I’m no beltway insider, but from my vantage point looking across the Bay from a nice table at Poggio Trattoria in Sausalito, I don’t see how Democrats ride Joe Biden into 2024.
The midterms are lost, almost everyone concedes that. Biden’s presidency so far has been one big bowl of ugly. You can bet the mortgage that the cool kids who do the math on these kinds of things have already calculated Biden’s gotta go.
Just by the way he walks in that old-man baby-step gait, you know he’s frail. And did you see the extended clip last week of him and New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern? He rambled on and on and on about WWII minutiae like she was his granddaughter visiting him in a rest home. It was just awful.
He’s showing his age, he’s not getting things done insofar as the public can see, and inflation – his fault or nobody’s fault – is a reliable re-election killer. So what do you do with a sitting president with an awful approval rating and a vice president with even lower approval ratings?
You tap him out.
NBC reporters Carol E. Lee, Peter Nicholas, Kristen Welker and Courtney Kube nibbled into it last week and reported that Biden is “rattled” by his sinking approval ratings and how he’s come off as looking “flat-footed” on the many crises that have hit during his tenure.
One of the kingmakers in the party, Rep Jams Clyburn, D-S.C., told NBC: “I don’t know what’s required here.” But Sen. Faiz Shakir, a senior adviser to Bernie Sanders minced no words: “We’re on a track — a losing track.”.
I’m not saying Biden will get a big-time primary challenge. That’s not the way party politics works at this level. Instead, someone like former President Obama will sidle up to Biden in November and whisper: “Enough, old friend, time to go back to the barn.”
GAVIN ASCENDING?
I still think Marin favorite son Gavin Newsom has a decent shot at the nomination. After the implosion of N.Y. Gov. Andrew Coumo, he’s the leading governor on the Democrat bench. He’s good on the stump, supporting a good California economy, and articulate enough to show his face in Iowa. He’ll deny he’s running … until he is.
CROSSED MY MIND:
A SHORT JOURNEY
– A Beautiful System: Local governments are awash in federal money. You know this when towns struggle to spend taxpayer money dropped into their laps via the American Rescue Plan Act. Tiburon, for example, wants to buy old wastewater ponds for $600,000 from the Richardson Bay Sanitary District to create recreational space. Ain’t government great: One government gives another government money and then turns around and gives it to another government to create a project with new and ongoing costs to the taxpayers. It’s a beautiful system.
– Pelosi DUI: U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy’s Pelosi’s husband, was arrested in a DUI accident on a road near their winery in NAPA. Nancy says she’ll have nothing to say on the matter because it is “private.” Hummm. If this were the spouse of the House Republican Leader. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, do you think the same standard would apply? I’m thinking not, but I’m a jaded SOB, this I freely admit.
– Problem Solved: What do you do when there’s a myriad of problems between the predominantly Black Marin City Community and the predominantly white Sausalito Community. You create a mural in the tunnel that connects the two communities. It will be called “All Our Children United” and cost $120,000. Color me skeptical. Look, we have serious issues to confront here. A more colorful tunnel will do nothing. Somebody in Marin has gotta say it, don’t you think?
ONE MORE THING
– My iPhone just filmed a 20-minute documentary on life inside my pocket.
– So domesticated dogs are most closely related to wolves? Really? My dog won’t walk on wet grass.
– In my whole life I never read a warning against eating detergent or putting glue in my hair. Somehow, I just knew it.
– “Phonics” is not spelled like it sounds.
– Navigation equipment was stolen from a submarine base. The thief will be caught sonar or later.
See you next week. In the meantime, avoid soreheads, laugh a little and always question authority.
(“Properly Subversive” is commentary written by Sherman R. Frederick for the Novato Advance, San Rafael News-Pointer, Mill Valley Herald, Ross Valley Reporter, Twin City Times and the Sausalito Marin Scope. Frederick is a long-time journalist and co-founder of Battle Born Media, a news organization dedicated to the preservation of community newspapers. You can reach him by email at shermfrederick@gmail.com.)
Otto Skorzeny says
SONAR