Acknowledge and Move On?
That's charitable, Mr. Phillips.
Redemption?
The Democratic Party can still redeem itself. But the first step is for everyone that was aware of Biden’s condition to come clean. No more evasions. No more insistence that he was sharp when you met him. The whole truth will come out, and they would be wise to get ahead of it. If a relatively little-known congressman like me knew that Biden was incapable of leading the country in a second term, what does that say about the complicity of the real party bosses whose names we all know?
— Dean Phillips, “I Warned My Party About Biden’s Health. Will They Listen Now?”
You can be forgiven for not knowing who Dean Phillips is.
President Joe Biden’s close advisors and the leadership of the Democratic Party went to great lengths to ostracize and silence him.
The link in his name in the quote above will give you more than enough background.
Regarding the topic at hand, his article (link above) for The Free Press more than covers his futile attempts to prevent the astonishing shit show performance of the Democratic Party in the 2024 election.
From the article…
For Democrats, this is an existential moment. It’s time to acknowledge their misdeeds and move on.
(Emphasis mine.)
Not… so… fast… Mr. Phillips.
“The Seriousness of the Problem We’ve Got”
This is, indeed, an existential moment for the Democratic Party.
Severe distress and major problems often cause existential moments.
“Existential moments” are emergencies… higher order crises.
One does not fix these types of exigencies through mere acknowledgement of “misdeeds.”
I think that there's no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we've got. We have a cancer within—close to the presidency, that's growing. It's growing daily. It's compounding. It grows geometrically now, because it compounds itself.
— Transcript, John Dean to President Richard Nixon, 21 March 1973
With Democrats, the cancer isn’t just Biden. Like Nixon, there was and remains a whole host of unsavory characters. They encircled and cheered on an enfeebled, aging man who shouldn’t have been running the country. At some point, someone who truly cared for President Biden should have taken away the keys to the Oval Office. And the keys to his Corvette.
I am unconvinced those who encouraged Biden to run again or those who lacked the courage to hold him to his 2020 "bridge candidate" commitment will step forward and accept responsibility.
That unwillingness means the Democratic Party can kiss its near future electoral prospects goodbye.
Speaking of Draining A Swamp…
Again… quoting Phillips…
American voters of all political perspectives are tired of being ignored, talked down to, lied to, canceled, and expected to choose between competing versions of increasingly similar political dysfunction.
The key phrase is “all political perspectives.”
I’m a common sense centrist in favor of common sense government. We’ve got problems… nationally and internationally... large and small.
The United States government cannot fix every problem.
That is an unrealistic expectation.
But, plenty of problems are solvable. It will require focus, determination, courage and consensus. I have little faith the current Trump/GOP administration can or will address any of those problems.
In democracies, trustworthy opposition parties are essential. In its current state, I have even less faith in the effectiveness of the now leaderless and rudderless Democratic Party.
The process of rebuilding trust will require two essential actions.
From Here… Where?
It should start with the two-stage purgation of the Democratic Party.
I use that specific term for a reason.
According to the 1991 Second Edition of the Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary, “purgation” is defined as “The clearing away of impurities; the cleansing of anything impure or extraneous matter…”
A secondary definition is “The discharge of waste matter from the body; excretion or evacuation; now only the evacuation of the bowels, esp. by means of a cathartic…”
The definition of cathartic as a noun, meaning a medicine which induces purgation, mentions a third stage of the process through the use of a “drastic.” The definition of “drastic” as an adjective in the field of medicine means “acting with force or violence; especially acting strongly upon the intestines.”
An important clarification…
I am emphatically NOT using the term “purgation” or “purge” in the politicidal sense of Stalin or other dictators. I have to make this clarification because mobs… in person and online… have no sense of history and an utter lack of second and third-order thinking.
Returning to the two definitions, I AM emphatically asserting the Democratic Party is rife with impure bodies… and impure minds. Those impure bodies and minds are metaphorically full of feces.
There are two distinct groups, germane to this issue, in need of evacuation.
The first comprises anyone who knowingly and willingly covered up the mental decline of President Biden. This definitely includes his closest group of advisors known as “The Politburo.” For names of the guilty and details of their crimes, read Jake Tapper’s recently published book Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.
There are also those positioned on the interior perimeter of this group who knew and also looked away. No one with any degree of critical thinking skills can believe for even a millisecond that cabinet secretaries, White House staff and other members of the government did not know about the rapidly declining mental faculties and physical condition of the President.
The second group consists of the members of the Democratic gerontocracy. These include Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and a host of others who hold on to power for the sake of power and not for the good of the American people.
I’m confident they vehemently disagree… if they can form and express a coherent thought.
They are out of touch. Their time has passed. They now contribute little to nothing. They are a gaping black hole devouring precious time, considerable effort, and valuable resources. I thank them for their past service. I loathe them for their present insistence on remaining politically active.
Anyone belonging to either… or both… of those groups should be removed from the party.
Anyone belonging to either… or both… of those groups should be permanently banned from the party and never again allowed to take part in a campaign at any level or be employed by a future administration.
Increasingly Similar Political Dysfunction
Phillips used the phrase “competing versions of increasingly similar political dysfunction” in his article. Dean might be on to something.
I am exhausted from being forced to choose between the clowns to the left and the jokers to the right. (This isn’t the first time I’ve ripped off Gerry Rafferty.)
I am not alone in my exhaustion.
The MAGAs now run the Republican Party. They are as dysfunctional… if not more… than the alleged elites who run the Democratic Party. We may have become desensitized to the madness, but we still feel and see the manifestations of monomaniacal derangement.
Nothing lasts forever. That includes movements… political, religious and otherwise.
Here are the questions in dire need of answers:
Which party will first undergo the pain of defenestration?
Who will begin and who will complete the dismantling?
What, if anything, will be the replacement?
Until those queries are answered and until the process is completed, the American electorate can look forward not to a bright future, but to a continual turning and turning into a widening spin.
Today, the center is stretched. Today, the center still holds.
Tomorrow… that remains to be seen.
If there is any hope, it is that Americans have somehow… with uncanny certainty… bounced back from division.
Our madnesses never truly vanish… but they have subsided.
This is when we seem to be at our best… despite our numerous flaws.
Thank you for reading.