And so it has come to move.
United States President Joe Biden has dropped out of this yr’s presidential race, bowing to strain from fellow Democrats who feared that his prepare wreck of a efficiency within the June presidential debate with Republican candidate Donald Trump – amongst different episodes – would render the octogenarian lower than interesting to the US voters.
A lot for Biden’s decree that solely the “Lord Almighty” might persuade him to withdraw from the race. Or perhaps the Lord had a hand in it, in any case.
To make sure, Biden’s Democratic colleagues did have a degree – not that Trump or some other choice, Republican or Democrat, is preferable in a dedicated plutocracy the place poll selections typically vary from the transparently sociopathic to the much less transparently so.
However Biden’s current verbal gaffes – together with such assertions as that he’s the “first Black lady to serve with a Black president” within the US – did counsel that he was maybe not correctly positioned to proceed because the commander of the worldwide superpower, linguistically or in any other case.
Objectively talking, too, his operate throughout the previous 9 months as abettor-in-chief of Israel’s genocide within the Gaza Strip is decidedly lower than charming. However in his July 21 presidential race withdrawal submit on the social media platform X, Biden most popular to look on the brilliant facet, assuring his “Fellow Individuals” that the US had “made historic investments in rebuilding our Nation, in decreasing prescription drug prices for seniors, and in increasing reasonably priced well being care to a document variety of Individuals”.
This can be information to many Individuals nonetheless combating medical payments and overpriced prescribed drugs. One in all them would have been my very own father, a Texas-born US citizen who died of prostate most cancers within the nation’s capital Washington, DC, in August 2023 on the age of 72, after being lured into profitable chemotherapy remedies by his medical doctors which did nothing however speed up his demise.
My dad had moreover been prescribed the prostate most cancers drug Xtandi, a drugs that had been developed with US taxpayer cash however not for the aim of, um, “decreasing prescription drug prices for seniors” – as was evident from my dad and mom’ invoice of a minimum of $14,579.01 for a single month’s provide of Xtandi.
Anyway, that’s US capitalism for you – which regrettably shouldn’t be something that may be cured through a democratic electoral charade.
Biden’s doubtless substitute within the presidential race is his present vice chairman, Kamala Harris. Whereas pundits debate her deserves on mainstream media, the one major query is exactly what is going to turn into of the entire cash raised on behalf of 1 plutocrat reasonably than one other.
As an Al Jazeera article revealed within the aftermath of Biden’s withdrawal notes: “With no precedent for the present state of affairs, questions have swirled over the destiny of Biden’s warfare chest. Within the US, in any case, election spending can run into hundreds of thousands, if not billions, of {dollars}”.
With so many hundreds of thousands and billions swirling round, then, there’s clearly not a lot likelihood for literal democracy. This regardless of Biden’s sentimental declare in his X submit that “none of this might have been achieved with out you, the American folks. Collectively, we overcame a as soon as in a century pandemic and the worst financial disaster for the reason that Nice Melancholy. We’ve protected and preserved our Democracy”.
Whereas Biden is retreating from his re-election bid, he isn’t stepping down from the workplace of the presidency. He has made clear that he considers serving the remainder of his time period to be “in the perfect curiosity of my get together and the nation” and that he shall be specializing in his “duties as President”.
Amongst his high “duties” that presently require fulfilling is receiving on Tuesday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the White Home – since genocide is unquestionably within the “finest curiosity of my get together and the nation”.
As Individuals course of the entire electoral switcheroo, they’d do effectively to ponder the plutocratic panorama of their nation.
In his goodbye missive, Biden signed off with the phrases: “I imagine at this time what I at all times have: that there’s nothing America can’t do – after we do it collectively. We simply must keep in mind that we’re the USA of America.”
And that’s what everybody ought to bear in mind ultimately: that the US is the US irrespective of who’s on the helm and there’s “nothing America can’t do” when it comes to inflicting world agony.
Biden could also be out of the race however American “democracy” – that’s, plutocracy – carries on.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
