(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . My response to a Cenk Uygur type candidacy whether as a D or as an independent [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-12-27 This is a response specifically to the newly announced Cenk Uygur type candidacy (Cenk Uygur himself is ineligible to be president) whether he or such a person runs in the Democratic Party or as a third-party or independent party candidate, but it applies generally to any other "progressive candidate" who is running on a supposedly "progressive" platform during this time when it will be President Biden vs Donald Trump. As I noted later on in the diary, running as a democrat under the Democratic Party who picked President Biden to be our standard bearer last time, can potentially do as much harm as a person who supposedly is on the left and runs on a third party ticket or as an independent. Name the last time that an incumbent president sought a second term in their major party's primary and failed to win it. It's been at least a century because I have gone through the presidencies mentally. And it may never have happened, but it certainly has been more than a century. President Biden will be the nominee for the Democratic Party. It seems equally clear based upon recent history of Trump's possession and absolute domination of the Republican Party that Donald Trump will be their nominee. In polling, the Democratic Party Jesus is ahead. But no actual major Democratic Party elected official polls ahead of President Biden. The Democratic Party is a political party of disparate factions. If there were one Democratic Party potential candidate around whom the entire Democratic Party would coalesce, President Biden would not be running. In order to try to get the nomination such a person would have to run hard on inflation and age and the false claims that Cenk Uygur has pushed before of cognitive decline. Yet such a person, say Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, would almost certainly lose and the ONLY THING THAT SHE WOULD HAVE ACCOMPLISHED IS MAKING IT EASIER FOR DONALD TRUMP TO DEFEAT PRESIDENT BIDEN. The result of this would be that our democracy would be eradicated and even the theory of all people being equal under the law would have been repudiated. There can be no doubt about this fact. For, Donald Trump already attempted to stay in power despite losing the election. As he already attempted it once and came very close to achieving it, he will try again only this time only loyalists would be nominated and the reason the attempted coup was unsuccessful last time was because there were people in the administration who were not pure loyalists, people such as Jeffrey Rosen Acting Attorney General, Richard Donahue, Acting Deputy Attorney General, and others. These people stopped the attempted coup. However, Donald Trump has made it clear that he will only nominate people who are pure loyalists, loyal to him and not the Constitution, would be nominated. Project 25 should scare all who care about the principle of equal under the law and democracy. So, the consequences of President Biden not winning is that we lose our democracy and the principle of equal justice under the law. Yet, a vote for any third party nominee just like a so called progressive candidate who drags President Biden during the Democratic Party's primary only helps Donald Trump. For all conservatives voters will vote for Donald Trump. If those registered voters who are on the left are split, then the candidate supported by the conservative voters will win. If such a person runs as an independent, how long has it been since a third party candidate has won the Electoral College? Certainly at least a century. A third party candidate has not won any electoral college votes since the sixties when we had a segregationist party. From whom would a Cenk pull votes? From President Biden. A Cenk type candidate is only likely to appear on the extreme left. Conservative voters are perfectly happy with the lawbreaker who attempted a coup and has been charged with 91 felonies. No conservative voter would vote for a supposedly progressive candidate running as a third party candidate. So, if a Cenk Uygur type candidate ran as an independent he would only help Donald Trump win by splitting the vote and by doing so, then that candidate would be enabling Donald Trump to eradicate our democracy. If he or such a person runs in the Democratic Party attempting to wrest the nomination from the standard bearer, the incumbent president, then he will have to run a scorched Earth campaign, falsely dragging President on some supposed cognitive decline. This could certainly damage President Biden enough to enable Donald Trump to win the 2024 presidential election. Right now, polling is misleading. We are nearly a year out from election day. There are so many events that will take place between now and election day that it cannot be understood to predict an outcome of the election on election day. Polls are now a snapshot in time. Republicans fall in line but Democrats fall in love. Thus, all Republicans will answer that they will vote for Donald Trump if it is a match up of he and President Biden whereas a segment of the Democratic Party blames the president for whatever aspirational goals were not met. The reality of this economy will be better understand than it is now. The CORE inflation rate for the last six months annualized is 1.9%, right at the Fed's target rate of 2%. The unemployment rate is 3.7%. It has been below four percent for a longer continuous period than at any time in the last fifty years. The growth of the gross domestic product is 4.9%. 14 million new jobs have been created, 4.5 million new jobs than were lost due to Trump's mismanagement of COVID. Consumer confidence is rising as is consumer spending. With inflation appearing to be defeated generally despite some corporations taking advantage and some exceptions in certain locations, we look to be approaching a soft landing. When is the last time that a president lost reelection with a good economy? Ford lost but he lost in an exceptional circumstance. He lost because he pardoned Richard Nixon. This is the first time that Donald Trump will have to face voters since his attempted coup and his three Supreme Court Justice nominees wrote the Dobbs decision that got rid of Roe despite the fact that this is and was an extremely unpopular decision and despise the fact that Roe vs Wade had fifty years of precedent and despite the promise the Trump SCOTUS nominees made in confirmation. Climate change, social racial justice, gun safety, abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights are all fundamentally on the ballot and eventually as young voters who claim to be progressive will be forced to contend with President Biden's reelection or Donald Trump utterly destroying every cause that they hold dear including again climate change, rights for LGBTQ+ people, assault weapons and pro choice rights. This is in addition to wanting to be able to hold the federal government accountable. For if the outcome of an election doesn't determine who wins and takes office, then why should the federal government care about or respond to the wishes of voters? Sitting this election or voting third party enables Donald Trump to eradicate our democracy. As we get closer to the election, the following events which will affect polls will take place: 1. Primaries and caucuses for each major political party 2. The voters start to understand reality, namely that is a good economy 3. President Biden and his allies will start campaigning and there is one hell of an argument that President Biden has earned reelection. . First, the economy itself is excellent and much better than it was when Donald Trump was evicted, at a time when the unemployment rate was 6.3% and he had fewer people employed at the end of his term than at the beginning and a disastrous COVID "policy". COVID is under control, relatively speaking. Many good laws, several of which were bipartisan passed Congress despite a narrow majority. These include the first gun safety legislation in thirty years, The Respect for Marriage Act, CHIPS and Science Act, American Rescue Plan, PACT ACT, Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation. That's substantial. . Third, President Biden is not being given the credit he deserves by people who claim to be left. Their understanding is being driven by social media whose choice of content is driven by ideology. They believe that Google makes them instant experts on topics completely foreign or new to them. They are not affected by historical events that they were not around but which previous students better understood and would have stronger feelings about such as the Holocaust. They fail to understand that Jewish people have endured a millennium of anti-semitism. Their views, the views of young people, differ from the views of most Americans. Polling is extremely clear on this point. President Biden doesn't have control of the purse. Rather, the Constitution in Article 1 section 8 gives the power of the purse to Congress. Furthermore, the House of Representatives is controlled by the Republican Party. To gain any chance at all of helping provide Ukraine with badly needed weaponry to fight off the Russians, funding for Ukraine ABSOLUTELY MUçST be tied to funds for Israel which Republicans want and for the border. They are already trying to push for unacceptable and immoral border policy. There is no way to pass Ukraine funding which must be passed as we cannot allow Putin and Russia to seize a huge amount of land and take over an immense number of people unlvç. If he is to stop, then he must have been stopped. Otherwise, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia will fall under Russian control as well. Xi is watching this to see if he can just take over Taiwan. Ours is an era in which "strong men" are attempting to subvert and destroy democracy. Donald Trump, Xi, Duerte, Orban, Vladimir Putin and oth que4er autocrats are trying to rise up. Hitler arose in Germany. It can happen here. Trump is quoting Hitler. So, we don't have the freedom to deny aid to Israel. What most on the left don't understand is that Joe Biden is NOT the Prime Minister of Israel. He CANNOT make them do whatever he wants. He can't even determine our foreign aid to Israel in this situation. President Biden has since the beginning warned Israel to not engage in actions that will result orsupport for Israel. He pushed Netanyahu in reducing the numbers of his troops to a third of his original commitment and got Prime Minister Netanyahu to accept humanitarian aid. Hamas hides behind the Palestinians. You can't tell Israel that they can't attempt to eradicate Hamas' military capability ability to launch violent terrorist attacks from Gaza because Hamas will keep doing it and they share a border with Israel and Hamas does not recognize the right of Israel to exist and they have said that they will keep launching terrorist attacks against Israel from Gaza. Therefore, again, whatever else you conclude, you CANNOT CONCLUDE that Israel doesn't have the moral fight to completely destroy the military capability of Hamas to launch violent terrorist attacks from Gaza. How would we have responded if our allies had pushed us to have a ceasefire with Al Qaeda and to limit our military response to Al Qaeda and that the Taliban is not Al Qaeda? Not well. Yet, indiscriminate bombing is unacceptable. The goal MUST BE to limit mass civilian casualties. So, this is a much more complex situation morally and ethically than members of the left would want to acknowledge. President Biden, again, has both privately and publicly, spoken against major ground operations and indiscriminate bombing and in support of limiting civilian casualties. In my view, President Biden has walked this political high wire situation admirably. With regard to Ukraine, President Biden recognized that the misses by American intelligence on Iraq wmd was more than twenty years ago and he trusted the US INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY and used their conclusions to tell our Western allies and the world what Putin would say, what he would do, and then how he would justify it. US Intelligence Community has been vindicated and this helped bring together a strong Western alliance that has supported Ukraine. He has even expanded NATO. This has been a great success. Thus, President Biden has earned reelection by getting COVID under control, by turning around the terrible economy he inherited to a very good economy, got much significant legislation including several pieces which were bipartisan through Congress with only a narrow majority, and with a muscular American presence which pushes freedom using diplomacy and without committing us to land troops. . All Cenk would add to this is to make it more likely that Donald Trump would win and that means the end of our democracy and the end of the principle of equal justice under the law whereas, again, President Biden has earned reelection by getting COVID under control, by turning around the terrible economy he inherited to a very good economy, got much significant legislation including several pieces which were bipartisan through Congress with only a narrow majority, and with a muscular American presence which pushes freedom using diplomacy and without committing us to land troops. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/27/2214133/-My-response-to-a-Cenk-Uygur-candidacy?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/