Joe Biden demonstrates the meaning of unity: The president drops out so Kamala Harris can step up

Joe Biden is done.

The president who brought us back from the brink after four years of Donald Trump’s atrocities, a horrible COVID pandemic and multiple subversions of democracy by the U.S. Supreme Court bowed out of his re-election bid Sunday after more than 30 Democratic officeholders, the party’s mega donors asked him to go.  Biden quickly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor.

It started with a horrible debate performance and was accentuated by a letter that actor George Clooney submitted to the New York Times two weeks ago urging Biden to step aside.

The donors and the elites have told us the voters don’t matter,  Mary Trump said on her “Nerd Avengers” show Sunday. “It was a decision driven by the white, power elite,” she added. 

This happened just days after The Republican Party nominated a convicted felon, former president Donald Trump, for president.

This is just a reminder that the 2006 movie “Idiocracy” directed by Mike Judge, featuring Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Terry Crews and Dax Shepard was meant as satire. It wasn’t supposed to be a documentary.

Yet there was Hulk Hogan channeling President Camacho on the closing night of the MAGA convention in Milwaukee. Prior to introducing Trump, I half expected Hogan or UFC head Dana White to say, “I know shit's bad right now, with all that starving bullshit, and the dust storms, and we are running out of french fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution.” Instead, he just ripped open his shirt to reveal a “Trump-Vance” tank top. And the WWE fans went wild. All he needed was a monster truck.

That’s MAGA politics. All show and no go. Trump’s former attorney Ty Cobb, quoted in the Independent Friday, gave the convention high marks for its theatrics but said Trump is an empty suit of blind ambition and no principles. 

The repetition of that message sounds like tinnitus to some, a song of hope for others, and just nothing worth listening to for all those at the convention who bought t-shirts picturing Jesus hugging Trump. 

There sure was plenty to laugh at as the MAGA party closed out its convention in Milwaukee this week, leaving behind fetid flies, rotting garbage and tons of soiled linen, and that’s just following the 92-minute self-congratulatory filibuster that constituted convicted felon Trump’s acceptance speech.

He was supposed to call for unity, and I’m sure in what passes for deep thought in the shallow recesses of his mostly empty skull, he nailed it. Yet, as the AP reported, “as quickly as he called for an end to the ‘demonization of political enemies,’ he turned the issue exclusively toward Democrats,” wherein he pushed his greatest hits of accusations that the justice system was weaponized against him, he was a victim, the Democrats were evil and he’s the victim, savior and best dancer of all time.

About the only specific policies he mentioned in his 92-minute excremental, self-aggrandizing speech was promising to roll back Biden administration efforts to combat climate change, redirect infrastructure spending and impose steep tariffs.

Afterward, his bobbleheaded sycophants took to the airwaves where they dutifully regurgitated the mantra of a unified party, while also assuring us Trump walks on water and if he lays hands on you he can cure you of warts. The bobble-headed anchors on most major networks nodded their approval and reflected on the unity of the GOP and the pensive nature of Hulk Hogan and Donald Trump.

Lost was the fact that the Republican Party only appears unified because no one but MAGA members are left in the party. Anyone capable of cogent, critical thought has abandoned that unholy alliance years ago, seeking shelter from the racism, misogyny and authoritarian policies it has embraced. All that’s left are so-called Christians arguing about how to engage in mass deportations of anyone who doesn’t think like they do. If the "Man in the High Castle" and "The Handmaid’s Tale" ever made a baby together, it would look a lot like the Republican Party in 2024. I’m sure the “Hunger Games” and “The Purge” are looking on in envy.

All the Republican National Convention did well was scare the living crap out of Democrats who are trying to figure out how they can take down Trump. They seemed to have a sure thing in President Joe Biden until he stared off into space at a debate with Trump nearly a month ago. It does say something about the Democrats that they are trailing or within the margin of error in most polls to a convicted felon who once suggested sunlight and bleach injections could cure COVID.

Still, the Democrats had a president who has a long list of legitimate accomplishments in the last four years, but 30 Democratic officeholders, including West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, said with “heavy heart” they had to recommend he leave. They torched Biden as if he’s a witch in Old Salem. With their own hair on fire, they’re babbling like they’re binging on hallucinogenics and washing it down with multiple shots of espresso.  Ahead of the president’s surprise announcement, I spoke with a Biden staffer bewildered by the push to get him out., “My God, what do we have to do?” Another Democrat, who wanted Biden to drop out echoed the sentiment Friday, “My GOD why can’t we come together on this?” 

God has as little care for Biden and his minions as he has for Trump and his, but everyone’s calling out his name seeking help, salvation, and the proper numbers for this week’s Lotto. It ain’t working. We’re on our own folks.

Friday Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio became the fourth Democratic senator to call on Biden to step down from his re-election efforts. NBC exclusively reported that Brown, who faces a competitive race in November said his constituents have told him over the last few weeks that they are concerned about growing jobs, giving law enforcement resources to combat fentanyl as well as protecting Social Security and Medicare from cuts and preventing a national abortion ban. “At this critical time, our full attention must return to these important issues. I think the President should end his campaign.” 

Wait. What? That’s a hell of a leap and a horrible non-sequitur.  The issues Brown names have been the central theme of the Biden administration and contain some of his greatest victories. 

The Democratic cartoon carnival of chaos due to freaking out over Donald Trump’s polling ahead of Biden in July is sardonically and tragically funny – if you discount the fact that should Trump win, what’s left of this country will be wrapped up and sold to Russia within a week of Trump crawling back into the Bully Pulpit to kiss Vladimir Putin’s flaccid backside. Maggie Hagerman will no doubt get the New York Times exclusive on that.

The Democrats are scared. But, now so are the Trumpers. They had figured out Biden, but they are scrambling to figure out who will replace Biden. Preparing poignant hate-filled rhetoric takes time. We had to settle with Trump’s immediate reaction; Harris is the same as Biden and complicit in the “worst presidency” in history. 

That’s why watching the Democrats dissolve into a puddle of tears on a nationwide stage while tar and feathering their own president is both entertaining and horrifying. There is no consensus on who will replace Biden. Hopefully the Democrats will listen to the president’s recommendation for his successor, but there is no guarantee of that since his party already burned him to the ground. 

For a second, I hope that voters remember Biden supported the first Black president, named the first female black vice president, and at the end showed his patriotism like a modern day Cincinnatus – he walked away. 

Some say the best way to move forward is for Biden to go one step further: resign now and welcome Kamala Harris as president and let her run as an incumbent. “That would unify the party,” Wajahat Ali said on The Nerd Avengers Sunday. That won’t happen.

Consider this; We have two political parties in this country. One has kicked out all dissenters who won’t cast their lot with an authoritarian, empty vessel, convicted felon. That’s their candidate for president. 

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The other party controls the White House and kicked to the curb a president who negotiated a pandemic, created record job growth, passed a historic infrastructure bill, relieved student debt and lowered the cost of prescription medication while supporting unions, women, minorities and the Constitution. He was very good at doing the job. 

He was horrible at communicating that fact. It ultimately cost him a second term. 

Make no mistake, the person most frightened by Biden’s Sunday decision is Donald Trump. And the MAGA Republicans are now pointing their finger at the Democratic donor class, accusing them of staging their own version of Jan. 6 - unable to accept that Biden won.

The question for the Democrats now is, can they close this cannibal buffet and come together in time to defeat the felon? Kamala Harris is the only viable candidate, but who could she get as a vice presidential candidate to appeal to the voters who love Joe Biden, but who aren’t necessarily as fond of her? Sunday afternoon, the name of Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat in a Republic state, emerged as a possible answer. “He’s actively interested,” a Beshear advisor told me. 

Late Friday afternoon, Harris, at the request of the White House many of us were told, met with donors to discuss “urgent, emerging needs” and that the call was “centered around ending the infighting and pivoting to winning.” Suffice it to say the more than 81 million people who voted for the Biden-Harris ticket four years ago would like to see that too.