Grassroots Democrats need to take the party back from the elites who’ve betrayed them
President Joe Biden walks off stage during the CNN Presidential Debate at the CNN Studios on June 27, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. Getty Images
A staggering 82% of Americans, per a new Post poll, believe President Biden should drop out of the 2024 race after Thursday night’s debate disaster.
Donald Trump is now headed for a landslide victory in November, and grassroots Democrats have every right — indeed, a duty — to hold the party elite responsible.
The elite who not only tried to cover up the president’s horrific decline, but effectively left regular Democrats no way to register their unease in this cycle’s primaries.
Powerbrokers who even now are pretending Biden can overcome this disaster.
The party has a few truth-tellers: “The bar was set so low and President Biden still could not clear it,” noted former Bill Clinton adviser Paul Begala.
“This confirms voters’ most dire concerns about Joe Biden.”
Concerns that Dem strategists recognized, yet their “solution” was to send him into that debate.
These idiots are completely out of touch with normal folks; they only talk to the big donors who now give the party a huge fundraising edge over the GOP — and ensure that the insiders earn plenty no matter how they fail.
Rich people who don’t understand politics, and can get snowed by fast-talking consultants.
The insiders specialize in spin; they’ve spent weeks and months insisting that no one should believe their “own lying eyes” when video exposes Biden’s decline.
And they’re still spinning: California Gov. Gavin Newsome just told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki: “Look, I’d rather have 80 years behind me than those 88 federal criminal counts in front of me. And so I feel very good about Joe Biden’s prospects.”
That’s as phony as the recent noise from MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough that “Biden is far sharper, more intellectually curious, and far more insightful on global affairs than any House GOP speaker I have met over 30 years.”
Hmm: He got posed a softball question on abortion, Dems’ best issue — and proceeded to talk about migrant crime, Trump’s best issue.
That’s the reverse of “sharp.”
Yes, senior party insiders were in a panic late Thursday, but Friday’s chatter was all about “soldiering on” — not about getting a delegation of leaders to level with Biden about the need to drop, or even about changing the convention rules to allow delegates to choose a different nominee.
They’re going to fall back on a Rose Garden campaign, with the prez making only carefully staged appearances at controlled rallies — plus, of course, exclusive fundraisers with the big-money crowd.
God knows the Republican elite has its own problems: That’s why Trump was able to bull through to the 2016 nomination, and why he has such appeal to the GOP base even now.
But the Democrats are supposed to be the party of the people, not the party of pulling the wool over the people’s eyes.