This Just In – I’m beyond ready. Please … drop the ball on 2023.
In 2012, the Obama-Biden campaign was not looking like an easy re-elect, but then Joe Biden said something that was a bumper sticker summary of what the administration had accomplished. “Bin Laden is Dead. GM is alive,” he said.
Short. Simple. Memorable. Factual. Those were the days.
At this point in the presidential election cycle, my summation of the campaigns and coverage would be something like this: Trump-91. Biden-81.
I’ve been hearing from friends and pundits alike the cynical “he gets away with everything” angst about Trump that is baked into any speculation about 2024’s campaigns and possible outcome.
For example, when the Colorado case lands at the Supreme Court, these folks point to Trump’s having put three of the nine justices on the bench. I guess that means they’ll act as supporters and throw cases in his favor, right?
In the dozens of challenges that escalated to the Court after the 2020 election, Trump prevailed in zero cases. He has attempted repeatedly to assert Executive and Presidential Privilege arguments to get some of these prosecutions thrown out altogether. They have failed and failed and failed. They have, however, produced delays, which is the objective.
Like a sugar-hyped kid arguing to stay up later at bedtime, Trump is throwing everything up against the wall to prevent what he knows is coming. Thrashing in every direction, threatening everyone he’s allowed to threaten, he is generating a machine of harassment and danger for public servants who do not deserve it.
The polls suggest that with a recession avoided, economy growing at a sustainable pace, manufacturing growing, wages and workers’ power surging like gangbusters and extremely tricky foreign policy being navigated expertly, the main thing I should know and worry about is that Biden is 81 years old … as are Paul McCartney, Harrison Ford and Barbra Streisand.
Personally, I think the real message of the “Biden is old” argument has everything to do with a healthy, capable 59-year-old black woman standing by in case anything happens to the president. This is my own cynicism, to be sure, but yeah, I’ll bet on racism and misogyny every time to explain the otherwise unexplainable.
After all, Biden’s political argument is the tried and true “finish the job” pitch that every first term president uses. Trump’s platform is about hating immigrants and locking up anyone who crossed him, abusing presidential power and almost certainly relieving all of us of the burden of voting to decide who the next president should be.
His assertions that the ’24 election will not be free or fair have already begun and he will certainly be calling for demonstrations and violence to disrupt an orderly election process. This is expected now.
In just a few weeks, we’ll begin seeing footage day after day of the former president marching into a federal courthouse. The campaign will be about his “I’m being treated unfairly” whining, not about us. Not about a vision for the country, not about security or economic growth.
Throughout the year, there are going to be even more civil and criminal instances of accountability being delivered to the 45th president, starting with a giant civil decision in New York that will end his business activity there. That case, brought by New York Attorney General Tish James, as been a sleeping giant for its potential impact.
There, too, is an instance of a strong Black woman who stands in opposition to Trump. His response has been, in part, to repeatedly refer to her as “Peek-a-boo James,” a racist dog-whistle term. Similarly, he refers to Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis (who is prosecuting him on RICO charges) using animal references in order to dehumanize her.
It’s a dangerous time, but the Hitler-admiring 45th President of the United States is thrashing about because that ball is going to drop at midnight on Sunday and the year of reckoning will be here.
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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