Democracy 2024: # 2

A week ago, I started to conclude my introductory weekly post about the 2024 Presidential election to cite the old cliche that there would be "many twists and turns" on the road to the White House. I definitely did not expect that the next week would conclude with President Joe Biden being investigated by a Special Counsel for mishandling classified documents.

This would perhaps be a good place to insert the infamous Two Spidermen meme and claim it is Biden and Donald Trump pointing at each other.

Yes, indeed though, the current President, and his immediate predecessor, who happens at this point to be considered his most likely general election opponent once again, are both subjects of Special Counsel investigations for basically the same alleged offense. This is quite an argument for either a third party or both parties looking in a different direction ahead of the next election, but I suspect tribalists on both sides will continue to hunker down. Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, has appointed both Special Counsels and it is hard to see how he really had nay other choice. The reality though is that it is now more unlikely that the Justice Department will ever charge Trump, because it is hard to see Biden being charged for what many people will associate as having done the same thing. It also needs to be pointed out that the last two sitting Presidents who had Special Counsels or Independent Prosecutors, (whatever the term might have been at the time), directly looking into their activities both wound up being impeached by Congress for somewhat unrelated matters that came in those investigations. It is hard though to see Biden actually getting impeached though, although many House Republicans would love to try. This has clearly been a very, very bad week for Biden though, with good economic news and the previous week's Republican dysfunction overshadowed by these revelations. It is also very possible that the President's son Hunter might soon be charged, at least for some crime, by the U.S. Attorney in Delaware.

I feel the need to point out that there are clear differences between what Trump is suspected of upon his leaving the Presidency and what Biden might have done upon his leaving the Vice Presidency four years earlier. It is important to understand those differences in the "cases", but in some ways, it should not matter. Wrong is wrong, and Biden's "60 Minutes" quote of "how could anyone be so careless" has clearly come back to bite him. It is also true that the distinctions seem to blur more and more with each passing day. More documents have been discovered or disclosed during the week and the original talking point after the first batch of documents at a Biden office were disclosed of "at least he did not have any at his house" is of course no longer operable.

At this point, there is no reason to believe that Biden and his Administration are not cooperating fully with the government. This is the major difference as compared to the Trump situation. In many ways, that should be the major thing for people to remember. After all, they voluntarily reported this discovery to the government. There is simply no way Trump would have ever done the same thing. Thus, it remains true that there probably is far more reason to charge Trump with a crime than Biden.

However, while the Administration may claim they are following official legal procedures "by the book" they definitely have been less than transparent with the media and the American public. The revelations keep coming out in drips and Bidenworld, seems to be in denial about how bad this situation may be and are just trying to get through each individual news cycle rather than get all the bad news out as quickly as possible. When they admitted to documents being found at the office, and expressed surprise over that, they also knew that documents were found in Biden's Delaware home, but chose not to reveal that earlier in the week, until it came out on Thursday. Today, we learned that even more top secret classified documents were discovered at Biden's home.

Since Mar-a-Lago was raided last year, Trump's many critics have assumed he was up to nefarious things by having these documents. Self-enrichment? Blackmail? Providing information to a hostile government? Many people assume the worst, but there is no proof of any of that. Others believe the forever fragile ex-President just likes to show papers to the asskissers who show up at the estate so he could point out how important he was and wishes he still were. Clearly, there is a problem though in regards to people having classified documents they should not have, and whatever haste or malfeasance may lead to that, especially as nationally elected leaders are begrudgingly leaving office to turn it over to the other party. Frankly, Hillary Clinton's issue with classified material while Secretary of State still seems to be the most conscience and most reckless of all these examples, and of course, she never got charged.

For reasons mentioned, this was a good week for Donald Trump's legal team, as it makes an indictment over classified material harder to do for political reasons. Special Counsel Jack Smith is also still looking into January 6th related matters though. Trump continues to act like an unhinged lunatic on his fledgling social media company account though. Besides a near daily obsession in targeting Elaine Chao, the wife of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, and his own Labor Secretary, using a racist nickname, Trump has been lashing out at Smith. One might think Trump would look at this Biden situation and go the route of "well, this thing clearly happens all the time. I did not do anything he did not do." Instead though. Trump in insisting that what Biden did was terrible and what he himself did was absolutely perfect. So, the former President, as he seeks reelection, is still doing political damage to himself.

Politically, Biden is in a worse place than he was a week ago for sure. This is simply a scandal he did not need, as his job approval numbers continue to be slightly below average, at best. He was looked uncomfortable and unsteady in addressing this issue. Peter Doocy of Fox News was able to goad him into a huge gaffe, by bringing up the fact that documents were found in the Delaware garage next to Biden's beloved Corvette. The President could not avoid taking the bait and pointed out that the garage is locked so it is not like the documents were out parked along the street. That was a very bad answer and gave an opening to disingenuous Republican critics, who are overstating the circumstance, even as they defended Trump on the matter months ago.

Maybe the argument is that whatever villain wanted to get his hands on our nation's secrets could find themself in the garage and take one look at that sweet Corvette and forget all about "Death to America." They would just want Uncle Joe to take them for a ride.

 

Tribalists on both sides are acting predictably in some ways and weirder in others. Some Biden defenders have taken a page from Trump's playbook by saying that perhaps the documents were planted and that this is all a Republican right-wing conspiracy against Biden. Some are even blaming what they claim is a hostile, pro-Trump Secret Service. That is an absolutely absurd allegation to make without any evidence. Curiously, some on the right fringes are saying that this is a sign the left is conspiring against Biden and want him off the scene because they know he would lose in 2024. I even saw some talk that Trump had the documents planted at his Florida home in order to defuse the eventual discovery of the documents at Biden's home.

Politics is indeed crazier than ever. Those who are loyal to Trump are definitely not going to give Biden any leeway for this situation and at the same time, those who either like Biden or who just really dislike his opponents, are going to somehow try to shrug this all off as "no big deal."

Yes, there are major key differences in the two situations, but the safety and security of the country deserved better than whatever happened and for whatever reason in both circumstances. Jack Smith and Robert Hur as now tasked with sorting it all out legally. The American people of course will have to try to find a way to sort if all out politically.