The Washington Post tells a story about 74 year old Allen Lehner….
A voter Joe Biden is gonna get ….
That Donald Trump needs…
Trump has done nothing since to entice Lehner back.
Lehner, who now considers himself an independent, says he is frightened by the president’s lack of leadership and maturity amid the nation’s health and economic crisis. Several people in his gated community in Delray Beach, Fla., have gotten sick; at least one has died. He worries about his own health — he has an autoimmune disease — and also about his adult children, including a daughter who has gone back to work and a son whose pay has been cut.
Yet for months, Biden has been more popular than Trump with seniors. A national poll of registered voters released by Quinnipiac University last week shows Biden leading by 10 points among voters over 65. A Quinnipiac poll in late April found 52 percent of Florida seniors supporting Biden to 42 percent for Trump, while a Fox News poll around the same time found Biden narrowly ahead.
“We have the ability to sway this election,” Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Terrie Rizzo declared as she opened an online town hall with fellow seniors earlier this month, which included a tutorial on voting by mail. “Trump has failed us and it is now our turn.”….
Good to hear leaving the ballot blank or writing someone in or voting third party is less of an option for at least some of these voters this time around.
Unfortunately (or perhaps from the Biden campaign’s point of view, extremely fortunately), Democratic Socialists of America (now approaching 100,000 members) is NOT endorsing Joe Biden this year, which is the kind of purist sectarianism we decry in anti-Trump moderates, independents and Republicans who say they too won’t vote for Biden.
From Biden’s point of view, however, this may be a small blessing since Trump’s side can’t so easily make scare ads about the sinister Socialist forces backing their opponent in order to turn Once-Again Great America into Venezuela. On the other hand, the ex-VP does have the support of another right-wing bogeyperson, my comrade the Notorious AOC.
Beyond Bernie: a Statement from the DSA National Political Committee
MAY 12, 2020
Following the withdrawal of Bernie Sanders from the presidential race, our country has lost the only viable Presidential candidate advocating the comprehensive reform we need to address this pandemic head-on. Sanders’s exit leaves Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. His differences with Sanders and the broader left could not be starker, as was recently made clear when he committed to vetoing Medicare for All, Sanders’s signature legislative priority. Biden’s recent, disgraceful embrace of anti-Chinese xenophobia in his general election campaign, and credible allegations against him, are dangerous examples of how corporate Democrats continue to fail at stopping the ugly advance of far-right politics, racism, and misogyny.
The Democratic Socialists of America will not be endorsing Biden. We fully agree with Senator Sanders that taking on the reactionary, racist, and nationalist right wing represented by Donald Trump is imperative for the survival of millions of working-class people across the country and the world. We believe that the only way to beat the radical right once and for all is through a socialist movement that draws millions of disillusioned working-class people, here and abroad, into the political arena. We will continue to welcome the millions of people who supported Bernie’s platform and are looking for a political home.
We also recognize this moment to strategically strengthen our movements and power. We will fight like hell against the Trump agenda by running pressure campaigns, engaging in mutual aid, helping to build strong, democratic unions, building coalitions with those organizing against capitalism, acting in solidarity with immigrants and incarcerated people against deportation and detention, working to protect tenants and unhoused people, organizing to expand voting rights, locations, and the right to vote by mail. We will demand COVID relief that addresses inequality through a lens of reparations, push for an end to sanctions that are killing millions and fuel militarism in many parts of the world, and will back democratic socialist candidates at the grassroots level. That’s because we know that politics does not begin every four years with a national election: when we get organized, we become the agents of the change that will win the better world the working class desires and deserves.
https://www.dsausa.org/statements/beyond-bernie-a-statement-from-the-dsa-national-political-committee
¶ A newsletter to DSA members from the National Political Committee (an inter-convention body roughly analogous to the DNC or RNC) said this:
The Presidential Election
In our April 24th Steering Committee Meeting, we discussed how we relate to the general election following the suspension of Bernie’s campaign and in accordance with convention Resolution 15, which mandated that we would not endorse any Democratic Party presidential candidate in the event that Sanders did not secure the nomination. We deliberated about how to engage with the millions of people politicized against Donald Trump and how to support our members as they analyze the political terrain created by a contest between a corporate, neoliberal Democrat and an increasingly fascist incumbent Republican amid the most severe spike in unemployment since 1939.
We committed to support chapter leaders as they hold discussions about what work their chapters will engage in to resist the far-right and build the left. We also debated whether we should encourage our members in swing states to grapple with the question of voting for Biden as part of local strategy discussions. The majority of the NPC voted no on this question.
Ultimately we voted to approve this statement about our orientation to the general election and the current moment. We encourage you to read the minutes from the Steering Committee meeting for more context.
Not surprising….
Yes It will keep Trump & Co. from defining Biden with the Socialists…
My hope is that some?
WILL actually secretly vote for the guy who is closer to them, then the guy who might end up going after them and their right’s in a second term…
Oh hell, you think Republicans won’t be screaming that Biden is a damn socialist this fall just because he didn’t get the official Democratic Socialist of America’s endorsement?
It’s in the Republican Party’s DNA to shout that word at any politician who doesn’t want to lower taxes on the wealthy.
They can’t stop doing it any more than Trump can stop Tweeting conspiracy theories and slander about Joe Scarborough being a murderer.
Speaking of I have yet to see widespread condemnation of Trump’s disgusting attack on this woman’s memory and her widower from Republicans.
Spineless. Gutless. Shameless.
Of course GOPer’s will throw everything at Biden and Democrats….
But Biden isn’t Sanders…
Socialist won’t checkmate the ‘L’ word….
THAT WILL play strong against Dem’s in Red states…
And it seems like the ‘mask’ could be new symbol knocking out the red MAGA hat….
Seniors, a dependable Republican voting block, trust Biden. This has Republican spooked. They know the election is a referendum on Trump and they are keeping their heads down and hoping not to anger the base.
The whole slogan Make America Great Again is a throwback appeal to older and middle-aged Americans who recall some time when America was great, or at least when most Americans thought America was great.
It’s not a forward-looking Kennedyesque appeal to progress to a better future, in the style (for example) of two other old codgers, Dr Ron Paul and Sen. Bernie Sanders.
And Donald Thrum HAS fucked things up…