And that actually happened.
US President Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race this year, bowing to pressure from fellow Democrats who feared he would be unattractive to American voters after his outrageous performance against Republican nominee Donald Trump in the June debate.
Biden’s decision was that only “the Lord Almighty” could persuade him to drop out of the race. Or perhaps the Lord did intervene after all.
Of course, Biden’s Democratic colleagues have pointed out that neither Trump nor any other option, Republican or Democratic, is generally preferable in a dedicated plutocrat politics where voter choice is broadly transparently anti-social or not.
But Biden’s recent verbal gaffes — including his claim that he is “the first black woman to serve with a black president” in the United States — have suggested he is ill-equipped, verbally and otherwise, to continue serving as commander in chief of the world’s superpower.
Objectively speaking, his role in presiding over Israel’s massacre of Gaza over the past nine months is certainly not glamorous. But in a July 21 post on social media platform X announcing his withdrawal from the race, Biden tried to look at the positive side, assuring “the American people” that the U.S. had made “historic investments in rebuilding our country, lowering prescription drug costs for seniors, and expanding affordable health care to a record number of Americans.”
This may be news to many Americans who are still struggling with medical bills and expensive prescription drugs. One of them would have been my father, a U.S. citizen born in Texas. He died of prostate cancer in Washington, D.C., in August 2023 at the age of 72. He was tempted by his doctor to take lucrative chemotherapy, but his death was hastened.
My father was also prescribed Xtandi, a prostate cancer drug. This drug was developed with American taxpayer money, but it was not developed with the purpose of “lowering prescription drug costs for seniors.” You can see this by looking at the fact that my parents paid at least $14,579.01 for a one-month supply of Xtandi.
Anyway, that’s American capitalism, and unfortunately there’s nothing that can be cured by the farce of democratic elections.
The leading candidate to replace Biden in the presidential election is the current Vice President, Kamala Harris. While pundits debate her merits in the mainstream media, the big question is: what exactly will happen when all that money raised for one plutocrat is used for another plutocrat?
According to an Al Jazeera article following Biden’s withdrawal: “The unprecedented nature of the current situation raises questions about the fate of Biden’s military coffers, which could ultimately amount to millions, if not billions, of dollars in campaign spending in the United States.”
With millions and billions of dollars at stake, the prospects for literal democracy are clearly slim, despite Biden’s sentimental assertion in the X post that “none of this could have happened without you, the American people. Together, we’ve overcome a once-in-a-century pandemic and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We’ve protected and preserved democracy.”
Biden has withdrawn his intention to run for reelection, but he has not stepped down from the presidency. He has made it clear that he believes it is “in the best interest of my party and my country” to serve out his remaining term and that he will focus on “his duties as president.”
One of his most important “duties” right now is to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday, because genocide is clearly “in the best interest of my party and my country.”
As Americans process the sweeping changes of the election, they would do well to reflect on the state of their country’s wealth.
Biden concluded his farewell letter by saying, “I believe today what I have always believed: that there is nothing America cannot do when we come together. We must remember that we are the United States of America.”
And ultimately, what everyone must remember is that no matter who is in charge, America is America, and when it comes to inflicting suffering on the world, “there is nothing America cannot do.”
Biden may have dropped out of the race, but America’s “democracy,” or plutocracy, lives on.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
