A Great Day for Democracy
It’s rare I get to write a positive article, so even though there are many ways I could twist this as a bad day instead I want to be optimistic because in this political climate positivity is a rare opportunity. Biden has dropped out and for once, a limit on the gaslighting that is done to Americans has been set. For years Biden’s cognition has been declining, he frequently forgets names, dates, and places, is rarely able to speak unscripted, and has said that he needs to get more sleep.
Biden for the most part won the 2020 primary election fair and square (although he was helped by a small army of candidates dropping out to beat Bernie Sanders, the actual threat to the establishment) and he certainly won the 2020 election fair and square (though he and Donald Trump both benefited from a system rigged in their favor). While campaigning in 2020 Biden claimed he would be “a transitional president” however when April 2023 came around he announced his bid for re-election.
Biden and his defenders have argued that Biden won a primary in 2024 and was chosen by voters, however Biden's primary candidates (Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson, Cenk Uygur, and Robert F Kennedy Jr) did not receive much coverage from the media (despite one of them being an incumbent congressman) and Biden never debated them (we saw why he didn’t). For the first time the Democratic party also changed the order of its primary elections (the legality of this is still debated), prioritizing South Carolina (a state Biden has performed well in historically) and skipping Iowa (a state that ended Biden's 2008 presidential run, and a state he did not win in 2020) and New Hampshire (a state Biden also lost in 2020s primary). Two states, Delaware and Florida had their primaries canceled.
But the fix was in for Biden and for the most part the Democratic establishment and the media shielded Biden from criticism, present ludicrous arguments about his competence behind the scenes and hiding him from press conferences (Biden has held the least press conferences of any modern president) and only having him do softball interviews. The shield was broken though when Biden finally debated Donald Trump and revealed himself to be cognitively impaired and unable to complete basic sentences. (for more on this you can look at my last article about Biden post debate (this has now turned out to be the most consequential presidential debate in American history). After his debate just about everybody in the country asked him to suspend his campaign, he responded by acting like Trump (again I wrote about this in my last article about Biden)
Today after constant pressure and an inability to soldier on, Biden finally dropped out of the race. I don’t know if this will allow Democrats to win, however maybe now they have a fighting chance against Trump. But this is about more than that, Democrats have surpassed Republicans unlike the Cult of Trump they are at least willing to say that their candidate can’t do it. Unlike Republicans they are saying there is a limit on gaslighting. Hopefully the Democratic party learns from this (they won’t) and when 2028 comes around they will present a slate of high quality candidates and discuss substantive issues. I don’t think I could vote for Kamala Harris but I will say that for the first time in at least 4 years the Democrats have a chance to earn my vote and that of countless others, it is up to them to take it. But unfortunately the Democrats live in the context of what came before them.
