Democrats Have Only Themselves to Blame
It didn't have to come down to this but it has.
I originally wanted to write this a week earlier but, given the events that went down on July 13, I pushed it back. But after the Republican National Convention and Donald Trump's decision to name JD Vance his running mate, what I originally wanted to write has become more relevant than ever.
Prior to the events of July 13, the big topic about the 2024 Presidential election was whether or not Joe Biden should step aside. That particularly became a topic after his abysmal performance in the first Presidential debate against Trump. The average voter wasn't paying attention to who got what right or what facts needed to be checked.
Instead, the average voter paid more attention to what's been obvious for some time: Biden's mind is gone. He is no longer the politician who can talk for several minutes on a particular topic but, once in a while, make a gaffe, quickly correct himself and get back on point. He can barely string together a coherent sentence, mixes up names, can't remember certain events and sometimes just stares off into space.
There were signs that his mental faculties weren't all there in 2020. Then COVID came along and every politician found themselves relegated to a virtual setting, which meant Biden making fewer public appearances. Still, one could find examples of his mind slipping away.
Then he won the Presidency and, over time, it became more apparent that Biden's mental condition was worsening. It could have been easy for Democratic leaders to recognize this and start asking themselves if it was time to find a new Presidential candidate for the 2024 race.
But then Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came along, followed by Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips. The Democrats, rather than encourage somebody like Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer to step forward, doubled down on Biden, along with a handful of state operatives declaring they simply wouldn't hold primaries.
Meanwhile, the Republicans moved forward with their own primaries, with Ron DeSantis looking like their best hope of defeating Trump. But that is not what happened.
It wasn't simply because Trump voters were sticking to their guns about the 2020 election. It was because most of the challengers wouldn't speak enough to the concerns that Trump voters had — concerns that go far beyond the 2020 election.
DeSantis opted to forgo the case he made about immigration and focused more about the "woke right" talking points. Nikki Haley went "all in" on the neoconservative agenda and Mike Pence went on about the dangers of Trump. None of it worked.
The only other GOP candidate who spoke to concerns that Trump voters was Vivek Rameswamy — and he didn't have the name recognition to overcome Trump.
But while the likes of DeSantis and Haley failed, here's the thing: They were given a serious opportunity to challenge Trump, despite him having a strong base who backed him.
The Democrats did no such thing. They stuck it out with the man whose mental faculties weren’t there, all while the apologists denied there was anything wrong with the man’s mind.
Only when it became evident to all that Biden's mental capacity is diminishing with each passing day, did we start to hear rumblings from within the Democratic Party that they needed to make a change.
But the Democratic leadership and donors are still missing what people are really upset about: That they can see there's a lot of things going wrong and the Democratic leadership, donors and the apologists in the media continue to tell them there is nothing to see here, move on.
They tell us that the economy is just fine or that inflation is actually a good thing when the average voter is concerned about putting food on the table and gas in the tank. They tell you that there is nothing to see at the border when illegal border crossing have spiked, to the point they are higher than, not just under Trump's first Presidential term, but at any point under Barack Obama's eight years as President.
They denied that COVID-19 came from a lab until Jon Stewart came out and pointed out how ridiculous that denial was. Even so, they deny that Anthony Fauci did anything wrong, even as evidence points to him backing gain-of-function research in laboratories in China.
They continue to tell us they are defending democracy in Ukraine when Ukraine is losing badly to Russia with no signs Ukraine can turn it around but more signs that Ukrainians don't want to fight the war anymore. They were once the people who criticized the war in Iraq but haven't said much about the failures in Syria and Libya, all while bringing those who brought you not only Iraq, but Afghanistan as well, into their camp, as if that criticism of the Iraq war meant nothing.
And they continue to tell us that anybody who dares to raise questions about elite consensus is guilty of some form of bigotry, when the reality is that elite consensus is a form of snobbery that treats low-income, working class and middle class people as simpletons who know nothing about anything, that any black, Latino or Asian individual who objects to this consensus is "white adjacent" and that any woman, homosexual or transgender who objects to this consensus is a "TERF."
Thus, when the current President cannot complete a coherent sentence, regardless of the situation, and apologists keep telling you not to believe what you actually saw, the Democratic leadership, donors and apologists only have themselves to blame for their current predicament.
It remains to be seen if the GOP's transformation into a working class party holds, in which the primary concerns are the economy, inflation, immigration, noninterventionist foreign policy (NOT isolationist — that is not the same as noninterventionist), transparency in government and serious challenges against corporate power and the bureaucracy.
The culture war — which I will not argue is pushed by plenty of Republicans — is on the backburner for the time being, and there are still 2020 election claims floated, but for the most part, the GOP platform is about addressing concerns the average voter prioritizes. Most notably, that platform rejects the neoconservative thinking that has brought failure after failure for several decades.
Again, it's not a given that the GOP will stick to that route, but the average voter is going to be more convinced to give that a shot than to back the "nothing to see here, move on" mantra that the Democrats have rolled out. And the more such voters give that platform a chance, the more likely it will be that the Democrats lose the White House in November.
Even so, my belief is the Democrats need to stick it out with Biden, even as his mental capacity is gone. The Democrats made their decision and need to grin and bear it. The only exception would be if Biden passes away, in which case Kamala Harris has to be the nominee, even if she's not interested in it.
What the Democrats need to do more than anything, though, is take a long, hard look at where they went wrong, rather than point the finger at anybody but themselves. It's easy to blame Trump, but he's not the problem. He's simply capitalizing on a situation that the elites (Democrat and Republican alike) created. If the Democrats want to correct course, the first step is to take the fingers they are pointing at other people and direct them toward a mirror.