Tag Archives: political parties

My Renewed Suggestion

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Former President and current Republican putative nominee for President Donald Trump has challenged Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden to a rematch debate. Trump’s challenge flips the boxing world’s rematch challenge protocol on its head: usually it’s the match loser who challenges the winner to a rematch; this time it’s the debate winner who’s challenging the debate loser to a rematch. This time, too, a cage match: no holds barred.

Biden should take him up on the offer, and sooner would be better. It would be Biden’s chance to prove that his prior debate performance was a fluke. That sort of thing happens in boxing, too: see the Ingemar Johansson-Floyd Patterson series of matches, where Patterson sleepwalked into a Johansson right hand, and then won both rematches, almost in walkovers. So it could be with Biden, with an already scheduled (re)match in September.

The parallels are plain, too. Johanssen was a bit of a hedonist and trained accordingly. Trump doesn’t explicitly prepare for his debates; he relies on his experience as he trots around the countryside in his private jet, moving along to this or that campaign rally. Patterson, on the other hand, trained in monk-like ascetism and isolation. Biden trained in similar isolation, including a week in retreat preparing for his June debate.

Thus my renewed suggestion for Trump. If Biden declines the challenge for a nearby, wide open debate, then Trump should debate an empty chair, or maybe an empty barstool. This time, though, instead of the round arena of a cage match, do it in the round arena of a townhall. Two barstools in the center, one occupied by Trump—or not, as he gets up and strolls around the stage addressing all of the crowd—and one occupied by Biden, who won’t get off his stool, if he shows up at all.

Fact is, it wouldn’t be much different than the CNN debate last month, where Trump debated a nearly empty podium. And one more suggestion: don’t interrupt. Let Biden’s rambling answers speak for themselves, while Trump then demonstrates his own memory and acumen by picking apart Biden’s rambles point by point with facts and specific achievements in his rebuttals. The no interruptions bit would be the hard part, and the challenge, for Trump.

It’s a win-win proffer: Trump wins the rematch, or not, and us American voters win by observing empirically the quality of Biden’s performance.

Joe Biden vs Lyndon Johnson

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There are some comparisons being made between Biden’s desired-by-many decision to quit his campaign for reelection and Lyndon Johnson’s actual decision to not run for reelection.

It’s a silly comparison. Here are a couple of reasons for that:

Johnson made his decision public in February of that year’s Presidential campaign, while even were Biden to so decide tomorrow, it’s July and only a few weeks before his Party’s convention.

Johnson, aside from his role in the by then generally unpopular Vietnam War, had a record on which the replacement Democratic candidate could run. Biden does not. His record is one of border erasure; international kowtowing and retreat; and domestic economic inflation, overregulation, and destruction.

The 1968 convention was pretty chaotic inside the building, but that was because there were a number of actually viable candidates in the contest.

The 2024 convention also would be chaotic, were the delegates on their own consciences to vote down Biden. That, though, would be because Party, as Leo Terrell has said on more than one occasion, practices identity politics and so would be stuck with Progressive-Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris, who is not viable as a Presidential candidate. Were Party to try to nominate someone other than her, the racist and sexist hue and cry would be deafening. The contest between those factions—viable candidate(s) vs Harris—would be bloody, and the damage done to Party would last for years.

The only serious comparison between the two is a potentially dangerous environment for a convention being held in Chicago. The Democratic Party’s 1968 convention was marred by widespread violent riots. And in response to the rioters, who among us recalls Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Richard J Daley’s “shoot to kill” order?

Pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas, anti-Israel terrorist supporters have already promised violent “demonstrations” for the Progressive-Democratic Party’s Chicago-hosted convention, now in a city with a reduced police capability and a reduced zeal for prosecution.

The two decisions would have a couple of contrasts but not many similarities. In the main, there isn’t any comparison.

A Third Reason

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors opined at length on the need for Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden to end his campaign for reelection. Among other things, they described one of Party’s rationalizations for Biden’s staying the course:

Ignoring the ballots that voters have already cast for Mr Biden in primaries across the US would undermine democratic decision-making and anger the party’s core supporters.

The editors offered two reasons for why that rationalization is erroneous.

[T]he estimated 4,672 delegates to the Democratic national convention—most of whom were selected in primaries, caucuses, or local party conventions—are a microcosm of the party, not a self-appointed cabal of insiders.

And

[Delegates] aren’t robots. Although delegates pledged to a particular presidential candidate are expected to vote for that candidate, the official party selection rules leave room for judgment, saying that pledged delegates “shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.” Delegates pledged to Mr Biden could conscientiously claim that new information has induced them to change their minds[.]

There’s a third reason, too, and this does directly address Party’s claimed concern for “democratic decision-making.”

Party went to great pains to limit primary voters’ choices to just one: Biden himself. Party pressured potential competitors against competing at all, and took active steps even to deprecate serious consideration for folks like Cornel West and Jill Stein, folks that most “democratic decision-makers” would have had no trouble assessing on their own. One potential candidate who was gaining traction, Robert F Kennedy, Jr, was interfered with and subverted so much that he felt driven to leave the Progressive-Democratic Party altogether and mount a separate, third-party campaign—where he’s getting anywhere from 8%-15% support in the polls. The one alternative candidate who was allowed into the primary campaign, Congressman Dean Phillips (D, MN), was sufficiently timid that he chose not to enter until it obviously was too late for him to have any sort of impact.

A MAGA Supreme Court?

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Who says the current Supreme Court is a MAGA court? Relatedly, who objects to Making America Great Again?  The Wall Street Journal‘s editors provided some insight to the Court’s rulings for last year and this.

First, an aggregate statistic: of all the cases decided in 2023, nearly 46% were decided unanimously, the second highest percentage of unanimity of the prior four years—second only to 2022’s unanimity rate. And both of those years had those evil Trump appointees Justices Neil Gorsuch, Bret Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. That court also had the Progressive-Democratic Party’s darlings, Justices Sonya Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Some 2024 cases decided unanimously:

  • Colorado can’t remove Donald Trump’s name from its ballot as an “insurrectionist” under the 14th Amendment
  • pro-life doctors lack standing to sue the Food and Drug Administration over the abortion pill mifepristone
  • the National Rifle Association can sue a New York regulator for coercing insurers to stop doing business with gun-rights groups

Among the 8-1 and 7-2 cases:

  • Justice Clarence Thomas writing for the Court to uphold Progressive-Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (MA) CFPB funding scheme
  • a refusal to close the constitutional door to a wealth tax
  • government can, indeed, disarm an alleged—not convicted at trial—domestic abuser via a civil restraining order

Of 22 cases decided by 6-3 votes, 11 had “mixed” majorities. Among these:

  • three conservative and three liberal Justices ruled that the federal government had unconstitutionally pressured social-media websites to delete user posts
  • six Justices, including Ketanji Brown Jackson, ruled that prosecutors had stretched the law too far in charging a number of January 6 rioters with obstructing Congress

Who says, and who objects? The Progressive-Democratic Party’s politicians dishonestly proclaim this Supreme Court, which adheres to the text of our Constitution and the statute(s) before it, an extremist and MAGA court, using the latter adjective as though it were a pejorative. The Progressive-Democratic Party’s politicians object to Making America Great Again—here demonstrated by their sneering at the concept of MAGA.

If It Were Truly a Nonevent

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden was rambling, shambling, and at times utterly incoherent in his remarks during last week’s debate.

There now is hue and cry to find a way to get him off this fall’s Presidential election ballot, and equally vociferous pushback by Biden’s staff and handlers in the White House.

Congressman Stephen Lynch (D, MA):

I think we have some decisions to make as a party. We’ve got to have that discussion immediately[.]

Congresswoman Susie Lee (D, NV) said she didn’t know whether another Democrat would be better positioned to beat Trump in November. But,

she said Democrats “absolutely” need to talk about how to move forward after the debate. “It was awful[.]”

The New York Times was blunt:

[T]he greatest public service Mr Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election. As it stands, the president is engaged in a reckless gamble.

And so on.

Now, the pushback.

Progressive-Democrat (and black woman, because Party makes such a big deal of those two irrelevancies) Vice President Kamala Harris:

This race will not be decided by one night in June, it will be decided by you [Biden].

A carefully anonymous “senior Biden adviser:”

We think there’s going to be a lot of twists and turns here[.]

Congressman James Clyburn (D, SC):

Those of us who are more interested in substance than style, we are still saying that on substance, Joe Biden is the best thing that has happened to this country in the last few years[.]

And so on.

If Biden’s performance in last week’s debate were truly a nonevent, though, wouldn’t Biden’s handlers, supporters, and potential donors simply ignore it and move on? Wouldn’t those Party members and supporters whose knickers are in such an uproar be quite a bit calmer, in the aftermath? After all, their main mentor, ex-President Barack Obama (D) is:

[B]ad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know[.]

This isn’t much ado about nothing; it is, rather, those staffers and handlers protesting far too much. Of course, some of the loudest supporters in that aftermath have to come out full-throatedly supportive of Biden, at least publicly, lest they functionally disqualify themselves as self-centered ghouls and vultures.