And so it has come to move.
United States President Joe Biden has dropped out of this year’s presidential race, bowing to stress from fellow Democrats who feared that his train 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 citizens.
A lot for Biden’s decree that solely the “Lord Almighty” might persuade him to withdraw from the race. Or possibly the Lord had a hand in it, in any case.
To make sure, Biden’s Democratic colleagues did have some extent – not that Trump or some other choice, Republican or Democrat, is preferable in a committed plutocracy the place poll decisions typically vary from the transparently sociopathic to the much less transparently so.
However Biden’s latest verbal gaffes – together with such assertions as that he’s the “first Black lady to serve with a Black president” within the US – did recommend 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 perform through 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 post on the social media platform X, Biden most well-liked to look on the intense facet, assuring his “Fellow People” that the US had “made historic investments in rebuilding our Nation, in reducing prescription drug prices for seniors, and in increasing reasonably priced well being care to a report variety of People”.
This can be information to many People nonetheless combating medical payments and overpriced pharmaceuticals. Certainly one of them would have been my 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 therapies by his docs which did nothing however speed up his demise.
My dad had moreover been prescribed the prostate cancer drug Xtandi, a medicine that had been developed with US taxpayer cash however not for the aim of, um, “reducing 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 just isn’t something that may be cured through a democratic electoral charade.
Biden’s likely replacement within the presidential race is his present vice chairman, Kamala Harris. Whereas pundits debate her deserves on mainstream media, the one most important query is exactly what is going to change into of all the cash raised on behalf of 1 plutocrat relatively 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 conflict chest. Within the US, in any case, election spending can run into tens of millions, if not billions, of {dollars}”.
With so many tens of millions and billions swirling round, then, there may be clearly not a lot probability for literal democracy. This regardless of Biden’s sentimental declare in his X publish that “none of this might have been carried out with out you, the American individuals. Collectively, we overcame a as soon as in a century pandemic and the worst financial disaster for the reason that Nice Despair. We’ve protected and preserved our Democracy”.
Whereas Biden is retreating from his re-election bid, he’s not 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 one of the best curiosity of my occasion and the nation” and that he can be specializing in his “duties as President”.
Amongst his prime “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 occasion and the nation”.
As People course of the entire electoral switcheroo, they’d do properly to ponder the plutocratic panorama of their nation.
In his goodbye missive, Biden signed off with the phrases: “I consider immediately what I at all times have: that there’s nothing America can’t do – once we do it collectively. We simply should do not forget that we’re the USA of America.”
And that’s what everybody ought to bear in mind in the long run: that the US is the US irrespective of who’s on the helm and there may be “nothing America can’t do” when it comes to inflicting international 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 creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.