So Joe Biden is 81 now! Never saw that one coming.

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Warren Buffet, 93

At 93, Warren Buffet is 12 years older than Joe Biden, but you don't see a lot of people pleading with him to step down as the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. That's because he's still making money for himself and the capitalists associated with him, and they value his 57+ years of experience as its CEO. Every year thousands flock to his annual meeting, and hundreds of thousands watch it online, because they value his capitalist wisdom, born of the better part of a century spent becoming a very successful businessman. They don't mind that his speech maybe rough and slow. They are there for the content.

Buffet isn't the only Fortune 500 CEO older than Biden, like Robert Greenberg, 83, who runs Skechers, and Roger Penske, 87 of Penske Automotive. Corporate shareholders tend to select their CEOs based on earnings, not age. Given how much the US economy has turned around since Covid-19 was sent to the background, the stock market has never been higher, Biden should be a shoe in with the donor class. But we are told that some big donors are now abandoning Biden, while at the same time others are embracing Trump for the first time. Are we witnessing a shift in the capitalist class, or a part of it, away from traditional bourgeois democracy, and in favor of authoritarianism, less regulation, and lower taxes for the rich? We all know the lousy debate performance was the trigger, but are there unspoken motives behind the movement to oust Biden suddenly?

How did we get here? When did the presidency become performance art?

Under the careful tutelage of the mainstream media (MSM), much of the public, including the Left, has lost sight of what the real requirements of a good POTUS, i.e. CEO of the United States are, or in anycase, should be. Ever since the 1962 Kennedy-Nixon debates, having the best screen performance has had an outsized influence on our choices. And since then, the right wing has refined the art of selling contentless candidates with on-camera performances. Ronald Reagan would never have been able to sell himself into the presidency without his decades of movie and TV exposure, and performance practice. And now we have Donald Trump, a grifter who honed his craft before the NBC TV audiences before selling it to the most backwards Americans to become the first US president to be branded as a felon or a rapist.

My take on The Economist July cover

Obviously, we live in an age where a bad TV performance is enough to get some key leaders and donors in one's own party to call for your head. We also live in an age where one party to a debate can spew nonstop lies and hate:

We have a border that’s the most dangerous place anywhere in the world – considered the most dangerous place anywhere in the world.

Oh, really? More dangerous than Gaza, Sudan, or Ukraine? CNN did him a real service by refusing to fact check him. If the moderators feared they would have to interrupt too often, they could have just noted when he said something that was true. That would have eased their burden considerably.

Trump mixed his vitriol with the occasional nonsense such as "So, I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air, and we had it. We had H2O. We had the best numbers ever," and the other guy is considered to have the bad performance because his voice is soft and slow, and makes the occasional gaffe. Well, guess what? Joe Biden has been making these verbal gaffes his whole career, that's why they call him the Gaffe Factory. In this 5-year old Guardian article he calls himself the "gaffe machine." Here's a YouTube video of his 10 biggest gaffes of 2020, to refresh your memory—and remember, he won that campaign.

Joe Biden has also had a lifelong struggle with stuttering. This is also something mocked by many. for example Oakland Socialist, which wrote recently, commenting on his ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos, who the post mistakenly, and embarrassingly, referred to as "Democrat Stephen Stephanopoulos":

He once again had trouble putting sentences together. “After that debate, I did 10 major events in a row, including until 2 in the morning after the debate," he said. “I did events in North Carolina. I did events in — in — in Georgia, did events like this today, large crowds, overwhelming response, no — no — no slipping. And so, I just had a bad night. I don’t know why.”

Obviously, a problem with stuttering is a serious defect for any politician in our media performance driven world. Could it also be an asset, in curious way, in a president? I have found, in my 75 years, that a white person saddled with a disability may often, through that disability, gain valuable insight and solidarity with other people seen as less than the social norm. They may come to know what white men, like Trump, may otherwise never know. They come know what it's like to be discriminated against, and that's an important life lesson for anyone that aspires to be president of these United States. Sometimes you have to take the bad with the good, and having to listen to a stutterer seems a small price to pay if it contributes to a president's humanity. Some of our most consequential presidents have had issues;  Abraham Lincoln suffered from depression, Dwight Eisenhower had dyslexia and John F. Kennedy wore a back brace.

Addressing that old age question: What are the chances either one will live another 4 years?

After consulting life expectancy tables and actuarial data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), ChatGPT told me:

An 81-year-old white male in good health has approximately a 79% chance of living another 4 years, based on current life expectancy data and survival rates.

After I rephased my question slightly, ChatGPT did the math, showed me its work, gave me this conclusion:

An overweight 78-year-old white male has approximately an 83.1% chance of living another 4 years, based on current life expectancy data and adjusted survival rates for overweight status.

That's a 4.1% difference in the probability that either of these presidential candidates will be able to complete his term in office. That's already within the margin of error in some polls. When I ask ChatGPT to factor in Donald Trump's known health issues, I get back this conclusion:

Given his age and health issues, Donald Trump has approximately a 78.3% chance of living another 4 years, based on adjusted survival probabilities. This estimate reflects the impact of his cardiovascular health, obesity, and other factors while considering the general life expectancy for his age group.

When I ask it the same questions about Joe Biden, it comes back with this conclusion:

Given his age and health issues, Joe Biden has approximately a 75.5% chance of living another 4 years, based on adjusted survival probabilities. This estimate reflects the impact of his managed cardiovascular and chronic health conditions while considering the general life expectancy for his age group.

So, when perceptions aren't influenced by hair dye, fake tans, and the manic energy that hate can generate, and the question is looked at cooly and objectively by an AI bot consulting real data, we find that Donald Trump, who isn't as healthy as Joe Biden, has only a 2.8% greater chance of completing his term, even if he's willing to leave after four years. When the fact that a POTUS gets much better healthcare than even the average white man (AWM) is factored in, I assume the likelihood that either of these candidates will complete his term in office goes up, but the differences will remain.

2.8% is well within the margin of error in anybody's poll. I think that pretty much takes the question of age off the table as an issue in any rational employee selection. Especially when the job is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," and the slightly younger applicant is vowing to tear up the Constitution! More on that in:

A few thoughts on the question of Biden's age

Stephen Hawking c. 1980

So, Joe Biden is 81. He has had a long history of gaffes, and a long struggle against stuttering, and those problems aren't getting better with age. He's also prone to tripping when very low barriers are placed in his path—thank you, Secret Service. None of this supports claims that he's suddenly "losing it" or going senile. None of that  justifies calls for him to step down, or for his cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment. At the almost hour long press conference after the NATO gathering he gave a master class in foreign policy that the other guy couldn't do in his dreams. I don't agree with that foreign policy—I think he's held Ukraine back with the weapons he's given them, and how he's allowed it to use them, and I think he's earned the appellation "Genocide Joe" for his support for Israel's massacres of Palestinians—but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about his command of the facts, broad overview of the overall situation, and ability to provide leadership. That's the kind of thing you need for a good CEO; media performance ability should be well down the list. Hell, If Stephen Hawking were an American, I'd voted to elect him president, if I agreed with his politics and his genius was in politics, rather than physics. Nevermind that he needs a wheelchair and an artificial voice.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was, arguably, the most consequential US president of the twentieth century—he served 12 years, led the US out of the Great Depression, and then led the world in the defeating fascism in WWII, and he did it all from a wheelchair. That's why I mock the recent Economist cover by replacing their walker accompany the statement "No way to run a country," with a wheelchair.

So, what's going on here? 

Why did all of MSM focus on Biden's poor debate performance to the exclusion of Donald Trump's lies and hate? I've grown even more suspicious of them after seeing them all move in lockstep to defend Israel, and cover up a genocide. Do they have other motives for wanting to ease Biden out of the White House that aren't age and gaffe related? Why suddenly the panic among some big Democratic politicians and donors, i.e. representatives of the capitalist class? Why are they all arguing that in order to save democracy they need to so by the undemocratic method of forcing out the candidate that got 87% of the popular votes in the Democratic primaries? It can't be that they are surprised that Biden is 81 suddenly. If age is a problem, it was entirely predictable, and those that thought it a problem had plenty of time to field candidates to challenge Biden in the primaries, and give Democratic voters a democratic choice of a younger candidate. But to pull this stuff now only helps Trump, and lessens the chance that any Democratic candidate can defeat him.

We should question whether there are ulterior motives for pushing Biden out among some Democratic members of the capitalist class. It seems like a kind of herd mentality took over where MSM suddenly focused on Biden's age and mental fitness to hold office, to the exclusion of almost everything else, including the on going genocide in Gaza. FoxNews, and that whole crowd, has been pushing this stuff for years. If you'll remember, it was a big part of their playbook against Biden in 2020. Now all of MSM is piling on, and mostly ignoring the worst of Trump. It's almost like they feel that Biden's pro-labor policies in his 1st term, and the promise to do more in a 2nd term, are a little too much for them. They have warmed to Trump, and his pro-business policies in Project 2025, and are using the manufactured "Biden age crisis" to put their fat thumbs on the scale for Trump.

What about Kamala Harris?

For those looking to bump Biden, there's also the sticky question of who will replace him. It's not like the party is united around an alternative. Kamala Harris is the obvious choice in many eyes, but other politicians and donors are calling for an open convention—meaning they want to put somebody else in. That's problematic. If they push out Harris, as well as Biden, they will alienate many of African American women and other core constituencies of the Democratic victory in 2020. And if not Harris, who? CA governor Gavin Newsom? He came in 2nd with 7% behind Harris's 29% in a recent poll comparing 30 Biden alternatives, and he also says he doesn't want the job. So, who else? Plus, I'm not so sure that an America where Trump may even be ahead is ready to elect its first woman president, and second black president this year. So, while Harris is obviously much younger than Biden, she comes with her own demographic issues.

So, it's my advice to all those that see the imperative of defeating Trump and his Project 2025 that they put aside all this defeatist talk about replacing Biden at this late date, focus their fire on the forebearer of fascism, and get behind the last man standing after the Democratic primaries. Those who favor replacing Biden with Harris should see that they campaign as a team, and that she is put out front where the nation can get to know her as an able leader more than qualified to fill the shoes of the presidency should Biden not hit the tape on this track. That would seem like a win-win for the Democrats because no matter how the second Biden term ends, Kamala Harris will be well positioned to succeed him with two full terms.

my 2¢
Clay Claiborne

14 July 2024

Some preliminary thoughts on Donald Trump assassination attempt 

I was working on this post yesterday and had the Butler, PA Trump rally on in background, so I heard it in real time, and started watching immediately. Based on what little I've heard so far, I wonder if the point of the operation by the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was to commit suicide by Secret Service. From his perch on the roof of a building just outside of the rally perimeter he was in a good position to target the former president, but he had to know that as soon as he fired, hit of miss, he would be killed by devastating return fire from the SS counter-snipers positioned on other roofs with better equipment.

If he felt so strongly that Trump had to be assassinated that he was willing to give his own life to do so, that's a level of fanaticism that has yet to be revealed. If he was just looking to go out in a blaze of glory, that might explain why he used an AR-15 type weapon, when a hunting rifle would have been better for the long range work, and why he didn't use a scope, for the most important shot of his life. Is it possible that he was more interest in killing himself than killing Trump? Either way, it's important to understand his motivation. Violence in this country has many.