I promised I would not be back at this substack column until something good happened, specifically naming the hope that Trump would croak although there are obviously other (not quite as delightful) eventualities that might bring me back. Nonetheless, here I am with a cheerful end-of-the-year roundup.
The Biden administration remains a total disappointment with Merrick Garland’s lazy leadership at DOJ being the most blatant example. Is he really going to let Trump skate? It sure seems like it. If he does (or merely depends on prosecutors in New York to try to nab the #1 seditionist) he will go down in history as a spineless geezer who greased the road to American fascism.
As for Biden himself, he has turned out to be precisely the kind of president most Democratic voters expected when they overwhelmingly rejected him in the early 2020 primaries. He was only saved when Rep. James Clyburn endorsed him before South Carolina, leading to a big Biden win and a head of steam that powered him through to the nomination. In return, Clyburn got pretty much nothing, not even the Presidential activism on voting rights he has every right to expect.
I don’t think Biden is indifferent to voting rights or any of the other issues he cannot fix with an easy executive order. I think he just lacks the energy to fight for them, just like he lacks the energy to engage with Joe Manchin beyond authorizing his press aide to issue a statement.
In fact, though, I’m not sure Biden really stands for much of anything. Remember what he did to Anita Hill (when he refused to allow other women victims to testify to the treatment they received from Clarence Thomas, thereby enabling Thomas to win Senate confirmation in a very close vote). That was unforgivable although most of us forgave him…I guess.
I hope he does not run in 2024. As for who should be the Democratic nominee, I’d pick the Vice President who is smart, the right age, and would energize the Democratic base which, we must not forget, has as its key component African Americans. They are unlikely to be too enthusiastic about a Biden who doesn’t even offer strong rhetoric on behalf of their right to vote.
Imagine being a black parent arguing with a child who is reluctant to vote for a president who allowed people like her to lose their right to vote. Or a parent, not necessarily black, of a child who is a progressive, the kind who almost nominated Bernie Sanders twice, the kind most young Democratic activists are, the kind who are the Democrats’ future.
I feel about Biden the way I did about LBJ in 1967 when I was in the “Anybody But Johnson” camp. He is the wrong person to serve as president—as President Obama understood when he chose Hillary Clinton and not his own Vice President as his favored successor. And Biden does not have LBJ’s amazing first “term” (November 1963 through 1965) record to somewhat mitigate the results of his disastrous Vietnam policy.
But maybe some miracle will happen and Manchin will allow the second Build Back Better bill to pass and Democrats will somehow keep control of Congress. That would put Biden in a better place to help hand the presidential nomination to someone he prefers and avert a free-for-all primary.
Of course, none of this will do much to reverse climate change, re-enfranchise African Americans, stop Israel from dragging the United States into the war with Iran it has craved and lobbied for for decades, save the women and children of Afghanistan from the results of Biden’s craven plan-less pullout, etc etc.
And yet I have to hope that Biden and the Democrats come back to life. The alternative is fascism.
No, I don’t think the racist dopes in Congress (not to mention the rank-and-file anti-vax idiots, Kyle Rittenhouse worshippers, or even the mindless horde that stormed the Capitol) are themselves fascists. They know no more about fascism than about communism or socialism or anything more abstract than their own racism, antisemitism, and upside down version of class resentment.
But they are primed to be led by some smart real fascist like Josh Hawley or Tucker Carlson, educated and upper class but who will convince the yahoos that he represents them while he in fact does the work of the people who hired him to end taxes on the wealthy, crush unions, end environmental and worker safety regulation, and prevent his voters from earning a decent wage (or even any wage at all when their jobs move overseas).
Did you watch the brilliant mini-series “The Plot Against America” which is an improved version of the Philip Roth novel of the same name. Roth predicts all this by positing an alternate history in which Charles Lindbergh, a smart fascist, defeats FDR for the presidency in 1940. The United States instead of leading the fight against fascism goes with the other side. The results are predictable, lynchings everywhere, pogroms against minorities, Jewish refugees fleeing to Canada by car and anti-Lindbergh votes burned in bonfires.
It is as scary as hell. But right now it also looks real. Of course, Biden and feckless Garland could try to thwart all this by making the prosecution of Trump and all the other seditionists their top priority. But they won’t. They just don’t get it. But we will get it and, even worse, so will our kids and grandkids.
I expect that this column will provoke some Democrats who, like almost ALL Republicans, believe that their party’s leader is always right. Sorry, that isn’t me. Although I will always vote for the Democrat over the Republican, I feel no need to pretend that the Democrat is by definition my leader. Some are, most aren’t. Biden is not.
Happy New Year.