Joe Biden is the Hilary Clinton of 2024
The following is the transcript of my troop deployment (i.e. ending rant) from episode 101 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast
Remember last time party elites decided to discourage a real primary and coronate a nominee instead? The nominee had obvious weaknesses and wasn’t very popular, but nobody was worried because the Republican nominee was a historically unpopular, sexist, racist, narcissist buffoon named Donald Trump. The year was 2016. The nominee was Hilary Clinton, and she went down in flames.
We’ve apparently learned nothing, because Democratic elites have once again discouraged a real primary and, despite the valiant efforts of Dean Phillips, they are hosting a coronation rather than a competition. Much like Clinton, Biden is starting out unpopular, except he’s even less popular than Clinton was. In January of 2016, Clinton’s approval rating was around 50%. Biden’s is under 40.
Like Clinton, Biden has obvious weaknesses as a candidate. I don’t know if you guys have heard, but Biden is 81 years old. He’ll be 86 by the time the next Presidential term is over. He is an old, old man, and it shows every time he’s on tv. It’s a huge liability. It’s such a liability that Biden generally just doesn’t do media appearances. They’ve got him locked down and their election strategy just seems to be to focus on how terrible Trump is. If Biden takes a fall or has a heart attack or something, it’s all over. Even if he survives, it will just illustrate how old and infirm he is.
This is just 2016 all over again. The Democrats are right that Trump is a historically awful candidate who should (should!) be very easy to beat! All they need to do is nominate someone who’s not also a historically bad candidate like Joe Biden! But nobody with any name recognition will run because the party has already decided that Biden’s the guy. In 2020, everyone who ran against Biden is still in good standing with the party, and many of them were given positions in his cabinet. On the other hand, Dean Phillips - the one guy with any spine in the party - is persona non grata and isn’t even bothering to run for reelection in his House seat because everyone’s all pissed off at him.
What are we doing? Why is there all this support for Biden? The whole reason anyone voted for Biden last time is that he’s electable. That was his one selling point. He is not electable anymore! Why don’t the Democrats want to nominate someone who gives them the best chance to win? This whole situation is complete insanity
The even less explicable part is that the voters are listening! Rather than voting for the courageous and daring Dean Phillips, a supermajority of voters in New Hampshire wrote in Joe Biden. Why?! Everyone is telling pollsters they don’t want Biden, so why not nominate someone else? Why go so far as to write him in when he’s not even on the ballot?
Biden might still win because Trump really is that bad, but it will be much harder than it ought to be, and it’s entirely our own fault. If there’s anyone left out there with the capacity for reason, vote for Dean Phillips!