Joe As Barack's "Point Man"

It's generally acknowledged that Joe was designated Barack Obama's "point man" for Ukraine. For instance, per Axios,

True: Joe Biden was the Obama administration's point man on Ukraine while his son was working for Burisma, visiting the country several times from 2014 to 2016.

On the other hand, I have yet to see any sort of job description for "point man", except that as Axios implies, it seemed to involve whirlwind visits on Air Force Two and meetings with top people. But just recently, poking around for background on Joe's bother Jim, I found this at NBC News from April 2016:

Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Iraq Thursday for a visit intended to help resolve a political crisis that's hindering efforts to defeat the Islamic State group.

Biden flew overnight from Washington to the Iraqi capital. The White House isn't publicly disclosing his itinerary due to security concerns, but Biden is expected to meet with Iraqi leaders.

. . . Though the trip was scheduled months ago, the vice president is “arriving at a moment of a lot of turbulence,” the official told reporters.

“The vice president has been the point person on Iraq for the administration since the beginning,” a senior administration official told reporters traveling with the vice president. “He’s been itching to get back for a while; looking for an opportunity. This seemed like a good moment to do it.”

We don't know who the "senior administration official" was with Joe on the plane -- it could even have been Amos Hochstein, who was with Joe on various flights to Ukraine and conducted similar briefings then. But whoever it may have been, he appears to have had the authority to reveal Joe's "point man" or "point person" status, which had, as far as anyone can tell, previously been unknown except to insiders.

But here's an even more intriguing piece in the New York Post from October 2012:

James Biden isn’t a big name in the business of residential housing development, so what exactly qualifies him to work at a construction company and share in the winnings of a $1.5 billion project to build affordable homes in Iraq?

If you said it has something to do with his last name, the one shared by his older brother Vice President Joe Biden, you wouldn’t be far off. At least that’s the guess of some Wall Street analysts who cover the Marlton, NJ-based company Hill International and think they’ve seen yet another sordid tale of crony capitalism.

. . . {I]t got some good news not long after its housing subsidiary hired James Biden as an executive vice president in late 2010. Just six months later, Hill won one of its biggest contracts ever, a $1.5 billion deal to build at least 100,000 affordable homes in Iraq.

A good deal for Hill, a relative newcomer to building homes — and for James Biden, who as one partner will get a good share of that $1.5 billion.

The deal is contingent on the Iraqi government providing financing, which it has yet to do, but Hill execs tell analysts the money could start flowing by the end of the year. That’s when everyone involved, James Biden included, will start collecting on tens of millions of dollars in profits.

One friend of James Biden’s estimates his net worth at around $7 million, yet he seems to have a remarkable lack of concrete business experience. An attorney who’s done work for him called him a “serial entrepreneur,” but didn’t name the startups he was responsible for.

However, the deal never went through:

The founder of US construction management company Hill International has admitted he “was wrong” to invest in the failed HillStone housing project in Iraq.

Irvin Richter says both Hill and its partner in the doomed project, South Korean developer TRAC Development Group, lacked experience in what was an ambitious deal.

Hill signed two contracts with TRAC Development Group in 2011, along with its majority-owned subsidiary HillStone International (the minority share is owned by a group of minority partners including US vice-president Joe Biden’s brother James, an executive with Hill’s housing division) to build 100,000 units in an overall 500,000 housing unit project in Iraq.

However, the project never eventuated and Hill was eventually forced to concede an estimated $1.5bn from its backlog in 2013.

Jim Biden appears elsewhere in Hill International's history:

Now-first brother James Biden was hired to help a Philadelphia construction company resolve a decades-old dispute with the Saudi government because he was the sibling of then-Vice President Joe Biden, court documents reveal.

. . . The affidavit, first obtained by DailyMail.com, was filed in a dispute between the construction company, Hill International, and one of three law firms it hired to help claw back approximately $140 million the Saudis owed for a desalinization plant built by a Hill subsidiary in the 1980s.

That firm, Lankford & Reed, claims that Hill International also hired James Biden, now 73, in 2011 to negotiate a secret deal with the Saudis to settle the dispute – and get out of paying Lankford the 40% cut outlined in their contract.

In July 2017, Thomas Sullivan, a former Treasury Department official-turned-private investigator hired by Lankford, drove to James Biden’s home in suburban Philadelphia to discuss his role with Hill.

. . . The first brother added that he was often tapped to represent Hill in meetings “because, of course, the name didn’t hurt,” Sullivan recalled.

James Biden also told Sullivan he had attended a February 2012 meeting with Saudi officials at which Hill would receive “final payment” for the desalination plant. Biden added that he had attended the meeting “because of his position and relationship” with his older brother, then Barack Obama’s No. 2.

According to the president’s sibling, Hill’s payment for its subsidiary’s work “would be made in both cash and ‘a very large amount'” of future business, Sullivan said.

After the meeting, Sullivan alleged, James Biden’s wife Sara walked him to his car and revealed that her husband and his older brother Joe were very close, and that they told each other everything.”

So what we're starting to see is a set of business relationships between Jim Biden and various other parties, including what looks like a long-term deal with Hill International, to use Joe's influence to make deals in places like Iraq and Saudi Arabia, with payments to Jim on an implicit understanding that he'll talk to Joe, who will get the client what's needed.

We have a lengthy and detailed timeline on Hunter, largely courtesy of his laptop. But I'm beginning to wonder if we don't now have a potential equivalent long list of deals -- some done, some not -- involving Jim. And oddly, whie Joe was Obama's point man for Ukraine, he traveled there only six times as vice president. But according to James Jeffrey, US ambassador to Iraq while Joe was vice president,

During my 20-month tenure in Iraq, Obama called [Prime Minister Nouri al-]Maliki just three times and met with him only once. Biden has been to Iraq 24 times. In Obama’s first term, Biden was at the center of all the Iraq decisions[.]

So Joe as vice president was in a position to influence far more in Iraq than he could influence in Ukraine, and it looks like he did far more meddling in Iraq's affairs. What other business was brother Jim doing there? But maybe more important, what did Barack Obama know? As we began to see yesterday, he had the FBI on Joe's case. And from what we hear, Barack never thought all that highly of Joe. Why did he give Joe such free rein in Ukraine and Iraq? Look at Barack's expression in the photo at the top of this post, as opposed to Joe's.

Which guy do you think is smarter?

This Strains Credulity

A Breitbart story gives an account of two Biden experts from Conservative Inc trading scuttlebutt:

Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow said that his new New York Times bestselling book Breaking Biden includes a number of forgotten biographical details about Joe Biden, including the fact that he was tapped as former President Barack Obama’s running mate “specifically for being bad with money.”

Marlow recounted this detail during an interview about Breaking Biden on the Drill Down Podcast with seven-time New York Times bestselling investigative author Peter Schweizer.

. . . “One of the reasons why Barack Obama picked Joe Biden was specifically because he was poor,” Marlow continued. “[Obama] actually liked the optics of having one of the poorest guys in the Senate. And this is so crazy to me because we were just in an era recently where if someone made money and someone made it in America, we pointed to those people as the example—like, ‘Wow, that person really has what it takes. They know what they’re doing.’ Joe Biden’s family has made money and lost it so many times you lose count. And that was a virtue for Barack Obama["].

The information that's been coming out is that Joe has always been Joe. People don't suddently change their characters at age 65, which is when Obama put Joe on the ticket. Yet that's the claim:

“What’s remarkable about that story, by the way, is Barack Obama says, ‘I’m going to get this guy who’s poor, who they would argue hasn’t cashed in.’ And what does Joe Biden do? ‘I’m Vice President now. Now’s the opportunity to really make bank!’ I mean, it’s shocking,” Schweizer said.

Stories about Joe back in the day are starting to emerge, for instance at the UK Daily Mail:

Joe Biden sold a house to a supporter for $1.2 million in 1996 - but it is only worth an estimated $1.65 million 27 years later, DailyMail.com can reveal.

. . . Biden bought the 10,000 square-foot mansion in Greenville, Delaware for $185,000 in 1974.

At the time he had recently become a senator on a salary of $42,500.

He went on to sell the house for $1.2 million - more than six times what he paid for it - in 1996.

. . . Since 1996 the Delaware housing market has nearly tripled, according to data from the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency.

That would indicate, if the house was worth $1.2 million in 1996, it should be well over $3 million now.

The story provides details of the purchaser and his links to MBNA:

He sold it for his asking price of $1.2 million to the vice chairman of credit-card company MBNA, at the time the largest employer in Delaware.

In the same year, MBNA employees contributed $62,850 to Biden for his Senate re-election campaign, and the house buyer donated the maximum $2,000.

Also that year, Biden's son Hunter was hired by MBNA and went on to become a senior vice president.

Later, between 2001 and 2005, Hunter was re-hired as a consultant by the company on a monthly retainer.

I posted on a related story in which Joe and Hunter sold Biden family influence together as early as 2005 here. In general, members of the Biden family haven't had careers separate from Joe's ability to garner political appointments for them, sinecures connected to his own campaigns, or jobs as Biden family hustlers -- Beau has always been the chief exception. For instance, his sister Valerie says on her own website:

Valerie Biden Owens is the first woman in U.S. history to have run a presidential campaign — that of her brother, Joseph R. Biden, Jr. She also led his seven straight U.S. Senate victories and has been his principal surrogate on the campaign trail.

Valerie is Chair of the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware and a partner at Owens Patrick Leadership Seminars. Valerie sits on the Advisory Board of the Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children.

Joe's brother Jim appears to have worked with Joe to peddle family influence throughout his own sketchy business career. Via a 2019 story in Politico,

In the 1970s, as Joe was entering the Senate and taking a seat on the Banking Committee, James obtained unusually generous loans from lenders who later faced federal regulatory issues. Joe Biden was in touch with two of those banks about his brother’s loans, once to scold a bank executive about invoking his name in attempts to collect on overdue payments.

. . . During the Obama years, several months after James joined a construction firm as an executive, the firm received a contract worth more than a billion dollars to build houses in Iraq while Joe oversaw the U.S.-led occupation of that country.Along the way, James partnered with his nephew Hunter, the younger of Joe’s two sons. A graduate of Georgetown University and Yale Law School, Hunter, 49, has struggled with substance abuse while hopscotching between endeavors in law, business and politics.

Joe's brother Frank is harder to trace. Via the UK Daily Mail,

According to a memoir written by Joe's second wife Jill Biden, Frank was a student at the University of Delaware - who played Cupid for the couple in 1974, as his older brother raised his two sons alone.

But in Frank's marriage announcement in 1985, he is described as having studied at San Francisco State University.

In other places, he is described as having attended Cornell University and Pepperdine Law School in Malibu, California, where he claimed that he had developed a love of surfing.

None of the schools would confirm Frank's attendance to DailyMail.com.

He appears to have worked on Joe's Senate staff following Joe's election, and he later obtained a patronage job in the Clinton administration:

In 1993, as Bill Clinton started his first term, he obtained a $78,000-a-year political appointment as director of congressional and legislative affairs at the Government Printing Office - now the Government Publishing Office - which he held until June 1997.

In effect its chief lobbyist, he defended his appointment in June 1996 to The Wilmington News, saying that its work was outside his brother's responsibilities in the Senate and that he had been alerted to the role by a friend, not by his brother.

After that job, he apparently worked again in Joe's Senate office. The Daily Mail continues,

According to a recent ABC News investigation into the business dealings of the younger Biden, in 2009 he became involved with the Florida based for profit charity Mavericks in Education after meeting the company's founder. Asked what he role was, he said: 'I'm the big cheese.'

. . . According to ABC News a person familiar with Frank's role at Mavericks told them he was paid $70,000 per year over the course of five years – a salary that amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Over the years, ABC claims, Frank touted his famous last name and Washington connections to help land the company a series of charter contracts from local officials in Florida to open charter schools. There were private jet trips to Tallahassee to lobby lawmakers; a far cry from 2008 when his brother Joe's chief of staff said Frank had 'no assets.'

. . . His time with Mavericks was blighted by claims of mismanagement, however.

Many of the schools, which focused on educating teens with troubled backgrounds, were mired in controversy, badly under performed, suffered low graduation rates, and in lawsuits and state audits, were hit with allegations of fraud.

According to ABC News Mavericks was hit with at least two lawsuits over allegations of inflating enrollment as part of a scheme to garner more government funding. The charters were eventually sold off in 2017 to EdisonLearning.

The Biden family pattern has been that Joe's siblings, as well as Hunter, have little talent but extravagant lifestyles, along with extensive problems with substance abuse that would not normally set them up for high-flying careers, and this has been the case since Joe's election to the Senate in 1972. If they're rich -- and as of now, they're all doing quite well -- it hasn't been through their own hard work and ability. Several of the links above date from 2019, early in Joe's 2020 campaign for president, when his efort seemed to be faltering. As his prospects improved, media generally dropped these stories, but they strongly suggest the Biden family boodle has been in place for some decades.

I've never thought Barack Obama was (or is) a dummy. To think he believed Joe was the poorest man in congress suggests he was naive, which I don't believe. The mere task of vetting someone to serve on his ticket as vice president would uncover a lot in Joe's background, leaving aside that both Barack and Joe had been in the Senate together, and Barack would have heard an earful just from gossip -- but this leaves out the FBI.

Fox News’ Jesse Watters shed light on explosive revelations about the FBI’s involvement with the Biden family Wednesday night. Earlier on in the day, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) disclosed that bureau documents show the FBI had placed 40 informants within the Biden family over the past 15 years, effectively having them “wired.” The intelligence operation is reported to have been active since Joe Biden’s tenure as Vice President.

“Everything ‘Primetime’ has been saying about the FBI and the Biden family has just been confirmed,” Watters started. “For years, we’ve told you the FBI knew everything the Bidens were up to. The cash, the Chinese diamonds, American policy for sale.”

I've thought all along that Barack Obama knew everything about Joe, Valerie, Frank, Jim, and Hunter, before, during, and after -- and if anything, the FBI knows more now than it did then. It strains credulity to think otherwise.

Every Time They Do This, Trump Goes Up In The Polls

Yesterday I suggested Trump is following a Chicago Seven strategy of baiting his trial judges into overreacting, committing reversible errors, and allowing themselves to be characterized as political hacks in the public narrative. This strategy is succeeding.

A federal judge on Sunday reinstated a gag order she imposed on Donald Trump in the Washington case accusing him of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat, denying his bid for a stay pending appeal.

The order prohibited Trump from targeting the special counsel prosecuting his case or witnesses who might be called to testify about his efforts to upend his election loss.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan imposed the gag order at the Justice Department’s request.

She temporarily lifted it on Oct. 20 after Trump’s lawyers appealed.

And she reversed that decision on Sunday evening, according to the court’s docket.

A member of the former Obama administration outlined the thinking that likely drove Judge Chutkan's change of direction:

Former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal said Sunday on MSNBC’s “Inside” that it was likely former President Donald Trump would be jailed for violating a gag order.

Katyal said, “There are two different gag orders. One, Trump has already violated, the one in New York state, in which he has been now find twice. And then there’s a swarm that you’re talking about the federal level with Jack Smith. And that one has been put on pause.”

He continued, “I think Donald Trump has made the best case of anyone. He is witnessing for why you need the gag order in effect. Because the moment that gag order was put on pause, he started developing and attacking people left and right.”

Katyal added, “So I think that there is no doubt in my mind that there will be a gag order imposed on Donald Trump. And there also is no doubt in my mind that he is going to violate it repeatedly. Repeatedly to the point where a judge is going to have to confront the ultimate question, are we going to put the former president in jail? and i think there is only one answer to that.”

Anchor Jen Psaki said, “What is your answer?”

Katyal said, “Which is you have to. If he continues this behavior, no other litigant in this country would ever be able to do what he is doing. Judges, I don’t care what your politics are, the one thing you understand when you put out that robe is that it is about the legitimacy of the court and about the judicial process.”

But the Chicago Seven case makes it plain that there are limits to the legitimacy of the court. Judge Hoffman, if we follow Katyal's logic, had no choice but to have Bobby Seale bound and gagged in the courtroom and impose draconian sentences on the defendants and their counsel for contempt -- that is, he had no choice until the higher court reversed him. And it's likely that Judge Chutkan's order will eventually be reversed. In an amicus brief, the American Civil Liberties Union argued,

Chutkan imposed a limited gag order on Trump earlier this month that forbids him from targeting any criticism at Special Counsel Jack Smith, court staff, or witnesses on his case that involves allegations related to the Jan. 6 riots.

But the ACLU argued the term "targeting" was unconstitutionally vague.

“The First Amendment rights of the accused require any court order restraining their speech to be both clearly defined and narrowly framed,” the group argued. "The order’s prohibition on speech that “targets” certain named and unnamed individuals is neither.

"Reading the order, Defendant cannot possibly know what he is permitted to say, and what he is not," it added.

It isn't hard to surmise that Trump is almost begging either Judge Chutkan or Judge Engoron to jail him for contempt -- over the weekend, he called Judge Engoron a "nut job", “Trump hating,” and “unhinged.” Regarding Judge Chutkan's reinstatement of her order, he posted As of this morning, he added,

“I have just learned that the very Biased, Trump Hating Judge in D.C., who should have RECUSED herself due to her blatant and open loathing of your favorite President, ME, has reimposed a GAG ORDER which will put me at a disadvantage against my prosecutorial and political opponents,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday morning. “This order, according to many legal scholars, is unthinkable! It illegally and unconstitutionally takes away my First Amendment Right of Free Speech, in the middle of my campaign for President, where I am leading against BOTH Parties in the Polls.”

The problem for the judges is that anything that happens now is going to become news, and at that point, it's out of their control and into Trump's field of expertise -- it's generally understood that Trump is a master at leveraging media coverage into free publicity. A judge who orders Trump to jail is going to open the door to unanticipated consequences for the whole process. I don't think either Judge Engoron or Judge Chutkan is remotely up to the task here, any more than Judge Hoffman was in Chicago.

Trump's Chicago Seven Defense

I've already mentioned the 1969 Chicago Seven trial here in the context of some of the January 6 defendants. Looking back at that post, I think the comparison is mild, especially in contrast to what's beginning to look like Trump's strategy in at least two of his cases, where judges are beginning to impose gag orders on Trump's speech outside the courtroom.

On one hand, Trump's strategy is to play the legal issues straight, appealing the orders through established channels. On the other, as opportunties present themselves, he's using public statements to bait the judges into overreacting, turning them into villains in the public eye and forcing them into committing reversible errors. For instance,

All this will do is enrage Judge Engoron, who has already fined Trump twice for violating a gag order that bars him from commenting about court staff:

Justice Arthur Engoron fined Trump for the second time on Wednesday after he again appeared to violate the order by making an apparent reference to his top clerk in comments before news cameras outside the courtroom.

. . . Engoron leveled the $10,000 penalty against Trump on Wednesday after he said to reporters outside the courtroom, "this judge is a very partisan judge, with a person who's very partisan sitting alongside of him."

. . . Engoron imposed the gag order on Oct. 3 after Trump shared on social media the name and photo of the judge’s top clerk and suggested she was politically biased. He had fined Trump $5,000 on Oct. 20 after a screenshot of the since-deleted post remained visible on Trump’s campaign site for weeks.

This is just starting to be reminiscent of the Chicago Seven Trial:

In his trial account The Barnyard Epithet and Other Obscenities, J. Anthony Lukas divides the Chicago Conspiracy Trial into five "phases." The first period, which Lukas calls "The Jelly Bean Phase," lasted from September 24 to October 13. It was a relatively uneventful stage, in which the defendants took a "gently mocking" stance toward the trial. The second period, the "Gags and Shackles Phase," lasted from October 14 to November 5. This phase by the defendants seeking to emphasize political issues in the trial, perhaps because they were concerned that the trial was being seen by their sympathizers as a mere joke. Also during this phase, Black Panther defendant Bobby Seale continuously, and in increasingly angry tones, insisted upon his right either to represent himself or to have the trial continued until his own counsel of choice, Charles Garry (who was hospitalized for gall bladder surgery), could represent him. Seale hurled frequent and bitter attacks at Judge Hoffman, calling him a "fascist dog," a "pig," and a "racist," among other things. On October 29, the outraged judge ordered Seale bound and gagged. . . . The final phase of the trial, from January 23 to February 7, Lukas called the "Barnyard Epithet Phase." It was a two-week period marked by increasingly bitter outbursts by the defendants and their attorneys, and by almost irrational overreactions by Judge Hoffman. Forty-eight contempts came in this shortest of the five trial phases.

Judge Hoffman's evident anger and bias in the case served only to damage the prosecution's interests:

The jury had scarcely begun its deliberations in the Chicago Conspiracy Trial when Judge Hoffman began sentencing each of the defendants and the two defense attorneys, William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass, to lengthy prison terms on 159 specifications for criminal contempt. The specifications ranged from minor acts of disrespect (such as not standing for the judge) to playful acts (such as baring rib cages or blowing kisses to the jury) to insulting or questioning the integrity of the court ("liar," "hypocrite," and "fascist dog"). William Kunstler, who seemingly became a radicalized brother of his clients over the course of the trial, was sentenced by Hoffman to four years and thirteen days in jail. One specification for Kunstler concerned an incident on February 3 when he said "I am going to turn back to my seat with the realization that everything I have learned throughout my life has come to naught, that there is no meaning in this court, there is no law in this court." The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals later reversed all contempt convictions, ruling that contempt convictions resulting in more than six months in prison require jury trials.

Eventually,

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed all convictions on November 21, 1972. The appellate court based its decision on the refusal to allow inquiry into the cultural biases of potential jurors during voir dire as well as Judge Hoffman's "deprecatory and often antagonistic attitude toward the defense." The court also noted that it was determined after appellate argument that the F. B. I, with the knowledge and complicity of Judge Hoffman and prosecutors, had bugged the offices of the Chicago defense attorneys. The Court of Appeals panel said that it had "little doubt but that the wrongdoing of F. B. I. agents would have required reversal of the convictions on the substantive charges."

. . . There is no simple "yes" or "no" answer to the question of whether the Chicago defendants intended to incite a riot in Chicago in 1968. Abbie Hoffman said, "I don't know whether I'm innocent or I'm guilty." The reason for the confusion--as Norman Mailer pointed out--was that the alleged conspirators "understood that you didn't have to attack the fortress anymore." All they had to do was "surround it, make faces at the people inside and let them have nervous breakdowns and destroy themselves."

Trump's attorneys must certainly be aware of the Chicago Seven trial, because there appear to be similar issues in all the cases against him, ranging from freedom of speech to failure to specify a crime to juror bias, and similar remedies in pulic opinion. There's also general agreement that Trump's strategy will be to win on appeal despite conviction in the trial courts, much like what took place with the Chicago Seven. And so far, Trump's strategy is pretty clerly to surround the fortress, make faces at the people inside, and let them have nervous breakdowns and destroy themselves.

Well, Trump and I are the same age. We saw the same things back in the day, and we paid attention.

Joe Gets A New Primary Opponent

I'm having a hard time getting my head around this exercise:

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) announced Thursday he is running for president against President Biden.

The congressman confirmed he would be running against Biden in the Democratic primary, after previously signaling he would not do so.

. . . The Minnesota Democrat has repeatedly called for a competitive primary instead of Biden running unopposed for the nomination.

“I think President Biden has done a spectacular job for our country. But it’s not about the past,” Phillips said. “This is an election about the future.”

According to Red State,

[W]hat makes this especially interesting is who is reportedly behind the campaign. According to another report, The Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt, infamous for his late-night online meltdowns, is advising Phillips.

. . . If Schmidt is the driving force behind Phillips' campaign, that's not a good sign for anyone involved. I wouldn't trust a co-founder of The Lincoln Project to win a race for dog catcher.

Still, Phillips' bid could cause issues for Biden because he's looking to drive a wedge through the primary process. New Hampshire Democrats lost their first-in-the-nation primary status after Biden and the DNC colluded to put South Carolina first in line, the very state that helped save Biden's then-collapsing campaign in 2020. Where is Phillips' centering his campaign? In New Hampshire.

So far, it looks to me as if the "primary process" is completely irrelevant to either party this year. Biden clearly wants to bypass New Hampshire, simply because he didn't do well there in 2020 and had to rely on South Carolina to save his campaign -- so naturally, he's going to take any suspense out of the 2024 race by putting South Carolina first. I don't see how a no-name guy running against Joe in New Hampshire will change anything.

It's also significant that Robert Kennedy Jr gave up on the idea of challenging Joe in primaries as a Democrat pretty early in the process.

On September 29, 2023, Mediaite reported that Kennedy was reorienting his campaign to run as an independent rather than as a Democrat. On October 9, 2023, he confirmed these reports by formally announcing that he will be continuing his presidential bid as an independent candidate.

. . . Prior to the switch Kennedy and his campaign manager had expressed dissatisfaction with the Democratic primary election process.

Acccusations that the Democrat National Committee rigs the primary process are nothing new; Bernie Sanders supporters made the same claim in 2016.

There’s always a learning curve, and my experience during the 2016 Democratic Primary educated me on the down-and-dirty politics behind an election.

People seem to be under the impression that high-level political corruption is only something you see in a movie or show like House of Cards. Perhaps the idea that the most powerful people in the country would cheat us out of our sacred practice of democracy strikes fear in the hearts of those of us who’ve trusted in this system for so long. But I can tell you from first-hand experience that not only does the DNC rig its primaries against independent-minded outsider candidates like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang & others, but that process is much more intricate and complex than one might imagine.

I think we can take it as given that the Democrat establishment doesn't want a primary process in 2024. Even if Joe drops out, which I think may be more likely than some believe, he'll delay the announcement until sometime in late spring or even summer to bypass any serious primary opposition. I think this is the real reason for Gavin Newsom's quasi-non-campaign: he avoids any imputation of disloyalty while also forestalling any serious primary electoral challenge to his implicit front-runner status, which he's actively cultivating with Nancy Pelosi's tacit approval.

After all, this has been Trump's 2024 primary strategy as well: avoid giving any potential opponent the opportunity to place himself on an equal platform by allowing debate. But for the Democrats, this strategy allows a late spring or summer bait-and-switch whereby Biden withdraws in favor of the preselected Newsom. And as I said the other day, this will also allow them to keep Kamala as the vice president while removing the risk of an octogenarian at the head of the ticket.

This still leaves me with the question of why Rep Phillips is undertaking this exercise, which Bernie veterans and other Democrat insiders must recognize is foreordained to failure.

Jews Are Being Expelled From The New Deal Coalition, Or Maybe They're Walking Out

Tolerance of anti-Semitic and even pro-genocide demonstrations on campuses in particular since October 7 has provoked a certain amount of recalibration among Jews over where their political alliances should lie. Some of it goes directly to the established Democrat party alignment that's persisted in many ways since Reconstruction. The playwright David Mamet wrote this past Monday,

We New York Jews have always voted for the Democrats, as their policies appealed to the immigrants and the first generation (my parents). A Fair Shake, a safety net, and unionism were manna to the newly arrived — in spite of (in both their and my lifetime) quotas and antisemitic discrimination. The immigrant Jews did well here, and voted for Franklin Roosevelt. And we are voting for him still.

His Advisor on Jewish Affairs (jude-suss, or “house-Jew”) was Rabbi Stephen Wise, the “dean” of the American Rabbinate. He referred to FDR as “Boss”, and brought home to his community Roosevelt’s assurance of aid to the dying Jews of Europe. Yet Roosevelt’s aid stopped with his assurances, and tens of thousands of Jews died because of his restrictive immigration policies, and millions in Europe because of his refusal to interdict the Holocaust.

Well, Roosevelt was an upper-class, prep school and Ivy League Episcopalian to the core. As someone pointed out, were it not for polio, all he'd be would be George H W Bush. He said privately in 1942 that the United States was “a Protestant country”, “and the Catholics and Jews are here under sufferance.”

Mamet continues,

Why do Jews vote Democratic? Partly from tradition — conservatives have heard a Liberal Jew, when asked to defend or explain various absurd or inconsistent Democratic positions, shrug and joke: “I’m a Congenital Democrat.” I understand, for I was one, too.

But there is no more cosy mystery in the antisemitism of the Democratic Party; Representatives are affiliated with the Democratic Socialists and pro-Palestinians, calling for the end of the state of Israel — that is, for the death of the Jews. And Democrat Representatives repeat and refuse to retract the libel that Israel bombed a hospital, in spite of absolute proof to the contrary, and will not call out the unutterable atrocities of Hamas. The writing is on the wall. In blood.

Moses was instructed to have the Jews smear blood on their doorposts to identify themselves, and, so, avert the wrath of the Angel of Death. Mythologically, the blood can be said to be their own: the message, that if they chose to stay in Egypt, their blood would not mark the doorpost, but would wash the floor.

It's worth noting that the Ku Klux Klan wasn't just anti-black; its secondary focus was anti-Catholic, it was anti-Semitic, and it was aligned with white segregationist Democrat politics in the South.

The lynching of Leo Frank, a prominent Jewish businessman in Atlanta, alarmed Jewish Americans in 1915. He was falsely accused and convicted of killing a worker, Mary Phagan, in the pencil factory that he managed. After Georgia Governor John M. Slaton stayed Frank's execution because of a lack of evidence, a mob dragged him from the jail and lynched him.

. . . The Leo Frank incident also led to a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). By the mid-1920s, the KKK claimed to have four million members, more than all the Jews in the United States.

Another question is why the collegiate Diversity Equity and Inclusion mechanisms have failed to protect Jews. Armin Rosen writes in The Tablet,

If the DEI offices’ hearts aren’t in it—Jews being rich white people whose near ancestors just happened to have been the Nazis’ chief targets—they could at least feign a strategic interest in Jews, thus protecting themselves from future accusations of willful neglect.

. . . The nation’s army of campus DEI staff presumably exists for moments like this one, where an already unpopular minority group confronts an unanticipated surge of stress and potential danger. Yet DEI offices haven’t even bothered with pro forma expressions of fake concern.

He concludes,

For the past two weeks, DEI offices have had a chance to show they can be responsive to the real-life needs of young people facing a scary and unfamiliar crisis. But these offices clearly do not exist to serve Jews, or wish to recognize Jews might be capable of feeling pain, even when their friends and co-religionists have been slaughtered en masse. That’s because DEI bureaucracies don’t exist to serve actually existing people of any background. The purpose they serve is a theological one, and dogma enforcement is a big part of what universities do these days.

. . . An equity office’s job is to engineer the values of the rising elite so that DEI and the wider ideological edifice it serves will remain powerful, protected, and even feared. These bureaucracies are not burning through institutional capital in order to salve the anxieties of Jewish students, because helping students was never the point. Their ambitions are of a different order: DEI embodies the moral authority of a larger system for distributing status and power. It doesn’t care about actual human beings—and as we’ve learned since the massacre of October 7, it especially doesn’t care about Jews.

So the emerging moral consensus is moving toward excluding Jews, and Jews are somewhat belatedly coming to understand this. Mamet concludes,

Unprotected, we appealed to Power for decent consideration as Human Beings; and Power in America, the Democratic Party, was always happy to take our money and our votes, and ask us to wait in the Outer Office. As it does today.

We'll have to see where this takes us, but it's intriguing that current Jewish thought is leading in the direction that it's never been wise to trust the Democrats. Certainly Catholics and Labor, who have also been more or less reliable members of the New Deal coalition, have gradually been moving in the same direction. Franklin Roosevelt, after all, was never a man of the people.

What Does Nancy Pelosi Know?

Over the past week, Gavin Newsom has been on a trip to Israel and China:

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) joked about his presidential ambitions following a wartime trip to Israel, explaining the limits of his visit.

“I wish I was president of the United States,” he told reporters when asked about meeting with Israeli leaders, particularly to discuss a potential ceasefire with Hamas. He added afterward that he was joking. “I could start doing all those things."

According to Newsom, the brief and impromptu trip to Israel was “limited in scope.”

. . . Newsom is the second governor to travel to Israel amid the war with Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas, following Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY). New York has the largest population of Jewish people in America, as well as the largest population outside of Israel itself. California has the second-largest population in the U.S.

The California governor has answered as to whether he supports a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, something growing in popularity among the most progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Newsom, though, has reiterated that he "stands with Israel."

His joking remark about being president comes as speculation continues over a potential 2024 presidential bid. Newsom has consistently rejected the notion that he is considering a primary challenge to President Joe Biden, even serving as one of the most high-profile surrogates for his reelection campaign.

Moving on to China on Monday, by Wednesday, Newsom had a surprise high-profile meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The topics of his visit were carefully spun to limit them to issues like California-Chinese cooperation in climate change, but the Chinese were also eager to portray Newsom as a refreshing new figure:

A new editorial published Monday by the Global Times, a nationalistic English-language tabloid published by the propaganda department of the ruling Communist Party, states that Newsom is one of the most esteemed U.S. officials to make the journey overseas—citing the governor's first trip there as one of pragmatism as the U.S.-China relationship overall has been one of angst and vitriol in recent years.

"To be honest, Chinese people currently lack faith in Washington as a whole and have distrust toward some U.S. politicians. However, the welcome for Governor Newsom's visit is sincere and warm, as 'it is always a pleasure to greet a friend from afar,'" the editorial states.

I have two reactions. First, Newsom, 56, terms out as California governor in January 2027, when he'll be only 60. He's got to be looking toward a political future, especially one outside California, where the Democrat legislative supermajority has put the state on a disastrous course. That has got to involve running for president. Second, Nancy Pelosi, nominally "emerita" as House speaker, still runs things behind the scenes there and in California. Newsom will make no move without Pelosi's specific approval.

Newsom is also scheduled to debate Florida Gov DeSantis on Fox November 30. There's no question that Newsom is angling to become the only white Democrat (which is to say the only credible Democrat) in line behind Joe, definitely for 2028, but as a contingency for next year as well.

My guess is that Pelosi, although she's moving very carefully, is aware that Biden has vulnerabilities that make a 2024 run more iffy than has been generally portrayed. I suspect that she and a close circle of insiders are aware of the same thing I've suspected here, that Joe's various gaffes, microaggressions, stumbles, mumbles, and other infelicities are symptoms not of senility but long-term alcohol abuse.

I ran into a strange confirmation of this rereading Tom Hines's biography of Raymond Chandler, a well-known Hollywood drunk who had a period of sobriety in the 1930s and early 1940s until roughly the time Billy Wilder hired him to clean up James M Cain's Double Indemnity for the screen. Chandler at this point fell visibly off the wagon while vigorously insisting he was still sober -- and Hines cites sources who knew Chandler as well as typical alcoholic dodges to say that this was nothing unusual -- drunks lie to themselves and everyone else that they're sober, and indeed, like Joe Biden, that they've never had a drink, ever.

I suspect Pelosi and other insiders are fuily aware that Joe has multiple skeletons in multiple closets, and they're in the process of hedging against a set of scandals that will force Joe's withdrawal from the race late in next year's primary season, leaving a limited field with no potential Democrat replacement having a clear primary campaign record. This will open the opportunity for Newsom to become the consensus last-minute white guy who isn't either Bernie Sanders or Pete Buttigieg.

He would keep Kamala as vice president.