February 2023. This is the moment they decided to ignore popular will and hold a coronation of a damaged and declining candidate. They depended on Trump being worse to manufacture consent for a historically unpopular candidate.
I keep thinking through all the arguments to keep Biden on the ticket and they all seem to concede that he shouldn't have run in the first place, which means I was right when I accused Dems and the White House of having zero strategy other than saying "it's still early" until it was too late.
Perhaps I'm focusing too much on the past. But if Joe Biden loses--and he is actively losing right now--there will be a concerted effort by everyone in the DNC and around Biden to blame the left or "wokeism" or trans people which will be (and always is) victim-blaming of the worst kind.
if you're wondering what "manufacturing consent" looks like, it's not when the sitting president wins the primaries and goes on to be the party's candidate, it's this
So basically a diffuse group of actors, some of whom are relatively powerless (the DNC, liberal activists), some of whom (“the media”) focused relentlessly on Biden’s age, “manufactured consent” how, exactly?
It’s one thing to say that, based on unsourced but plausible reports, his inner circle may have misrepresented Biden’s acuity. Which is bad. It’s another thing to start invoking an expansive conspiracy and use Chomsky’s term for, in essence, the creation of false consciousness.
I mean, really, the blame just kind of falls on Biden and his inner circle. He wanted to run, they didn't discourage him from running, and every other choice is just downstream of that.
I also think there's an issue where even people in the know probably felt mostly fine with Biden's vigor in 2022 and 2023 and that the debate represented an actual shift in his abilities. Maybe conflict in the Middle East has worn him out. Maybe the campaign is getting to him. But rapid declines 1/
"Manufacture consent" is the leftist word for "fake news." It's pretending that reality is a conspiracy because it doesn't fit your priors.
There was a primary contest. Biden had (laughable) challengers. Throwing that out is a much grievous violation of popular will than whatever you think happened.
It's not even about who is better or worse at this point, though we know exactly who is worse. The election basically became a single issue for a lot of people in one day or over a series of days.
I acknowledge Biden's drawbacks, but for the sitting incumbent President to run for a second term against a guy he already beat is just the most natural thing to happen. It is not a conspiracy. When was the last time a party did not run a sitting first term president for reelection?
