What’s the Focus?

Posted on by
Reply

Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden, while he was campaigning for reelection, focused most of his argument—nearly all of it, in fact—on two things: beating Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, and his Progressive-Democratic Party winning the election.

Certainly, winning an election is a prerequisite to passing legislation that furthers one’s own and one’s party’s policies and brings to fruition one’s own and one’s party’s goals. But that would be a fallout of a winning campaign focused on those policies and goals and why those policies and goals are better than the other candidate’s and party’s.

That’s the question being raised these days, post Biden campaign:

…whether Harris, or any other Democrat, will be similarly burdened by public unhappiness about the economy—or whether they can pivot to focusing on the future, where the candidate stands a better chance against Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Even here, though, the question as phrased is about beating a man rather than a successful argument of having a better plan for the future.

So far, the new Progressive-Democrat candidate for President, of whom today the sitting Progressive-Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris is the most likely, still is campaigning against the man and for her Party. There’s no move to argue her policies and goals. Party still is keeping it personal and not about its view of what’s better for our nation. Of course, given the damage those policies and achieved goals have done to our nation’s security and standing around the world and the damage done to our economy and to our safety domestically, she has little to campaign on other than being against her opponent.

Now that He’s Out

Posted on by
Reply

Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden has ended his campaign for reelection. Some, notably Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance, have said that if Biden quits his campaign, he also should resign from office.

I tend to agree with that sentiment, but not from the idea that, as Vance has suggested, if Biden is too unhealthy to run for reelection, then he’s too unhealthy to continue in office for the next six months.

My view is that if Biden resigns soon—this week, maybe—that would make his Progressive-Democrat Kamala Harris the new Progressive President. That, in turn, would give Harris a measure of the power and influence of incumbency for her own election campaign. It’s a question, though, whether the scant four months until election day (especially with early voting starting so early in many jurisdictions) would give her that much of a boost.

It’s a question, too, whether any such boost would be mitigated by her already quasi-incumbency as the sitting Vice President. Sitting Vice Presidents do get elected, vis., George Bush the Elder, but not always, see Hubert Humphrey. On the other hand, Presidents campaigning for the first time after “inheriting” the office due to the departure in one form or another of the prior incumbent, typically don’t get elected, from John Tyler forward. Gerald Ford, who had three years of incumbency not a mere three or four months, is the latest example of that difficulty.

But maybe Biden is too selfish and feeling too much betrayed by those syndicate family members he thought he could trust to make the move. Or maybe he’s stubborn enough to stay in office just to show them they can’t, either, run him out of office.

White House Hatred of Israel

Posted on by
Reply

That’s what this Wall Street Journal editors’ lede implies, if the claim is true.

Is US foreign policy on autopilot? On Wednesday we learned the Biden Administration is imposing sanctions on another Israeli while reissuing a sanctions waiver that lets Iran access more than $10 billion in frozen funds. Its priorities reflect a policy that long ago was overtaken by events.

That’s not autopilot. That’s the Biden White House continuing those folks’ long-standing disdain, extending to open hatred, of all things Israeli. Why do they think that way? The position is so irrational—Israel is our only real ally in the Middle East; it’s the only democracy there; the nation is inclusive enough to include Arab citizens and Arab Knesset members; the nation bends over backwards, even today, to avoid civilian casualties in a war inflicted by a terrorist entity for which civilian casualties, even of their own brethren, are the goal—that only those White House persons can answer the question. If they think about it at all.

The editors concluded their piece with this:

[W]e got Iran-backed war and assaults on US forces and commercial shipping. What will it take for Mr Biden and his advisers to recognize their failure and change course?

Maybe Biden, et al., don’t see a need for course correction. Maybe they don’t think their pro-Iran, anti-Israel moves are failures.

What’s at least as bad is the silence from the Progressive-Democratic Party regarding Biden’s moves vis-à-vis Iran and Israel. That the syndicate is so carefully silent suggests its own complicity in this irrational hatred.

Cowardice in another Milieu

Posted on by
Reply

The Washington Post posted its screed of hatred against all things Israel when it castigated some parents of hostages being held by Hamas for not criticizing Israel enough to suit the tabloid in the parents’ own plea for their children’s release. The tabloid’s post:

Omer Neutra has been missing since the October 7 attack on Israel. When his parents speak publicly, they don’t talk about Israel’s assault on Gaza that has killed over 38,000 Palestinians, according to local officials. Experts have warned of looming famine[.]

American Jewish Committee has succeeded in preserving the tabloid’s disgusting post:

The parents of Israeli-American hostage Omer Neutra have one goal: TRYING TO FREE THEIR SON from Hamas captivity.
That’s all they need to say.
How could this tweet have been posted? Shame on @WashingtonPost for calling the Neutra’s morality into question.

Leave aside WaPo‘s open support for the terrorists in taking the terrorists’ casualty claims at face value. This is WaPo‘s naked hatred made manifest.

The tabloid sinks deeper into the cesspool holding tank, though. In response to the hue and cry against the outlet, its managers chose to not correct the post. They chose instead to delete it and try to pretend it never occurred.

That’s revisionist history, it’s an insult to honest Americans, it’s an act of dishonesty, and it’s naked cowardice.

Panic

Posted on by
Reply

The day after the Republican convention closed, with Republicans the most unified they’ve been in several election cycles, this occurred:

Friday brought calls from several more Democrats for President Biden to end his candidacy….

Never mind that party Presidential nominating conventions typically produce spikes in poll numbers favoring the party that just concluded its convention and that spike quickly dissipates as the adrenalin rush of the convention fades. Those polls aren’t even out, yet, so the degree of spike isn’t known.

The calls from several more Progressive-Democrats this soon after the Republican convention is just the blind, stinking panic of the Progressive-Democratic Party as its politicians run hysterically in circles, screaming and shouting.

Is this a political party we want anywhere near our government in these dangerous times for our nation?

Separately but relatedly, I hope Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden stands tall, metaphorically, and refuses to end his campaign for reelection. If Party elites want to execute a coup against their Party leader, let them do it at the convention, where nomination debates and nominations should occur. Let the people have their voices stand, through their delegates, which they solemnly elected throughout the primaries. Folks voted in those primaries long before they understood the condition of their preferred candidate? That’s a lesson that might be taken to heart regarding (too) early voting in general.

In the realization (I wrote this post Saturday night), Biden folded and dropped out. Then it took him two tries actually endorse his VP as his replacement for reelection. He can’t tell his delegates how to vote at the convention, but it seems likely to me that the party bosses will deny those 14 million primary voters their representation through the delegates their votes selected and anoint Harris. If so, so much for democracy in the party that bleats about threats to our democracy.