There have been calls from the Democratic Establishment and various news pundits for Biden to drop out of the presidential race. The reason they give for casting doubt on Biden is his seeming inability to think clearly and express his thoughts when under pressure. They say this has resulted the loss of donor confidence and therefore, the loss of donations.
The establishment’s criticism is fairly new. It differs from the public’s criticism. Many voters criticize Biden’s foreign policy in Gaza. He has lost their support because he seems unable or unwilling to stop the ongoing genocide.
First, those of us who think Biden should not drop out need to look closely at the people who are making this call. Second, we need to reexamine the assumption that Biden could have stopped the Gaza genocide.
Third, I’m not forgetting the concerns that Biden isn’t up to the task physically. I believe he is. I hope his performance so far is partly the result of bad advice and preparation before the debate. He has shown promise in his first term, as I will recount in this article. So, if he wants to stay in, that’s what he should do.
First Defense of Biden: Comparing Biden and Trump
It’s not hard to compare Biden’s approach to Trump’s approach. This should be the first and most obvious step in Biden’s defense. What we are getting instead is a long list of Democrats who have called for Biden to drop out. The New York Times published a long list of them. However, I will limit my comments to the members of the Democratic Establishment who have been telling Biden to give up.
Biden’s Establishment Critics
The most influential member of this club is Barack Obama. In case anyone has forgotten, Obama was instrumental in putting Biden in office and driving Bernie out of the race. The fact that he would try to control his chosen candidate at this late date is astonishing. Obama is also the guy who sold us out to the banks during the Great Recession.
Another member of the establishment, Hillary Clinton, has not yet backed Bided in this fight. (She has not called for Biden to quit either.) Progressives have a history with Hillary Clinton. They haven’t forgotten that she spent two election cycles ruining Bernie’s chances. And that’s not the half of it.
When Bill Clinton was in office, he signed NAFTA into law, destroying many manufacturing concerns and the cities that depended on them. In addition, Hillary worked on the campaign of right-wing Barry Goldwater. Both the signing of NAFTA and support for Barry Goldwater have right-wing connotations. One might conclude that Biden’s progressive record makes the Clintons nervous.
Biden’s Accomplishments in Perspective
According to Robert Reich, the Biden Administration has done more than any other president in the last 50 years to change the structure of power in America. Trump, on the other hand, takes all the power to himself. He surrounds himself with people who support him and lie for him no matter what he does or says. And it is no longer a surprise to anyone when no one resists him. Republicans tend to become more like Trump under pressure; and the media behaves in the same way. My question is, do we understand what we’d be giving up and what we’d be getting if Biden drops out?
The Importance of Being Incumbent
One of Biden’s strengths against Trump–perhaps his most important strength–is that he’s an incumbent president. History shows that an incumbent president has a stronger position than someone who has never been president.
More importantly, Biden has already beat Trump once.
Last but not least, Trump has his own drawbacks. His supporters’ doubts about stability of a Trump Administration are sure to grow as his campaign progresses.
Project 2025: Donald Trump’s Albatross
Trump has recently denied knowing anything about Project 2025. But he does know about it. His own people created it. That will be an albatross around his neck as the campaign wears on.
We also shouldn’t forget that a large number of Republicans already prefer Biden to Trump.
A Few of Biden’s Legislative Accomplishments: Manufacturing, Supply Chains, and Jobs
Thanks to the President’s efforts, companies have announced nearly $300 billion in manufacturing investments in the United States. They are also bringing back supply chains from overseas. This process is creating good-paying jobs and union jobs, including jobs that don’t require a four-year degree.
Infrastructure
President Biden has worked across the isle to pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law–an investment in our nation’s infrastructure. We are rebuilding roads, bridges, ports, and airports. We’re upgrading public transit and rail systems. We’re replacing lead pipes to provide clean water, cleaning up pollution, and providing affordable high-speed internet to every family.
Veterans Services
Biden also signed into law the PACT Act – the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxic exposed veterans in more than 30 years.
Gun Safety
His administration passed the first major piece of gun safety legislation in three decades – The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
Reproductive Rights
President Biden and Vice President Harris have also taken action to defend reproductive rights. Biden has signed Executive Orders to protect access to reproductive health care, including abortion and contraception, and he has safeguarded patient privacy. He has made it clear that he will fight any attack by a state or local official who attempts to interfere with women exercising their constitutional right to travel out of state for medical care.
Clean Energy and the Protection of Land and Water
The President has also taken executive action and signed legislation to develop clean energy at home, accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles, and reduce pollution that endangers communities. And he has protected more lands and waters in his first year than any President since John F. Kennedy.
Biden’s Foreign Policy
Now it’s time to discuss the highly disturbing back-story of the Gaza genocide. I support the Palestinians, and I’m horrified about what’s been happening to them. In my opinion, the only thing that comes close to excusing President Biden for his part in the Gaza debacle is a sense of perspective centering around geopolitics.
The geopolitics of Israel is not a ‘good’ or ‘true’ geopolitics, as defined by Edmund Aloysius Walsh in his book Total Power: A Footnote to History.1 What we see taking place in Gaza are the geopolitics of Herzlian Zionism. The Nazis used this geopolitics as well.
Karl Haushofer Meets Edmund Walsh at Nuremberg
After the Allies’ victory in World War II, Edmund Walsh served as Consultant to the U.S. Chief of Counsel Robert H. Jackson at the Nuremberg Trials. One of his duties was to interrogate retired Imperial German Army General and former University of Munich professor Karl Haushofer. They were trying to determine if Haushofer’s academic philosophy of Geopolitik helped justify crimes against peace and the Holocaust.
Walsh provides a timeline of the teachings that inspired Karl Haushofer. However, he begins by citing examples of what he considers to be true geopolitics.
A Brief Timeline of Geopolitics
Aristotle said geography was a prime consideration but not the only one. His Politics II, III, and VII talked about climate, soil, topography and the environment and geography being important in the life of a state.
Strabo, the Greek geographer (who wrote from 63 B.C. to A.D. 21) was probably the first conscious geopolitician.
In the Middle Ages, Albertus Magnus and Montesquieu said it was the ‘esprit des Lois’ of factors that give character to legal institution of a civilization.
Kant said geography was the basis of history. He added that it is susceptible of exaggeration, but persuasive.
The geopolitics of Baron Dietrich Heinrich von Bulow alarmed the monarchs of Europe. For that reason, the Russian Czar put him in a dungeon at Riga, where he ‘conveniently’ died. As an example of his method, Von Bulow had theoretically divided continental Europe into 12 viable states.
In 1942, Professor Renner of Columbia University modified von Bulow’s project somewhat. He thought Europe would only allow nine states.
Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 for the sake of one key city and an open port.
The Russian historian V. O. Kluchevsky’s Course of Russian History had a geopolitical point of view.
Steward’s purchase of Alaska in 1867 and his interest in Greenland were evidence of politico-geographic acumen.
Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History was a geopolitical monograph.
Theodore Roosevelt had a practical understanding as applied to the Isthmus of Panama.
In 1907, Homer Lea predicted the Japanese attack on the Philippines, which took place in 1941.
According to Walsh, the first stages in the corruption of pure geographical knowledge began with Karl Ritter (1779-1859). He wanted to use geopolitics to achieve political objectives of imperialistic governments. The foundational heresy was the organic conception of the states. This led to the irrational and one-sided policies of Germany during the Nazi Regime (Walsh p. 39).
Walsh’s Efforts to Discredit German Geopolitics
Walsh wrote about his interviews with Karl Haushofer that took place during the Nuremberg Trials. After they had discussed Haushofer’s contribution to the policies of Nazi German and Japan, Walsh suggested that Haushofer could redeem his record by helping to discredit German geopolitics. Haushofer agreed. But this did nothing to address the use of similar ideas in Israel.
The Geopolitics of Herzlian Zionism in Europe
Great Britain in Palestine had already made use of these ideas. In fact, the geopolitical aspect of Herzlian Zionism in Europe involved several major empires.
The British Empire sponsored the political project of Zionism at least from the early 1800s; the Russian Empire was the host to some five million Jews at the time; the Austro-Hungarian and German empires provided the ground for much of the cultural debate about Zionism (Pinsker’s Auto-Emancipation and Herzl’s The Jewish State were first pubished in German); and the Ottoman Empire was the sovereign of the Arab territory of Palestine. A political geography critique seems…appropriate because the rise of Herzlian Zionism was concomitant with the rise of many other politial geography and geopolitical ideas stemming from social and spatial Darwinism as expressed in Rudolph Kjellen and Friedrich Ratzel’s lebensraum, Karl Haushofer’s geopolitik, and Halford Mackinder’s heartland doctrine.
Geopolitical Genesis p. 3
Sir Halford Mackinder (1861 – 1947) was the pivot of Haushofer’s indoctrination. However, all of these theorists contributed to Haushofer’s work in Germany.
Sir Halford Mackinder’s World Island of the Earth
Mackinder had warned since 1904 that the power that controlled Eurasia could one day rule the world. The basic Mackinder doctrine was that there are three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa. These three made up the great central unit of land mass, or the world island of the earth. The Western Hemisphere, including Australia, etc. are minor land units supplemental to the central unit. He suggested the world island would measure 2,500 miles by 2,500 miles, and could be the seat of world power. And, inevitably, Halford also spoke of the strategic position of Jerusalem.
Mackinder considered Palestine a geostrategic region at the center of his Geographical Pivot of History. The following is a summary of the progression of these ideas as presented by Edmund Walsh.
Friedrich Ratzel’s Organic Theory of the State
Friedrich Ratzel (1844 – 1904) taught that states might be subject to the natural processes of growth and decay. A state’s capacity for expansion determines its survival or culture. Space is not only the vehicle of power; it is power.
Rudolph Kjellen on the Geopolitical Rivalry Between Germany and England
Rudolph Kjellen (1864 – 1922) developed Ratzel’s idea. He said conflict was a geopolitical consequence of growing rivalry between Germany and England. Kjellen coined the word, geopolitics.
James Fairgrieve’s ‘Heartland‘
James Fairgrieve (1870 – 1953) contributed the term ‘Heartland’.
Karl Haushofer’s Indoctrination of the German People
Karl Haushofer (1869 – 1946) borrowed from all of the foregoing works. After WWI he strove to reeducate Germans to think in terms of continents. In his opinion, “Germans have been too much under the influence of lex lata (the law as it exists).” Haushofer’s influence on his countrymen and women was far-reaching and long-lasting. For twenty years, he fantacized the people of Germany by the sacred words Lebensraum and Autarchy. They imagined an immense and viral continental power rendered impregnable against the sea power of England, who was now decrepit. In this way, they were led to expect a pan-regionalism in Central Europe with Germany the central fortress of political and economic influence. And demands for a rectification of frontiers were based on ponderous arguments from anthropology, ethnology and invocations of Nietzsche’s superman.
The Result: The Poisoning of the Global Worldview
It gradually becomes clear that we’re not just talking about a few influential men who developed these ideas and made war. Apparently, ideology can poison the worldview of entire peoples. And, in spite of the efforts of Walsh and many other capable men, the poisoning did not cease at the end of World War II.
Enter the Self-Proclaimed Enemies of the United States
An impressive number of very determined and energetic people refused to accept Germany’s defeat in World War II. For them, that’s all World War II was–a defeat. And it was temporary. These people never give up. This is what the United States has been dealing with since 1945.
People in the United States and Europe criticized the Nuremberg process.2 It’s not surprising that in the intervening years, the U.S. has often strayed off track. Criticism of the Nuremberg Trials progressed to the re-militarization of Germany as a bulwark against Communism. The demands of the U.S. military combined with efforts of certain individuals and organizations managed to ruin the war crimes process.
What Does This Say About the 2024 Election?
World War II did not put class rivalries to rest. Since that time, a corrupted form of geopolitics has been an obstacle to peace. Modern Palestine is now at the center of the storm. We should expect President Biden to work for peace in Palestine, but that would require a recovery of ‘true’ geopolitics. Currently, Biden’s seeming inability to protect the Palestinians is the result of a corrupt global consensus. This is not a reason to vote for some other American.