- My vote is a personal endorsement. It says, “I, citizen Ted Rall, approve of Joe Biden’s career in public office.” I do not. Voting for Biden would be a retroactive endorsement of his vote to invade Iraq, which killed over 1 million innocent people. Voting for Biden would be a retroactive endorsement of his long history of racism, beginning with his disgusting opposition to court-ordered busing.
- Biden has never apologized for his numerous right-wing policy positions, such as writing the fascist USA-Patriot Act and the 1994 crime bill that expanded mass incarceration of Black men. Biden’s refusal to apologize indicates that he still believes he did the right thing, and that he would do them again in the future. Why should I forgive him? He has never asked for forgiveness.
- Joe Biden lies a lot. He falsely claimed to hold three bachelor’s degrees and to have graduated at the top of his law school class with a full scholarship. He falsely claimed to have come from a family of coal miners in Northeastern Pennsylvania. He plagiarized in law school and when he wrote his speeches. He said he was arrested with Nelson Mandela; it didn’t happen. During his recent debate against Bernie Sanders, he looked Sanders and the American people in the eye and falsely claimed not to have repeatedly supported the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding of abortion. One of the biggest reasons to despise Trump is that he lies so often. What’s the point of replacing one liar with another?
- Even in the middle of a viral pandemic, Biden says he would veto Medicare For All if a bipartisan Congress were to pass such a bill. 5 million Americans were without health insurance before COVID-19. That number has more than doubled due to coronavirus lockdown-related unemployment. I cannot vote for anyone who wants my fellow Americans to die of COVID-19, and that goes double when the murderer is motivated by corruption: of the approximately 20 candidates in the 2020 Democratic primaries, Joe Biden received the biggest contributions from the healthcare industry.
- Joe Biden wants to kill the planet. He still refuses to support a Green New Deal whose goal is zero net carbon emissions by 2030. He wants to do it by 2050. Way too late! Climate change experts say that human civilization may be extinct by then. I cannot vote for anyone who wants everyone on earth to die from climate apocalypse. Here too, Biden has been corrupted by giant contributions by oil and natural gas energy companies.
- Biden refuses to name his cabinet. Given his advanced age — he would be the oldest person ever elected president — his supporters say a cabinet of “best and brightest” department secretaries would pick up the slack as Biden’s mental abilities continue to fade. If that’s true, what are those names? Unless he proves otherwise, before the election, we have to assume a Biden Administration will be run by Obama-era corporate hacks, not one of whom was liberal. You shouldn’t hope for the best from someone who still has Laurence Summers, an idiot who thinks that women aren’t smart enough to be scientists, on speed dial.
- Whether or not you believe that the DNC conspired to install Joe Biden as the nominee, a vote for Biden is a vote for a conservative Democratic Party. Consider what will happen if Biden wins with substantial progressive support. Internal pollsters will conclude that there’s no need to kowtow to progressive voters because they will vote for a corporatist even if they don’t receive any ideological concessions. The argument is, get rid of Trump first and then push Biden to the left. As MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell has said, that’s ridiculous. “If you want to pull the major party that is closest to the way you’re thinking to what you’re thinking, you must show them you are capable of not voting for them. If you don’t show them you’re capable of not voting for them, they don’t have to listen to you.” Voting for Biden would actually resume the party’s push toward the right.
- America deserves more than two parties. Both major parties began small. They never would have grown had 19th century voters been unwilling to ignore the two-party trap and “waste” their votes and financial contributions on organizations that didn’t initially seem to stand a chance. If you don’t believe in either Donald Trump or Joe Biden, vote for and contribute to a smaller party. If you support the lesser of two evils in election after election, don’t complain that a better alternative never emerges.
- Joe Biden is mentally unfit for the presidency. He is clearly suffering from dementia, which is why his campaign is hiding him. Now they’re trying to come up with excuses for him not to debate Trump. If the electorate wants to hand over nuclear launch codes to a man who is senile, let them commit this madness without me.
- Biden’s team thinks that their guy can win without campaigning or articulating an affirmative platform of forward-looking ideas simply because so many of us are disgusted by Trump. They may be correct. But it’s dangerous. If Biden’s non-campaign campaign model is successful, it will be emulated. People will become president without being properly vetted, without the American people getting to know them. Nothing could be less democratic.
I anticipate the usual objection to this essay: but Trump! He’s so crazy and racist and stupid and evil!
All true. But none of Trump’s many shortcomings eclipse the sum total of the concerns raised above. Considering everything, in the aggregate Biden and Trump are equally awful. In some ways, Biden is worse. For me, the conclusion is obvious: don’t vote for either one.
Take to the streets.
(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of the biography “Political Suicide: The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party.” You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
18 Comments.
1. I notice that several of your criteria apply to pretty much all the dem nominees. Sure Clinton didn’t want to invade Iraq, but when it came to dropping bombs on people, he certainly didn’t shirk. His wife woulda put him to shame, no doubt.
2. I don’t know how you limited yourself to 10. When a career is as morally repugnant and long as, um, Biden’s, how to pick just 10?
3. Again with the Trump bashing. Trump just pardoned his good buddy Roger Stone. And, much like the Pope’s battalions of tanks, the dems are mumbling about outrage and impotent to do anything, even while the media struggles to differentiate Trump’s pardoning from all the dems who did similarly scummy pardons.
The idea that some Barney Fife-minus-half-his-wits like Biden is going to beat Trump? I just don’t see it.
Also, to be fair about it, how can, um, Biden provide a list of his cabinet (#6)? Goldman Sachs hasn’t handed it to him yet.
Many Americans are tired of the meanness this administration relishes, they long for the compassion and warm embrace of Uncle Joe. It’s obvious his campaign is emphasizing his compassion due to the tragedies in his life. There is a percentage of the electorate who feel this way, they don’t care about his past policies that are enumerated here.
I am reading Ted’s new book, along with a similar themed book* by John Nichols. Nichols goes even farther in pinpointing the awfulness of the Dem party to when the party bosses dumped VP Henry Wallace in favor of Truman.
*The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party: The Enduring Legacy of Henry Wallace’s Antifascist,Antiracist Politics
And I really agree with you about #6. Why not name a shadow cabinet right now? That is more important than speculation about who will be his runningmate! How many of them will be Clinton retreads and Obama retreads? It would be awesome if Warren was secretary of Treasury, for example.
Oh and I heard John Nichols propose Rep. Barbara Lee for VP(the lone vote against PATRIOT Act in Sept 2001).
I may print this out a put it on the fridge with a magnet. I know all this stuff about Biden, but am inclined to ignore it. Hold my nose and vote for ANYBODY who can replace the incumbent imbecile. This essay points out why that is not a responsible way to vote.
Re: Full-load Biden’s “supporters say a cabinet of ‘best and brightest’ department secretaries would pick up the slack as Biden’s mental abilities continue to fade.”
This is the same bunch of pin-heads who have been psycho-analyzing His Hairness (aka “Trump”), however justifiably, for 3.5+ years. Again, who, exactly, are the “deplorables”?
Don’t miss it folks!!! It’s the titanic clash of the blithering, demented geezers for the title of “most powerful person” in the world!!!
Ted,
I’m gonna call foul on you. In your entry concerning, um, Biden’s mental state:
“Joe Biden is mentally unfit for the presidency. He is clearly suffering from dementia, which is why his campaign is hiding him. Now they’re trying to come up with excuses for him not to debate Trump. If the electorate wants to hand over nuclear launch codes to a man who is senile, let them commit this madness without me.”
You offer three links.
The one for “clearly suffering from dementia” links to an article from “The U.S. Sun” (I’ve never heard of it) that mentions a Rasmussen poll of 1,000 likely voters. What voters think is not an acceptable substitute for facts and data. I mean, if you were writing for the New York Times, sure, this would pass with flying colors. But it’s 8:18 a.m. as I write this and I’ve been up all night drinking oven cleaner, so my standards are still a little better than the Times’s.
The one for how his campaign “is hiding him” is much better, but still circumstantial. That they’ve tucked him away is alarming. What I would find more alarming is a report about how so few reporters (if any) have actually spoken with him, at any length whatsoever, in anything other than a purely scripted fashion.
The third link is to Thomas Friedman. To explain why citing Thomas Friedman for anything is unacceptable is a waste of my time to write, your time to read, and the Internet’s time to carry. Thomas Friedman? Was your Ouija board unavailable? Were there no escaped maniacs lurking in the bushes over there at Casa Rall?
Biden’s mental state is a significant issue, and I certainly think he’s a couple of jigs shy of a saw. But these links aren’t up to snuff.
Much like Biden.
“Links? Links? We don’t need no stinkin’ links!”
Sorry Alex, but I’m old enough to remember a time before the internet when a person didn’t need to know what everyone else thought before he could think things out for himself.
«… I’m old enough to remember a time before the internet when a person didn’t need to know what everyone else thought before he could think things out for himself.» But surely, Glenn, you don’t mean to say that critical evaluation of sources originated with the World Wide Web and the possibility of sending hyperlinks ? Hasn’t a consideration of the authenticity and reliability of sources always been a necessary part of judging the validity of statements, particularly about matters, like Joseph Robinette Biden’s possible descent into the mists of senility, concerning which one has no direct experience ?…
Henri
All sources, including those on the internet, are subject to critical evaluation.
Whose individual opinion has such validity that it can be taken on faith?
An individual from Goldman Sachs argues that the economy will not come back until people do what is necessary to shut down the pandemic. I have no faith in anyone from Goldman Sachs but this opinion seems to comport with my thoughtful evaluation of the facts, so I don’t need to quote Goldman Sachs personnel to validate the product of my thought.
So, as with all statements of fact, it is wise to append the word “alleged” and limit reliance on language itself. The facts as I observe them are not complete and verifiable, but then our symbolic representations of reality are really best approached as metaphor, to say what something is “like” rather than what it “is”.
It’s enough that in reading Ted’s 10 points that find agreement with Ted as to what Joe Biden is “like”, and I think that Joe Biden is “like” an “asshole”.
[…] couldn’t resist, however, posting Ted Rall’s absolutely perfect listing of his (and my) 10 Reasons I Won’t Vote for Biden. Voters from both parties have made the argument that their candidate is less than perfect, but […]
but wait, here’s his Plan for environment/climate!
https://joebiden.com/climate/
All I need to know is that when Barack Obama fake-sipped water from Flint Michigan’s water system, anything Biden says about climate and pollution is shouted down by his silence about Obama’s opening up deep water oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and having the first nuclear power plant go online since Three Mile Island.
«He [i e, Joseph Robinette Biden] still refuses to support a Green New Deal whose goal is zero net carbon emissions by 2030. He wants to do it by 2050. Way too late! Climate change experts say that human civilization may be extinct by then.» Pehaps that last sentence may be the one reason for voting for Mr Biden, Ted ; why should this poor planet have to suffer «human civili[s]ation» any longer ?…
Henri
Henri,
In all fairness, yes, the human experiment has been a bitterly disappointing thing. And if it were just the human race that would blink out of existence, that might be okay. We could set things up before the end to preserve and transmit the art, literature, and music, for a little while at least. One last message in the bottle before the final night falls on our lumpen species.
But there are flowers and dragonflies and whales and my two cats and all the other things on this good Earth, and we’re going to drag them all, kicking and screaming, into the fires with us.
That’s the thing that really fills me with sorrow..
Every act of one party against the well-being and security of the people is met with an “I’ll see you and raise you” bid by the other.
Each of the two parties is betting how badly they can beat the pants off the people and still be elected (and take home the big prize pot from the oligarchy).
How low will the people allow themselves to be dragged down before they wise up?
I know. I’m not voting for the guy either. He frankly doesn’t deserve my endorsement. I agree that getting rid of Trump and Trumpeteers is necessary–but that isn’t sufficient. We have to decide what comes *after* Trump is defeated, and in jail where he belongs, and I don’t think voting for Biden is the way to accomplish that. I’ve never been much of a fan of electoral politics, even at the best of times–politics that matters is in the streets. I’ve been registered to vote since I was 20 (1972) and I’ve never voted for a corporate Dem. Not going to start now.
[…] Biden is the nominee and, if polls are accurate, likely next president. He wrote last month, “Joe Biden is mentally unfit for the presidency. He is clearly suffering from dementia, which is why his campaign is hiding him. Now they’re […]