Democrats and Republicans “Stole” Over 35,000,000 Votes From the Greens and Libertarians in 2020

Many things that everyone knows, are not true. Sometimes, quite rarely, one of those widely-believed falsehoods not only turns out not to be true, but obscures the fact that the exact opposite is true.

Most people believe that small political parties siphon off votes from one of the two major parties. Mainstream media repeatedly declares, without bothering to cite evidence because their statement’s obviousness rises to the level of self-evident, that Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the 2000 election (not true) and Jill Stein sucked away enough Democratic votes from Hillary Clinton to put Donald Trump in the White House (also not true).

Let us, for the purpose of this essay, set aside the usual counterarguments to the claim that you shouldn’t vote Green because they’re just spoilers: no presidential election is decided by a single vote so you can’t possibly individually change the outcome, people who don’t live in swing states have no reason to worry about tipping an election, parties ought to have to earn votes, voting for a lesser evil is still voting for evil, a little party will never become bigger until we stop overthinking our tactical voting and simply support that candidate and the party we like best.

But—are small parties really electoral succubi? First, a look at Republican losers who blamed third parties for their losses.

Running as a Progressive in 1912, a vengeful Teddy Roosevelt out to punish his former protege for deviating from progressive Republicanism is alleged to have sucked away votes from William Howard Taft. We did wind up with President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat—a result cited as the ultimate example of a third-party candidate splitting a party. But historians forget to mention that 1912 was a four-way race. Wilson faced his own “spoiler,” from his left: Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party, who got six percent of the popular vote. Taft was such a weak candidate that neither Teddy nor Debs made a difference; Wilson would have won no matter what.

Pundits say Ross Perot created a big enough sucking sound of votes from George H.W. Bush in 1992 to hand the race to Bill Clinton. Pundits are mistaken: Perot pulled equally from the Ds and the Rs. Libertarian Jo Jorgensen is unfairly blamed for contributing to Trump’s win in 2020.

Similarly, left-leaning third-parties—since 2000, this has meant the Greens—have never poached from Democrats in big enough numbers to change the outcome. Green Party supporters tend to be leftists like me, who would otherwise not vote at all. If the only two parties on the ballot were the Democrats and Republicans, we’d sit on our hands.

Greens can’t steal my vote from the Democrats. This is because Democrats didn’t have my vote in the first place.

The Greens are not a purer, more liberal version of the Democrats. Greens’ progressivism, which criticizes the economic class divide and prioritizes programs to reduce income and wealth inequality, and opposes militarism, is a different ideology than the Democrats’ corporate identity-politics liberalism of tokenism and forever wars. Democratic voters who care more about abortion, affirmative action and transgender rights than class issues are not likely to abandon them for the Greens, who are most interested in economic problems like the minimum wage and Medicare For All.

At the same time, progressives don’t think of the Democratic Party as a watered-version of Green progressivism. Progressives hardly see any difference between Democrats and Republicans. There’s little to no daylight between the Big Two on the matters progressives worry most about: economic unfairness and militarism.

The real spoilers are the two major parties who “steal” votes—from small parties like the Greens and the Libertarians. Unlike the little organizations, who count themselves lucky if they pull in three percent of the vote in a presidential race, Democrats and Republicans steal massive numbers of votes from their rivals.

I’m talking, of course, about the phenomenon of “strategic voting.”

“I’m a Democrat who loves Joe Biden but I’m voting for Howie Hawkins (or Cornel West),” said no one ever. On the other hand, a lot of people who would otherwise go Green instead vote Democratic because they are afraid of “wasting” their vote. Many “Democrats” are actually progressive, falling significantly to the left of the Democratic Party. If they thought the Greens could win, they would vote for them.

A 2019 Hill-HarrisX survey sums up the strategic-voting mentality: 65% of Democratic voters said they would prefer to vote for a primary candidate with the best chance to beat Trump than one who agreed with them on their top issue. What if Americans voted their opinions? What if “wasting your vote” wasn’t a consideration?

A 2021 Pew Research analysis found that six percent of voters belong to the “progressive left.” They tend to be young and highly-educated; they’re the “largest Democratic group to say it backed Sen. Bernie Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic primaries (though members of this group broke heavily for Biden in the general election versus Trump).” An additional 10% are what Pew calls the “outsider left”: very young and “not thrilled with the Democratic or Republican parties—or the country writ large, for that matter.”

            If the Green Party had full access to the political process, and we voted our opinions, it could expect to get all (or close to all) of the 16% of the vote who are progressives and alienated leftists. Full access to the system would include:

  • Placement on ballots without having to overcome onerous ballot-access requirements and nuisance lawsuits by the Democratic Party
  • Invitations to televised debates
  • Media coverage at the same level of exposure as either of the two major parties
  • Donations to finance advertising and data research at the same level as either of the two major parties
  • No more attack pieces in the media characterizing third-party votes as “wasting your vote” for a “spoiler” who “can’t possibly win”

(I don’t have space to address other institutional advantages enjoyed by the Democrats over the Greens, like a big rich party’s ability to attract more high-quality candidates and the fact that Americans have been propagandized by their parents and teachers since childhood to believe that the two-party system is inherent to our political system.)

The Greens are so marginalized that it’s hard to imagine this alternative reality in which they were seen as a true “third party” on par with the Ds and the Rs—not kooks or weirdos, simply a third option. Even so, it’s safe to say they’d be closer to 16.0% of the vote than the 0.2% garnered by presidential nominee Howie Hawkins in 2020.

            Pew also found that 12.0% of voters belong to what it calls the “ambivalent right”—irreligious, young, prefer smaller government and are “more moderate than other Republicans on immigration, abortion, same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization.” There’s a word for that orientation: libertarians. Yet, due to the same barriers faced by the Greens, the Libertarian Party only got 1.2% of the vote in 2020.

            By my back-of-the-envelope calculus, Democrats and Republicans are poaching over a fourth of the overall vote—over 35 million—from the Greens and Libertarians.

(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.)

Democrats in Denial

            Denial is neither a river in Egypt nor just a psychological defense mechanism identified by Anna Freud, Sigmund’s daughter. It’s the guiding principle of President Biden’s reelection campaign.

            Polls consistently show that the vast majority of Americans, including most Democrats, don’t want Biden to run again because they think he’s too old. This is not new information—Biden and the Democrats knew voters were concerned about his age four years ago, when they signaled his intention to be a one-term, transitional president.

            Nevertheless, he decided to run again.
            Two weeks after he announced his 2024 campaign, Biden’s approval rating fell to his all-time low, 36 percent in the ABC News/Washington Post poll. No president in the history of modern polling has won reelection with numbers this low at this stage in the cycle.

            Yet he remained in the race.

            Biden faces two challengers, neither of whom has been taken seriously by the media, run TV campaign ads or held a major rally. Despite being repeatedly ridiculed as a fringe anti-vaxxer and kooky New Age self-help author, respectively, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Marianne Williamson are polling at a total of 25% among Democratic primary voters against an incumbent president. Compare that to Bernie Sanders at this point in the 2016 campaign; he was at 15% yet nearly took the nomination away from Hillary Clinton. RFK and Williamson aren’t as surprisingly strong as Biden is shockingly weak.

            In 1968, when LBJ announced he wouldn’t run again—after the Tet Offensive—he was polling better than Biden is doing now.

            And Biden persists.

But he refuses to break a sweat. Democrats tell The Hill that “Biden’s circle would like to run a ‘light’ campaign this time around, too,” as he did in 2020 when he used the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to campaign from his basement in Delaware. Biden doesn’t want any debates. He’s running on the same policies as 2020. Such deflection reflects Democrats’ refusal to acknowledge how voters perceive the president: feeble, erratic, falling down every other week, possibly senile. A hard-charging 50-state campaign full of big rallies and vigorous debates and town halls could counter that image, but Biden isn’t up to it and/or his aides are in denial. They won’t even work up a fresh issues platform.

This is a not a reelection bid. It’s a slow fade.

            Never mind our guy, Democrats are thinking, their guy is in real trouble. Donald Trump will almost certainly be the Republican nominee and he’s facing multiple criminal charges that could land him in prison for nearly half a millennium! Legal woes may not be hurting him with spite-voting Republican primary voters (quite the opposite), but wait for the general election! Joe Biden will be sitting pretty!

            Except that the Hunter Biden laptop stuff could well be at a full merry boil by then. Did Joe “Big Guy” Biden accept $5 million from a Ukrainian energy company as a bribe in return for getting a prosecutor who was looking into that company fired—a company that employed his son in a country in which the U.S. is now involved in a proxy war? Maybe yes, maybe no, but House Republicans might well turn up evidence of Joe’s perfidy big enough to make voters forget about Trump’s penchant for hoarding top-secret memos.

            Democrats do not appear concerned about this possibility.

            Wildest of all, no one—not the president, not Democratic leaders, not even Democratic voters—seem at all worried about putting Trump on trial during an election campaign.

They endlessly declaimed the yucky incivility of Trump and his supporters chanting “lock her up” about Hillary (mere words), yet are untroubled by the optics of Democratic prosecutors, one of whom won elected office by promising to go after Trump, actually working to put the Republican frontrunner and most recent Republican president, behind bars. Election Day 2024 might find Trump in prison.

Yes, Democrats, this is a problem. Trump is not merely a candidate. He’s an iconic populist, the leader of a movement. You’d have to go back to Huey Long to identify another American political figure as simultaneously beloved and reviled. The January 6th Capitol riot followed Trump’s obviously false claims of election fraud; how will Trump’s followers react to the factual spectacle of his being handcuffed and confined to jail—by Democratic prosecutors conducting politically-motivated prosecutions—during a presidential campaign? How can a two-party system where one party’s candidate is locked away in a prison cell still call itself a democracy? Democrats don’t care. They just want Trump gone, yet they’re not willing to run a viable candidate with a realistic strategy to beat him at the polls.

There is nothing to fear but the pigheaded obliviousness of those who would back their adversaries into a corner with no escape.

            (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.)

 

Still Trumped by Trump

            The problem is not that the electorate is polarized, siloed into self-reinforcing media echo chambers and mutually contemptuous — that’s the cause. The problem is that neither the partisans of the left nor those of the right can imagine themselves, for even a second, on the other side of the ideological divide.

            This phenomenon is perfectly illustrated by the spectacular rise of Donald Trump’s Republican primary poll numbers, first following his indictment for business fraud by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, and then after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced his run. According to conventional (liberal) wisdom, both these events should have hurt Trump politically. What the heck, Democrats wondered, is going on with those wacky GOP voters?

            Donald Trump thinks, at least he claims he does, that the deep state and the media are out to get him. Judging the long list of congressional investigations, Justice Department inquiries (which were subsequently determined to have been unjustified), multiple impeachments and criminal charges that have targeted him, the former president’s paranoia appears to be grounded in reality.

Trump brilliantly projects his personal and political travails upon his supporters. “In reality they’re not after me, they’re after you,” he tweeted in 2019. “I’m just in the way.” After The Donald, in other words, would come a deluge of liberal statism gone wild: more taxes, fewer guns, migrants stealing your job, cities awash in bums and criminal gangs, transwomen raping your daughter in the ladies room.

You can’t defeat Trump unless you undermine his relationship with his supporters, who view him as a guardian and an unrepentant advocate for their values and concerns, and love the fact that he drives liberals crazy. Want to get under Trump’s skin? Get zen, stop reacting and call him out for the promises he broke to right-leaning voters.

Democrats, however, can’t begin to understand conservatives’ concerns or the mindset of voters who share them. Stuck in their New York Times/NPR/MSNBC bubble, in which everyone who votes Republican (especially for Trump) are inbred, uneducated, racist hicks too stupid not to impale their brains when they pick their noses, they attack Trump for the things they dislike about him—which, to his supporters, are features rather than bugs. They deploy tactics that would diminish a politician in their eyes, only to elevate him among MAGA types. Rather than separating Trump from his voters, everything Democrats do is pushing them closer together.

Detach yourself emotionally from your visceral dislike of the short-fingered vulgarian and it’s easy to see why a party whose base sees itself as beleaguered and aggrieved rallied around Trump after a liberal Democratic DA arrested him in order to fulfill a political campaign promise. Yet Democrats still believe that more of the same will yield different results.

Filing criminal charges against Trump over the classified records found in Trump’s office at Mar-e-Lago “suggests a fateful new reckoning is looming over Trump,” CNN mused on May 18th. Wait, there’s more! If could be that Trump’s Biggest Legal Danger Comes From Georgia as New York magazine said, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has signaled that indictments over election interference might be filed against Trump this summer.

            Precedent and common sense indicate that any criminal indictment by a Democratic prosecutor will be viewed by Republican voters as more political grandstanding over offenses that are trivial, ginned up, or both. Democrats are blind to this reality. Republicans aren’t different than you and me; if a passel of Republican DAs were to go after Joe Biden at the same scale over analogous offenses, they too would close ranks around the president.

            Well-funded, popular in his home state and articulate, DeSantis poses the only substantial (albeit long-shot) threat to Trump’s bid for the GOP nomination.

As a populist culture-warrior who has carefully studied Trump’s appeal, DeSantis knows he has to attack Trump from the right, on issues like the COVID-19 lockdown, abortion, spending and crime, marketing his administrative experience. Having established his bona fides on illegal immigration, the Florida governor might jab Trump for completing less than 400 miles of his promised “border wall” along the nearly-2,000-mile border with Mexico, which, Trump’s promises aside, Mexico did not pay for. “Donald likes to talk,” I’d say if I were him, “but that’s all he’s got—lots of loud words, no action.”

            At this point, however, DeSantis’ culture-war red-meat is like a restaurant with great desserts and boring entrees—he’s got tasty extras but where are the basic policy items? So it remains Trump’s nomination to lose. As for the general election? There’s no indication that the Democrats have learned anything about Trump’s vulnerabilities since they underestimated him in 2016.

            (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.)

The Unpersoning of anti-Biden Democrats

            “Am I real?”

            “Do I exist?”

            “Do you see the real me?”

            Humans have always asked themselves these existential questions. These days, Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. have more reason to wonder about their corporeal status than most.

            Earlier this week, because I felt that I deserved to suffer, I tuned into a political horse-race discussion on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Why, host Joe Scarborough wondered aloud about Joe Biden’s oxymoronic announcement that’s he’s not announcing (“I plan on running, Al, but we’re not prepared to announce it yet”), isn’t the President actually, you know, announcing that he’s running for reelection? The April the year before the election ere, ’tis the season for such communiqués.

            Front and center in Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski’s speculation was that Biden wouldn’t have any pesky primaries to deal with before the general election; thus he can take his time before declaring. This would come as news to Williamson and Kennedy, both of whom have formally declared their candidacies for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination and have filed the requisite paperwork.

            Given how early in the race it is, Biden’s rivals already pose a surprisingly significant threat to the incumbent: 10% of Democrats say they’ll vote for Kennedy, 4% for Williamson in a Morning Consult poll. Kennedy does even better among some key demographics: women and voters over 65, both of whom turn out in heavy numbers. An Echelon Insights poll shows Williamson surging, now at 10%.

            When I sat down with Bernie Sanders to research my bestselling graphic biography, it was June 2015–two months later in the race—and the Vermont senator was polling 1% to 2% of Democrats. Yet he went on to nearly defeat establishment favorite Hillary Clinton; he might have succeeded if not for the DNC putting their corrupt thumbs on the scale. At this stage, 10% each for Kennedy and Williamson is impressive.

            Kennedy is political royalty and Williamson is a well-known author and previous Democratic primary candidate. Yet media outlets like MSNBC are lying to their viewers, pretending that they don’t exist and that Biden is running (or might run) unopposed. Resistance is futile. Get used to it.

            Unpersoning is the latest tactic of the Democratic Party establishment and their media allies, including MSNBC. If you don’t admit to the existence of a rival candidate, then you certainly don’t have to cover them or their campaign — so voters will never learn about that alternative option. They’re not real, therefore they’re not serious, therefore they don’t get any votes, therefore they’re not serious, therefore they’re not real.

Beautiful, infantile, effective.

Bear in mind: Scarborough didn’t say Biden wouldn’t face a serious primary challenge (which, in any case, is far from certain based on those polls, and Biden’s own poor ratings.) That would be subjective. Scarborough said there wouldn’t be any primary whatsoever, which is plainly untrue.

But this, as you probably know, is nothing new. Bernie received terribly unfair news media coverage—and in such small portions!—when he ran in 2016 and 2020. My favorite moment was MSNBC’s Chris Matthews comparing Sanders’ candidacy to the Nazi invasion of France.

John Edwards, the progressive candidate in the 2008 Democratic primaries, suffered the same phenomenon. USA Today’s dismissal of Edwards was typical: “The Democratic contest is a two-person race, dominated by Clinton and Obama. That leaves Edwards, a former North Carolina senator who is a close third, and Richardson, New Mexico’s governor who is a distant fourth, waiting for a stumble or a political earthquake to create an opening for them.” How can it be “a two-person race” if there’s a “close third”?
            In 2004 the media piñata was another progressive with anti-corporate message, Howard Dean.

Basic pattern recognition indicates the evolution of an increasingly aggressive approach toward erasing political challenges to the corporate establishment. A quarter century or so ago, third-party candidates like Ralph Nader were routinely ignored, starved of press coverage and threatened with arrest when they tried to attend a presidential candidate as an audience member. Candidates Dean, Edwards and Sanders were insulted (angry yeller, lightweight pretty boy, cranky old commie) and subjected to DNC skullduggery intended to marginalize them.

The unpersonings of Williamson and RFK Jr. elevate old-school shading to the level of Orwell: No one has ever opposed Joe Biden. No one will oppose Joe Biden. Joe Biden will run unopposed—especially when he is opposed.

(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.)

Democrats and Republicans Agree: Better to Lose Than to Shut Up

 “When you surround an army,” Sun Tzu counseled in The Art of War, “leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.” Partisans on both sides of America’s everything-looks-like-a-hammer politics have forgotten this basic tenet of strategy—and are likely to pay for it.

            Donald Trump announced that he expects to be arrested in New York and indicted in connection with charges that media reports say are about to be filed by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Democrats greeted the news with characteristic gloating.

            “[Trump] cannot hide from his violations of the law, disrespect for our elections and incitements to violence,” tweeted former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The New York charges concern the allegation that he misappropriated campaign funds in order to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels, who says she had sex with the former president. They have nothing to do with denying the result of the 2000 election or the January 6th Capitol riot.

            Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann tweeted: “ARREST TRUMP TODAY! ARREST TRUMP TOMORROW! ARREST TRUMP FOREVER!”

            “I’ll throw a watch party when it happens,” Alyssa Farah Griffin said on ABC’s The View. “Lock him up! Lock him up!” Joy Behar responded, echoing the anti-Hillary chant at Trump’s rallies.

            Schadenfreude is wicked fun, but gleeful Trump-bashers might want to consider the consequences: Grievance-mongering is one of Trump’s main political schticks. Revel in the T-shirt of the presidential mugshot but remember, MAGA nation will use it to rile up the GOP base—and bring back some 2016 Trump voters who became Never Trumpers as well. In a Trump perp walk (I’d advise him to demand one), conservatives will see maddening injustice where liberals see just desserts.

            Indeed, even Trump’s primary challengers are coming to his defense. What doesn’t kill Trump makes him stronger; an arrest coupled with liberal gloating thereabout plays into his narrative that he receives unfair and disproportionate opprobrium while swampy mainstream pols get away with murder, hardens his supporters’ resolve, and increases his chances of being restored to power. “If this happens, Trump will be re-elected in a landslide victory,” Elon Musk predicted.

            Meanwhile, Republicans are overplaying their hand on abortion.

            Pro-lifers have launched a novel legal challenge to FDA authorization of the abortion drug mifepristone in a federal court in Texas, a case that will probably be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Wyoming recently banned medication abortion. A South Carolina bill would define abortion as murder punishable by life in prison or capital punishment. Considering that 85% of voters favor legal abortion in all or some circumstances—a record high since 1976—they might ask themselves whether they’ve blown up a bridge too far.

            One-third of American women now live in a state where abortion is illegal due to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Most abortion-ban states have exceptions for rape, incest and the life of mother on their books, but in practice very few exceptions are ever granted. A lawsuit filed by five women in Texas who nearly died because they were denied abortions to which state law said they were entitled highlights that reality.

            When widespread demand encounters legal prohibition, people generally resort to a workaround—legally if possible, underground if not. There are roughly a million abortions annually. Medication abortions using mifepristone to block hormones that support pregnancy and misoprostol to empty the uterus accounted for 53% of U.S. pregnancy terminations in 2020, a portion that has almost certainly increased with the spread of telemedicine during the pandemic and the Dobbs decision.

            The mifepristone option has served as a socio-political pressure-release valve since Dobbs. Red-state women get still obtain abortions without traveling hundreds of miles. Red-state politicians can pander to pro-life voters, pointing out that abortion is far more difficult to obtain without looking like full-fledged Handmaid’s-Tale despots. The loser has been the pro-choice movement, which lacks the galvanizing effect of a 100% abortion ban.

            If SCOTUS overrules the FDA and kills mifepristone, the pressure-release valve gets closed—and not just in the 28 states that currently ban abortion. Medication abortion, the easiest and therefore most common type of abortion, vanishes in all 50 states. In an election year, the mere effort to ban mifepristone may be sufficient to enrage liberal voters. If it succeeds, watch out. Abortion rights aren’t currently a top issue for left-leaning voters, but an actual ban could spur even disgruntled progressives to turn out for Democrats about whom they otherwise might not have felt enthused.

            What should the two parties have done instead?

In an ideal world, Democratic prosecutors and investigators would have coordinated their efforts, bypassing novel legal theories like AG Bragg’s that are politically flimsy and unlikely to lead to conviction in favor of rock-solid charges like business fraud and instigating a riot. Now that an indictment appears to be forthcoming, Democrats could have assumed a sober mien, pointing out the sad necessity of having to book a former president like a common criminal. They shouldn’t be jumping up and down like overstimulated infants.

            Republicans, on the other hand, should have taken a breather on their fight against abortion. Had they waited a few years to let the new bifurcated legal normal to take hold, the pro-choice movement would have lost momentum as dispirited partisans drifted away having accepted defeat. Eventually, with Americans accustomed to abortion as less legal and rarer, they could have moved forward to ban all forms of abortion nationwide. Slow and steady, the same way economic conservatism was built up from the grass roots over decades following Goldwater’s 1964 rout, might have won this race.

(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.)

It’s My Party and I’ll Conflate If I Want To

Ever since Donald Trump became president, Democrats have taken to equating the fate of their own party to the fate of American democracy. In a two-party system, the logical conclusion is that this is profoundly undemocratic.

Say Another Go Ain’t So, Joe

            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.)

 

Except for the Facts, Why Worry?

The contents of the Hunter Biden laptop have been authenticated by mainstream media organizations as well as the FBI. Yet many Democratic voters pretend like it’s a fringe story from the far right with few possible implications for the current administration.

Best System Ever except for the Way It Actually Works

Because the Democratic Party hasn’t built a farm team, they may well be stuck with 82-year-old Joe Biden to run for reelection. Republicans, meanwhile, are in an analogous situation, possibly stuck with Donald Trump because no better alternative has stepped up yet. How did the population of 330 million people end up with so few choices?

DMZ America Podcast #78: Kyrsten Sinema’s Bait and Switch, Brittney Griner Home After Prisoner Swap with Russia

Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema took the wind out of the sails of Senatorial Democrats two days after they got a 51-seat majority, announcing that she will no longer be a Democrat. Meanwhile, WNBA player and convicted marijuana transporter Brittney Griner is back home in Texas after being traded for a Russian arms dealer. Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall and Scott Stantis, battling the flu, nevertheless find the energy to tell you what it all means and why you should care.

 

 

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