don’t want to hear the bullshit argument that the “primary voters have already spoken”.  That’s nonsense.  There was no real primary process; no debates, no real alternatives (including Dean Philips), and no active process, so the voters have NOT spoken.  There must be another alternative and that needs to happen NOW.

Americans should have one goal, and one goal only for 2024: soundly thrashing TFG at the polls.  We have to kill the cancer of MAGA and the cult of personality and that needs to happen now.  The DOJ has failed us; the federal and state courts have failed us; the SCOTUS has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the majority is profoundly corrupt and ruling for their actual constituents (the billionaires and extremists) and not for the rule of law.  None of our guardrails are working.  To save the US and our almost 250 year old form of government, we have to save ourselves.  And we, as voters, need someone to coalesce around, and that ain’t Joe Biden.

So there.

Conservatives have one super power and one major weakness. Progressives have one super power and one major weakness. Every election cycle sees the collision of these strengths and these weaknesses. We saw both flare up during that fateful debate and we continue to see it in the aftermath. The sad truth is that the Democratic party has placed themselves in a no win scenario of their own making.

Republicans can craft a narrative and they have the discipline to stay on that narrative. That is their superpower. Whether that narrative has any truth to it, whether it is raging hypocrisy, or whether it ignores large swaths of truth doesn’t matter. Of course, we are seeing their weakness in full display here in Texas. They couldn’t govern a two car funeral. Yet, I digress.

The whole business about Joe Biden and Ukraine early on in the Trump presidency was a test balloon. Trump was able to paint Hillary Clinton as corrupt and right or wrong that label stuck. So maybe he could paint Biden as corrupt. Obviously that has never worked. He continues to try to fight a two-front war but the vast majority of people don’t see Biden as corrupt. They do see him as old and that is the other plank they have fought on. Watching conservatives fight on both fronts is maddening. One cannot be a criminal mastermind and senile at the same time. I suspect deep down inside they know this, but they almost see it as an insult buffet. You take your pick.

As Democrats/progressives we do one thing really well. We govern. When we are in charge things get done. Legislation passes and people in control do the things day to day that need to be done for things to run smoothly. The economy starts humming and people get the services they need. When polled without labels, people routinely favor what Democrats and progressives do and what they call for. That is our superpower. When we look back at these last three and a half years we see a ton of good in the Biden presidency.

Our weakness is that we care what people think. If you think back to every major progressive achievement, you see we have spent far too much time and energy asking people that will never support it to weigh in. We lost a public option in the Affordable Care Act that way. Now, we see ourselves at the precipice of a national crisis. We see a collision of the GOP strength (discipline in messaging) matched squarely against our weakness (we care what others think). What is one to do?

We blew this one folks. Joe Biden should always have been a one term president. A successor should have been groomed (the positive meaning of that word) and introduced to the public long before now. At this point it doesn’t even particularly matter if he is capable of doing the job for another four years. Politics and reality are at best estranged lovers. What we shouldn’t do is worry about the 40 percent that will vote Trump religiously. Those folks won’t vote for anyone you put up. The key now is the other 60 percent.

Yet again, this is where we burn ourselves. We worry about the narrative.Kamala Harris is too liberal and too abrasive. Gavin Newsom is too California and California is a hell hole. Bernie and Elizabeth are too old and too extreme. Secretary Pete is just too gay. Remember, these are all things the 40 percent will say and they are the folks that would never vote for them anyway. I personally don’t care what they say. I say let’s ask the 60 percent.

Anyone you put up at this point will have about a week or two where they are the darling. Then, the right wing noise machine when craft a new message and start chipping away. That’s the way these things work. So, as hard as it is we have to dial out the noise. We cannot listen to people that won’t vote for anyone we put up. This is all about people that might support the cause. Who are they more likely to support? The clock is ticking.

Sometimes, it’s good to read national news from a foreign perspective. It has a quality of distance that suggests a neutral perspective, if that’s possible.

So that’s how I introduced myself to Project 2025 – by reading this summary from the BBC.

TFG has foresworn any connection to the project or their document, this despite the fact that it’s authors are former TFG administration political appointees. For example, currently serving in prison, Trump advisor Peter Navarro has a chapter.

The sponsoring group, The Heritage Foundation, has the official list of acceptable judges from which The Convicted Felon chose his three SCOTUS justices to overturn accepted legal precedence in a variety of areas.

The fact that they have labeled the project Agenda 47 does not mean that there are 46 other agendas. It means the agenda is designed for the 47th president, which will never be Joe Biden.

A statement of purpose might be summarized this way (as they do on their website):

It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration. This is the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project.

As opposed to the Project 2021 Presidential Transition Project. That didn’t go over very well.

Here in a PDF is all 922 pages for you to peruse for your own areas of concern.

Since I have used NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) in the past to monitor approaching hurricanes so I know when to stay or go, I took a look at what they want to do with NOAA:

The National Oceanographic [sic] and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.

Besides not getting their name right, Project 2025 doesn’t like NOAA because it is the point of the spear for those concerned with global climate change.

They aren’t.

A vote for a Republican this November is a vote that ratifies Project 2025. These guys are deadly serious. Honest to God, it’s the only Libertarian-influenced plan I’ve ever seen that doesn’t also call for the legalization of Cannabis.

As a mere special education teacher, I am not in a position to advise candidates. I’ve thought about running locally before, but definitely don’t have the money to do it. If I were to advise Democrats (since I’m definitely not a Republican) is that they should run on a platform of “competence in government.” The planks are fairly simple and have been on full display here in Texas the last two plus decades.

I vividly remember Bill White (then mayor of Houston) and Rick Perry standing on stage following Hurricane Ike. Perry was fumbling about and was told live on camera that it was his job to take federal funds and distribute them to localities that needed them. You could see the urge to kill on White’s face as he realized the governor was sitting on cash and didn’t know what to do. Both men walked off stage. Only White returned.

We’ve seen the electrical grid crumble before our very eyes. We’ve seen senators flee the state during the ice storm. We’ve seen a governor do nothing and be out of all ideas. At the national level we have seen a pandemic completely mismanaged. We’ve seen the economy bungled time and again. Each time Democrats have to be elected to fix these things.

This is not to say that every Republican is an idiot. Ed Emmet did a good job as county commissioner when he held the post and worked well with other county and city officials. Lina Hidalgo might be doing an even better job. In general, Democrats just do the job better. We aren’t talking policy here. We can have policy debates and certainly we always do. This is simple barebones work that government must do on a day to day basis.

A hurricane has hit the gulf south. Over a million people are without power as I write this. Governor Abbott doesn’t seem interested in getting the work done. How do I know this? He’s not even in the country right now. He left on July 5th when everyone knew the storm would land somewhere in Texas. We didn’t know who would be effected, but we knew it would be Texans. Thanks Governor.

So, when will the rest of the folks get power? Would they get power faster if state officials actually gave a shit about doing their job? We will likely never know. What we do know is that Republicans are more interested in getting the job, keeping the job, and enriching themselves off of the job than they are actually doing the job. This is practically a universal truth.

In Washington, representatives and senators certainly write bills, attach pork for local projects, and grandstand with great regularity, but there are hundreds of things they do for constituents that no one ever hears about. That is unless they are too busy grandstanding and ass kissing to do that job. Beyond the policy debates and ideological nonsense is the simple day to day responsibilities of being in state and national government. This stuff matters and it matters now for people in the gulf south. It sure would be nice if people in Austin cared about doing it.

Back in 2016, I distinctly recall a presidential candidate egg on the members of his rally audiences to commit battery on others at the rally because he didn’t like how they were acting or what they were saying. “Knock the crap out of ’em,” he growled. “I’ll pay your legal fees,” he offered to them.

Did anyone ever take him up on that?

Since the answer is a resounding “crickets,” then you haven’t heard the news about The Felonious Guy’s lawyer and advisor, Boris Epshteyn. That’s him at right coming out of some courtroom, a common sight these days.

In May, Epshteyn found himself in a pickle in Arizona when he was indicted in The Case of the Fake Electors. The matter showcases another MAGA attempt at committing election fraud by claiming that a set of Republican Electors were legitimately produced as the duly sworn Electors in Arizona’s 2020 presidential election.

They were not. Arizona went for Biden by 10,467 votes, or 0.3% of the vote. Close, but no cigar.

Epshteyn apparently helped out with that scheme, earning him a place in court with 17 other TFG idolizers, many of whom also appeared on the list of defendents in Georgia’s RICO trial.

But this is Boris’s first dance with election treachery. He’s been “in the room” before but never got his name on a true bill.

And to our knowledge, TFG has never coughed up a single “dead president” to pay anyone’s legal fees other than his own – with PAC money no less.

So how is it that we find out, through TFG’s own Save America PAC’s FEC report, that it paid Epshteyn’s attorneys, Tully Bailey LLP, a total of $50,000 on May 14, 2024?

That’s a lotta lucre for a lawyer’s legal fees.

It could just be that The Former Guy, or more probably his accomplices, have learned from past experience that you don’t let your lawyer stew in Otisville Federal Prison while you lord it in the Oval.

They get a bad case of resentment if not outright hostility. They might even testify against you.

Just ask Michael Cohen.