Scranton Joe Versus The Volcano: The Tyranny Of The Elites
America prefers underdogs to big-money Party-power Hollywood reality.
By Omar Moore
July 13, 2024
“I don’t care what the millionaires think. And by the way, ninety-seven percent of all the people who have contributed to us…are people contributing under 200 bucks.”
—President Joe Biden, during a phone call to “Morning Joe”, July 8, 2024
Joey Landslide. Coming November 5.
President Joe Biden commanded his way through a 58-minute news conference Thursday night with the vigor, leadership and aplomb he has shown throughout his nearly three-and-a-half years in presidential office. His performance at the NATO Summit newser will only bolster support for him among voters and increase chances that those previously agnostic to him will empathize and vote for Biden amidst such withering attacks on him in the press and corporate news media.
Where are these attacks in the press and corporate news media coming from? And from whence is the motivation of those doing the attacking? The Democratic Party, never one for showing respect for its voters (particularly its Black voters) is suddenly behaving like a villain or a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. With wholly unreasonable panic (in service of a more sinister agenda— kneecapping Vice President Kamala Harris in 2028) the richest and most powerful elements of the Donkey Party is reducing itself to a tyranny of the elites, from which Joe Biden does not come.
What these attacks aren’t about is Joe Biden’s age. Or a debate. They are about sabotaging the people’s will and the opportunity for a female—make that BLACK FEMALE—president of the United States, which would be a foregone conclusion should Biden win on November 5, as it is widely expected he would not serve a full four-year term. Everyone knows that Biden, a career politician with a wealth of experience, is a genuine and decent person who has seen much and will want to pass the baton to the vice president and be part of indelible history.
These attacks are also about a white-owned political party that doesn’t want to let go of its grip on power and control over it, much less cede it to Black people. America is getting Blacker and Browner. Politicians are too. Black voters, largely on the strength of then-Senator Kamala Harris as Biden’s VP choice, voted overwhelmingly for him. Black people are the biggest percentage voting bloc and the undisputed base of the Democratic Party. The internal power structure remains white and older than Biden himself. Some of the white elders governing that structure cannot reconcile their own party’s Black base. The white elders’ agenda is surely 2028 (California governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer): to knock Harris out and get things whiter.
The corporate news media (who will no doubt keep up the drumbeat against Biden during the Republican convention next week) is represented and owned by the white billionaire elite and they have their agenda. Their agenda is not age. It isn’t even winning. It is money. This week in Idaho at a media conference David Zaslav, the right-wing CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery, the parent company of CNN, declared that it didn’t matter much to him which political party wins the presidency as long as they were business-friendly. Said Zaslav: “we just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to to be even better.”
Joe Biden, who on Friday night in Detroit during an electrifying rally warned the press not to let the manual for dictatorship, Trump’s Project 2025 happen, has shown the resilience and battle-toughness necessary to finish the job in the White House. The Biden presidency has so far seen the creation of 15.7 million jobs (and 42 consecutive months of job growth), a reduction in the deficit by $1.7 trillion, forgiveness of $170 billion of student loan debt, $16 billion donated to HBCUs, more than 200 federal judges including 58 Black federal judges (37 of them Black women), more Black federal judges than any US president ever, the first-ever Black female Supreme Court justice, reduction of prescription drug costs for insulin for seniors to $35, pardons for federal marijuana possession, 800,000 manufacturing jobs created and a sixty-year record low in unemployment across the board. And that’s just a partial list of President Biden’s accomplishments in under four years. That’s a record that is better than many two-term presidents including Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and obviously the convicted felon-in-chief.
There is no question that Joe Biden’s presidency is the most significant and transformative since LBJ’s, if not prior. On top of that, the US financial markets have been at record highs for the Dow Jones, Nasdaq and Standard & Poor’s 500 indexes, the US economy is the best in the world (though there is more to do), inflation is down, gas and food prices are coming down and billionaires are prospering. On that last note, there is just one wrinkle for the very prosperous: President Biden wants to tax billionaires at a 25 percent rate instead of the 8.2 percent they are taxed at now. And that’s what the David Zaslavs of the world don’t like—which would explain the corporate news media’s unrelenting and baseless attacks on President Biden, while the 34-count convicted felon, insurrectionist and twice-impeached rapist (who will extend and deepen his 2017 tax cuts for the top 1 percent) doesn’t have so much as an orange glove laid on him.
So the white billionaires, Democratic Party power brokers, corporate news media and some Democratic politicians who can’t and won’t see past their own elections based on phony, incorrect and overbaked polls, is the maelstrom of a volcano that Scranton Joe, a trademark fighter, is up against. The one indispensable asset Joe Biden has on his side however, are the 81 million people who voted for him in 2020 and the 14 million who voted for him in the primaries this year, an 87 percent vote share (not to mention over 3,900 delegates.) This reality is something the Democratic elites seem desperate to subvert. Democracy cannot be declared when some members of the Democratic Party have the alacrity to traduce the will of the people.
The foolery of a (false) narrative that President Biden isn’t “exciting” injects an image that politics or elections are supposed to be entertaining affairs. They aren’t. That kind of idiocy, which does much damage, further fueled by the horserace-devil-may-care attitude of the US corporate news media, ignores the vital truth that elections are life-altering, circumstance-changing real-life. Just ask 2016 and three far-right wing Supreme Court justices. Just ask Roe v Wade. Just ask millions, and certainly dozens of thousands of women and girls in at least 14 states across the US. Or the would-be dictator of America thanks to the same Supreme Court.
The “are you not entertained?” nonsense ascribed to politics and elections as generated by social media and the US corporate news media just doesn’t belong when elections are in fact literally a matter of life and death. Political savvy, education and awareness must prevail and be the order of the day. Those who devise Trump’s Project 2025 are certainly not trying to be entertaining or exciting. So why are some people demanding excitement (from a presidential candidate) when they should instead be embracing education (about civics)?
As for the cable hosts, pundits, prognosticators and podcasters joining the insane “Drop Joe!” chorus — they have books to sell, social media followings to amplify and names to make. They don’t seem to care that fame lasts about 15.5 seconds (maybe 5.5 Tik Tok seconds) these days. And none of those failing to ask for Filthy Felon 34 to vacate the presidential race seem to realize that Americans typically root for the underdog. The 1976 film “Rocky”, set in Pennsylvania, President Biden’s native home state, should have told them, and of all people, the self-interested Hollywood types that.
Thanks very much for reading this edition…of The Politicrat.
I’m Omar Moore.
Vote. Register to vote here: vote.org
The Politicrat Daily Newsletter compiled by Omar Moore
(Twitter: @the_politicrat | @thepopcornreel)
(Fanbase: @popcornreel or fanbase.app/popcornreel)
(Mastodon: @popcornreel@mas.to)
(Bluesky: popcornreel.bsky.social or @popcornreel)
(Medium: omooresf.medium.com
(Substack: Omar Moore | Politicrat Podcast Newsletter)
(Threads: @popcornreel)
The Politicrat Daily Podcast
Subscribe NOW to The Politicrat Daily Podcast YouTube Channel!
The latest episode of The Politicrat Daily Podcast will be found directly below: (please subscribe now!)
Subscribe NOW to The Politicrat Daily Podcast YouTube Channel!