Stayers and Steppers

I have issues with all the discussion over Biden. People seem to be talking at crossed purposes. I think some are not listening to what others are saying. That's super disrespectful, but also hugely unproductive because there's no point arguing against something no one is saying.

For example, some are seeing this as pro-Biden vs anti-Biden. That's a huge misunderstanding. The ones asking Biden to step aside are almost exclusively people who like and respect Biden. They're NOT “against” him. They're interested in seeing Dems win, and they don't think Biden can.

I'm going to refer instead to Stayers and Steppers. Stayers are those who think Biden should stay, and Steppers are those who think Biden should step aside. I conjured these words so they don't have pre-attached senses of Good vs Bad. They're just people divided by their preferred tactic for winning the election.

It comes up in Biden v. Trump discussions that folks say to vote Biden because he's not an autocrat. I also hear some Stayers saying that Steppers should stop talking about forcing a candidate on voters that they didn't vote for, that that's autocratic. It's not autocratic. The process is messy, but it's not autocratic.

Many of us have used terms like fascist and autocrat loosely for our whole lives because we never needed the terms to refer to our reality. We now risk seeing these played out in horrifying reality, so let's be more careful with words.

I do think who takes over and why is important, though. Kamala's whole job is to be the backup for Biden. So she's the obvious choice. I agree opening the convention to a fight among other candidates will create both chaos and resentment. Skipping a well-qualified woman of color will be conspicuous. Let's not do that. But, either way, it's not autocratic.

There are people who don't like Biden in this, and might even be described as anti-Biden, but that group is not the Steppers. I'll call the third group the Disillusioned.

Some Disillusioned are just shrugging quietly, some are actively bitter. This group either won't vote or will vote third party. The Disillusioned are not Steppers. They don't care any more what Biden does, because they've washed their hands of it.

The fact that there exists a Disillusioned group is the primary reason, I think, that Biden's numbers are suffering. He was suffering even before the debate. But the debate gave us a reason to talk about Biden's poll numbers. The Steppers are worried about how many Disillusioned there are. In many cases, they've talked to the Disillusioned to try to get them to come back, to explain how important it is to back the Dems. That discussion usually goes nowhere and is painful. For the Stayers not to acknowledge that the Steppers have made such good faith arguments to the Disillusioned that the Stayers have pointlessly made to the Steppers (because the Steppers are not the ones walking away, they are just remarking on the fact of others doing it) is super-annoying and incredibly disrespectful and unproductive.

People have become disillusioned for may reasons, but Gaza is a big one. No amount of saying the war should finally end is going to get them back. They're mad about the genocide, and they're hearing “it's time to end this” as “our genocide has killed as many as is productive.” That doesn't appease them. They need an admission that a very bad thing is already done and still ongoing and we've supported that. They think someone must take blame. It's hard to see the Disillusioned-by-Gaza coming back at all, but if they do they'll want Biden, who made us complicit, gone. For that reason alone, Biden cannot heal this by staying.

Some Disillusioned are also worried about age. Some may have seen someone among family or friends go downhill. They know how quickly it can happen. They know it doesn't happen all at once, but at first it's "now and then". No amount of showing a good day will convince them there aren't bad days. That's going to still haunt them. To them, Biden's reassurances sound like a promise of a brave face that may hide a hidden truth.

Plus, defense of Biden's gaffes gives cover to Trump's.

Some Disillusioned just don't want a choice of two old white guys. That's only fixed by Biden stepping aside.

Biden and the Stayers keep showing us people who like him, but no Stepper doubts there are such people so that helps not at all.

The Stayers point to good days, but no amount of good days rebut the possibility of bad days.

The Stayers point to past accomplishments, but no past accomplishment is proof of a future one.

A lot of pointless, wasted talk at crossed purposes.

The Steppers aren't the ones walking away. They're just observing that OTHERS are.

Tonight's [July 11, 2024] press conference did not speak to those others.

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Author's Notes:

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This essay by me was originally published on Mastodon on July 12, 2024. Click through to see some discussion that followed.

Only very light editing was done to create this almost-mirror copy, to make a references to “tonight” clearer and to make better use of bold and italic, which are not available on Mastodon.

Note from the original essay:

I wanted to refer to logical proof rules for universal and existential quantifications, but I went for less nerdy English instead, hoping to be more accessible to all.

Our Primary National Values

Biden and Sanders have been debating matters like Social Security. Can we afford it? Biden acts indignant that Bernie would suggest he's a threat to Social Security, yet Biden's record is plain, as well-summarized by Ryan Grim at The Intercept in this tweet:

Biden blatantly lied about Social Security at Iowa's Black & Brown Forum this week:

Q: "Do you think it's fair though for voters to question your commitment to Social Security when in the past you've proposed a freeze to it?"

Biden: "No, I didn't propose a freeze."

"You did." pic.twitter.com/DBzauK2n53

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) January 24, 2020

The Truthiness About Biden

Nor does Biden explain how and why his opinion has changed. In a worrisome pattern he seems to share with Trump, he simply denies he ever had an opinion that is clearly documented.

Stephen Colbert called this “truthiness”—an assertion of “facts” that come not from books or the head, but from the gut.

“Alternative facts,” Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, calls such affronts to reality.

Biden would have us see Bernie's views as extreme, radical, dangerous to consider. He offers himself as the safe choice. The message from the centrists is that Bernie's notions will bankrupt us. The truth is, many of us are going bankrupt just fine on our own. We need the government to pull the reins on corporate greed, but Biden can't even admit this is where the problem lies.

It's clear that the recent tax cuts for billionaires are part of an organized “starve the beast” strategy by the GOP. Such a strategy works in two steps: first take all the money out of the system into rich people's pockets, then declare that the government is short of money and that social programs must be cut. They've done step one. Now we're back in the same situation as happened the last time Biden championed cuts.

Has something changed? Because it looks to me like Biden has positioned himself as the realist, the compromiser, the one willing to pull a Susan Collins, hemming and hawing for the cameras so it looks like an oh-so-difficult choice, but ultimately “surprising” us by deciding that we need to be fiscally responsible and endure our middle-class medicine rather than ask too much of billionaires.

Because that's the picture he seems to be painting when he accuses Bernie, directly or through his advocates, of being too extreme, too radical, too untrustworthy, too … socialist.

Biden wants us to trust him, but trust him how? Why? The only one he seems to point fingers at is Bernie. And why? Because Bernie is willing to point fingers at who he thinks is the actual source of the problem.

Bernie is willing to say what is obviously true, that we don't need billionaires.

Assigning Value

Biden wants Bernie to be seen as obviously extreme. But is he?

We just had a candidate in the race that had half a billion dollars of literal pocket change. He will probably be as rich or richer at the end of the year as he was at the beginning of the race.

Moreover, Elizabeth Warren in a few simple sentences so destroyed this man's character that all that wealth could not overcome it, ending his run—clear proof that wealth does not measure virtue. Even given the strong tendency people seem to have to follow successful others, which is what seems to have gotten Trump elected, there are limits. As Sarah Kendzior so aptly says:

“When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatise those who let people die, not those who struggle to live.”    —Sarah Kendzior, in a 2013 essay Poverty is not a character flaw

All to say I don't think there is clearer proof that somewhere in our nation there is enough wealth to enable people to age with dignity: enabling them to be useful advisors and contributors to our society for more years, unlocking a lot of wealth and happiness. They can advise friends, family, and the community in personal and business matters. They can take care of grandkids. They can just not be a burden to younger people who are struggling themselves and might have to take time off for work.

Or we can say that it's more important, as a nation, to have a few Michael Bloombergs. My saying “a few” isn't casual. We cannot all be Michael Bloombergs. Of necessity, mega-wealth accumulates only in the hands of a few. The math only works that way. We're all taught we might one day be rich without bounds, but we should be taught that at some point increased wealth comes at the expense of others, and generally in a way that is disproportionate with actual value contributed to society. Whatever Bloomberg's positive contribution, he has not contributed that much more than other people.

Even if you think all his actions good, and that's up for debate, a lot of those actions are things any person with that money would have done, and are rightly attributed to the money, not the people. And many have done great goods for no reward. So while money is a crude metric of some amount of good people have done, we need to learn that it is not a precise measure and that we are not valueless nor these people with tons of money gods.

And that is what's being debated. Not just "social security" as words, but the values behind it. Our country generates wealth. We have allowed that wealth to flow to a few people, disproportionately. Our government is not a business. It is a group of our us that get together charged with administering a fair set of rules that allow everyone to succeed. The set of rules we have are out of balance, like a clothes dryer with the balance off. The term "wealth redistribution" is tossed around as if it's a bad thing, but it's like with the dryer, it will eventually stop if something is not done to get things back into harmony.

Social security is fair and humane, but it is also an assertion that in our quest to incentivize things as a rush for money, we have limits on how much one person may take from another. There is incentive enough in seeking millions, even many millions. There is little one can do with billions but buy governments or otherwise subvert the democratic will of the public.

That's what we're debating. Tax the rich to bring things back into harmony, or yield public control of resources on a bogus theory that over time we've realized we the public are nothing and only Bloomberg and his ilk have any entitlement to wealth for their amazing contributions.

Push is coming to shove. Billionaires are an active threat to the middle class. The GOP is actively teeing up exactly that conflict, daring Democrats to take that on. Bernie is up to it. That Biden paints Bernie as extreme suggests he's not.

Biden just isn't up to challenging billionaires' entitlement to the disproportionate wealth they have amassed. But without doing so, we'll run short of funds. At that point, we should fully well expect him to make the same choices he denies having made in the past.

So you perhaps understand why I've said I do not celebrate this “anyone but Trump” thing as a victory. I wanted Warren, but at this point, go Bernie!

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Author's Notes:

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The essay which became this post started as a post by me earlier today at reddit.

I also very much recommend Sarah Kendzior's book The View from Flyover Country.

Impeachment Poetry

A tweet written in limerick led me to respond in kind:

After laws broken daily for years,
“Shocked, Shocked” are a Speaker and peers.
  Now they’ll risk reelection,
  raising one thin objection.
“Too little, too late” are my fears.

Limerick is not my preferred format. I usually prefer haiku, or (as here) senryu. There's something calmer and more elegant about it. So I also tweeted a senryu, perhaps as apology for the limerick above:

Crimes mount by the day.
  Biden chides, “soon, it's too much.”
What was it before?

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