Biden Will Lose if He Doesn't Recognize Palestinian Statehood
It's his only route out of this heinous atrocity his State Department has abetted
Axios is out with a new decree from their bosses report from the State Department, highlighting how the remaining people with any dignity left in their body in that God-forsaken building are scrambling to find a suitable exit ramp to stop Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
The idea is actually a good one, because it’s the only way out of this mess that could do the one thing that could actually end this nightmare: give Palestinians a state* (*after the “war” in Gaza, of course). Per Barak Ravid:
Secretary of State Tony Blinken asked the State Department to conduct a review and present policy options on possible U.S. and international recognition of a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza, two U.S. officials briefed on the issue told Axios.
Why it matters: While U.S. officials say there has been no policy change, the fact the State Department is even considering such options signals a shift in thinking within the Biden administration on possible Palestinian statehood recognition, which is highly sensitive both internationally and domestically.
Beyond the immediate Israeli offensive on a captive civilian population, the broader problem has long been one familiar to Americans: a two-tiered racial caste system. It’s not a coincidence that America’s great imperial achievement since WWII looks a lot like America. Just because the Israeli apparatchiks sprinkled throughout American media want to portray history as beginning on October 7th does not make it so. The occupation does not justify the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians—as we cannot ever concede to the rightful slaughter of civilians, lest we concede our basic human dignity—but it does explain it.
Osama bin Laden spoke about Palestine when detailing the reasons behind his attack on New York and Washington. An entire wave of terrorists hit Europe last decade with Palestine as one of their rallying cries. This is the major pain point across so much of the Arab world, as it is the ultimate symbol of the perpetual Western occupation of their lands (I’m a Jew and I very much understand that there are idealistic and religious notions to creating an Israeli state, but I’m also a political scientist and I think you have a small baby brain if you can’t see how Europe and the U.S. forcing the creation of a state on a Middle Eastern peoples land led us to the point—and yes Zionists, I do know that Jews are a Middle Eastern people, that’s why I look at the Palestinians as my brothers and sisters).
A two-state solution used to be the ideal in the age before we abandoned our ideals, and while it is important that the Biden administration is floating this idea through their favored channels, it’s a weak dismaying display of how far we still have to go just to get to where we were.
Trump is the 2024 Favorite
It looks like Joe Biden is going to lose to Donald Trump. And I don’t say this based off of one poll, but I do believe this poll is representative of the broader problem with Joe Biden at the moment (I need to dust off the old all caps button to reach the MSNBC-pilled folks with their heads still stuck in the sand):
NO ONE IS EXCITED TO VOTE FOR THIS 8,000 YEAR OLD DOOFUS AIDING AND ABETTING ONE OF THE MOST HEINOUS CRIMES OF THE 21ST CENTURY
Now on to the bad news. I’ll let Yahoo break the news because they’re the only outlet who cared more about writing an accurate title conveying the most important news from this latest credible poll, and not offending their liberal reading audience’s sensibilities (the New York Post also wrote a very accurate headline but I’m not linking to that shit). I need to drink some hot tea after all that all capsing anyway. Per Brendan Rascius:
In a worrying sign for Democrats, Trump, the likely GOP nominee, is leading Biden in North Carolina, Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania, according to a Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll released on Jan. 31.
These aren’t all exactly narrow margins. Brandon’s losing Arizona 47%-44%, Georgia 49%-41%, Michigan 49%-39%, Pennsylvania 48%-45%, and Wisconsin 49%-44%. The goose looks to be cooked. The fact that l i t e r a l l y n o o n e is saying Kamala’s name or has said her name or even asked where she was or what she has been doing during this entire supposed transitional administration is an indictment of the entire DNC as an institution. I have said this a million times before and I will say it a million times again: the Democrats are primarily a fundraising operation masquerading as a political party. There’s no captain of the ship, folks. We’re all just stuck in our rooms yelling at each other across the hall while the two “captains” lounge up top and increasingly forget how to speak English.
It’s Biden or bust, folks. Honestly, given how consistently popular “generic Democrat” is in polling, actual bust is probably the Democrats best outcome, but that path of thought is a bit uncouth even for my incendiary blogger brain.
He does have real policy achievements. Joe Biden’s domestic policy is who Barack Obama sees when he looks in the mirror (and Obama’s domestic policy is who Mitt Romney sees when he looks in the mirror), and prior to Ron Klain leaving his side and instantly letting the entire place get infested with neocons and braindead Ivy League tryhards, Biden looked to be a really heavy favorite against America’s Top Diva who was sure to make 2024 all about 2020 and annoy the hell out of voters. Biden still had his coalition, and he passed the most ambitious domestic spending agenda in decades and the most ambitions climate agenda to date. Good things were happening.
Now Biden has lost a huge chunk of support from two key constituencies: people who weren’t excited to vote for him but saw him as a competent manager and stopped doing so beginning with his Afghanistan pullout (which deserves a whole blog on its own), and the youthful diverse coalition that showed up at historic rates and pretty much delivered the 2020 election to Joe Biden. He really did reach out to them through his adoption of Bernie and Warren folks into his campaign and administration, and I know I felt like for the first time in my life an establishment Democrat actually would look at the left as a vital constituency. There was a real moment for unity.
And then Hamas attacked and the IDF and Benjamin Netanyahu failed and now the most right-wing government in Israel’s history is conducting a targeted bombing campaign of a captive civilian population. And Joe Biden is supplying the bombs. And young people like myself are repulsed. As of right now I won’t vote for him. If I lived in a state that mattered, I would feel differently, but living in a Bernie state, I can vote my conscience. In 2020 it led me to Biden. In 2024 it will lead me to a write-in.
Unless
Palestine can begin to be made whole.
This is an impossibility because Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF have assassinated entire branches of the Palestinian family tree, but an effort to rebuild a new Palestine must begin and it must begin right now.
The ceasefire is only half of the demand.
Then Palestinians need food. Water. Shelter. Medicine. Then infrastructure. Everything everyone else has and more. That is the only deal that can be made. Any solution that does not stand the Palestinian state on its own two feet with a robust global support network only ensures more war—war which provides the weak Netanyahus of the world with a cover to launder their inadequacy through their atrocities.
It’s a mathematical fact that the difference between Joe Biden winning and losing in 2020 is the youth vote between 2020 and 2016. Right now, polling looks more like 2016 on that front. Add in all the hesitant competence-based voters he’s shed since the Afghanistan pullout, and you have a very weak president. This is not a broad coalition led by an experienced statesman against a reality TV star-turned aspiring autocrat—this is a career bumbling fool bumbling his way through his presidency the moment his babysitter left (Ron Klain 2024!).
I know a lot of Beltway people assume that Gaza is just a “foreign policy” issue, and it will inevitably recede into the background like all other foreign policy issues do, but it’s viewed as a moral issue by the people who really care about it—one the Biden administration abjectly fails. One that can be held up against their incessant assertions of “just imagine how bad it would be under Trump.” I literally cannot.
I don’t believe that Biden can get the youth to vote for him at anywhere near 2020 rates without a Palestinian state at this point. I don’t know what else you could possibly do to even begin to try to make up for this. A state is just the first step of many.
So Joe Biden’s war room, if you’re tracking the Axios talking points distribution and you found your way to my blog, do it. Drag Bibi into a SCIF and show him the CIA’s plans to assassinate him (please—like these don’t exist somewhere) and tell him you’re done fucking around. America is an imperial power and we’re going to start acting like it damnit. Palestine exists and you’re done bombing them and that’s just life now—or it isn’t.
I guarantee you guys will see your poll numbers in Michigan jump. I’ll even tell a pollster or two I’ll vote for you out here in Bernie country.
Or keep supplying bombs to murder children.
And lose to Donald Trump.
Your choice.