Democrats Panic Over Democratic Inaction on Biden Panic

July 10: Dems’ Biden plan … Heat wave … Boeing guilty plea … DeSantis, Haley snubs …

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Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), appearing remarkably chill as he tells CNN last night that Donald Trump is going to win. (Screengrab / CNN video.)

Democrats may be divided over Pres. Joe Biden’s ability to beat former Pres. Donald Trump, but they’re remaining strongly united in not doing anything about it.

While Trump is consistently, persistently demented enough to embrace extreme, discredited, nation-destroying, democracy-smothering measures, the problem for Democrats is that 40% of the country like Trump’s brand of crazy.

Democrats have few means of challenging Biden’s candidacy, after decades of shifting power from Congress to the White House, and letting Democratic presidents seize control of the Democratic National Committee. But still, at a minimum, a public pressure campaign would mean something.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) last night did not deny earlier reporting that he said privately that Biden can’t beat Trump.

“Trump is on track, I think, to win this election, and maybe win it by a landslide, and take with him the Senate and the House.” Bennet told CNN. “This isn’t a question about polling. It’s not a question about politics. It’s a moral question about the future of our country.”

Bennet said that the “The stakes could not be higher” but that he was not calling for Biden to step down, suggesting that the stakes could be higher.

Similarly, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) has said Biden “needs to do more” to soothe raging fears about his unelectabililty. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) said Biden “must do more.” Suggestions have included unscripted events, such as town halls.

Such events would likely achieve one of two things: Reassure voters, or confirm their fears. Either way, we’d have more clarity.

Biden yesterday gave what was seen as a strong speech to the NATO summit, providing strong evidence that he can successfully read things out loud sometimes. But Biden has announced no new strategy for convincing people his brain doesn’t take periods of unauthorized leave.

At their weekly luncheon yesterday, Democratic senators came to a consensus on what to do about Biden’s insistence on dropping the issue the way he drops the ends of sentences. The Senate Democrats agreed to do nothing. (Gift link.)

The complex new strategy of doing nothing involves coordinated acts of inaction, accompanied by prolonged periods of watching CNN, punctuated by outbursts of frustration whenever there are no mics around.

Over on the House side, Democrats who last week banged the drum for Biden to step aside have retreated, singing a song of surrender. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) went from telling House Democrats Sunday that Biden should drop out to saying yesterday that his opinion was moot.

Biden, Nadler said, is “going to be our nominee.” He added, “We all have to support him.”

The House capitulation follows a prolonged campaign of not doing anything about Biden’s obvious issues.

To his credit, however, and despite his advanced age and deteriorating mental stamina, Biden somehow has managed to weather the combined force of both House and Senate Democrats doing literally nothing to challenge his nomination.

And although hope is notoriously not a plan, the New York Times reports that hope is now the plan. Hope, specifically, for a Biden brain fart carefully calibrated not to constitute a medical crisis, but powerful enough to make him soil his pants and propel him into retirement.

Some Democrats are pissed about the plan not to do anything. Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) said, “The idea that we are going to slow-walk into fascism because we don’t want to hurt somebody that we respect’s feelings — I cannot even begin to tell you how angry that makes me.”

The Times twists the knife with a line calling Democratic reluctance to challenge Biden publicly “reminiscent of how congressional Republicans behaved during Mr. Trump’s presidency, when they would criticize and mock him privately but profess total fealty in public.” Fair!

The danger, of course, is that coming after Biden publicly may weaken him if he stays in. This, however, is how democracy works. If Biden’s that weakenable, party leaders should act.

This is why parties … democratic and Democratic … are supposed to have robust primaries. Even for incumbents. Especially for politically/physically/mentally weak incumbents.

This is also (one) reason why you don’t vest your collective power in a single office or person or branch of government. 

That said, no one gets to know how any of this will turn out. Biden could do a great thing that makes people love and trust him. For instance: Juggling flaming swords.

Maybe Biden will look stronger for beating back the purely rhetorical rebellion. And besides, it’s not as if there’s a consensus forming about who would give Democrats a better shot in November.

What’s that, New York Times? You have something to say?

“Behind closed doors, there was a consensus forming among the members in the toughest House seats that Democrats would have a much better shot of winning the majority with Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket.”

Stay tuned!

Vegas Is on a Hot Streak

So…many…bad…jokes…to…resist. You know what they say, whatever dies of heat stroke in Vegas stays buried in Vegas. Etc.

The entire American Southwest is baking and breaking heat records today. The National Weather Service has an excessive-heat warning in effect for the region through Saturday morning.

Las Vegas, NV, is expected to set a new record today: Its longest recorded streak of days hitting 115°. Today will be the fifth day in a row.

That’s the same temperature prescribed by AllRecipes.com for a perfect reverse-sear prime rib roast. Slow-roasted…but not for five days.

Vegas hit an all-time record of 120° on Sunday and 119° yesterday. And the 115°+ streak could last through Friday.

Meanwhile, record highs in Oregon are being blamed for six fatal reverse-sear prime rib roasts there. Heat tourism is at a fever pitch in Death Valley National Park, where the heat killed a motorcyclist over the weekend.

Washington and Idaho both endured temperatures above 100° yesterday. As the AP notes, this June was the hottest June on record, the 13th month in a row that’s happened.

And in case you’re wondering about Public Enemy #1, Texas’s combination of unrestrained heat and unrestrained capitalism is today fucking over millions of people stupid or unfortunate enough to live there.

Heat indices will reach into the triple digits for parts of Texas today. Again. And almost two million people are without power.

How come? Sure, the Texas power grid is a capitalist’s dream/humanist’s nightmare. But also, Hurricane Beryl — a record-breaking (in terms of how early/strong it was) storm fueled by climate change — knocked out power lines. Fully restored service is days away.

Which means, much like most of the state’s incarcerated population, people are going to be prisoners of the heat today without air conditioning. Or even a fucking fan. A lot of people who can’t afford it will also be losing entire refrigerators worth of spoiled, overpriced food.

Houston hospitals are at capacity because they can’t release people to go back to dangerously hot homes. So Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R-TX) announced yesterday they’re moving those patients…to a sports stadium.

Unless the U.S. takes serious, radical action against Big Oil and Big Agriculture, the only way to bring these numbers down is if the temperatures convert to Celsius and climate change converts to Islam.

Crime Watch

THEFT A gang of thieves ripped off 35,000 people and stole more than 1,000 cars without showing up on a single Ring cam or in smash-and-grab store video played endlessly on TV news.

The so-called 5-3 Gang has a front company called Fifth Third Bank, a legal entity it uses to disguise the criminal nature of its undertaking. The organized-crime cartel is active in 12 states, mostly the Midwest and Southeast.

Yesterday, the gangleaders agreed to pay $20 million in penalties that will not come out of their hand-sewn pockets because they were smart enough to create a corporation/scapegoat to execute and take the fall for their crimes.

Specifically, Fifth Third incentivized its henchpersons to create fake accounts for customers. 

And pressured customers into buying unneeded auto insurance, or “protection.” When customers refused to pay the protection money for protection they didn’t need, Fifth Bank slapped them. With fees, but still!

And when slapping (with fees!) didn’t work, they repossessed their victims’ cars. One thousand of them.

Keep in mind that repossession is done under the aegis of law enforcement. Meaning the standards for repo are so low that this vile gang could get law enforcement to help them rip off 1,000 cars to which they had no legal right.

Like most criminals, Fifth Third is a recidivist, allowed by soft-on-crime politicians to continue its spree instead of having all its executives thrown in prison. In 2015, Fifth Third executives had to pay $18 million of not their money for ripping off people of color on their car loans.

Fifth Third CEO Tim Spence became the gang’s ringleader in 2022. He got a 15% pay raise last year to $9.4 million a year. Also someone else’s money. Specifically, his victims’.

The mob’s press release announcing Spence as the new capo di tutti capi said, “Spence believes deeply in the nobility of the banking profession and its ability to be a catalyst for positive change in the communities Fifth Third serves.”

MURDER Boeing is pleading guilty to fraud conspiracy related 346 people dying in Boeing planes.

Two Boeing 737 Maxs (Maxi?) crashed in 2018 and 2019. Boeing was later accused of defrauding the Federal Aviation Administration about its flight-control systems on that model jet.

For their crimes, Boeing executives will do no prison time and spend not even half a day in a halfway house where they could potentially be rehabilitated from their criminal ways. Instead, they’ve agreed to pay fines of up to $487 million…of someone else’s money.

Family members of the victims…the 346 victims…were ripshit about the “punishment.” Wall Street, however, was fully stoked bruh. Boeing shares rose 3% in early trading.

Petty, Meaningless, Satisfying Campaign Watch

DeSANTIS As plans come together for next week’s Republican National Convention, we’re learning more about the role that former Pres. Donald Trump’s former rivals will play. And Politico reports that the answer is suck it former rivals.

Despite leading Trump’s new/current home state, a perennial battleground, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) does not have a speaking slot next week. Keep in mind, the convention is four days of nothing but endless speeches by an endless parade of lower-level party functionaries, but still we’re more likely to hear soaring, nationalistic oratory not from DeSantis, but from the likes of Kid Rock.

HALEY At least DeSantis was invited to attend! Unlike former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC), who was Trump’s ambassador and prostrated herself in front of Trump and released her delegates yesterday to Trump despite him not doing a single thing to earn them. Not invited. No girls allowed. 

Recommended Reading

FASCISTS ON THE RUN Salon’s Heather Digby Parton has a rousing roundup of antifa’s European branches holding the far right at bay. An important point she flags that TFN didn’t is that one way the left ensured the far right’s third-place finish in Sunday’s second round of French voting is that some of their candidates stepped aside, coalescing the antifa vote behind individual candidates.

LEFT BEHIND The 1,000 counties that saw the lowest population and income growth in the first 16 years of this century saw explosive growth in the last three years, a new study found. We’re talking about the homes of 18% of the country. These counties:

Since 2020, their job numbers have quadrupled from the previous four years. The numbers were crunched and threaded by the Economic Innovation Group and its president, respectively.

PROJECT 2025 The Heritage Foundation’s cryptoChristofascist manifesto/to-do list if Donald Trump becomes represident is dissected and flensed by the Center for American Progress in an ongoing series. 

OBITUARY The co-founder of Red Bull…has run out of energy. 

TCB

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Go get ‘em, kids. You got this.