2024 Democratic National Convention

The events of the last few days have made incontrovertible something that candid observers have known for some time now: that the word “democracy” in the maw of Democrats bears the same relation to really existing democracy that the Russian word “Pravda” bore to really existing truth in the Soviet era. If you look it up, you’ll see that “Pravda” means “truth.” At least, that’s what the dictionary says it means. But anyone on the ground, experiencing the full-court press of Soviet disinformation knew that the newspaper Pravda deployed the word “truth” only to undermine it. It was necessary to pay lip service to the charade.

Tonight on a series of Zoom calls, a majority of DNC delegates endorsed Kamala Harris, helping her secure the required number to become the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.  The lesson? Destroying democracy is bad, unless it's done over a video call. In which case, it’s totally fine. Earlier, at the now-Harris campaign headquarters in Delaware, Kamala read from a teleprompter before making an awkward phone call to Joe Biden. I was waiting for the part in the movie when the record scratches, the frame freezes and then the narrator Harris says, “Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.”  The fifty-nine-year-old’s haphazard road to the general election is the best scenario she could have hoped for given her shortcomings.

It’s odd how things that have been widely predicted and even widely anticipated can nevertheless occur with an emotional thunderclap. I suppose death would qualify as an example. Joe Biden’s announcement on X earlier today that he would not be seeking reelection certainly does.  The announcement had its curious aspects. For one thing, it came from his personal account, not the account of POTUS. Indeed, for a moment that made me wonder whether it was for real. A glance at the internet assured me that it was. Most of the letter is political thru-text.

Even amid inner Democratic turmoil over his capability to stay in office, President Joe Biden refuses to step down. In terms of proving he is too diminished to run, Cockburn is not sure what more evidence the Democratic Party needs. Biden mumbled through his Complex news interview with Speedy Morman on Friday. A few people in the comments on the interview said they had to turn on subtitles to understand him. Biden also said, “In 2020 when Barack asked me to vice president...” Cockburn can forgive the guy for making a simple mistake, having been Barack Obama’s VP from 2009-2017. And yet with repeated evidence of memory mix-ups — not pertaining to normal, everyday mistakes, but to serious questions of mental acuity — each infraction is increasingly concerning.

The conventional wisdom is that the race for the presidency fundamentally changed with the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump. That’s wrong. The failed attempt to kill Donald Trump didn’t change trends in this election; it reinforced them.   The shooting reinforced public images about four distinct issues.  Trump’s strength and determination;  Biden’s weakness, politically, physically and cognitively;  Trump’s lead in the battleground states he needs to win reelection; and  The failure of basic governmental institutions, such as the Secret Service, to do their job  The enduring image of the Saturday shooting is the photo of the former president as he leaves the stage.

If you were expecting a Benjamin Button-style de-aging of President Joe Biden at tonight's NATO press conference after he recovered from the cold and jet lag he claims led to his disastrous debate performance, well... Biden is still Biden. His voice still sounds old and whispery. That being said, when he finally did step onto the press conference stage, he had an air of confidence that was not present during the debate two weeks ago. There were quite a few complications leading up to actually starting the press conference. The White House originally scheduled it for 5:30, but bumped it back to 6:30. The streaming started then, but the conference didn’t actually begin until almost an entire hour after 6:30.

The American media is in a credibility crisis following President Biden’s car-crash debate performance last week. How is it that so many reporters and pundits failed to reveal the depth of the commander-in-chief’s decline? Public trust in the media is in the basement — but it’s been tailing off since 2008, when the legacy media landscape in the United States fundamentally shifted.   Before 2008, the legacy media — while always leaning to the political left — had maintained a patina of objectivity. When Bill Clinton lied to the American people about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, they belatedly pounced. When John Kerry’s campaign began to crater, they reluctantly covered it. They were, to be sure, oriented against Republican candidates and policies.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.  “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”  Those were Hemingway’s words in 1926's The Sun Also Rises.   A century later, they apply to Joe Biden, not financially but politically. For him, the sun is not rising. It’s setting.   “Gradually and then suddenly” is the story of Joe Biden’s physical and cognitive decline. “Gradually and then suddenly” is how his army of enablers in the media, the Democratic Party and the donor base abandoned his defense.

After Thursday’s disastrous excuse for a presidential debate, New York Times opinion columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that Joe Biden “has no business running for reelection.” Columnist Nicolas Kristof also said he hopes Biden “reviews his debate performance” and “withdraws from the race.” Johanna Maska, a Democratic consultant and former Barack Obama aide, wrote on X: “We cannot do this, Democrats. Joe Biden can’t put a sentence together.” Meanwhile, numerous other Democratic insiders and donors are in a state of panic. So if President Biden won’t make it to November, then who could step up?

In the aftermath of the worst debate performance by an incumbent president in American history, the media is already scrambling for a storyline about what went wrong with their chosen candidate. Their frame of argument goes like this: we love Joe Biden, he’s the best, his presidency is an enormous success, but really, someone at the White House should have told us that he was this ludicrously old. How were we to know? Shame on them. This narrative is a blatant lie. The truth is that if the media conglomerates had been honest with the voters a year ago, they would not be in this predicament today, nor would the country be saddled with an mentally addled, barely ambulatory octogenarian as the candidate of the major party media members overwhelmingly support.

What began on Wednesday morning as a cringy campaign video has resulted in an official debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Both candidates have agreed to appear in a June 27 debate hosted by CNN and a second on September 10 hosted by ABC. The announcements came after Biden said on Wednesday that he will not participate in debates hosted by the Commission on Presidential Debates and instead proposed face-offs with Trump in June and September moderated by news organizations. Hours later, Biden accepted an offer from CNN to host the first debate. “Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again,” Biden bragged in a video posted to X.