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A Message About Joe Biden and to the Chicken Littles [1]

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Date: 2024-06-29  

I didn’t wan’t to have to write this diary, but obviously people are still rattled over Thursday night’s debate and its implications, so I figured I would have to chime in about what happens next.

First of all, yes, it was a bad performance for our President. But one 90 minute misstep over a convicted felon who went on a verbal diarrhea tirade of lies and avoidance of questions without any pushback is absolutely no reason to change horses in the middle of the race. In fact, it’s not the first time an incumbent president struggled during a debate only to bounce back stronger and win the election. Barack Obama stumbled during his first debate against Mitt Romney after his administration was finally beginning to pull out of the depths of the worst recession since the Great Depression, yet he recovered and handily won re-election. Even Ronald Reagan, who by the way I could not stand as President and was even showing early signs of Alzheimer’s disease during his re-election campaign and was only beginning to pull out of the nastiest recession since the Great Depression at that time, declared Morning In America not only won re-election but pulled electoral college numbers not seen since Nixon vs. George McGovern. And by the way, this wasn’t the first time Joe Biden was knocked out and left for dead politically. The same thing happened during his run for President in 2020.

We all remember how crowded the 2020 Democratic field was back then, and it featured a number of very well credentialed candidates including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and even Michael Bloomberg among others. Pete Buttigieg narrowly won the Iowa caucuses over Bernie Sanders while Joe Biden finished in a distant fifth place. After the New Hampshire primary which Bernie Sanders won handily, Biden had another poor showing. I even remember reading an article either in the New York Times or Washington Post documenting the Biden campaign and interviewing his campaign workers, and even then it was described as a funeral-like atmosphere where people were telling Joe Biden to give up his campaign because he was too old for the tastes of the voters at that time, (Never mind that Bernie Sanders is around the same age as Biden.) Biden would make a minor delegate breakthrough in the Nevada caucuses but once again Bernie Sanders won that pretty easily, so his campaign more or less in desperation put in all their remaining chips in the South Carolina primary. As it turned out, Joe Biden scored a decisive win in the primary, winning every county in the state. He then went on to dominate Super Tuesday, causing all of his competitors except Bernie Sanders to drop out of the race. After a few more primaries, Sanders eventually dropped out himself and conceded the nomination to Joe Biden.

Despite Trump being impeached for meddling into Ukraine’s affairs and demanding more info on Joe Biden in exchange for arms to defend their country from what was then a potential Russian invasion, he was still favored to win re-election. But then COVID=19 swept over our shores, and his subsequent botching of the response to the pandemic as well as his hostile response to the Black Lives Matter protests and the rushing of the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court after the death oh Ruth Bader Ginsburg, led to Joe Biden’s election to the Oval Office. We all remember what happened afterward from the pushing of the big lie in court to the failed insurrection on the capitol Building on January 6th. 2021.

So among all of those events Biden inherited a crap storm. Nevertheless, despite a pandemic which refused to go away despite the presence of vaccines, and the resulting inflation which occurred due to supply chain issues, Joe Biden managed to steer us out of those crises, passing the American Rescue Plan, the CHIPS Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which not only created thousands of new jobs but also rose real wages for the first time since the 1970’s. He also passed an increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit which lifted millions of children out of poverty until it was undercut by the MAGA Republicans in Congress as well as traitorous Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Likewise he passed a progressive budget despite a Republican House which couldn’t even agree on ehe way to tie their own shoes. Meanwhile Donald Trump was being indicted on 91 felonies in four different criminal court cases while also being slammed in civil court, being held liable for sexual assault and financial fraud. Most recently he was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up illegal campaign hush money payments he made to a porn star he had a tryst with after this third wife had just given birth to his fifth child. And he is about to be sentenced for those crimes on July 11th.

So in spite if Biden’s history of bouncing back from setbacks and tragic moments (and he has bounced back from more tragic moments than most of us have ever experienced or would ever want to experience), why is everybody ready to give up now? Lawrence O’Donnell has already explained the logistical reasons why it can’t happen, but Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, and Jasmine Crockett gave the most impassioned reasons to stick with the program. I’ve even read some comments in the past couple of days stating we shouldn’t need to save Joe Biden; he needs to save us. The reality is we all need to save each other and save our country and democracy itself. Joe Biden isn’t some mythical omnipotent figure who can just do anything for us, but he’s a good man and patriotic American who has served our country well. But he can’t do everything by himself. In fact, that’s why we elect representatives, senators, governors, state legislatures, mayors, city councils, school boards, and and even dog catchers to represent our interests. Wasn’t this whole site created in the first place to elect more and better Democrats to public office? That’s why we not only need to stand behind Joe Biden but behind all of our candidates fighting for our democracy, an economy that works for all people, women’s reproductive rights, voting rights for all Americans, protection of the rights of people of color, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community, and our climate. We already know our opponents are looking to dismantle the American democratic experiment, and while Trump is the visible face of the autocratic fascist movement, he is getting a ton of help from MAGA Republicans in Congress and the red states, a corrupt Supreme Court, a ton of wealthy oligarchs, big corporations, and foreign adversaries. That’s a lot to go up against, but it’s a fight we all have to embrace whether we like it or not. Too many people suffered and died for the rights we currently have, like the numerous African Americans lynched during Jim Crow, the female workers at the Shirtwaist factory, Emmet Till, Medgar Evers, Andrew Goodman, Michael Scherner, James Chaney, Matthew Shepard, Tina Brandon, George Floyd, Breanna Taylor, and numerous others. We have to advocate for all the accomplishments Joe Biden has dome, and to all the evangelicals who continue to follow Donald Trump, we have to meet them at their very religious core directly and ask them Jesus Christ would be okay with a serial liar, adulterer, and fraudster leading the people of Abraham and Moses? Sure, some of them are probably beyond our help, but we’ll plant a seed in some of their brains, and eventually the truth will sprout and bloom in their faces. That’s why we still have to go door to door and even confront the lies on social media. they try to gaslight us with lies, we gaslight them back with the truth. It’s not going to be easy, but its something worth fighting for, and we need to this now.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/29/2249839/-A-Message-About-Joe-Biden-and-to-the-Chicken-Littles?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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