The Democrats, Stupidity, and the Election System Gave Us Trump

Howie circa 1973

The Democrats, Stupidity, and the Election System Gave Us Trump

There is one other variable, and it’s not exactly a variable that factored into the disastrous results of the 2024 presidential election that gave us our new Führer, Donald Trump. That variable, before going any farther, is the power elite, with a nod to the late sociologist C. Wright Mills in his book The Power Elite (1956) and in his Letter to the New Left (1960), that have a somewhat invisible hand at calling the important shots in how power is wielded in the US. They are those who own corporations, the banks, are in the military, and in the political system. Over the past 45 years or so, they’ve given us lots of endless wars that fuel the so-called military-industrial complex. That complex creates some jobs, but try buying a fighter jet or nuclear weapon at Walmart.

The Democrats have given us all manner of disastrous policies since the age of the Great Communicator, Reagan. There was neoliberalism, oh how I hate the word liberal in that concept, as the neoliberals are arch conservatives. Clinton gave us war in the former Yugoslavia, the end of a social safety net for those in need, including innocent kids, the opening of the banking system for all manner of mayhem through the end of Glass-Steagall, and lots of space for those deemed unworthy by the system and stuck in prison. I realize there are some criminals who need to be separated from society, but Clinton opened the floodgates, and Joe Biden was a major supporter of that. The first lady, Hillary Clinton, tried unsuccessfully to make healthcare more equitable, one of her few good policy positions, and we eventually got Obama Care that was a boon to the health insurance industry. Back to Clinton, who shipped millions of jobs overseas with his trade agreements. Take a walk, I do, through many hollowed-out cities and towns across the US, and the results are obvious.

Then there was Obama, who talked the talk about hope and change and gave us shit in return. Obama let the bottom fall out of the banking system with his bailout during the subprime mortgage crisis. He saved the banks and their investors, screwed the average Jane and Joe with lost dollars, millions, or was it billions, lost in homes and home equity. Stupid me: I voted for him twice!

Of course, there were the disastrous Republicans, who kept the party for the wealthy going on and on and on through tax cuts. Endless wars and environmental ruin are products of the political duopoly, so the damage done to the people of the US and elsewhere is not on the shoulders of any political party or politician, but rather, on the political system itself and the demands of a predatory economic system that has created the race to the bottom.

Biden is in a class by himself. He really is a Republican with his support for endless wars, tax cuts for the wealthy, and a law and order agenda. He also screwed those who borrow money on credit cards. But these policies do not get to the heart of the matter.

Jake Tapper and Alec Thompson, of CNN notoriety, a losing media platform that supported Joe Biden in the face of reality, is one of the outlets that can claim some ownership for the hideous debacle in sanity we face today. Their book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again (2025) is not a mea culpa, but rather, the laying out of the disaster of Biden’s cognitive and physical decline that made his failed candidacy, and the resulting failed Harris candidacy, so obvious for so long. Biden’s roaming ways, his gait, his cognitive challenges were in some respects obvious in his June 2024 debate with our current leader. In yet another appearance, when Barack Obama led Biden off the stage as Biden shuffled seemingly mindlessly, connected more dots of this debacle.

Biden did have some good policies after the Covid-19 pandemic hit, but support for people during that catastrophe was not continued and did not even make it with lip service in the Harris campaign. Did Harris actually run a campaign? I think not. The best Harris could conjure up was a mortgage assistance program that was less than a drop in the bucket. In an interview, she said she was not Joe Biden. Oh, the humor in that remark. I think most could figure out the latter without the former vice president’s help! To Biden’s credit, he did help people with student loans, a program that Trump has destroyed. When you think of Trump, think in terms of Sherman’s march to the sea.

We’re left with wars in Ukraine and Gaza, now expanding to the West Bank, and who knows where else. We’ve got an environment burning up by the day. We have a president dining with his fellow authoritarians in the Middle East, who would take food out of the mouths of their fathers, mothers, and children for the hell of it! And in case of any complaints, it’s off with their heads! Or, maybe in a more humane temper, a few lashes of the whip or so.