What a month we're having. At the start of it, we were coping with Biden's reveal during the democratic debate late last month of what everyone knew but dared not say about his fitness for re-election, the president's decrepitude overshadowing his opponent's unhinged string of lies. After a week of watching the incumbent flail in several public fora in an effort to clear the low bar of demonstrating a modicum of remaining competence for politicking even in the face of a mounting movement within the upper echelons of the Democratic party (and the media) to urge him to step aside, it was beginning to look from my humble vantage (and to my great disappointment) like he might have weathered the storm. To make matters worse, amid Biden's feeble but firm protestations against calls for him to end his campaign, last weekend we were treated to the spectacle of Donald Trump surviving an assassination attempt with a mere nick to his ear and a killer iconographic moment. It seemed as if all hope was lost in any effort to defeat Trump in November-- a rather bleak state of affairs given the rising specter of the very autocratic, gains-cancelling Project 2025 threatening to be instantiated on Day 1 of Trump's increasingly assured re-election among its emboldened architects at the precious interest Heritage Foundation. I had resigned myself to bearing witness to a slow motion car crash between now and November as Biden made daily assurances that he would resist any and every call for him to step aside.
Daily headlines indicating that the end was near for Biden rang increasingly hollow. It wasn't until Obama telegraphed that he might be onboard with a different name at the top of the ticket that it felt at last like the appearance of a fracture in the wall of Biden's defenses. After one final report of the incumbent's intention to defy the riptide of discontent with his continued bid for re-election among the elite, at long last the news came today-- it was true. He was stepping aside from the campaign. He had endorsed the nomination of his Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement at the top of the ticket. Thank the void at the center of the universe!
After a year of my own discontent with Biden's bid for re-election, it has been a little de-moralizing rooting for the orchestrations of the idiotic donors, media and other elites who saw nothing wrong with Biden standing for another term throughout an entire primary season in which serious challenges within the party were ignored when they weren't actively quashed, until that debate in which the problems that everyone knew were there could no longer be ignored. When Bernie Sanders and the squad alone urged caution in switching out the winner of the primary mid-stream, it gave me extra pause. And as a result of acknowledgement of the particular perils of Project 2025 especially in light of the uncertainties about whether Biden would be replaced and if so who with, I found myself making arguments that came uncomfortably close to "Vote Blue No Matter Who." If I search within myself, they were identical. My plan this week was in fact to make another case against Third Party voting-- something that might have been easier had I not attempted to prepare myself for it by listening to some conversations online to the contrary that reminded me that if nothing else (and there really is nothing else that third parties are good for in this unfortunate winner take all system), at least they are proving grounds for policies and programs the best of which often eventually find their way into the platforms of the duopoly-- never by themselves, but always ministered by those aiming to change the mooshiest party from within.
It would be easy to beat myself up about the strange bedfellows I have fallen into company with in my desire to defeat Project 2025.
But today, I dream and take a moment to rejoice.
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