Biden Will Be Remembered More for What He Didn't Do Than What He Did

Other than the election and everything related to it, one thing stuck in my craw this past week, and it stuck there hard, so much so that I can't cough it up. At her daily briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked if President Joe Biden would pardon his son Hunter, who is facing sentencing after pleading guilty to federal charges related to tax evasion and lying on an application for buying a gun. She responded, "We've been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is no."

Now, you can tell me that Joe Biden respects the law and lots of such shit. But Hunter Biden was the subject of a slavering witch hunt by Republicans who were out to destroy his life for simply being Joe Biden's son. The fact that we know anything about him at all is a testament to how clean Joe Biden's record is: they had nothing on the father, so they went after the son so they could make the father guilty by association. In other words, the motherfuckers wanted blood, and they weren't going to stop until they got it.

Yet here's Joe Biden, who is not only leaving office, but that office is being taken over by the man who put the target on his family's backs. When a parent has the power to save a child from a pack of wolves, that parent has an obligation to pluck the child to safety. Sure, the GOP and the gabbling goblins on the right would lose their shit, but they'll lose their shit if Hunter Biden is sentenced to anything other than the death penalty. 

It's ragingly frustrating. Pardon your son, Joe. Jesus Christ, use the power you fucking have while you have it. Don't let the bastards get everything they want. Fucking hell. 

In late 2019, I wrote that I didn't want Biden to be the Democratic nominee because he believed too much that he could work with Republicans and that he wouldn't bother punishing Trump and the fuckers who aided and abetted his crimes. Biden actually said at a fundraiser back then, "With Donald Trump out of the way, you’re going to see a number of my Republican colleagues have an epiphany. Mark my words. Mark my words...It’s going to take two things: One is somebody who in fact, knows how to reach across the aisle and get things done." 

I know we all blame Merrick Garland for the failure to prosecute Trump quickly and we want to hang him up like pinata and pummel him (rhetorically, of course). But I would not be the least bit surprised if Joey Gladhand up there didn't hold the Justice Department back, thinking that not going after Trump would buy him some good will with the GOP as he tried to get shit done. He learned the lesson that all Democrats are cursed to learn too late: Republicans are motherfuckers and they will try to fuck mother every chance they get. That's what they do. It's right there in the word. 

Biden made restoring norms that Trump had shit on and tossed into the garbage more important than wielding power. But he didn't realize that institutionalists like him were worthless in the Trump-warped DC landscape he returned to. And Democrats followed his lead. Sure, they were able to get some pretty amazing things passed, but they never used the power they had. When Jim Jordan, who looks like if armpit sweat were a person, defied a House committee subpoena, they never once threatened to bring charges against him or have him arrested. They just let it go. That was a pattern: Republicans do or say something outrageous and Democrats just keep their heads down and plow ahead, not realizing the outrage is actually hurting them. If you're MMA fighting but you want to treat it like a boxing match and only use those moves, don't be surprised when you get kicked in the throat and land on the ground, gasping for breath.

It continues even after the 2024 election. We went through a couple of years of Biden and Democrats telling us that Donald Trump's reelection is an apocalyptic event that will wreck our nice democracy and shatter our alliances around the world and send the country reeling into despair. But what does Biden do after Trump won? He fucking congratulates him and tells the country that everything is just fine. No. Just fucking no. Be mad. Chastise us. Tell us it's fucked up and now we need to be vigilant or Trump will shred what remains of our national character. "I've said many times, you can't love your country only when you win," Biden said after the election. But you don't need to roll over and pretend shit's not fucked up. Biden loved his son when his son was fucking up, but he sure as shit let Hunter know he was fucking up and needed to do something about it. 

I'm not blaming Biden directly for Kamala Harris's loss. I don't know what would have happened if he had dropped out early and Democrats had gone through a bruising primary battle. But I am blaming him for allowing Trump to be able to run. I blame him for not immediately having the lead insurrectionist arrested after inauguration. Like Barack Obama's failure to hold Wall Street bankers or George W. Bush to account for all their crimes, it casts a pall over the presidency and the system of justice. The only way ruthless assholes learn to back down is to be a ruthless asshole to them. 

I'm writing this as a way of saying that the Democratic leadership of the future should not be so invested in returning to doing business as usual. Biden promised us that, but it wasn't enough because Republicans and their media outrage machine didn't fucking want it and Trump wouldn't allow it. That ship of comity and cooperation has sailed the fuck away. If we ever have another election, whoever emerges as a leader out of the reckoning that Democrats are having would have to be a take-no-prisoners destroyer of norms because norms aren't fucking laws. No one gets punished for not doing things the Way They've Always Been Done, so don't. Break open the Supreme Court. Fire anyone who Trump leaves behind (like Postmaster Louis Dejoy). Fuck process. Fuck procedure. Fuck any of it that gets in the way of putting this strain of politics in this country in its grave. Republicans learned that the only thing that should encumber them is laws, and then they will test those laws until they reach the breaking point or they can get away with whatever the fuck they want to do. I'm not saying to be the abject Constitution-haters Republicans are, but, Jesus fuck, murder the Senate weirdness like nominees being held up when a senator from that state objects. Use power like you like having power.

Institutionalism is bullshit. Tradition is often just another word for "behind the times." Goddamn, I can't get over that the president won't even pardon his maligned and persecuted son because of a belief in the innate goodness of institutions. Biden's tragic flaw, like its been for so many Democrats, is believing that if you just show your opponent that you're playing by the rules honestly, they'll respect that and work with you. It simply doesn't work that way anymore (if it ever truly did). The price we now have to pay for that fucked up adherence to an idealized past is incalculable. Despite all the good that Biden did do, much of what he got done will now be reversed by these jabbering jackals who could give a shit less if it hurts people to do it. Despite having made a significant contribution to helping the working class, mitigating climate change, getting us out of a pandemic, and more, that failure by Biden to evolve, even after having a front-row seat to Republicans obstructing Barack Obama endlessly, even while watching Republicans devolve in increasing and frightening ways, will be his legacy.

(Note: Well, that and his failure to even attempt to rein in Benjamin Netanyahu, but that's a post for another time.)

America Is a Floating Island of Garbage

Pundits and political commentators and randos on social media will come up with a thousand ways to explain what happened last night.

Some of them will blame Harris's failure to offer definite support for Palestinians and condemn Israel's genocide in Gaza. They'll say that that failure suppressed the Arab-American and Muslim vote, as well as turning off Gen Z, tuned into the slaughter on TikTok, and lefties who wanted an excuse to pretend to be edgy by not voting or voting third-party. 

They'll blame Harris's support for supposedly "woke" ideas like support for diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. They'll say that she was too left.

They'll blame Harris reaching out to Republicans, even campaigning with objectively awful people like Liz Cheney just because they, too, hate Trump. They'll say that she was too far right.

They'll say Harris embraced President Joe Biden too much. They'll say she embraced him too little. They'll say she didn't do enough to cater to this or that Democratic group or constituency. They'll wonder if she should have picked Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro instead of Tim Walz. They'll say should have done Joe Rogan's show. Every single decision by the campaign will be questioned and criticized and torn apart. 

They'll say that Joe Biden should have remained the candidate, even though that would have meant another three months of Biden-is-too-old stores that were already turning the electorate against him. Or they'll say Biden should haven't run at all and allowed Democrats to nominate someone after a bruising primary fight, but there's no guarantee that would have changed a vote.

They'll call out Russian interference on Election Day, with bomb threats called into multiple locations in Black-majority districts. They'll say that disinformation, like fake Haitian voters, was spread by malicious nations and eager clout-seekers online. They might even blame third-party candidates, although that math doesn't add up.

And on and on and on. They will find a way to blame everyone and everything except those who deserve the blame. 

At the end of the day, a majority of Americans wanted Donald Trump to be president, and they didn't give a damn about anything else. They hate what he hates. They want to see retribution agains the imagined foes he's conjured. They did this even with everything they knew about him and his extravagant criminality and treason. They simply didn't believe it or they liked it. His voters might have been misinformed about a lot of things, but they know who Trump is, and they're completely fine with it. Where we see a rapist and a felon and a coup leader, they see a Tony Soprano-like antihero. Where we saw a competent and accomplished Democratic candidate, they saw a communist harridan who will force schools to give sex changes to children and let Venezuelans take over towns out west. You laugh, but they hold this as true. God, they want to punish immigrants and women and trans people so fucking badly they can taste it. They want their tears and blood and screams to bathe them. 

There are things we know for sure. The Latino vote, especially men, tilted dramatically to Trump. White people, especially white men, voted for him. College-age men voted for Trump in much larger numbers than anticipated. And my generation, Gen X, betrayed everything that we were raised to believe about fakes and frauds in authority and went for Trump. All of them, us, deserve blame. America has a men problem, and it's scary as hell. 

But one thing above all other ruled the day, and, frankly, makes me embarrassed to live on this floating island of garbage we pretend is a country. And let me do this as an address to Trump's voters:

You are so fucking stupid, just the stupidest motherfuckers who ever were allowed to breathe. You're so stupid that you won't even realize how badly you've fucked everything up. Your stupidity is so deep, so ingrained, so far up your deranged asses that you won't even realize it when you become the victim of your own stupid decisions, when prices go up because of tariffs and the lack of workers for farms, when you're fucking drowning in your shitbox homes because nobody did anything to stop climate change, when your town's tax base has been deported, when your factories die because there aren't enough workers, when your daughters and wives die because of no access to the medical care they need, when the rank stupidity you force others to adopt ends up making all of you worthless shit lumps in a ditch, just vessels for algorithm-fed hate lessons on social media on your screens, masturbating into oblivion over the pain of others while ignoring the cries of everyone around you while the world burns. I'd tell you to go fuck yourselves, but you already have and you don't even know it.

Jesus fuck, you voted to protect abortion rights in Missouri and Montana while still voting for Trump and other Republicans who will pass a national ban, negating the amendments to your state constitutions. That is, in the most basic way, blindingly fucking stupid, demonstrating a complete ignorance of any way that our elections or government functions. And if you're in one of the many groups that Trump has explicitly promised to harm and you voted for him, you're a fucking joke.

And if I sound angry and disgusted, it's because at least in 2016 we could say that Trump didn't win the popular vote, that the country at large was still hanging in there. But not this time. This is who we are. None of it was enough, not the crimes, not the blatantly unAmerican policies, not the weirdness and obvious mental decline, not the shitshow that surrounds him. None of it. Trump increased his margins of victory across the nation, including in states like New Jersey and New York. That's so frightening.

And all those blames and excuses up there? Here's the coldest comfort I can offer: none of it would have mattered. I don't know what would have made a difference. This is who we are. This. This is who we are in the damned 21st-century. It's who we've always been. We're a nation founded on genocide and racism, enforced misogyny and absurd delusions of our superiority. It's in our DNA. And now we get to live out the natural and horrific extension of that.

You want me to end this by saying we should fight, by saying we need to regroup and defend those who will need defending (god, there are so many), by saying we're in this together. And maybe I'll get there. But right now, today, all I'm wondering is what, exactly, is worth fighting for. 

Donald Trump Will Want to Kill Us If He's Elected (and He Can Do It)

Kamala Harris has been very clear about the threat that a second Donald Trump presidency will pose to many people. She is never more passionate than when she's talking about how Trump's anti-abortion Supreme Court justices and Republicans across the country have caused deaths and harm to women. She said in her speech on the Ellipse last week that Trump "has an enemies list of people he intends to prosecute. He says that one of his highest priorities is to set free the violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers on January 6. Donald Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him, people he calls, quote, 'the enemy from within America.'" She regularly asks her crowds to imagine Trump "without guardrails," meaning that he can act with the immunity and impunity granted to presidents by that same corrupt, anti-American, anti-democratic Supreme Court majority in Trump v. United States, a case name that has more meaning than it ought to. 

And all of this is great and necessary, but when it comes to the power that Trump will wield as president (or Harris, but she's not fucking insane and senile), I think that specificity is necessary. In other words, I don't think voters really understand what could potentially be unleashed here. It's gotta be made plain and personal. For instance, during arguments on the January 6 immunity case, I really wanted the government to tell the justices that, under what Trump was proposing, a president would have the right to have them killed if they thought the justices were a danger to the country. No, I don't think it would have changed the outcome, but make motherfuckers have to consider their own mortality.

The same goes with a Trump restoration. As the Brennan Center for Justice said about the garbage ruling and the garbage court, "It threatens to free presidents from the constraints of law and democracy. And it paves the way for future presidents to try to make good on the most antidemocratic of all propositions: might makes right." Yeah, no guardrails and no moral compass will make for a nightmare. 

I try to avoid hysterical statements about shit, but when generals are warning that Trump is a fascist and unfit to be president, when people who were slobbering supporters are telling us that Trump is a danger to the nation, it's time to fucking listen because people who don't traffic in hyperbole aren't being hyperbolic. They are telling you what shit is. So let's pretend that Trump comes in and decides to take these dictatorial powers to their fullest extent. He clearly thinks that the Constitution is easily tossed aside if the president thinks it should be. If we go down authoritarian highway, we're fucked. 

We all understand pretty clearly that Trump's enemies, especially Republicans who opposed him, including everyone who warned about him, are doomed if he's back in office. And Democrats like Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, and, well, most elected Democrats will be in that group, too. In fact, some of them know that. They will be rounded up. They will be arrested. Some of them will be executed without trial. Trump loves the idea of military tribunals, perhaps even televised so he can get the ratings. And Trump will justify this as making the country safer, under the power that Supreme Court has given him. He's already declared them all enemies and "scum" and dangerous. If you don't think that Trump is that petty, vindictive, vengeful, and demented, you have been asleep for the last few years. 

Remember, according to the Supreme Court, the only way that he can be stopped is if he's impeached and removed from office for these acts. And I guarantee there's at least a third of the Senate who wouldn't vote to remove (you need two-thirds to do it). 

Let's keep gaming this out, going to some extremes for the sake of argument. Trump's gotta maintain the fiction about the corruption of elections, so any officials who he sees are responsible for his loss in 2020 would be rounded up. Any election workers who were in, say, Detroit or Philadelphia or Atlanta. Former Georgia and Arizona officials are as good as gone. He'll have to take care of the media pretty quickly, too, to make sure that he's the only source of information and "facts." He'll also go after any very rich people who opposed him and who haven't gotten the fuck out of the country (which many of them will). And you'd think at that moment that maybe it would be enough, that he could do what he wants to make life miserable for the rest of us under emergency powers that he's declared because of the "invasion" at the border or whatever other fake crisis he can conjure. 

Except then there's the other fictions that need to be maintained, all those bullshit, anti-science, ahistorical ideas that he's run on. His administration will come after or let states come after anyone who teaches that climate change is real or that racism is a thing or that trans people exist. Purging intellectuals who are against the dear leader is par for the totalitarian course. This is when it starts to hit home for more people: "Shit, my wife was just teaching the fact that seas are rising and temperatures have gone up and now she's been sent to work in the radioactive flood zones of Florida." It's where I get worried for my tenured ass. 

And if you read your Project 2025, private businesses will be affected, too. You'll see a massive brain drain and a shifting of financial centers away from the United States because investors have to live in reality, but Trump doesn't. He'll come after companies that have diversity policies or who have made adjustments for living in a world that is fucked by the climate crisis. Workers in those industries will be arrested because they believe in facts and observable reality. Here's what Project 2025 says on page 42, dripping with hatred, "Those who run our so-called American corporations have bent to the will of the woke agenda and care more for their foreign investors and organizations than their American workers and customers. Today, nearly every top-tier U.S. university president or Wall Street hedge fund manager has more in common with a socialist, European head of state than with the parents at a high school football game in Waco, Texas." Yeah, they're gonna wanna kill some "socialists."

And Trump's already promising a new ban on Muslims coming into the country. And he can go from there to deport people who are here legally. He wants to get rid of birthright citizenship for migrant families. We'll have the camps set up for his mass deportation of millions of migrants in this country. Hell, his troops will have experience rounding up large numbers of people, tearing families apart, clearing out entire neighborhoods. Filling those camps again wouldn't be a problem. Christian nationalists will demand that kind of purity, as well as an implementation of bible-based policies. 

What about anyone who supports Palestine? Or anyone who might protest something he does? Any protest will be squelched and those involved will be rounded up. That means college kids and younger will be subject to arrest, detention, or worse. 

We know that Trump wants more executions, and he loves the idea of killing people. He wants shoplifters shot without due process. He thinks there needs to be a violent day to end crime. He wants drug dealers killed. Again, nothing short of removal from office prevents him doing any of this. 

Now you might think that there's no way that people in the government will allow this, that they'll balk at being so terrible. But one of the first things Trump's gonna do is get rid of civil service protections for government workers. He'll fire tens of thousands of them and install only loyalists, people ready to carry out these policies, people who believe in this shit. Look out at any MAGA Nazi rally. They're filled with people begging to do this shit. They won't even care that Trump will end up tanking the economy and ruining their daily lives. They'll blame the few remaining libs for that.

To take it even further, Trump could fire any military officers who don't want to carry out his demands. It doesn't take much imagination to see what that leads to. 

And if you think I'm being hysterical here, well, I'd rather be hysterical about this than deluded that a fucked-in-the-head Trump, surrounded by people like Bannon and Stephen Miller and every Putin-humper and Orban-fellater and Jesus-sodomizer he can find, wouldn't try to remake the nation in his mad image. And, by the way, Trump is likely worse than Vladimir Putin or Viktor Orban or even Xi Jinping. They at least have some beliefs, shitty as they may be, that go beyond greed and racism (and all at least still provide health care for their citizens). Trump is more like Kim Jong-Un of North Korea, a dumpy little manbaby who likes playing dress-up, watching things go boom, and forcing people to love him. 

If he's so awful and such a threat to the very existence of the country as an alleged "beacon of freedom," you might wonder why he's allowed to even be a free man. Going beyond the usual, obvious answers of "because he's rich" and "because Merrick Garland is a feckless bitch," there's a good chance that, for the good of some kind of stability, those in power who are opposed to Trump want him to lose the election. Except that's what Democrats did in 2016 and how did that work out?

Lemme take this one step further: I think that the most dangerous time in recent U.S. history will be the period between election and inauguration. It's gonna be nuts if Trump loses, but we know what's coming (to an extent). But if Trump wins, it could be dangerous for a different reason. Because, see, Joe Biden does have those exact same Supreme Court-granted superpowers now, and if he and the people around him really think a Trump presidency could lead to the end of the United States and world instability, well, wouldn't they have a responsibility to act? And then what would happen?

To bring this back to this election, you need to understand that electing Harris is the only way to stop this or something even close to this from happening to you, to all of us. One of the things that Harris is running on is to make sure this shit doesn't happen and hopefully make it so that it can't happen with anyone in the future. We not only have to fill holes in the law that let a president go full Hitler, but we have to get the Supreme Court under control. One reason I voted for her already and want her to win is because we need a sane adult to make us sane once more after nearly a decade of madness. I'm hoping that a Harris administration will understand that the only way to end this is to put some motherfuckers in prison for good. (Sorry. I don't believe in the death penalty. And in this case, we don't need martyrs.)

Yeah, it's important to get inflation under control and expand housing and deal with whatever the "crisis" is at the border, but a potential Harris administration needs to get our shit together as a country or we're gonna be back in this bullshit spot, teetering at the edge of a cliff like we're all in a bus that's half on and half off, again.