The birthday of US President Joe Biden, who turned 80 last Sunday, revived the talk that American politics is threatened by gerontocracy - the power of the elderly.
“We are not the biggest fans of the politics that the Democratic Party is pursuing, but we refuse to believe that Biden is the best person she can nominate in 2024,” writes The Washington Examiner.
- At an advanced age, Biden became a danger to himself and to others ... The decision to run again for the presidency can only be an act of selfishness.
It’s time for Biden to step aside, and it’s time for someone else to lead the Democratic Party.”
In addition to Biden, the American political Olympus is full of old men and old women tenaciously holding on to power.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is 80.
Nancy Pelosi, who will serve as Speaker of the House of Representatives until January 2023, is 82 years old.
Congresswoman from California Maxine Waters (the one who exposed the Russian agent Aibolit in the country of Limpopo) is 83 years old.
Her Democratic colleague Grace Napolitano is 85. Republican Congressman Hal Rogers is 84. Democrat Bill Paskrell is 85. Jim Inhofe, Republican Senator from Oklahoma, is 88 years old.
His Iowa colleague Chuck Grassley is 89. Well, the oldest member of the Senate, Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California, will turn 90 in June.
This whole almshouse, in comparison with which the notorious "Kremlin elders" from the Brezhnev Politburo would look like the senior shift of the pioneer camp, has a very direct impact on American politics.
Is it any wonder that the US behaves the way it does?
However, the real target of the article in The Washington Examiner is not Biden and other Washington gerontocrats.
The direction of the main blow is a man who has not held any positions in the American political system for almost two years, former US President Donald Trump.
Since the announcement of his participation in the 2024 presidential race, he has been in the center of attention of the American media for the second week in a row.
The prospect of the return of the ex-US president to the White House in 2024 excited both his supporters and his enemies: the former inspired, the latter infuriated or horrified.
But no one remained indifferent.
“Former President Donald Trump is only four years younger than Biden, and if elected, he will be the same age on his inauguration day as President Ronald Reagan was on his last day in office,” writes Conn Carroll, delicately not saying that Biden became president exactly at the age at which Reagan left the White House.
True, Carroll admits that “Trump didn’t have nearly as many physical and mental problems as Biden,” but only to emphasize: Trump is losing his grip, his speech in Mar-a-Lago, where he announced entering the presidential race was "lifeless, boring" so much so that some of those gathered in the ballroom of the estate allegedly tried to leave the hall without waiting for it to end (the security did not let them out).
The speech was really not so incendiary,
Nevertheless, the general tone of the media covering Trump's actions remains unchanged: the ex-president is "out of breath", demonstrating a "low level of energy", "not the same anymore."
“Just as Democrats can do better than Biden, Republicans can do better than Trump,” Conn Carroll concludes.
And this is not his personal point of view, but a kind of training manual that is mandatory in all mainstream media.
One can only guess who developed this training manual, but, apparently, it was born in the bowels of that very “deep state” (deep state), with which Donald Trump fought all four years of his presidency.
Trump's return to the White House is a real nightmare for the Deep State.
The Deep State has gone to great lengths to ensure this return does not happen in 2020, by fraudulently promoting Sleepy Joe Biden to the presidency.
But now the situation is somewhat out of control: the aged and increasingly less adequate Biden is not going to be limited to one presidential term and seriously intends to fight for re-election, and against the backdrop of what is happening with the economy, migration policy and crime, he risks losing not only to Trump, but in general to any candidate who speaks the truth about the events in the United States.
The only option left for the Deep State to prevent the re-election of the “red monster” is to support his rival within the Republican Party itself.
This is exactly what is happening now: almost all mainstream media, including those that faithfully serve the Democrats, are celebrating the young - 44 years old - Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a politician who won a triumphant victory over his Democratic rival Charlie in the November 8 midterm elections. Christie (the gap was almost 20%).
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is closing a once gaping gap with former President Trump,” cheers The Hill, which is certainly not a GOP sympathizer.
We are talking about the data of the Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll, according to which over the past month the rating of the governor of Florida has grown by as much as 11%: if the Republican primaries were held now, then 28% of voters would vote for him (in October there were only 17%).
At the same time, the poll showed a decrease in support for Donald Trump: if in October 55% of respondents were ready to vote for him, now “only” 46%.
"While he still holds a double-digit lead over DeSantis, the poll marks a dramatic change in the former president's political strength," said The Hill journalist Max Greenwood.
Andrew Sullivan, a columnist for the British edition of The Spectator, gloatingly states that, according to the polls, Ron DeSantis is "suddenly" pulling ahead in a number of key states: in Georgia, he is ahead by 20% (57% vs. Trump's 37%), in Iowa, New Hampshire, even Texas (43% versus 32%).
Most importantly, Sullivan writes, only Trump and DeSantis appeared in the polls, which means that the way Trump won in 2016, which was to smash the opposition piece by piece, so that no other then one candidate - this time will not work.
Both Greenwood and Sullivan are difficult to attribute to Republican supporters (the latter is generally an Obama progressive and openly gay).
So why do they rejoice in the rise of DeSantis, who owes much of his triumph to his hardline stance on the teaching of "critical race theory" in schools and is considered an enemy of "wokism" and leftism?
Sociological surveys are a very insidious thing.
More recently, the midterm congressional elections have proven once again that it is dangerous to rely on sociological data.
Polls confidently predicted a red wave, but it never materialized.
The dust around the elections is still settling (in some districts, the counting of votes continues, although this will not fundamentally change the situation: the Republicans will control the House of Representatives, and the Democrats will control the Senate), and each party is trying to present the results with its victory.
The reality, however, is that both parties essentially lost—the Democrats lost the lower house of Congress, and the Republicans failed to win the upper house—and this loss must somehow be explained to voters.
Moreover, the Democrats, in general, don’t have to try too hard: the country’s economic problems are obvious even to the most consistent supporters of Biden.
But for the Republicans, it is fundamentally important to find a scapegoat responsible for the fact that the expected “red wave” turned into a barely noticeable ripple on the surface of the American political pond.
That scapegoat, predictably, was Donald Trump.
Now the media is focusing on the fact that several high-profile Trump-backed candidates have lost to Democratic rivals and are blaming the ex-president for their loss.
There is some truth in this - but here, for example, in Arizona, Carey Lake, who is considered a Trumpist, lost 0.66% of the vote to her rival Katie Hobbs and refuses to admit defeat, because voting machines suddenly stopped working in Maricopa County at the most crucial moment.
The possibility that the "victory" of the Democrats was achieved through fraud is so obvious that the Arizona prosecutor's office opened a special investigation - and since there has not yet been an official certification of the election results (its deadline is November 28), unpleasant surprises for the Democrats are possible here.
What if it turns out that in both Arizona and Pennsylvania, Trump's candidates lost not because they were supported by the ex-president, but because the Democratic Party cheated again, as they did in the 2020 presidential election?
Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, things are not so bad at all - for both Republicans and Trump.
The vast majority of the Republican congressmen who will control the lower house from January are Trumpists.
Their names are less known than those of Dr. Oz or Cary Lake, but they are Trump's loyal army.
And this, among other things, means that the House of Representatives will face fierce fights between “elephants” and “donkeys”, since the leader of the Democratic minority, most likely, will be the young and aggressive Hakim Jeffreys, Congressman from the State of New York, instead of old Pelosi.
Jeffreys is infamous for stubbornly and consistently denying the legitimacy of the election results ... but not in 2020, of course, but in 2016.
Only if the Trumpists are branded “conspiracy theorists” and “spreaders of crazy ideas” for denying the results of the 2020 elections, then Jeffreys, on the contrary, is promoted to the speaker of the lower house of Congress.
No wonder, because he confidently declares: “Russia interfered in our elections.
Attacked our democracy for the sole purpose of artificially placing someone at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (White House address. -
K.B.
).
They succeeded."
He continued to claim that Trump was "put by the Russians" to the presidency, even after Special Counsel Mueller's investigation found no evidence of "Russian collusion."
Can such a fanatic, who sees Russian agents under every bush, find common ground with Republican Trumpists in the House of Representatives?
The question, as they say, is rhetorical.
The aggravation of the conflict between the parties in Congress is only one of the obvious consequences of Trump's return to the political scene.
Others are also visible: the almost inevitable impeachment of Biden (yes, this impeachment will not pass through the Senate, but it will spoil the blood of Sleepy Joe and the Democrats), disputes over military assistance to Ukraine, an audit by the FBI, which refused to investigate Hunter Biden’s “hellish laptop” for several years ... In a word Trump's return is a guaranteed turbulence in the system, a kind of political tornado that threatens to sweep away the deep state's strongholds.
“If the wealthy and aristocratic classes are afraid of Trump's return to power, there are good reasons for this.
He is in their world, but not from him.
If he can resist their siren song about globalism and cheap labor, he may be able to avoid the fate of Napoleon and enjoy a second act stronger than the first,” writes the experienced and wise journalist Frank Mile, one of the few political observers who afraid to take the side of the ex-president.
But it is precisely this prospect - the return of Trump, like Napoleon, who fled from the island of Elba, who can win his Waterloo - and makes his enemies from the establishment (no matter which party) exploit the theme of the dominance of the old in American politics, relying on "promising youth" like Ron DeSantis.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.