SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
joe biden
It's the Bad Ideas—Not the Old Age, Stupid!
Don't count birthdays. Follow the money.
Jun 06, 2025
Sometimes a little procrastination can be a good thing. A recent case in point was this year’s California Democratic Party’s convention decision to postpone consideration of a resolution calling for a mandatory retirement age for state and local officials. By not acting on the measure the party has, at least for the moment, spared itself a diversion from the real question of just what message it wants to convey – regardless of the age of the messenger.
The resolution was offered by Eric Kingsbury, a member of a heavily tech-funded slate that succeeded in moving the San Francisco Democratic Central Committee dramatically to the right in the last election. Kingsbury was quick to state that this was “decidedly not about Nancy Pelosi. If every elected leader in this country were like Nancy Pelosi [the 85-year old San Francisco Representative who is a fellow Committee member] we wouldn’t have to have this conversation.” And yet SF Democratic Committee Chair Nancy Tung suggested a specific age cap of 70: “That’s the general thought. Though we are thinking that an exploration by the state party is the way to go. But 70 is an age that other jurisdictions have adopted for judges and the like.”
This all, of course, is a predictable reaction to Joe Biden’s inept debate performance widely believed to have cost the Democrats the White House. It is also something of what we might call a “best seller-list solution,” in this case a follow-up to the success of “Original Sin,” the account of the Biden decline in his White House years that immediately hit the top of the New York Times non-fiction list. This book comes close on the heels of “Abundance,” the best-seller pro-growth manifesto also touted by centrist members as the cure for what ails the Democrats. .
Perhaps the quickest refutation of the age-limit solution is Senator Bernie Sanders, currently traveling about the country conducting (often in the company of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) the largest anti-Trump Administration rallies to be found anywhere, while also sponsoring the (unfortunately unsuccessful) U.S. Senate resolutions to block weapons shipments for Israel’s use in further devastating Gaza. Sanders is 83, a year older than Joe Biden. Would we really want to silence the principal challenger to the Trump agenda in the currently trendy cause of fighting gerontocracy? Well, actually the people behind the convention resolution just might.
What is the new leadership of the San Francisco Democratic Party all about? As they say, just follow the money. In winning control of the Central Committee, the SF Democrats for Change slate raised over $2.2 million, more than tripling the amount raised in support of the Labor and Working Families slate of incumbent members and allies.
The source of that overwhelming financial edge was predominantly high tech capital. Backers included billionaire Chris Larsen of Ripple cryptocurrency, once estimated to be the fifth richest person in the world, now down to #407; Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman; and Zack Rosen, CEO of the venture-backed software company Pantheon. But the group’s most prominent and infamous supporter is self described “centimillionaire” Garry Tan, CEO of startup incubator Y Combinator (I’ll leave you to do your own research on the exact meaning of that), and also an early employee of Palantir Technologies, the data analysis and technology firm that has received over $113 million in federal funding from the Trump administration for the implementation of the executive order for federal government cross-agency data sharing.
Tan, who is estimated to have spent something like $400,000 on SF politics in the past few years, achieved his moment of maximum fame with a wee hours X post directed at a majority of the then members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors: “Fuck Chan Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a label and motherfucking crew … And if you are down with Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a crew fuck you too … Die slow motherfuckers.” When someone responded suggesting that he was drunk when he posted what was apparently a reference to a Tupac Shakur song, Tan responded, “You are right and motherfuck our enemies.” (The posts were subsequently deleted.) Tan describes himself as a “moderate.”
While all of the big bucks backers of SF Democrats for Change may not be as crude as Tan, one trait we can be certain that they do share is disinterest in any campaign to radically shift the status quo in America. Do they share their proteges’ interest in a political age cap? Who knows, but it’s nothing that’s going to make them start asking for their money back. Whereas, if they were to hear that the recipients of their campaign funding were calling for an end to the corporate domination of politics, we can be pretty sure they’d let us know what they thought about that.
That the party needs to find a way to recapture the hearts and minds of the working class has become a truism in Democratic circles. And that doing so will require advocating clawing back some of the wealth and power that the nation’s corporate elite have amassed in recent years is obvious to anyone who takes the time to think it through. But you ain’t going to keep the support of the people whose cash put SF Democrats for Change in power by talking that kind of talk.
This is a scenario we can expect to see repeated in every state over the next couple of years. Age limits! Deregulation! Strong defense! Cut bureaucracy! Patriotism! Less political correctness! It’ll all be rolled out as party “moderates” try to achieve the impossible status of being both the party of the working class and the party of billionaire and centimillionaire financiers. Beware!Keep ReadingShow Less
From Power as an Aphrodisiac to Prostate Cancer: Democrats and the Fall of Joe Biden
The presidency is the ultimate source of power in American politics. But individuals lusting for power does not typically end well for the masses—especially the working class.
May 21, 2025
There is a fable that when Kissinger and Nixon met with Mao Zedong, Mao wondered out loud why the physically unattractive Kissinger was so successful with women. Kissinger quipped, supposedly, that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
Anyone who has spent time in political campaigns, political office, or corporate hierarchies, knows there is more than a little truth to Kissinger’s claim. If you hold power or have access to it you are attractive, or at least more attractive than you would be without it. You can feel it and you can use it, and you may do foolish things for fear of losing it. The hunger for it is strong enough to suck away your courage.
Kissinger’s insight gives us, perhaps, a better understanding about how Biden got away with running again when he was so obviously impaired. (You want to kill an aphrodisiac? Talk about your prostate cancer.)
The wound has been reopened with the publication of Original Sin, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. It is the supposedly shocking story of how Biden’s mental and physical maladies were covered up. (What’s really shocking is how Tapper is hawking his own book on his own CNN show and then also covering it as major news, just a bit like Trump selling meme coins from the White House. Yes, in behalf of all authors, I’m jealous!)
And now the revelation that Biden has Stage 4 prostate cancer is leading to further recriminations that he was hiding his declining health both from the public and from his fellow Democrats.
The basic argument is that those in the know knew that Biden was growing more and more feeble during his presidency and covered up the growing problems by keeping him out of the public eye. As a result, Biden and his team pressed for his reelection, while virtually no one in the Democratic Party resisted publicly, even as polls repeatedly showed that a majority of Democratic voters thought Biden was too old to run again.
Why didn’t the Democrats do something about this obvious train wreck in the making? Why didn’t Bernie, AOC, Elizabeth Warren and other congressional progressives call this process into question so there would be time to select a new candidate through primaries? Why didn’t Governors Pritzker and Newsom, along with other presidential hopefuls, say something—anything—to the American public?
The current crop of answers goes something like this: Biden was protected by his “Polit Bureau” of close advisors, as Democrats labeled them. Those in government who were in contact with Biden always reported that he was sharp and fit because he was only made available during his good times. In short, it was largely his advisor’s fault, including his wife Jill, who failed the party and American democracy by protecting him from more scrutiny. And perhaps, more importantly, it was Biden’s foolish ego that pushed him to hold onto power until it was too late.
Much of that may be true, but it’s inadequate. Kissinger’s aphrodisiac explanation goes deeper.
The presidency is the ultimate source of power in American politics. How could anything match being the leader of the free world, the Commander in Chief of the largest military arsenal in history, and the single person who can control U.S. laws and legislation, from the bully pulpit, by executive order, or with a veto? Everyone wants to kiss your ring.
The president has that power. Power for most everyone else (except for the Supreme Court justices, when they show some spine) is largely derivative. As a result, those who have access to the president are far more powerful than those who do not. Gaining presidential access and then holding on to it is the next best aphrodisiac.
Progressives in Congress—like Sanders, AOC, and Warren—believed they had great influence over Biden and his agenda. There was the repeated bluster that Biden was the most pro-working-class president since FDR. Big ideas, like the Green New Deal, gained Biden’s support, and progressives were often in the center of the action, passing progressive legislation and regulations (even when ambushed by Sens. Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema).
Had they dared to question Biden’s re-election run, it is likely, very likely, they would have lost their access in a hurry. That threat no doubt quieted their tongues. Proximity to power may even have led them to ignore Biden’s decline, to avoid seeing it, and even to choose not to think about it. The power-high can do that and more.
What about the presidential hopefuls? They are hungry for the fullest dose of the power aphrodisiac. If they challenged Biden and his incumbent advantage in 2024 and failed, they might never get another chance at that ultimate high. The Biden supporters among Democratic elites, especially, would never forgive them for stepping into the race. And if Biden beat them in the primaries, and then lost to Trump, or if they beat Biden and then lost to Trump, they would get blamed, and their lofty political ambitions would be quashed. Just calling Biden out, without challenging him in the primaries, would get them nowhere but down. Just ask Dean Phillips.
But if they sat back and let Biden win, or fail on his own, then the 2028 would be wide open. Their choice wasn’t that hard. The safest path to power was to bide their time.
Unfortunately, that political pragmatism and surrender to the aphrodisiac might turn out to be enormously problematic for the Democrats. It’s not a given that Trump’s scorched earth policies will flip the House back to the Democrats in 2026, and the Senate map is a particularly tough one for the Democrats. The Biden debacle has voters questioning why Democrats remained dead silent even as the rest of the country could see plainly that Biden was too old to govern.
That silence now leads to more questions about the timing of Biden’s cancer diagnosis. Did he release this information to turn media coverage away from the new book’s revelations? How could he not know of his ailment while he was president, given that he had the best health care support in the country, if not the world?
All this adds to the stains on the Democratic brand and further undermines their credibility, which already is severely tarnished among working-class voters.
As this story festers, it might be a good time for progressives to question their lifelong strategy of rebuilding the Democratic Party into an instrument of working-class justice. Maybe, just maybe, they should concede that task is doomed to failure. Most Democratic Party officials do not want to be the defenders of the working class. Most, in fact, are content to work hand-in-hand with their wealthy donors who have gained their riches by siphoning wealth away from working people.
Instead, it might be time to have a serious discussion about what it will take to build a new working-class political formation, possibly a new party, even if it is going to take a decade and maybe longer to come to fruition.
The billionaires have two political parties. We need one of our own—one that is not intoxicated by the enfeebling lust for power.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Former President Biden Has 'Aggressive Form' of Prostate Cancer
Biden, 82, is the oldest person to have held the office of the presidency.
May 18, 2025
Former U.S. President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, according to a Sunday statement from his personal office.
"Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone," according to a statement sent to CBS News and other outlets."While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management."
A Gleason score, a grading system for prostate cancer, ranks the seriousness of cancer from six, which is considered "low-grade" cancer, to 10, which is considered "high-grade" cancer.
Biden has kept a relatively low profile since exiting the 2024 presidential race last summer following a disastrous debate performance in June that generated widespread concern about his fitness to serve as the Democratic candidate.
Since then, reports about this decline have continued to surface. On Friday, Axios released audio of Biden's interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur, who investigated his handling of classified documents from before he took office in 2021. In the audio recordings of the interviews, which took place in October 2023, Biden has a difficult time remembering key dates and details.
Earlier in May, Biden did a television interview during which he refuted the notion that he suffered serious mental decline during his final year in office.
Democrats have continued to deal with the fallout of around Biden's departure from the race and reports regarding his mental acuity, with some fielding tough questions about their awareness of his decline before he decided to drop out.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Biden are the two oldest presidents to ever be sworn in, with Trump besting Biden by a few months when he was sworn in this past January. Biden, who is 82, is the oldest person to have held the office of the presidency.
Elected officials in both parties, including Trump, offered Biden well wishes and messages of support on Sunday.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular