Did Democratic Primary Voters Notice Last Night That It Really IS Time For Biden To Pass The Torch?

Biden (senile): "Wish you were here," passing the torch to himself

I had a feeling Biden might not do well in the debate. But I never expected to see the total self-destruction. He should have been seated on a lawn chair with a hose to douse the other candidates for stepping on his lawn. Eric Swalwell summed it up before it even began! “I was six years old when a presidential candidate came to the California Democratic convention and said ‘It’s time to pass the torch to a new generation of Americans.’ That candidate was then-Senator Joe Biden. Joe Biden was right when he said it was time to pass the torch to a new generation of Americans 32 years ago. He’s still right today. If we’re going to solve the issues of automation, pass the torch. If we’re going to solve the issues of climate chaos, pass the torch. If we’re going to solve the issue of student loan debt, pass the torch. If we’re going to gun violence for families who are fearful of sending their kids to school, pass the torch.” Biden’s pathetic response: “I’m still holdin’ onto that torch.” It was the beginning of his debate-long meltdown.

He was angry and defensive and clearly the most awful would-be nominee on the stage! It got far, far worse during his argument with a very predatory and relatively skillful debater, Kamala Harris. He didn't seem prepared for the ambush that was absolutely coming his way. She had it all rehearsed and ready to go as soon as the opportunity-- in this case, Marianne Williamson's statement about slavery reparations-- came up. Watch:



She addressed him directly in a way that could not end well for him: “I do not believe you are a racist… but…” He claimed he “did not praise racists,” which he did and which she did not accuse him of doing. Watch the tape again. He was responding to his own, utterly unacknowledged, inner guilt about praising racists, not to what she said about him “talking about the reputations of two United States senators who built their… careers on the segregation of race in this country.” She also mentioned he worked with them to pass anti-busing legislation. He as much as called her a liar for saying he praised racists. But he did— over and over and over. She was only wrong about Ione thing: when she said he isn’t a racist. His long racist record in Delaware and then in the U.S. Senate is a racist record. No one ever says it out loud, but, let’s face it, he was chosen by the first black president to be his running mate to balance the ticket— a black and a racist, the ultimate Democratic Party balance. He also lied about busing. He didn’t just work for busing on a federal level. Previously to being elected to the Senate, he cynically built his reputation in Delaware as the anti-busing (pro-segregation) Democrat. And defending racism by citing “states rights” is a bad move in a post-‘50s Democratic primary. His revenge was to remind people— obliquely enough so most people probably didn’t get it— that Kamala was a very flawed prosecutor who was locking up black people for pot smoking. Still, the bullshit was seeping out of every pore in Biden’s traumatized body when he responded:

“Everything I have done in my career— I ran because of civil rights…” He first ran for office to prevent blacks from being able to exercise their constitutionally protected civil rights. Harris does no one any good by her crap about “I do not believe you are a racist.” Who cares if he is or isn;’t a racist? His RECORD is racist, regardless of what polite society decides it sees in his heart. As Biden said himself later in the debate: “My time’s up.”

People are saying Kamala had the best night. She may have, but she didn’t really drive the stake through Biden’s heart, just wounded him (perhaps mortally). As for the rest of her night… all she really does is repeat— WORD FOR WORD— Bernie’s talking points. Fine if she wants to steal the senator’s great ideas, but at least she ought to try putting them in her own words. Ans maybe Ione day we’ll find out if she has any ideas of her own (aside from setting Steve Mnuchin free for some meekly campaign contributions).

But for Biden— and his glass jaw— last night was a disaster, one he won;’t recover from. Whether it was the inevitable racism thing or his defense of the NRA or his inability to speak to a question about his judgment about leading the support for the unjustifiable invasion of Iraq— not just a bad vote— a leadership role. In fact, towards the end of the debate, one of the moderators, Chuck Todd, I think, asked each candidate to state in a couple of words, what he or she would prioritize once they were elected and in office, Biden started babbling about defeating Trump. Biden is the only Democrat who could possibly make Trump look relatively fit for office. A Biden nomination would be like a death knell for the Democratic Party. I think many Democratic primary voters saw that last night.

Will we see mass suicide at Biden campaign headquarters? No more checks? No  more chances for a White House gig in 2021?

The big take-away, besides Biden’s self-destruction, was that Bernie’s ideas dominated both nights of debate. The Democratic narrative is Bernie’s narrative, not Biden’s, not Kamala Harris’ and certainly not McKinsey Pete’s. As Elaine Godfrey put it late last night in The Atlantic, “Several of the candidates seemed to define themselves against Sanders, reflexively comparing and contrasting their agenda with his. It was a reminder of just how popular the senator from Vermont’s ideas have become since his first campaign, in 2016: His policies have dominated discussion for much of the past three years, helping pry open the Democrats’ Overton window, inch by inch. That’s especially true when it comes to health care. When asked about the pragmatism of progressives’ proposals, Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado said, ‘I agree with Bernie’ on his goal of universal health care. But ‘where I disagree is on his solution of Medicare for All.’ South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, for his part, criticized what he sees as an impractical shift to a Medicare for All system. ‘Every person in politics who allows that phrase to escape their lips has a responsibility to explain how you are supposed to get from here to there,’ Buttigieg said.”

When the subject turned to student debt, the candidates jabbed at Sanders’s new proposal to cancel all Americans’ student debt, to the tune of $1.6 trillion, with no income or other restrictions. “I believe in free college for those whom cost could be a barrier,” Buttigieg said. “I just don’t believe it makes sense to ask working-class families to subsidize even the children of billionaires.” Biden explained that he would want to give students tuition-free community college instead.

The candidates, again and again, were playing the game on Sanders’s turf. He didn’t receive the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2016, and he might not secure it in 2020. But when the issues he’s long championed are being debated before 15 million Americans, in some ways he’s already won.

No, he will already have won, when he wins— when WE win, not the corporatists and Wall. Street banksters who have taken over both political parties, the GOP long ago and the Democrats, when Bill Clinton was getting a blow job from some ditz in the Oval Office. Bernie made it clear over and over again that it will take a political revolution to beat these forces. When that happens he/we win. Last night’s best quote wasn’t really from Kamala Harris’ useful attack on Biden. It was from Bernie: "Scientists tells us we have 12 years before irreversible damage. We have to come together against this common enemy, and transition the world off fossil fuels."