By Regi Taylor
Full disclosure: In the 2020 U.S. Presidential primary, my first choice was Kamala Harris, whom I supported until she suspended her campaign. Nine days after Ms. Harris announced, I uploaded this adoring quirky video: Kamala Harris for the People 20-20
Most of us know the Hollywood formula movie featuring the hyped-up protagonist detective who attempts to disarm the timed explosive as it digitally counts down, ticking loudly, while the entire country holds its collective breath, praying for a miracle, only for the hero to cut the wrong-colored wire, and the powerful bomb starts ticking louder and faster toward certain detonation.
Could the Democrats have cut the wrong wire by forcing Joe Biden off the presidential ticket? And speaking of Hollywood, the path laid out to achieve the foregone victory of an imperial president who has promised to be a dictator, with immunity, impunity, and Project 2025 firmly in hand, appears meticulously scripted, everybody delivering his line and playing his part with award-nominating performances, including some Dems, right on cue.
What are they thinking? Were they gotten to? This entire revelatory MAGA march toward the Oval in barely 100 days was just hastened by the Democrats’ bizarre capitulation to who really knows what – we don’t – as if an off-screen director had yelled: “Action!”
Perhaps the Democratic political leadership knows what the rest of us don’t that has informed their decision to oust Biden. However, from the vantage point of media observations only, reporting suggests Biden is the victim of the bum’s rush.
Not only is it clear that negative polling is the basis of Democrats’ mutiny, but the result of self-fulfilling prophesies also instigated for many months by whispers of Joe Biden’s diminishing faculties, those same indoctrinated critics, clearly able to recognize Donald Trump’s full-blown psychoses and apparent onset of dementia, offered little more than click bait quips about his condition.
If Biden and Trump were basically in a dead heat in the election stakes, with nearly even money on who might win, why haven’t Democrats been equally vociferous about Trump’s mental unsuitability for office, notwithstanding his extensive rap sheet, to the extent that they demanded he drop out.
Besides Trump’s criminality and his blatant psychological deterioration, his moral turpitude, demonstrated by lies like not knowing about Project 2025 and not knowing E. Jean Carrol, his declaration to be a dictator on day one, unifying the Reich, and seeking retribution by jailing his political enemies, among other apocalyptic fascist insinuations, the former president has escaped the degree of opposition from Democrats as a bloc that has been unleashed against Mr. Biden with the desired result, satiating the Trumps’ and Putins’ of the world..
This is not to say that there have been legitimate concerns about Joe Biden’s deficits as the Democratic standard-bearer for the 2024 presidency. However, by appearance, the decision to expel Joe Biden in the final stretch presents as reactionary and tumultuous.
If Biden really needed to go, perhaps it’s the timing, tactics and trends surrounding their choice that make Democrats appear a bit inept and disarrayed, confusing and disillusioning voters in the process at a time when American Democracy hangs in the balance. The idiom, don’t change horses in midstream, is more than a cliché in this instance.
While Kamala Harris is eminently qualified to assume the presidency, there’s was no guarantee her candidacy was assured before the convention. Moreover, if there were a floor fight – a contested convention – for the nomination, not only is there no assurance that the best man, or woman, would win, historically nominees selected through this process seldom win the general election.
Democrats record of winning the presidency after nominating their candidate in a contested convention is 40%. The last such convention was held 72 years ago when Democrat, Adlai Stevenson was nominated after three chaotic ballots and lost to Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. Remember the 15 ballots Republicans suffered through to choose Kevin McCarthy as speaker and how it turned out due to lack of consensus?
The Democratic National Convention is scheduled for August 19 – 22 in Chicago, with a preliminary vote, a virtual roll call, scheduled for August 1 to test whether a nominee can be settled upon before the convention start.
Of the 1,968 delegate votes needed to lock up the nomination, early estimates ((at this writing) report Kamala Harris may have the needed delegates already committed. Ironically, Joe Biden had accumulated 99%, 3896, of the total outstanding available delegates, 3939, officially clinching the nomination in March 2024.
If abandoning Biden 15 weeks before Election Day were not dubious enough, putting MAGA’s monarch one step closer to a coronation, the tactics employed by Democratics to banish Biden is not only a terrible look to voters from the standpoint of which replacement candidate is most electable (with only weeks left to thoroughly evaluate), but also implies a degree of squirreliness on the Democrat Party at-large, threatening down ballot races, and the likelihood of capturing the U.S. House and Senate.
The constant media propaganda barrage targeting Joe Biden’s age, infirmities, and gaffes, while giving Donald Trump a conspicuous pass, seems to have had the desired effect by eventually ensnaring supposed Democratic political allies of the president, suborning the cooperation of so-called democratic stalwarts, while undermining and sabotaging Mr. Biden’s viability at the top of the ticket by driving adverse poll narratives.
Then there are the trends. How is it that a man who hired an African American female vice president, ended the COVID 19 pandemic, created 15 million new jobs, lowered prescription drug costs, lowered child poverty, is rebuilding infrastructure, availed student debt relief, appointed an African American woman to the Supreme Court, passed the Inflation Reduction Act, and brought civility back to the Oval Office – in 42 months – is deemed to be completely ineffectual, while his demented Republican rival is considered to be derogatory, but not incompetent?
Moreover, while Democratics fell for the okey-doke and chomped at the bit to throw Biden under the bus, I think prematurely, due to contrived, hyped-media denigration, Republicans unflinchingly support their presidential nominee zealously, motivated by a single-minded desire to win. Just days ago, the Republican National Committee triumphantly elevated a mentally compromised, convict, rapist, racist, insurrectionist, aspiring dictator as their viable nominee with absolutely no trepidation or shame.
However, now that Democrats have made their move and been called out for it, what’s left is to salvage the 2024 Democratic campaign for president, since our lives and liberties absolutely depend on it. Ostensibly, Kamala D. Harris is inheriting the nomination. She is the strongest and most well-positioned to beat Trump and lead the nation. We must strongly coalesce around her candidacy and vote, vote, vote!
