TULSI DESCRIBED IT, I EXPERIENCED IT, AND HERE WE ARE

The woulda shoulda couldas of the 2024 campaign

The nation has been going through a collective panic attack since Biden’s debate with Trump last Thursday, but it’s an agita I’ve experienced for the last year and a half. 

The meltdown of the Biden campaign is not just the story of one candidate; it’s the reflection of a particular system and how it operates. For that system, the priority is not the highest exercise of democracy but rather the ruthless attainment and maintenance of power.

The Democratic National Committee didn’t even pretend to support a robust and fair primary. Rather, they proclaimed with no sense of shame that they saw their goal as simply supporting the President’s renomination. Their loyalty was not to the democratic process but to their chosen candidate, reminding me of George Washington’s warning that political parties would form “factions of men more loyal to their party than to their county.” It’s a lot like Iran’s Council of Guardians; sure, you can choose whoever you want - as long as it’s someone we’ve chosen first.

I would know.

Tulsi Gabbard has written an exact description of the process, in her new book For Love of Country. My friend Patricia sent me the book and I was kind of stunned when I casually opened it and saw this section on page 136:

It’s all part of the DNC playbook….It’s a 3-step plan they deploy against candidates who refuse to fall in line.

First they try to ignore you, as though you are not a candidate, and you don’t exist. They do not want people to know you’re running for president.

Second, if that doesn’t work, they try to destroy your reputation, discredit you, and smear you, using their partners in the propaganda media. They try to define you before you have a chance to define yourself. They relentlessly publish one article after the next depicting you as a kook or fringe candidate so that voters will not take you seriously. 

If that doesn’t work, they go to step three - total destruction. They pull out all the stops to try to cancel, to destroy you completely.

Yep, folks. That’s it. That’s honestly how it works. And it’s why even though 70 per cent of Democratic voters expressed over a year ago that they wanted something other than a Trump-Biden rematch, Biden’s nomination was pushed on people with an almost ridiculous insistence. 

“We don’t primary an incumbent president!” Really? Then tell me what Eugene McCarthy was doing when he primaried Lyndon Johnson, because I don’t remember anybody thinking he shouldn’t. In those days, we just thought it was democracy. 

“Biden beat him last time, so he’s the one who can beat him this time!” To me, that’s like telling an actor that because they won the Oscar last year then surely they’ll win again this year. I tried hard to remind people that this year is a very different movie than 2020 - more like 2016, in fact - but between blacklisting by CNN and MSNBC, plus pretty much everything else described by Tulsi in the quote above, my message was surrounded by a thick gray fog.

The thing that bothered me most, of course, was how easily otherwise intelligent people seemed to get sucked into it.

I’ll have a lot more to say soon. In the meantime I think it’s an ultimately good thing that people are recognizing how many voters deferred unknowingly to a political and media elite who were anything but responsible guardians of our rights and privileges in a democratic process. The part that always bugged me was the way the DNC presented themselves, and were perceived by others, as the only real adults in the room.

Turns out they were drunk teenagers with the keys to the car. Thank God they didn’t wreck it, and we still have a chance to take the wheel.