Status Joe For the Status Quo

It's official. Joe Biden has finally repurposed his wandering hands into throwing his hat into the presidential ring for what is about the seventh lucky charming time in his career. Let the party-splitting begin in earnest!

The campaign motto I have assigned to him ("Status Joe For the Status Quo") is, I admit, a bit misleading. It might be more proper for Uncle Joe to roar "Status Joe For the Status Quo-Ante!" given that he wants to return us to the Golden Age of Obama. On third thought, Uncle Joe crowing for Ante might remind voters what a groper and sniffer of women and girls he is - and that will never do in this age of #MeToo.

Biden has such a long sordid history of corruption and cruelty that it would take hours to copy and paste all the lists that have thus far been compiled. For a crash course in his depravity, you should read Norman Solomon's excellent synopsis over at Truthdig, which in its own turn, links to several other excellent synopses of Biden's awfulness.

It'll be interesting to see how his primary opponents treat him, given his exalted Status. If they are polite and deferential, if only to show that they are not as mean and petty as Trump,  then beware - especially if it comes from candidates who've conveniently latched on to the progressive agenda.

Even Trump is not acting as overtly nasty as he could be, only taunting Biden as "Sleepy Joe" in a morning tweet. This actually renders Biden hapless and harmless, which is exactly the opposite of the truth about him.

Forget about the Democratic Party dividing itself in two. I think it should be at least a three-way division. A  five or six-way division would be even better, because then collapsing under its own corrupt weight would come sooner rather than later.

 So far, we can probably divide the several dozen or so candidates among those who will shamelessly grovel before the former V.P.;  those who mildly disparage his political history without engaging in the "politics of personal destruction"; and those who take off the gloves and immediately start punching him in his many vulnerable spots. I predict that "moderates" like John Hickenlooper and Pete Buttigieg will be in the first group, Bernie Sanders in the second,  and Elizabeth Warren in the last. She has never been shy about expressing her withering disdain for Uncle Joe, largely because of his authorship of bankruptcy reform legislation. Bernie, on the other hand, is loath to personally attack anybody, except maybe Trump.

There is also a fourth group, one that is thus far occupied only by former President Barack Obama. Cautious and pragmatic as always, he has as much as endorsed Biden without being "seen" to endorse him. To make his choice of Biden known, he used a paid spokeswoman to praise Uncle Joe, sending the additional subtle message that the enlightened women in Obama's orbit are far from disgusted by Biden's roaming hands and overactive nostrils.

“President Obama has long said that selecting Joe Biden as his running mate in 2008 was one of the best decisions he ever made,” Obama spokeswoman Katie Hill said. “He relied on the vice president’s knowledge, insight and judgment throughout both campaigns and the entire presidency. The two forged a special bond over the last 10 years and remain close today.”

Out of sycophantic duty, Politico refers to this glowing endorsement as "cryptic," allowing Obama to be seen as not interfering in the race. O.K. then.

It'll also be interesting to see how Biden's claims to be Obama's heir play out. It's as if septuagenarian Prince Charles suddenly announced he was running for King as his more popular son William's heir, rather than Mum's. It's kind of a back-assward approach, if you ask me.

Then again, I am probably being unfair. Because OBiden is not a father-son relationship, or a son-father relationship. What they're really marketing is a Bro-Bro relationship.

When you're a Status Bro, you can rise above groping women. You can show your good intentions by gripping, and being gripped by, a fellow Status Bro who has the added benefit of having melted the hearts and minds of millions of liberals on both coasts. Regaling us with eight whole years' worth of professional, glitzy Bro-marketing also took unwanted attention away from such less appetizing macho behavior as bombing eight countries, drone murders of civilians, and their secret coddling of the Bankster Bros and Corporate Person-Bros.

This is not to say that their Special Relationship was all fun and games and Bro-cheer. OBiden could be serious when the occasion demanded it. Though sitting right next to one another, they very carefully refrained from jokes and PDAs during the private video-streamed execution of Osama bin Laden.

If it had been Trump sitting in that room, you can bet your bottom dollar he would have been crassly tweeting about his killing prowess even as the gruesome murder was happening. He probably would have live-streamed it on Facebook and maybe even superimposed his own MAGA hat-wearing head on a Navy SEAL executioner's body. Obama had the good sense to restrict his own involvement to one still photo, showing him dressed in a tasteful casual-chic golf shirt under a windbreaker. Instead of going into all the gory details, he waited many hours before donning suit and tie and maturely giving the Nation a sanitized, if not downright false, version of how "justice" had finally been done. 

That left the Bro-Joe side of the duo free to incessantly and trumpily bellow at re-election campaign rallies: "We killed Bin Laden and General Motors is Alive!" without ever mentioning that the investors in both enterprises got filthy rich while the actual grunts and auto workers got hammered - in wallet, in body, in mind, and in soul.

As Biden intoned today in the video announcement of his "Let's Go With Joe!" campaign:

"We are in the battle for the soul of this nation. I believe history will look back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time. But if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are, and I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”

So I guess impeachment is not gonna happen. Removal of Trump on grounds of obstructing justice would obstruct Uncle Joe from battling aberrant moments. He and his Golden Pitchforks constituency cannot simply stand by and watch Congress perform its sworn Constitutional duty. 

Uncle Joe wants to succeed where Robert Mueller passive-aggressively failed. He wants to advance from mere Status Bro status and market himself as the latest Father of Our Country. 

O.K. then.