Plan B From Outer Space

Since flattery and cajolery and insipid appeals to patriotism haven't convinced Joe Biden to just go away, Democratic Party bigwigs have now advanced to their idea of a Plan B. 

They're proposing, with less than two months before their nominating convention, to put the gloss of democracy on a really cool alternate selection process.

Party boss James Clyburn of South Carolina is calling it a "lightning primary" an idea which veteran party operative James Carville took up with a column in Monday's New York Times.

Since time is so short and Donald Trump is Enemy Number One, you  didn't actually expect a real primary, where ordinary slobs are actually permitted to vote, did you?

On the contrary. The new version of primary is when former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama get to anoint an octet of worthy Biden replacements to appear at a quartet of town halls on various worthy corporate-sponsored cable channels. Clinton and Obama would be the "facilitators" of these events. To be democratic about it, they  would consult with the nation's twenty-odd Democratic governors to arrive at the final cut of contenders. The actual voting would be done by the pre-selected party delegates after discussions both public and private.

Carville wiggles out of the party's Kamala dilemma by stressing that yes, of course the current vice president would be included among the lucky eight. What more perfect way to get rid of her without appearing to be racist and sexist?

For that matter, what more perfect way of getting rid of Joe Biden? First, they gave him a big premature group hug of an endorsement, thus blocking any challengers. Then, when it is too late to allow real democracy back into the mix, they encouraged a premature debate with Donald Trump. When Joe's ballyhooed knockout punch failed,  they acted all shocked and chagrined that the old geezer had gone senile on them.

Elder abuse is not just in the purview of Jill and Hunter Biden, not by a long stretch. And not only that: the old geezer turns out to be such a mean, cornered, snapping wolverine of a geezer that he's turning into a Donald Trump clone himself, what with bragging in one interview that since he rules the whole world, he alone can defeat his strongman brother under the demagogic skin.

Carville's essay, meanwhile, is nothing if not disingenuous. In the colorful Cajun-speak that this veteran of Clintonism he is known for, the latest item on the party's tasting menu reeks of a nest of bloated rats overdosing on their own swamp gas.

"We’re going to nominate a new ticket in a highly democratic and novel way," the essay wheezily boasts. "Not in the backrooms of Washington, D.C., or Chicago."

Town halls — high-stakes job interviews for the toughest job in the world — would surely attract television and cable partners and generate record numbers of viewers. Think the Super Bowl with Taylor Swift in the stands. The young, the old and everyone in between will tune in to see history being made in real time.

That's quite a stretch, even for a moribund party that still thinks that the show, the spectacle and the "story-telling" are all that the electorate wants or needs. There will be zero discussion from them on such niceties as federal rent control legislation, single payer health insurance, Supreme Court term limits, disease abd oanemic control and climate legislation. Blind allegiance to war and genocide are definite musts, though.

Of course, their contrived emergency timetable also  means that some people will just have to be disgruntled about the "hard choices" which must be made on behalf of Pragmatism. Cue the neoliberal thought collective!

Town halls will give Americans a fresh look at Ms. Harris and introduce them to our deep bench of smart, dynamic, tested leaders. In addition, Democratic delegates will get to further grill and stress-test these leaders in public and private meetings before a formal vote of all the delegates at the Democratic convention.

And naturally, Carville hastens to add, "we've got some folks at the fringes, God love 'em" who will not be invited to the town halls. He was too chickenshit to mention that names Jill Stein, Cornel West and probably Bernie Sanders even though he has remained silent about his good friend Joe Biden. 

 This nifty selection process will, if it comes to fruition,  be a variation on the 2020 primary theme, when Selector Barack Obama convinced all the contenders trailing Bernie to drop out en masse. Elizabeth Warren stayed in so as to bleed progressive votes away from Bernie. And thus was Joe Biden crowned. The pandemic and lockdown were just the frosting on the cake for the Party.

Carville's parting shot in his op-ed was to give a shout-out to "my friend Rahm Emanuel" who is credited with inventing the neoliberal slogan "never let a serious crisis go to waste.," even though Winston Churchill probably said it first.

As Naomi Klein outlined their method in "Disaster Capitalism," it matters not whether the crisis is manufactured by the very destructive culprits who claim to want to put it all back together again.

We've seen this horror movie too many times before to get scared by i, let alone take their script seriously. It'd be laughable, were not the United States of America and Europe (a/k/a NATO) not in Washington this week plotting their insane march to World War III.

Needless to say, there will be no peace candidates on the Democratic stage any time soon. Just imagine Taylor Swift in the stands, and your troubles will magically pack themselves away in the old kit bag.