Worry and Privilege

I grew increasingly angry with the treatment of Joe Biden as Democrats made their hysteric post-debate noises. It took me some days to quiet the chattering class tinnitus and parse the Biden “problem” for what it really is—Rich donors are anxious. Rich people use money and privilege to avoid anxiety. Rich people do not consider the implications of their actions, because they are privileged.

These rich possess only a surface understanding of politics and view voters as an unwashed, malleable class who obviously will swoon for the forceful and run away from weakness. They all were content to let Biden win 14 million goddamned votes without raising a fuss because they agreed with the results. Now, one untelegenic moment stands out against everything Biden has accomplished as an end to his campaign, primary voters be damned—because we privileged obviously know better.

Biden, one of the most successful presidents in history, with solid legislative achievements and the best economy in a century after a world pandemic somehow magically cannot campaign and govern because of one debate? There is no American Richelieu in the White House directing policy. Joe Biden is president and his administration, managed by him everyday, governs the country well, even as he blew his first debate as all incumbent presidents have done in recent memory. The turn against him is nonsensical.

For all of Biden’s missed words and backwards phrasing in the debate, he spoke using coherent thoughts and stayed on topic. Trump was loud but lacked coherence, speaking only sound bites and lies, leaving a difficult task for anyone to answer two-minute strings of unrelated unreal untruths. Joe Biden is old. The body slows down. He has life-long speech issues now exacerbated by age. His voice is quieter, and he needs to take a bit more time to talk than days past. The explain-everything-in-two-minutes debate format was not ideal. But you cannot credibly get from there to presidential or electoral incompetence.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O'Donnell provided a helpful service playing segments of an unscripted Biden from event beginning to end to show what he is capable of. The NATO press conference as well was a remarkable display of knowledge and understanding of world affairs. Trump could never command the level of comprehension Biden did at the NATO summit, and that should be what everyone takes away from the event. Sadly, yet predictably, the focus is on how Biden collapsed two sentences into one and crossed Trump’s name with Harris.

Privilege will cost the rest of us

But here we are. Rich privileged donors are now convinced Biden will lose because he is not snappy and cool as Obama (someone who also famously blew his first incumbent debate). They are now worried. And unlike members of the Congressional Black Caucus for instance, who have a civil rights history and culture built on the tolerance of uncertainty and acting in spite of it, these helicopter Democrats are swooping in calling reporter friends and withholding vital donations to save voters who clearly cannot understand elections. The privileged do not want to worry about voters, so they use money and influence today to get Kamala Harris to clean up a mess they are currently in the midst of making, relying on people of color as they do for their housekeepers or gardeners. These privileged Democrats seek a magical answer to make themselves less anxious before Election Day. In their collective privileged subconscious mind, life will not change drastically under Trump, so there is little risk in dumping Biden, who is likely uncomfortably too pro-union for them in the first place. Everyone else risks substantially more, but that is not the privileged concern.

Privilege complicates a simple effective plan

Biden beat Trump by 7 million votes in 2020, that is 2.5 times the margin Clinton won the popular vote with in 2016 with a 2.8 million margin. Clinton lost only because a NFL Sunday stadium attendance of voters from 3 states went the wrong way. The way to beat Trump is simple: keep what we had. Do not let Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin go sideways by a few thousand votes. That is it. It is all turnout. No one is left to persuade. But what is happening right now is a needless muddying of water. Not that Biden will lose the national popular vote, but it could endanger a swing state. The privileged will say Biden’s age is the problem. I say the privileged are making his age an Email 2.0 and creating problems where none existed before. If the privileged did not panic, the poor debate would be far back in the rear-view mirror, playing only Fox, OAN and Sinclair stations, because the news cycle would have moved on by now.

Other complications make Biden’s campaign more difficult post-debate. Ageism and ableism are in the mix with people conflating reasoning and loud, quick-witted speech. Politicians are remarkably superstitious and rely on polling for decisions much as our ancestors read tea leaves or chicken entrails (which is the current state of polling today, not much better than hurling bird guts). And, as Jon Stewart pointed out, we have a news industry designed to cover a 9/11, not a long campaign of policy discussions, so the reporting herd lurches from perceived crisis to crisis, conveying little useful. However, the driver of this Email 2.0 ageism are the privileged who identify as Democrat, unable to manage their anxieties, who risk dissuading enough people from voting to trip a swing state and lose our county to Project 2025 fascism.