Facing multiple criminal indictments, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump might be in prison by election day 2024. Joe Biden, the Democratic incumbent and party frontrunner, is currently older than 96% of all Americans, a number that will only become bleaker by next year. It’s hard to argue that American democracy is alive and well. Which box will you choose?
As we head into a Trump versus Biden rematch nobody really wants, it’s hard to argue that the American electoral system is really a democracy.
As the 2024 presidential campaign begins in earnest, political cartoonist Ted Rall, (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) dig into what looks like an 1892-style political rematch, between former and possibly future President Donald Trump, and current President Joe Biden.
Trump appeared on CNN for the first time since 2016, at a raucous town hall meeting that received widespread criticism from liberals and their mainstream media allies. He advised congressional Republicans to be willing to risk default in the debt-limit crisis, signaled that he would reduce or eliminate military aid to Ukraine, and made fun of Jean Carroll, the columnist who won $5 million from a jury that found him liable for sexual battery and defamation. Trump is just Trump being Trump as usual, but what else did we expect? The question now is, will old Trump 2016 win, or will old Trump 2020 lose?
The Republican-controlled House oversight committee has its sights set firmly on the current president, Joe Biden, the First Lady and other members of his family. The first family acquired $13 million from unknown sources a few years ago, and Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop seems to indicate that the money may have originated from covert and corrupt sources in places like Romania, Uzbekistan, Ukraine and China. If the president really accepted bribes and kickbacks from foreign countries, this could be the biggest scandal in American presidential history.
Columbia University announced the winners of the Pulitzer Prizes earlier this week, and with all such pomposity, there’s a lot less than meets the eye to the proceedings. Scott and Ted dish on everything you need to know about how this particular sausage is made, as well as the self-dealing and conflicts of interest on a staggering scale.
Watch the Video Version of the DMZ America Podcast:
DMZ America Podcast Ep 101 Sec 1: Trump Returns
DMZ America Podcast Ep 101 Sec 2: Biden’s Brewing Scandals
DMZ America Podcast Ep 101 Sec 3: Behind the Pulitzers
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll places the President’s approval rating at a record low, 36%. In the modern era, no president has been reelected with numbers like these.
58% of Democrats want their party to nominate someone other than Joe Biden in 2024. Of Democrats.
If the election were held today, Donald Trump would beat Joe Biden by four points.
Only 32% of voters think Biden has sufficient mental sharpness to do a president’s job.
This, as grim is it all is, is the good news. Enjoy, Democrats! Because it’s downhill from here. The economy is, as usual stupid, the biggest issue; just as the campaign begins this fall, so will a recession, according to the Federal Reserve Bank. Then there’s Hunter Biden’s pesky laptop, the gift that keeps on giving to the Republicans. Whether Joe proves to be “the big guy” who gets slices of kickbacks or the $13 million that mysteriously wound up in his bank account in 2017 and 2018 turns out to be a bribe paid by an Uzbekistani telecom or some other scandal related to the crack-addict deadbeat-dad son who refuses to shut up, it’s beginning to smell a lot like whoop-ass.
Biden reminds me of the classic “Tales from the Darkside” episode in which a grandfather is too stubborn to admit that he’s dead even as chunks of flesh slip off his face. The American people have a clear, loud message for the president, which he refuses to hear: we hired you for one term. Which is kind of what he promised.
It isn’t, of course, too late to reverse course. Nothing prevents the president from announcing: “Well, on second thought, actually I’d like to spend more time with my great-great-grandchildren.” Who knows? With Joe an officially lame duck, Kamala Harris might step up and impress us with her border czarina gig—or her new AI thingie.
Could be he’s up to some 17-dimensional chess, as suggested by my fellow Centerclip contributor Rina Shah. Shah recently mused, and I think she’s on to something, that Biden officially announced in order to clear the field of Democratic competitors and set the stage for him to anoint his chosen successor whether they be Harris or someone less impressively unpopular. Such political bait-and-switch would be a new low—but don’t forget, we are talking about a guy who got 51 former intelligence officers to manipulate a presidential election for him, while risking World War III.
Short of these two options, what can an incumbent president who is disliked, disrespected and deemed to be dim, do to dodge defeat?
We know what Democrats plan to do: what worked in 2020.
Biden will point out that he’s not Trump. “Compare him to the alternative,” Biden surrogate Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) says. He won’t campaign. “Frankly, the best way to run for re-election as president is to be president,” Coons argues. He’ll avoid debating his Democratic primary challengers. He’ll hope Trump goes to prison (as if the legal system could act quickly).
But 2024 isn’t 2020. The pandemic is over. America is outside again. Americans expect their president to be out there with them.
“Watch me. It’s all I can say.” That’s what Biden says whenever a reporter asks whether he’s too old for his job. Trouble for him is, we have been watching—for three years—and the results are in that Washington Post-ABC News poll. Fair or not, we don’t like what we see.
Biden and the Democrats can’t talk their way out of the widespread perception that the president is past his due date. Cries of “ageism” are falling on deaf ears, including among the 62% of voters over age 65 who think Biden is too old. There’s one possible solution: stop hidin’ Biden.
Put the President out in front of the White House press corps every single day of the week, fielding unscripted questions, no cheatsheets allowed. Have him do weekly town halls, including in hostile Republican territory. Grant presidential interviews to vicious right-wingers like Sean Hannity—and don’t forget left-wing progressives. If Biden does all that for months on end and manages to hold his own, he might turn some of us into believers.
Biden’s staffers and advisers, many of whom worked for Obama, are not stupid people. They know what must be done to save this doomed reelection campaign. Unfortunately, they know they can’t do it. Biden isn’t up to a tough race.
So here the Democrats go, eyes wide-open, standing like idiots on the tracks as the train appears in the distance and slowly draws nearer. Disaster is as avoidable as can be. They can amble off those tracks any time. All they have to do to save themselves is make a move.
Right now, they’re paralyzed.
(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 and co-hosts “The Final Countdown” radio show Mon-Fri 10 am – 12 noon ET. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
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.
District of Columbia and two states, drivers over the age of 75 have to take a new road test to show that they are still competent to drive. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., claims that he will be perfectly OK to run the United States military until he is age 86, no test required.
Award-winning political cartoonists Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) analyze an eventful week’s breaking news and current events on the DMZ America podcast.
President Joe Biden released a video on Tuesday announcing his bid to run for reelection next year. Scott and Ted discuss what’s missing from the video—promises, bragging about low unemployment, Ukraine—and what it portends for the Democrats’ campaign strategy. An 1892-style rematch, between the President and former President Donald Trump, both very old men, now looks all but certain. Is this what democracy looks like?
On Monday cable news networks gave the axe to two bold-face names in opinion journalism, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and CNN’s Don Lemon. Did Dominion Voting Systems negotiate Tucker’s head on a plate as part of its $787 million settlement with Fox? Did CNN use Tucker’s demise to bury its decision to part ways with its gay Black morning anchor? What does it say about corporate media and what happens to both men now?
A Minnesota grandmother, 94, is poised to receive justice from a sympathetic Supreme Court after county tax officials seized her condo over $2300 in unpaid property taxes and pocketed that along with $40,000 in equity just because they could, Constitution and property rights be damned. Scott and Ted go over the state’s increasing tendency to steal individual property via the government’s wide-scale abuse of eminent domain and civil asset forfeiture laws. How long will Americans put up with official thievery?
Watch the DMZ America Podcast – Video Version:
DMZ America Podcast Ep 99 Sec 1: Biden Is Running Again
DMZ America Podcast Ep 99 Sec 2: Tucker and Lemon Get the Axe
DMZ America Podcast Ep 99 Sec 3: Government Is Stealing Our Property
A 23-year-old man was the latest mass shooter to make the headlines, this time at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, where he was an employee. As usual, Democrats called for increased gun control. Republicans blamed the mental health crisis. Both parties have a point. But we also shouldn’t ignore something unique to America, a brutal culture of violence that permeates our politics, pop culture and our everyday lives.
Covering $300 billion of Non-FDIC-insured deposits at the failed Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank was an easy decision for the leaders of a capitalist system that prioritizes profits over people.
Will Joe Biden run for reelection despite his age? Democrats are on tenterhooks. Meanwhile, possible Democratic alternatives are on hold, incapable of fundraising or drawing attention to themselves until that they know it’s a wide open field and they can safely announce without disrespecting the president.
