What Biden Still Doesn’t Get

 

Biden falling handing out

diplomas at the Air Force

Academy

Trump is a convicted felon facing God knows what in terms of sentencing. A small contingent of Republicans (11% looking at the average polling) have turned against him, but his base and a significant number of never-Trumper Republicans will vote for him. It’s too soon to gauge the “outrage” at the judicial system vs a pretty fair trial and clear conviction, but I suspect that for some, the edge says a felony is a felony. If folks keep calling this the “hush money case” vs “trying to the hide the facts and manipulate the electorate case,” Trump has the upper hand. But somehow, even a felony conviction leaves Biden and Trump neck and neck, most significantly in those key swing states. With democracy vs autocracy at stake, you might think this should be a Biden lay-up. Why isn’t it?

First, Trump has the diehard pro-Israel Zionist vote. Biden is unlikely to turn those voters in his favor unless he gives up the Progressive and rather significant pro-Palestinian rights American Gen Z contingent… without whom he will have a hard time winning and whom he may have already alienated as the Netanyahu enabler with a stream of US munitions… and lots of talk but little in the way of real pressure. Biden’s “peace plan” is a non-starter to Benjamin Netanyahu, who despite Biden’s support is a “never-Biden” Trump supporter.

Second, the economic metrics of inflation reduction do not benefit all strata of Democratic voters the same way. Folks who got their college degrees in the 1960s and 70s, paid less than third in inflation-corrected dollars than students today. Student loan debt is crippling. If older folks purchased a house before the 2008 subprime mortgage meltdown, they got what is today exceptionally cheap but appreciated housing at really low interest rates. Today renters and buyers, even corrected for inflation, are paying double or more for the same properties. Rent or purchase… but most cannot save the downpayment for a purchase anyway.

And no amount of a wage or salary increases is going to change the average perception of massive price increases in everything from fast food and groceries to gasoline for those who still own a car. Sure, we’re down to 2.8% inflation, but that number includes all those folks who are benefiting from educational and housing costs established in a different era. For those at the bottom of the economic ladder, they just experienced the increases and missed the good parts. And those who smile at the low unemployment rate miss the 12% unemployment rate of young college students entering the workforce or those in the tech sector who are facing one of the greatest periods of layoffs and contraction in recent memory. But those student loans are still due!

For people facing health issues, their insurance – when they have it – has usually added higher premiums, co-pays, deductibles, policy caps and exclusions. For those relying on subsidized healthcare, they are fighting to keep what they have as deficits generated from tax cuts are pushing rightwingers to cut benefits. Profits matter; overall health does not. Trump’s slobbering old boy, rich dude network wants those tax cuts and administrative agencies slammed to the ground.

And if you hear Biden touting his stand against the demise of Roe v Wade and his appointment of an African American woman to the Supreme Court, most people point to the failure of the Democrats to use this reality to change this country for the better. Instead, there are fewer gun controls, climate change initiatives are in the crosshairs of the reconfigured Trump Supreme Court, there is more gerrymandering, DEI is dead, there are more voting rights restrictions and more reproductive health risks that there have been in half a century. Minorities voted… but… To many, voting for Democratics has produced nothing they care about. So why vote?

So, who’s the Democratic champion that is supposed to lead the nation back to these liberal values. An octogenarian who uses words we haven’t heard for decades (“malarkey” anyone) and who cannot walk from Air Force One or to a podium without that “dead man’s” shuffle. He brags about all the wonderful things he has accomplished, and indeed he has, but those accomplishments do not touch the daily lives (and expenses) of most of his constituents.

Even though Trump is a proven fraud and a convicted felon, even though he needs to bleed contributions from his working-class constituents to pay his legal bills for criminal activity, Trump sells the “I am victim” mantle amazingly well, and no one even stops to realize that every criminal defendant protests his or her innocence. Trump has learned to present that cry to generate votes and raise money. And despite his litany of bankruptcies, failures to pay average workers as well as his lawyer, manipulation of his corporate books to hide reality, most Americans still believe Trump’s experience as a businessman makes him vastly better qualified to lead the economy.

No American since the Civil War has done more to polarize Americans against each other, legitimized racism and white supremacy and fomented violent anger at anyone or anything that is not pro-Trump. The entire Republican Party is a weak, “woke beyond woke” set of easily manipulated Trump sycophants ready to sell the entire country down the river, killing democracy in the process… and the only candidate who can save the country… is that grandfather from the past, that shuffling octogenarian, who is battling a “no rules, winner take all” convicted felon… who is definitely holding his own. Retribution is his rallying cry.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is exceptionally difficult to wake up an electorate looking for a forceful, energetic candidate but seeing only doddering Joe attempting to appear tough enough to take on Donald Trump.