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After Biden

Christian Lorentzen

The tin cup is empty, and the ass has gone under. Joe Biden’s political career is over, and he had to do it by autocoup. His two most trusted aides came to him at Rehoboth Beach and told him from a distance – because he has Covid – that he no longer had a path to victory. The money had dried up, he was trailing in all the usual swing states, and even in states the Democrats usually win without spending much money, like Virginia and New Mexico. The next day he posted his resignation letter to X (formerly Twitter) and followed it up with an endorsement of his vice president. Oh, yeah, c’mon, man, keep her around. So came to an end a month of blather about the way Biden had become King Lear. The final reckoning was less like Julius Caesar than like sending the president to the self-checkout till at Tesco to pay for his own hemlock.

After Biden’s endorsement, not included in his resignation letter but announced in a subsequent tweet, Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, and most of the governors, legislators and cabinet secretaries who’d been floated as possible rivals submitted their own endorsements and got in line to be vetted as potential running mates. Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, has called Harris, stepmother of two children, a ‘childless cat lady’; her outspoken opposition to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade is probably her greatest electoral asset.

Only the blessing of the Obamas was lacking, and it arrived this morning. The New York Post reported that Barack Obama favoured the Arizona senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut, but the chaos of a contested nomination at such a late hour (by US standards) and an open convention were never really on the cards. There was too much money to be bundled in a short time – Harris already has a war chest of pledged donations exceeding $100 million – and the proper way to conduct a convention in modern times is as an elaborate infomercial. These events draw more from the science of public relations than from the techniques of democracy.

This year’s Democratic convention will be held in August in Chicago. The location evokes memories of the 1968 convention, the protests against the Vietnam War and the violent response by local police and the National Guard. Famously, that week no one was killed; unlike during the Republican convention in Miami earlier that summer, when law enforcement officers killed three people, but that uprising occurred in a Black neighbourhood removed from the political action and the scrutiny of journalists, though Norman Mailer takes note of the event in Miami and the Siege of Chicago.

In 2020, the Democrats’ virtual convention presented the Black Lives Matter protests after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police earlier that summer as a cheerful prelude to the Biden campaign in a video set to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The Rising’. The party will not be able to do the same with protesters against the genocide in Gaza if they turn up en masse this year. Benjamin Netanyahu this week spoke to Congress and asserted that Americans protesting against his war are Iran’s ‘useful idiots’, and the White House spokesman John Kirby echoed the claim (while saying ‘that’s not a phrase we would use’). Harris shook Netanyahu’s hand and told the press that she wants a ceasefire and won’t ignore the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. It won’t be possible to tell if Harris will be less indulgent of Netanyahu than Biden until she’s elected. Trump said at the debate that Biden should let the Israelis ‘finish the job’. Robert Kennedy Jr offers no alternative. The only declared candidate consistently against the slaughter has been Cornel West.

Biden’s speech to the nation about his withdrawal from the race did not give his reason for getting out. It was beside the point anyway. His ‘sacrifice’, as it’s been called, must come as a relief to himself and his family. And now perhaps he will have preserved his ‘legacy’, unless Trump wins in November, in which case Biden will be blamed for dithering and not getting out of the way last year. His son Hunter is said to have been sitting in on meetings with him since the June debate that exposed his impairment, though to call him temporary co-president might be an exaggeration. He awaits sentencing on a conviction for lying about his drug use on a gun permit. His father has said he won’t pardon him, highlighting a contrast between his integrity and Trump’s pathological nepotism. A pardon for Hunter now would tarnish the president’s reputation one last time. In that sense it would be a true sacrifice and a real act of love.

Comments

  • 26 July 2024 at 12:10pm
    j. w. says:
    What a facile commentary.
    • 26 July 2024 at 12:27pm
      Aron says: @ j. w.
      yes
    • 26 July 2024 at 6:14pm
      Kit Brewer says: @ Aron
      and yet . . .
    • 28 July 2024 at 6:09am
      Ken Gelder says: @ Kit Brewer
      ...and yet it gets published...
  • 27 July 2024 at 12:41pm
    DavidSanderson says:
    This reads like it was quickly knocked out after a few too many wines. It was a pretty momentous couple of weeks in American politics and it deserved better than this.
  • 27 July 2024 at 3:44pm
    su fernandez says:
    Lorentzen is being generous to the Democrats who have been lying to America--and the world--for months and months and months, maybe years. I support neither party: a pox on both your houses.
    • 27 July 2024 at 4:06pm
      LAKHINDAR BANERJI says: @ su fernandez
      True
  • 27 July 2024 at 4:17pm
    Markus Nabholz says:
    That is the most boring, least informative blog I had the displeasure to waste my time reading in a long time.
  • 28 July 2024 at 6:49am
    Christopher Bryan says:
    Facile is the word for these comments. I can hardly believe the LRB gave them space.
  • 28 July 2024 at 2:18pm
    Delaide says:
    Very curious, these Comments. The post is a fine summary of recent events.
  • 29 July 2024 at 11:20am
    XopherO says:
    I am puzzled. Perhaps those who claim this blog is facile and/or boring can explain why and provide their own perspectives. Otherwise their comments are just as facile, if that is indeed the case. Perhaps it is too short to do justice, so why not add what is missing so we can all be better informed.
  • 31 July 2024 at 5:14pm
    fbkun says:
    Apparently Christian Lorentzen touched a few nerves here !
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