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.

We all remember the disastrous (and laughable) Republican responses to the SOTU over the years.  Bobby Jindal’s and Marco Rubio’s responses were cringe-worthy, and Jindal’s 10 minute spotlight moment ended his career.  Well, last Thursday, freshman Alabama senator Katie Britt said “hold my beer”, launching into the weirdest SOTU response in history.  Typical for Republicans, they put her in a fucking KITCHEN while she breathlessly disclosed the horrors of the Biden administration like protecting women’s health and preserving the right to vote.  If it wasn’t so strange it would have been hilarious.

One of Britt’s blood curdling stories was one she recounted of a private conversation she had with one woman who had been sex trafficked by the cartel in the US after crossing the border during Biden’s presidency.  The story was truly horrific as she described being repeatedly raped and being held captive in a shoebox-sized room.  Simply awful…with the one exception that it was complete bullshit.  Not that the woman was raped and held captive – that story is likely true.  The bullshit happened when Britt pinned the whole terrible scenario on Biden and his border policies.  Tim-Tokker Jonathan Katz did all the work on this, so I’ll let him tell the story:

@katzonearth

This isn’t going to make her like TikTok more. #katiebritt #sotu #stateoftheunion #lies #politicians #biden2024 #trump2024 #immigration #traffickingawarenes #mexico #bordersecurity #fyp

♬ original sound – Jonathan M. Katz

So, the victim here, Karla Jacinto Ramiro, was a victim of child sex trafficking when she was 12.  In 2004.  When George W. Bush was president.  IN MEXICO.  Ramiro is now an advocate for victims of sex trafficking and is in her 30s.   Ramiro even told this same story in a congressional hearing in 2015.  So, Katie Britt picks up this tragic 20 year old story and recasts it to place blame on Biden who wouldn’t be president until almost 20 years after it happened.  That’s like Republicans blaming Obama for the great recession that happened under GWB or Biden for the disastrous response to COVID  and Afghanistan debacle that were caused by TFG.

Not only was Britt’s melodramatic and creepy SOTU rebuttal cringe-worthy, it was also nothing but vicious character assassination and pure bullshit.  AND she did it on national television.  With any luck, Britt will go the way of Bobby Jindal.

Lacking enough votes to open an impeachment “inquiry” by multiple House committees, Kevin McCarthy opened it by fiat today, under mutinous pressure from the Crazy MAGA wing of what’s left of the GOP.  I actually burst out laughing at his reasoning when he said,

“House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct.  Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption.”

“Allegations.”  “A culture of corruption.” Right now all the red Irony Lights are flashing and Hypocrisy Sirens are howling.  Without a vote, McCarthy is trying to keep his job by feeding the alligators that are threatening to devour him if he doesn’t do TFG’s bidding.  Remember that TFG is the guy impeached twice for extortion of a foreign government and insurrection, under indictment for 91 felonies, liable for sexual assault and defamation, being sued for massive financial fraud in New York, and who had his “charitable” foundation shut down for fraud.  Add that to his history of screwing investors and contractors, friendship with child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, lusting after young girls, and stuffing his pockets with other people’s money, and you have the actual walking, talking textbook example of corruption.

But, hey, let’s go after Biden after a 5 year full on effort to dig dirt on him without unearthing one credible shred of evidence, just to placate the actual criminal.

I say, bring it on.  The shit show will be epic.

Joe Biden has never been afraid of getting out in front of his party, or even his boss when he was VP.  After all, we have Biden to thank for dragging Obama over the line on marriage equality when it counted, and he’s also done it on assault weapons, troop support, healthcare, and other key issues.  He’s doing it again by shaking up the 2024 primary season, and that shake up is long past due.  The most controversial elements of the schedule is pushing South Carolina to the front, and relegating Iowa farther down the line.  New Hampshire would share the second night with Nevada.  Not surprisingly, Iowa and New Hampshire are pissed.

I happen to agree with Biden 100% in this change.  First let’s look at the obvious – diversity.  Iowa and NH are two of the whitest and most rural states in the US.  Iowa is 90% white.  NH is 87% white and packed with libertarian gun crazies.  After all, their state motto is Live Free or Die, which is not exactly comforting or consensus building.  Ignoring all other factors, the demographics alone disqualify these states as leaders, period. But it gets worse. In the last 12 primaries, Iowa chose a candidate who didn’t eventually win the nomination 4 times.  In 1976, in fact, Uncommitted beat Jimmy Carter by 10 points. In those same historic primaries, NH picked the wrong candidate 5 times.  To me, though, the death blow for Iowa happened in 2020 when it took them THREE WEEKS to announce the results, and that delay managed to pick…wait for it…Pete Buttigieg.  Biden placed fourth.  The Iowa caucuses can best be described with the words SHIT SHOW and have caused the state to lose all claims to being first in the primary/caucus season.

The rest of Biden’s plan is to push very important states to the front – South Carolina, then adding Nevada to the second week along with NH.  Those states will be followed by Georgia and then Michigan to round out the early states.  This plan makes a lot of sense as it brings demographic diversity, geographic diversity, and battleground states into the early results which will hopefully bring candidates with the broadest appeal to the front sooner.  This is a welcome change that has a number of advantages, not the least of which is motivating more people to participate.   I won’t be surprised, though, if the calcified leadership of the DNC kills it, once again snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The list of crimes, lies told, corruption, self-dealing, fraud, theft, extortion, sexual misconduct, insurrection, obstruction, conspiracy, and cruelty committed by TFG is long, growing, and in plain sight.  Predictably, though, that very same list is totally invisible to MAGA Republicans.  Fearful of retribution from their mouth-breathing base and TFG himself, they perform more gymnastics than an Olympic athlete to avoid seeing what is obvious to the rest of us.  Congressional Republicans had TWO opportunities to get rid of him, and made the wrong decision.  Since he’s left office, they have continued to cow tow to him, regularly doing the MAGA Hajj to Mar-a-Lago to kiss his ring (and his ass).

It’s no surprise then, that the GOP has been completely blind to the slow motion train wreck of TFGland including investigations and convictions for tax fraud, election denial, insurrection, and, of course, his hoarding and concealment of over 11,000 US government documents including 100 classified documents and 90 empty folders marked classified.  They’ve also ignored the fact that the National Archives tried to get the documents back for 18 months, finally getting a federal grand jury subpoena that TFG promptly ignored.  When the FBI took the radical step of going and getting the documents themselves, GOP screamers amplified his lies that it was a “smash and grab” and “all they had to do was ask.”   They then fabricated the story that he “declassified” these documents “in his mind” tryin to excuse TFG’s behavior.

Then comes the discoveries of classified documents at Biden’s home and former office.  Numbering about 20, having those documents was sloppy at best, but was immediately reported to the National Archives, and Biden is cooperating in the investigation.  The incident is certainly not helpful to Biden, but it’s extremely unlikely there was any nefarious intent in having these documents.  Conversely, Trump took something like 50 boxes of government documents when he finally left office, concealed them, lied about having them, moved them several times to avoid having them found, and even had his lawyers lie that there were no more documents after returning about 20 boxes last year.  Beyond his attraction to shiny things, a worse reason for keeping them, as Maggie Haberman of the NYTimes reported, TFG was trying to use his possession of US government documents as trade bait to get files from the DOJ about their investigation of his longstanding relationship with the Russians and their interference in the 2016 election.  Believing you can trade something you stole for something that you would never get in a million years is insane, which explains why TFG thought it was such a good idea.

Not surprisingly, while looking the other way on TFG’s hoarding of thousands of documents, Republicans are going apeshit over the discovery of the 20 documents in Biden’s possession, and they are already launching an investigation of the incident in the House.  I say fine, investigate your ass off.  However, the Dems must be uncharacteristically aggressive here.  Each time the Republicans introduce some testimony or evidence about the Biden documents, the Dems must introduce ten times that amount of evidence of TFG’s hoarding, and then concealing his possession of the thousands of documents he took.  This is eye for an eye, fighting fire with fire.  It’s time to take their selective outrage and turn it on them in public.

The Chaos Wing of the GOP is going after a jaywalker while a serial arsonist is burning down the Capitol. It fits.

As the January 6th Committee focuses all its attention on TFG, the evidence presented makes it indisputable that not only is he a Giant ShitBag, he’s a criminal guilty of seditious conspiracy and other crimes.  Life for TFG is going to radically change in coming months with dozens of lawsuits and even criminal charges in his future.  Recent polls are showing his death grip on the GOP is weakening, and many Republican voters are beginning to look elsewhere for 2024.

While I welcome Trump finally facing the music, taking him out politically presents a conundrum – besides Biden, the Dems have no candidate groomed or positioned to run for president in 2024.  With Trump out of the way, the next choice for the GOP is Ron DeSantis who I would describe as TFG, only smart.  DeSantis understands what issues drive his base to the polls and he is relentless.  He’s been trying to get to the right of every other possible candidate in the last 2 years especially Abbott in their race to the Crazy Train 2024.  After TFG, DeSantis is polling stronger by multiples than everyone else on the train.  For the Dems, that’s not good.

I love me some Joe Biden, but he’s going to be 82 in 2024.  That’s simply too old, especially up against a much younger loudmouthed opponent like DeSantis.  That match up simply won’t turn out well.  The big problem for the Dems is that there is no other obvious choice; Kamala polls around 37% approval, and currently polls about even with DeSantis and her name recognition is much higher than his, at least for now.  That’s not great.  Behind her are, Schiff? Newsom? Warren? Sanders? (God, please no). Booker? Roy Cooper? (gov of NC). Klobuchar? AOC? Buttigieg? Sherrod Brown?  Of all these possibilities, Brown seems the strongest choice as he’s done well for years in Ohio which is more conservative than it is liberal.  Buttigieg is a possible, especially now that he’s a cabinet secretary, but I’m not convinced he’ll have a enough broad appeal, especially with low information voters.  The rest are either not ready (AOC) or unelectable, like Warren and Sanders.

In the end, the Dems face a tough choice.  I would vote for any Dem over DeSantis, but I’m not your typical voter, and this is the problem for 2024.  Typical voters don’t pay close attention until it’s almost too late, and tend to follow the herd.  That’s how TFG eked out a win in 2016; DeSantis has the advantage for 2024 of a strong base and coming from probably THE key battleground state giving him a huge leg up on everyone else.

Such is the problem with the Dems; unlike the GOP, the Dems do almost no grass roots growing, and that makes the party weaker.  One illustration of the difference between the two parties is that of the pyramid.  Repubs build a broad base, running for school boards, precinct chairs, and town councils. On this base is built a large population of up and coming politicians, and those who rise to the top become the leading candidates with president on the top of the pyramid.  The Dems do the opposite; there’s very little broad grass roots work so presidential candidates are on their own to get enough attention to get nominated (Obama was the textbook example of that).  Once the candidate is selected, the entire party then piles onto that candidate forming an upside down pyramid that is 100% dependent on the candidate; if he/she fails, the entire party collapses and then has to rebuild.  Relentless grass roots development is how the GOP has come to dominate in most states, and the Dems haven’t figured it out yet.

That brings us to 2024.  The January 6th Committee stands a really good chance of taking out TFG either by actual criminal charges from the DOJ or at least damaging him enough to kill his 2024 chances.  That brings DeSantis, who’s a much stronger candidate.  The Dems don’t have an answer for that.  It ain’t pretty, and I’m not hopeful.