Special Counsel Robert Hur decided not to charge President Biden with mishandling classified documents because he’s too senile to be deemed to have free will and intent for prosecution. Yet Biden immediately called a press conference, at which he claimed to be of sound mind and body—and then conflated the presidents of Mexico and Egypt.
Most voters are unhappy about the likely Trump-Biden rematch we’re looking at. But it’s probably too late to avoid at this point. let the wishful magical thinking begin!
Polls keep saying the same thing: voters think President Joe Biden is too old.
The latest comes from some outfit called “The New York Times.” According to these “Times” people: “An overwhelming 71% said [Biden] was ‘too old’ to be an effective president—an opinion shared across every demographic and geographic group in the poll, including a remarkable 54% of Mr. Biden’s own supporters.” Just because he’s 80.
Almost 81.
If the election were held today, the poll monsters go on, “Trump would be poised to win more than 300 electoral college votes, far above the 270 needed to take the White House.”
On paper, where things get printed, it looks bad. “Even Kamala Harris—no political juggernaut so far—fares a bit better than Mr. Biden, trailing Mr. Trump by three points in a hypothetical matchup, compared with Mr. Biden’s five-point deficit,” the Times says.
Fortunately for Democrats, Biden doesn’t live on paper. Our commander-in-chief is a skeletal flesh-and-bone human being. And he has the answer to these so-called “polls”: “I don’t believe the polls.” Exactly so, Mr. President. Anyone who takes the $8 billion-a-year public opinion and election polling industry and its thousands of highly-educated analysts seriously is plainly a poltroon and a malarkey-peddling pony soldier!
Ooo, look at us with our 95% accuracy rate, we’re soooo smart!
Democrats have got to get the president’s message, whatever that is, out there. Otherwise voters might listen to Congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota, the 54-year-old twerp challenging Biden in the Democratic primaries. “83% of Democrats under 30 want a different nominee. You know, a lot of politicians lie, but the numbers don’t,” Phillips says. Phillips loves Biden and voted with him literally 100% of the time; his only beef with the prez is the age thing.
Like how James Carville famously said “it’s the economy, stupid” and that somehow got Clinton elected president, Biden needs to tell someone loudly and proudly: “It’s not about my age, even more, stupids!”
Studies prove it with 95% accuracy: when people are thinking about one thing, they’re not thinking about something else. So, if we want voters to stop focusing on Biden’s age, we need to seduce them into obsessing over a different subject entirely.
For instance, Biden might run attack ads pointing out that, at 77, Trump is no spring chicken his own self. Ad copy first draft: “If Biden is too old, Trump is almost as old as he is so at bare minimum he’s almost too old too!”
Or, for heterosexual male voters, we could just show and talk about women’s breasts. Age who?
But really, because this is politics and it’s supposed to be about policies, Democrats should migrate the focus on age over to the president’s handling of the economy. Well, they’ve been trying that. The problem is, the voters hate Bidenomics. The thing about voters is, they don’t respond well when you remind them why they hate you.
Why do the voters hate Bidenomics? Because people are psychologically selfish. Rich people and the stock market are doing great but the voters are broke and so are unappreciative. “Whatever stories Americans are told about the strength of the economy under President Joe Biden, they are not going to be persuaded to look past the issue of their own living standards,” liberal economist James Galbraith writes. Ingrates!
Never mind the economy. Which is an awesome economy, no matter what your wallet tells you. And another thing—why is your wallet talking? Are you on fentanyl? If so, why can you afford fancy opioids? Bidenomics, that’s why!
Pivot, pivot, pivot! Maybe Biden should focus on young people. They were a key part of his coalition in 2020, dropped away from Democrats during the 2022 midterms and are expected to stay away in 2024. Let’s get them back.
Biden’s ace in the hole: come out as trans. Trans-young! Biden will announce that he now identifies as a 33-year-old. Not as the racist 33-year-old SOB he was in 1975 when he ran for Congress in Delaware while opposing court-ordered school desegregation and supporting pro-apartheid senator Jesse Helms’ attacks on bussing. As a cool modern one with, like, a goatee.
Trans-young Biden will dump the birthdate he was assigned at birth in favor of his lifestyle birthdate, 1990. It’ll even be on his new driver’s license, assuming he’s able to get the old one back after Hunter took it away along with his car keys.
As a dude who retroactively came of age in the 2010s, he’ll be underpaid, overworked and totally unable to repay his college student loans—just like the young voters who are mad at him because he didn’t forgive their student loans.
Common ground!
Maybe we should talk to Kamala.
(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
Editorial Cartoonists Ted Rall (from the political Left) and Scott Stantis (from the political Right) discuss national and international events of the week.
First up: as we enter the third week of the war between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip, there are rising fears of regional escalation. Has Hezbollah agreed to open a second front against Israel? Will Iran attack Israel? How long will it take Israel to overthrow the Hamas government and what kind of regime do they plan to install if and when they succeed? Right now, it looks like they are poised to repeat the mistakes America made in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
In the second segment of the podcast, Ted and Scott discuss the constitutional crisis created by the Republican Party’s inability to choose a Speaker of the House of Representatives. Steve, Scalise and Jim Jordan are both out. Will the speakership ultimately wind up in the hands of an obscure congressman? In the meantime, congressional business has ground to a standstill.
Finally, Ted and Scott react to President Biden’s second Oval Office speech since he became president. Squinting, unable to read the Teleprompter, tripping over his words and slurring, this was an extremely disturbing performance that seems to belie Democrats’ claim that he is a viable candidate for 2024. Will he resign? Step aside mid-campaign? Or try to muddle through somehow to reelection? Scott and Ted also discuss the substance of Biden’s speech: his attempt to link the Ukraine and Israel conflicts.
Watch the Video Version of the DMZ America Podcast:
DMZ America Podcast Ep 121 Sec 1: Israel Playing Into Hamas’ Plans
DMZ America Podcast Ep 121 Sec 2: House Speaker Crisis
DMZ America Podcast Ep 121 Sec 3: Biden’s Terrifying Speech
The issue of President Biden’s age, unprecedented in American political history, will increasingly rise to the fore as voters focus on the election. The role of the vice president, of course, has never been more relevant.
Well, Mr. and Mrs. Biden, the holidays are over. You know, the holidays during which you were going to decide whether or not to run for reelection. So, what did you decide?
This being a democracy, we hope that you came down on the side of the 70% of voters who don’t want you to run in 2024. Even if that figure reflects the feelings of every single Republican (and it probably doesn’t), it includes a lot of Democrats too.
At your age, Mr. President, decision-making can take a little extra time. Let me help you weigh the pros and cons.
Pros: You get to try to beat Donald Trump again. You have some legislative achievements to brag about. You’ll make history as the oldest person to ever run and perhaps win.
Cons: You have low poll numbers—and we may be heading into a recession. You might lose, which would suck, especially if it were to Trump. The Hunter Biden laptop investigation could turn ugly, maybe even implicate you in criminal wrongdoing. You won’t be able to campaign from your basement this time; a real presidential campaign is grueling and you’ll be 81. Actuarily, there’s a strong chance you would die during your second term, elevating the deeply unpopular Kamala Harris to the Oval Office. She would tarnish your legacy and hurt the Democratic Party.
You’re still sharp enough to see the right choice.
Next up: what to do about the vice president?
With only 28% of Democrats saying they would vote for Harris in the 2024 Democratic primaries, she would be far from a shoo-in for the nomination, which ought to be a given for a sitting vice president. She was a terrible campaigner, I would say in the 2020 primaries, but she didn’t even make it into 2020. The former prosecutor, who still hasn’t worked to release the innocent Black men she sent to prison, could easily face a devastating, even lethal, primary challenge from the left.
Cutting Harris loose is the smart, arguably required, move. But she’s a woman of color. Sidelining her will look racist and sexist. The only way to ease her out of the race somewhat gracefully is to make it look like her idea. Convince her that her only future in politics is a humiliating defeat. Find her a soft landing: university president, NGO CEO, MSNBC anchor.
Being a lame duck won’t feel good. Run again or retire, Mr. President, you’re a lame duck either way. Republicans control the House, Democrats barely have the Senate, campaigning begins this fall. Legacy-defining legislation is in your rearview mirror.
What matters now is nominating the strongest possible person to run against the Republicans next year. The best way to accomplish that is to subject the contenders to trial by fire. The nominee must be battle-hardened in preparation for the general election.
2016 shows what happens when a candidate has the nomination handed to her by superdelegates, cheating, backroom deals, and other DNC shenanigans. Hillary Clinton was smart and experienced but also arrogant and entitled. And why not? The nomination was handed to her. If she’d gotten accustomed to having to fight for every vote, she might have felt the hunger and drive to campaign in Wisconsin in the general or refrained from insulting Bernie Sanders and his supporters.
Clear the field, stand aside and give potential contenders as much time as possible to fundraise and organize their campaigns. Mr. Biden, as eminence grise and de facto leader of your party, you can pressure the DNC and top Democrats to abolish what remains of the superdelegate system and scrupulously refrain from endorsing or criticizing any contender for the Democratic Party nomination for president. Progressive or liberal, let the best person win and lead the party you have served for a half century to a victory that will serve as a lasting legacy of your wisdom.
(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
For the foreseeable future, the Democratic Party is in trouble. In today’s essay I will describe just how bleak the situation is – spoiler alert, very — and how I would advise party leaders to respond if they asked my advice.
First, they’re probable going to lose big in the upcoming midterms.
Prediction is fraught, things change, you never know, blah blah blah. Polls are mixed. That said, Republicans will almost certainly take back the House of Representatives and probably the Senate as well.
The tea leaves look ugly. Plagued by the perception that he is tired, feeble and out of it, the nearly octogenarian President Biden’s approval ratings are at a near record low 41% and sinking. Gallup’s monthly poll of the issues that worry American voters lists the top problems as poor government leadership (20%), inflation (17%), the economy in general (12%) and fuel/oil prices (6%). Rarely has a political situation been so straightforward; voters think the economy sucks and they blame Biden.
The president has no one to blame but himself for the perception that he doesn’t understand how much pain inflation is causing, and that he doesn’t have a plan to bring it down. First he said that inflation wasn’t happening. Then he said it would be temporary. Now he’s blaming Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine for an economic phenomenon that began a year earlier and that his sanctions against Russia are making worse. The White House’s most recent published statement focuses on attacking inflation by…taxing the rich and big corporations. I’m all for a progressive tax system. But changing who pays for missiles and bombs won’t bring down food and gas prices.
Not that we’ll find out. Democratic proposals to increase taxes on the wealthy are dead in the water. So Biden’s idea to fix inflation is something he can’t try.
Inflation, the problem that most scares voters, will remain high at least through the end of the year. And there’s nothing the president can do about it – he told us that himself last week. Biden’s inability to lead will prompt swing voters to cast rage votes for Republicans.
So 2023 will likely begin with divided government.
The president will be the lamest of all lame ducks. Biden, 80 and about to topple over at any moment, will finally have to admit to himself and the nation what everyone already knows: he will not run for reelection. Heir-apparent Kamala Harris has one of the lowest popularity ratings of anyone in American politics, 31%, the same as for lawyers and big pharma. How bad is it? Not only is Harris incapable of clearing the field by scaring away potential rivals for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, she would almost certainly face the devastating embarrassment of a sitting vice president losing in the primaries.
Worse still, Republican control of Congress will make it impossible for the Biden-Harris administration to rack up any legislative accomplishments for them, or any Democrat, to run on in 2024.
When voters are miserable and hopeless because they don’t see government taking action that might alleviate their pain, they punish the incumbent party. So the trick for Democrats in the upcoming presidential election would be to shed the albatross of the failed Biden presidency. There’s only one way to do it: both Biden and Harris should announce early in 2023 that they do not plan to run for president, thus opening the field to all comers.
American elections are about the future. Sweeping the slate clean will make for one of the most exciting Democratic presidential primary campaigns in history and could attract new candidates who otherwise might have sat out the race.
Republicans, on the other hand, will almost certainly renominate an old white man, Donald Trump. The reality-TV real-estate pseudo-billionaire who once seemed so fresh as to be wild and crazy will be a bitter blast from the past.
My suggestion, of course, runs directly against the conventional wisdom that a first-term president becomes instantly impotent following the announcement that he will not run again and that it’s therefore better to keep up the fiction as long as possible. With Republicans controlling Congress, however, what difference will it make?
A soon-to-be-retired President Biden would be freed to pass all sorts of executive orders and other programs that require nothing more than a stroke of his pen. With Harris not running, no other candidate would be held to account for his actions beyond party affiliation. Biden could do all sorts of things on progressives’ wish list, thus shoring up the currently unenthusiastic party base: a blanket pardon of nonviolent drug offenders, closing Guantánamo Bay, forgiveness of federal student loans, canceling federal contracts with companies that engage in union-busting, pardoning political prisoners like Julian Assange and targets of the security state like Edward Snowden. He could follow the lead of Richard Nixon of all people, and impose wage and price controls to fight inflation.
There’s no point worrying about the 2022 midterms. Democrats are going to lose those. They need to look ahead to 2024. Job one is convincing Biden and Harris to stand down.
(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of a new graphic novel about a journalist gone bad, “The Stringer.” Order one today. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
The epidemic of mass shootings has prompted some lawmakers to call for “red flag laws” that would allow people to report those who seem to be getting unhinged before they have the possibility to become a mass shooter. It’s hard to think of a law that could be more easily abused.
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Democrats need to stop playing cute about the president’s reelection plans.
Asked in March whether he’s going to run in 2024, Biden’s answer was, shall we say, less than unqualified: “The answer is yes, my plan is to run for re-election. That’s my expectation.” He added: “I’m a great respecter of fate. I’ve never been able to plan three-and-a-half years ahead for certain.”
Eight months and ten approval points later, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters: “He is [running]. That’s his intention.”
Weasel words like “expectation” and “intention” signal that Biden is sticking to the “alternative strategy” that The Politico revealed in December 2019: “quietly indicating that he will almost certainly not run for a second term while declining to make a promise that he and his advisers fear could turn him into a lame duck and sap him of his political capital.”
According to aides, Biden expected to be a “transitional” figure due to his age. The Politico piece quoted an unidentified advisor: “He’s going into this thinking, ‘I want to find a running mate I can turn things over to after four years but if that’s not possible or doesn’t happen then I’ll run for reelection.’ But he’s not going to publicly make a one term pledge.”
With an approval rating of 28%, Kamala Harris is not that running mate. She is the least popular vice president in the history of polling. But running again is unrealistic for the oldest president in history. He would be 82 years old when he runs again and 86 when he completes his second term.
An 86-year-old president today would be the third-oldest head of state on earth.
And Biden isn’t the sharpest 79-year-old. He is visibly infirm, gets easily confused and can’t be trusted to hold a traditional press conference involving an unscripted back-and-forth with members of the press corps.
Whether he knows it or not, Joe Biden will almost certainly not run for reelection. Political insiders know it. (“One Democrat involved in campaigns said they couldn’t think of a single person they had spoken to in the last month who considers the possibility of Biden running again to be a real one,” The Washington Post reported recently.)
Voters know it too: 54% of Americans, including 45% of Democrats, told an August Quinnipiac poll they don’t believe Biden will be a candidate in 2024.
Democrats should deep-six this absurd game of “who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” and admit the obvious truth. A man in Biden’s mental and physical condition at age 79 will not rally. He won’t get stronger by age 82, when he will be required to hopscotch the nation for a grueling series of campaign appearances and presidential debates, while simultaneously heading the federal government.
Credibility is the most valuable coin of the realm in politics. Anyone with a scintilla of common sense knows that Democrats are lying about Biden’s current fitness for office as well as his plans for reelection. There are lies and then there are lies that insult your intelligence; Trump’s ridiculous claim that Mexico would pay for his border wall stood apart from his other untruths.
It would be hard to overstate the brand damage caused by political messaging that doesn’t pass the smell test. “What [Biden] is saying publicly is what he firmly believes. There’s no difference,” former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell told The Washington Post. “He will not run if he feels he can’t do the job physically or emotionally.” Biden once had a word for this kind of playing-both-sides statement: malarkey.
“The message,” notes the Post, “is aimed in part at tamping down the assumption among many Democrats that Biden may not seek reelection given his age and waning popularity, while also effectively freezing the field for Vice President Harris and other potential presidential hopefuls.”
This strategy is misconceived. Harris is hobbled by her unpopularity. How can she intimidate potential primary challengers, much less clear the field? How can you freeze the field for Harris and someone else at the same time?
So the real question is about Biden. If he runs, the DNC will back him. Democratic candidates and donors are understandably reluctant to committing time and money toward 2024—something they need to begin now—if there’s a strong possibility that Biden will run. More candidates, running longer campaigns, improve the likelihood that the eventual nominee will emerge well-funded, seasoned and tough enough to face Donald Trump or another Republican.
There are, of course, costs and risks associated with exposing a sitting president as a lame duck. First and foremost would be Biden’s ability to push through major legislative initiatives. Which is why he should delay his admission that he plans to be a one-termer until after the passage of whatever is left of his Build Back Better social-spending bill next year. BBB is the last major law Biden will ever have the chance to sign; he’ll be a de facto lame duck anyway.
Congressional Democrats won’t like going into the midterm elections without a strong president, but they’re going to get shellacked no matter what. They can recover their losses in 2024 on the coattails of a presidential nominee made stronger by a vigorous primary battle and Biden’s willingness to step aside.
In any case, voters might give Democrats credit for being honest about the physical and mental health of the president, for being mature enough to prepare for who will follow Biden and for treating them like adults.
(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of a new graphic novel about a journalist gone bad, “The Stringer.” Order one today. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
President Joe Biden is almost certainly too old and mentally infirm to run for reelection in 2024. Besides that, his approval rating is low. Vice President Kamala Harris is the obvious alternative except for the fact that her approval rating is even worse. Corporate Democrats keep flailing, trying to find one of their own who is acceptable. Meanwhile, they repeatedly blocked the most popular politician in America.
