Opinion by: Krystal Ball
We all remember this great campaign trail moment when Dr. Jill Biden hit the trail to make the case for her husband.
JILL BIDEN: “I know that not all of you are committed to my husband, and I respect that,” she said. “Your candidate might be better on–I don’t know, healthcare–than Joe is, but you’ve got to look at who is going to win this election. And maybe you have to swallow a little bit and say ‘OK I could personally like so-and-so better’ but your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Trump.”
Well, that inspiring pitch seems to be landing with a new group, the Democratic establishment. In the last few weeks Joe’s racked up endorsements from 4 different members of Congress, Dina Titus, Kurt Schrader, John Garamendi and Ami Bera. Former Obama AG Secretary and Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack also jumped on board. But yesterday he got a real feather in his neoliberal cap with the endorsement of Former Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry is most famous for his painfully tortured logic in trying to explain his Iraq War position and for subjecting us all to 4 more years of George W Bush.
His endorsement is of a very specific sort. There is literally no voter who’s going to say well I’m a simple guy, I just vote for whoever John Kerry tells me to. But it is indicative of something more fundamental. The Democratic establishment is rapidly moving through the 5 stages of grief towards acceptance of a Joe Biden nomination. First there was denial. “His support is soft! We’ve got 85 candidates. One of them will break through to carry the centrist mantle for the next generation.” next of course anger. An anxiety riddled anger captured by the New York Times and other reporters in New York City drawing rooms where Democratic elites complained bitterly about the sorry state of the field and a rash of billionaires yelling at CNBC cameras. After that comes bargaining which happened out of view and apparently was enough to drag Deval Patrick and Mike Bloomberg into the race. Now, as they see Deval drawing literally 1 person at Morehouse College and Bloomberg registering at 3% in spite of spending millions, depression is moving rapidly into coming to terms with Joe Biden. With all his ineptitude and lack of Ivy League degrees, and off color comments and best years long behind him, they are starting to accept that he may just be their best bet.
Warren was fun for establishment Dems to flirt with. A sort of teenage rebellion “There’s no way I could take you home to mom” candidate. Pete was fun to date when actual commitment felt a ways away, but now that we are well into the holiday season with a January impeachment trial set to suck up all the oxygen right up until the Iowa caucuses, now is the time for the establishment to get serious. To in Jill’s words “Swallow a little bit” and vote Joe.
To help ease their sorrow and grease the skids towards acceptance, Joe is out with a positively Hillary-esque ad that is earning rave reviews from the establishment punditocracy.
CAMPAIGN AD:
World leaders caught on camera laughing about President Trump.
“I watched his team’s jaw drump to the floor”
Several World Leaders mocking President Trump. they’re laughing at him.
“My administration has accomplished more than almost any administration int the history of our country.
“Didn’t expect that reaction, but that’s okay.”
The World sees Trump for what he is, insincere, ill-informed, corrupt, dangerously incompetent, and incapable in my view of world leadership. If we give Donald Trump four more years, we’ll have a great deal of difficulty of ever being able to recover our standing in the world, and our capacity to bring nations together.
Did you hear that? The blackface guy and the dude whose neoliberal policies triggered the largest national strike in decades are laughing about Trump. Fancy rich guys in suits from Canada and France don’t like him. We can’t have him triggering the smirking disapproval of condescending global elites! Now there’s a message that’s going to resonate in the heartland.
Can I just say, we literally watched this guy say “Grab em by the p word” and he still got elected! If you think that you are going to get anywhere by arguing about his crass and undignified behavior, you are nuts. But it’s exactly what the Democratic establishment and far too many democrats want to hear. Trump is bad. Trump is embarrassing. Everything that’s bad is because of trump. It keeps them from having to do any soul searching or have any culpability for the state of affairs in our nation or around the world.
In fact, what John Kerry told reporters about his Biden endorsement really says it all.
“Our politics are broken. The country faces extraordinary challenges. And I believe very deeply that joe biden’s character, his ability to persevere, his decency and the experiences that he brings to the table are critical to the moment. The world has to be put back together, the world that Donald Trump has smashed apart.”
Now it seems to me like the world must have already been pretty smashed apart for the most powerful nation on earth to have elected donald trump in the first place. And if our politics are broken, both Kerry and Biden were spotted at the scene of the crime.
Joe’s new ad picking right up where Hillary left off and Kerry’s endorsement all just underscore the fact that none of these people have learned anything. They are all just planning to rerun 2016 with a new establishment candidate and a new set of outrageous behavior for them to clutch their pearls over. Only this time, Trump has the structural advantages of being the incumbent president plus an actual campaign organization and a Democratic party determined to wrap themselves around the tree of impeachment.
But it doesn’t matter how much this path has been discredited and trod on the road to failure, the establishment can’t turn back now. Joe may not be ideal, but he’s all they’ve got left. It’s suck it up and vote Joe time for the establishment. Expect the media and the elites and the professional “Left” to all start getting in line.
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