Bide has officially dropped out. Yaay!
Larry Horist called it on Thursday, he knows the infighting of national politics well, how to gauge pressure, how to read the symbolism, messages from inside sources, to him it was a foregone conclusion.
I was fooled by the strong messages from the Biden campaign and the White House saying, “Never Give Up! Never Surrender!” (quoting Galaxy Quest…). But as Larry would counsel, this is what they have to do to preserve options and ultimately negotiate the end.
It was also wishful thinking on my part, knowing that Trump had a straight shot to victory against a feckless Biden campaign.
But the Democrat Party has prevailed upon Joe to give them one last fighting chance. Many Democrats warned that Joe was risking losing the down-ballot votes, both the House and the Senate, but the connection there is nebulous. The bottom line is that with Joe Biden still running the chances were zero. Now they are above zero, however much.
And they can cause chaos.
Chaos is the source of my new trepidations and make no mistake, the chaos will be intentional. The ability to increase the rate of change to be quicker than the news cycle, the ability to diversify and intensify their messaging. Those of us who suspect voter fraud in 2020 (we know there was some, but we can not prove it influenced the election), see the resulting chaos as an opportunity for the Democrats to engage in skullduggery. They showed the world then that they were more interested in power than in democracy and basic freedoms. The machine they have built is as massive as it is corrupt, and it has shown that it can hide behind chaos.
They now have new opportunities to manipulate the polls, to change the rules, to launch new chains of propaganda, and change the tone of the election. And if you are as cynical and paranoid as I am, it is the opportunity to collect a database of dead people, print boxes of filled-in ballots, implement vote harvesting, begin recruiting (in the CIA sense) polling staffers and plan the covert operations around dozens or hundreds of polling places – and, of course, to launch new charges against Trump (maybe even take another shot).
While I don’t support the Democrat Party, I certainly do not accuse them of being stupid or incompetent when it comes to elections (it is their policies that are mostly stupid and incompetent). Some questions arise:
— Are they smart enough to know that Kamala Harris is breathtakingly incompetent and unlikable? Yes, of course they are, but they might be able to fix unlikable with short term ad spends, and competency will be less important given that she is Obama’s choice and he will probably pull here string like a puppet.
— Will there be an October surprise? Yes, and a big one, we just don’t know what it is yet (thus the “surprise”…). Otherwise, why fight so hard for an election you will probably lose given the status quo. So they are not counting on the status quo, they have something, perhaps many things up their collective sleeve. For example, if Biden resigns and Kamala serves the rest of his term, and if China attacks someone, she becomes a wartime President – a huge boost in stature and favorability. Can this be planned for October? Yep.
— Will there be cheating? Yes. The question is whether we will ever know. Again, the Democrats are not stupid, they know how to cover their tracks even against the best the Republicans have to offer. They are equally as clever as the Republicans in this sense, and they have the advantage of months of planning.
— Will they be able to spend Biden’s 91.5 million dollar campaign money? Sure. Even if Harris is not the nominee she could be the VP candidate on someone else’s ticket, granting that access. But the Clinton’s, the Obama’s and Biden have all endorsed her – it doesn’t end there but it may be enough. Or the money could go to the DNC who could spread to other elections (hmmm… could that be their play? Biden can’t win but we can get more money for other candidates?). Or it could go to a charitable organization that Biden happens to control. There are loopholes upon loopholes here, the money will not go to waste.
Again, I’m not too worried about the strategies we know about. I’m worried about the strategies we don’t know about, that hide in the chaos that stick a knife in democracy and that are so well crafted that they will never see the light of day. Election 2020 was that way. My cynicism says the 2024 race is not yet over.
What has changed since 2020?
Nothing.