And so it has occurred.
US President Joe Biden has dropped out of this yr’s presidential race, bowing to stress from fellow Democrats who feared his disastrous efficiency within the June presidential debate with Republican nominee Donald Trump – amongst different episodes – would make the octogenarian much less interesting to the American citizens.
That was the extent of Biden’s decree, that solely the “Lord Almighty” may persuade him to withdraw from the race. Or maybe the Lord had one thing to do with it, in any case.
To make sure, Biden’s fellow Democrats had been proper: It’s not that Trump or some other choice, Republican or Democrat, is preferable in a compromised plutocracy the place electoral selections typically vary from the transparently sociopathic to the much less clear.
However Biden’s current verbal gaffes — together with claims that she is the “first Black girl to serve below a Black president” in the USA — did recommend that he might not be well-positioned to proceed as commander of the worldwide superpower, linguistically or in any other case.
From an goal standpoint, his position over the previous 9 months as an confederate to the Israeli genocide within the Gaza Strip is decidedly lower than charming. However in his July 21 publish on social media platform X, by which he was withdrawing from the presidential marketing campaign, Biden most popular to look on the intense aspect, assuring his “fellow People” that the USA had “made historic investments in rebuilding our nation, reducing prescription drug prices for seniors, and increasing inexpensive well being care to report numbers of People.”
This can be information to many People nonetheless battling medical payments and overpriced prescribed drugs. Considered one of them would have been my very own father, a Texas-born U.S. citizen who died of prostate most cancers within the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., in August 2023 on the age of 72, after his docs satisfied him to bear profitable chemotherapy remedies that solely hastened his demise.
My father had additionally been prescribed Xtandi, a prostate most cancers drug that had been developed with American taxpayer cash, however not for the aim of, say, “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 is American capitalism, which sadly is nothing that may be cured by a democratic electoral farce.
Biden’s probably alternative within the presidential race is his present vice chairman, Kamala Harris. Whereas pundits debate her deserves in mainstream media, the primary query is strictly what is going to occur to all the cash raised on behalf of 1 plutocrat as an alternative of one other.
As an Al Jazeera article printed after Biden’s withdrawal notes: “Unprecedented within the present state of affairs, questions have been raised in regards to the destiny of Biden’s battle chest. In spite of everything, within the US, election spending can run into hundreds of thousands, if not billions, of {dollars}.”
With so many hundreds of thousands and billions floating round, there’s clearly not a lot probability of literal democracy. This regardless of Biden’s sentimental declare in his X publish that “none of this might have been achieved with out you, the American individuals. Collectively, we overcame a once-in-a-century pandemic and the worst financial disaster because the Nice Melancholy. We’ve protected and preserved our democracy.”
Though Biden is withdrawing from his re-election marketing campaign, he isn’t resigning from his position as president. He has made clear that he believes serving out the rest of his time period is “in one of the best curiosity of my occasion and the nation” and that he’ll concentrate on his “duties as president.”
Amongst his predominant “duties” that he’s at present required to meet is to obtain Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the White Home on Tuesday, since genocide is definitely within the “finest pursuits of my occasion and the nation.”
As People course of this complete electoral course of, they might do nicely to ponder the plutocratic panorama of their nation.
In his farewell deal with, Biden signed off with these phrases: “In the present day I consider what I’ve at all times believed: that there’s nothing America can not 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 America is America regardless of who’s in cost and that there’s “nothing America can’t do” when it comes to inflicting international agony.
Biden could also be out of the race, however American “democracy” – i.e. plutocracy – soldier on.
The views expressed on this article are these of the creator and don’t essentially mirror the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.