The vacuity of Democratic strategy is astonishing if you take at face value the claim that a Trump victory this November will “end democracy.” Apparently, Trump paying Stormy Daniels $130K in hush money, after which some creative accounting obscured the source of the payoff, renders him “unfit for office.” And that claim is now a “top 2024 issue” for Democrats, as The New York Times notes here:
Democrats Push Biden to Make Trump’s Felonies a Top 2024 Issue
Interviews with dozens of Democrats reveal a party hungry to tell voters that Donald Trump’s conviction makes him unfit for office, and hopeful that President Biden will lead the way.
Meanwhile, this was the lead headline in the NYT “top news” send-out this morning:
A Felon in the Oval Office Would Test the American System
Some are wondering how the Constitution’s checks and balances, meant to hold presidents accountable, would work if the next president elected were already a felon.
“Some are wondering”: What a vapid phrase!
I think there are more severe “tests” of the “American system.” How about a president enabling a genocide in Gaza, for example?
If you want to beat Donald Trump this November, how about running a more attractive, more dynamic, more charismatic, more populist and popular, candidate? Whatever else Biden is, he is very much lacking in dynamism even as his actions render him increasingly unpopular among key segments of the Democratic base.
My wife jokingly said today: Just what we need, another election featuring two tired and seriously old white guys. She has a point. It’s not that Trump is now a felon that renders him allegedly unfit. Trump is, in my view, constitutionally unsuited for the presidency. Biden, in contrast, is a fading political hack who will be 82 years of age at the end of this year. Yet, this is what the “American system” produces. Maybe that “system” needs an overhaul?
So, which tired and seriously old white guy do you want to vote for this year?
It seems hard to believe that in my lifetime we had a young, dynamic, and visionary president, JFK, who was 43 years of age when elected. A president who grew in office, rather than fading. A president who in 1963 made a commitment to pursuing peace with the Soviet Union. A man with flaws, but also one with potential.
Of course, the DNC with its superdelegates has created a system to deny anyone like a JFK (or even RFK Jr.) any chance at securing the nomination. Only corporate stooges need apply. That has allowed a populist-fraud like Trump to emerge from the right, a billionaire who poses as a man of the people. That Trump’s claim is plausible to so many is a measure of how far the Democratic Party has fallen.
It’s already been a very long election cycle, and it’s only early June. Five more months of total BS to go, America.
I was 8 when Allen Dulles arranged the assassination of JFK, and I am still waiting for justice (if there is any such thing in America) to be served. Even Jeffrey Sachs and Ray McGovern are now openly noting this ultimate infamy in American history, and I am hoping that more people who were on the inside during or just after the coup will start to speak up. America is never going to be a functioning democracy as long as the deep state coup regime remains in power and continues the forever wars that they sustain their power through. I just hope that more open discussions of America's true history start to percolate through the country.
'Like Israel, Hamas Isn’t Offering Palestinians a ‘Day After’ – Just More War and Suffering'
Armed struggle has failed to stop the ongoing theft of Palestinian land. The destruction and death wrought by Israel in the Gaza Strip calls for a different kind of struggle – one that takes into account its people's right to live
In Israel, the slogan "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is perceived as a call for the eradication of the Jewish state. As is the way of slogans, it doesn't specify what will happen to Jews in the newly freed Palestine.
If we asked every protester in the United States and Europe what they mean when they shout these words, we'd probably get a variety of answers, ranging from "the Jews should return to their countries of origin" to "a secular and democratic Palestinian state will be established (under the leadership of the Islamic Movement?), where people of all three faiths live in equality."
One thing that is certain is that the shock from seeing the carnage and destruction wreaked by Israel in Gaza has led many young people around the world to view Israel as a settler-colonial entity, and thus an illegitimate one. They see Hamas' attacks on October 7 – its targeting of the military, for sure, but also the massacre of civilians – as part of any people's legitimate struggle against a colonialist entity.
A vast chasm lies between those who see October 7 as the starting point or as evidence of Palestinians' innate murderous tendencies and those who are aware and understand that the main explanation for what happened lies in Israel's occupation and oppression.................................................................
https://portside.org/2024-06-03/israel-hamas-isnt-offering-palestinians-day-after-just-more-war-and-suffering