The wailing and gnashing of teeth over calls for Biden to end his candidacy is 2016 all over again.  I know many Salon customers hate it when I say it, but it’s true.  Hillary was a terrible candidate.  And, just like in 2016, I didn’t say unqualified, I said terrible candidate.  She didn’t listen to local party operatives, walled herself off from everyone who disagreed with her, and ignored calls for her to emphasize battleground states like Michigan believing that she had the election sewed up.  And we all know what happened.  Did Comey and Russian meddling hurt?  Absolutely, but it shouldn’t have been that close for that to have a material effect.  Those are facts that we all knew before the election, yet Hillary and party leaders ignored all the flashing red lights and handed the White House to TFG.

The same goddam thing is happening again with Biden loyalists and the base.  “Stay the course!” “Don’t change horses!” “The voters have spoken!” “If we change candidates, we’re going to lose like Humphrey!” “The Republicans will sue to keep a new candidate off the ballots!”  So on and so forth.  Here are the facts – THE ELECTION IS ALREADY LOST.  Only a miracle, or a thoughtful change, can save it.  Here are the battleground numbers as of TODAY:

TFG has a solid lead in every single battleground state and that’s unlikely to change.  During his press conference a couple of nights ago, Biden said no poll shows he’s losing.  They’re ALL showing he’s losing. Biden either lied, or, more likely, hasn’t been shown these polls.  It’s just math.

Yes, yes, we all know that TFG is a lying gasbag, shitbag, convicted felon, rapist, and every other pejorative adjective you can summon.  But that doesn’t mean a goddam thing to his voters.  In fact, they LOVE that he’s a lying gasbag and convicted felon as it plays into his Earth II narrative that he’s none of those things, but rather a victim of persecution by the “deep state”.  We’re not dealing with facts here folks, we dealing with people who don’t have a grip on reality.  THAT is reality.

While we’re at it, let’s talk about all the handwringing over Republicans suing to keep the Dems from “changing candidates on state ballots”.   First, there are no goddam ballots to change.  Biden, and TFG, for that matter are not the nominees for president.  There ARE no ballots, at least yet.  That doesn’t happen until AFTER the conventions.  Even then, there are mechanisms to change candidates, but that’s not what we’re talking about.  We’re talking about replacing Biden before or during the convention.  Suing to keep a new candidate off state ballots is a Republican talking point started by the Heritage Foundation (yes, that Heritage Foundation).  Like everything else coming out of the Heritage Foundation, it’s bullshit, so stop repeating it, please.  Here’s why.

Lastly, those of us calling for Biden to step aside are not “dividing the party” or “serving Republicans”.  Republicans, including TFG are terrified that the Dems use their heads and change candidates to a dynamic new candidate.  They LOVE running against Biden because they’re looking at the same numbers I am.  The numbers with any other major candidate are worse for TFG.

In short, every number points to a loss if Biden stays on the ticket.  Also, it increases greatly the chances of losing both the House and the Senate at the same time.  Those are inconvenient facts.  Ignoring those facts will lead to another TFG term in the White House and we should all be terrified of that.

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.