Impeachment Fallout: DNC Attempts to Keep Joe Biden Alive, Sink Bernie Sanders

The so-called “Resistance” to Donald Trump within the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has reached a new low in its effort to impeach the current president. The DNC has seized on Trump’s telephone conversation with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an impeachment investigation that implicates Joe Biden. Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign has already been struggling due to questions about the former Senator and Vice President’s cognitive decline, not to mention his long record of political service to Wall Street and the mass incarceration state. The impeachment inquiry adds Biden’s relationship to the Ukraine to the mix of questions about his electability. While Trump may have fallen into one political trap, the orange billionaire has set a trap of his own when he involved Biden in the conversation. That the impeachment effort was always going to involve Biden directly has forced the Democratic Party into a rather difficult bind.

The impeachment inquiry exposes the Democratic Party’s dual agenda of keeping Biden alive while killing Bernie Sanders’ New Deal “democratic socialism.” Biden is at the center of the impeachment saga, yet the entire Democratic Party establishment has vowed to protect him from scrutiny. Prominent Democratic Party officials such as Ted Lieu have sworn that Biden’s corporate dealings in Ukraine have been thoroughly investigated and deemed free of corruption. Corporate media outlets such as The New Yorker have repeatedly claimed that Biden is the victim of a conspiracy theory. Even 2020 Democratic Party primary candidates such as Elizabeth Warren have defended Biden by demanding that the impeachment inquiry remain as narrow as possible and focus only on Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president.

The message is clear. Biden can do no wrong. Trump can do no right. Trump indeed stepped into hot water by not involving the Justice Department first in his crusade to expose Biden’s wrongdoings in Ukraine. But the fact remains that the possibility of Trump being convicted and removed from office from the impeachment process are little to none, regardless of what one thinks of the 45^th president of the United States. Trump certainly isn’t celebrating the fact that he is the center of an impeachment scandal, but he isn’t going to bow down to the Democratic Party, either. Trump possesses a strong Republican majority in the Senate. He will no doubt use the impeachment predicament for his own gain. That spells doom for Joe Biden.

While Trump is opposed on the basis that he is some anomalous problem and right-wing demagogue, Biden’s entire career reflects “business as usual” in Washington. Biden’s son did rake in $850,000 while on the board of the Ukrainian gas corporation, Barisma. Joe Biden did threaten to withhold one billion dollars of aid from right-wing former president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko if he didn’t fire the very prosecutor who had conducted an “inconclusive” investigation into Burisma just a year prior. And Joe Biden is very much responsible for the miserable conditions in Ukraine. The Obama-led coup in Ukraine was the product of decades worth of NGO-backed “color revolution” schemes. Biden and Obama continued to provide direct support to the neo-Nazi groups that made up the bulk of the “Maidan Revolution” well after the coup was complete. Contrary to the anti-Russian predilections of the Democratic Party, the ongoing civil war in Ukraine is principally Biden and Obama’s responsibility.

The DNC hopes to keep Biden alive in the 2020 race long enough to ensure that Bernie Sanders’ democratic socialist agenda is dead before the end of the Democratic primary. Trump’s battle with impeachment comes as the Democratic Party primary has turned into a three-person race between Biden, Sanders, and Warren. Sanders raised 25.3 million dollars in the last fundraising cycle, one million more than Warren and ten million more than Biden. Biden’s stock has taken a tumble and is likely to keep falling in the wake of the impeachment investigation. The Democratic Party has opted to ignore Biden’s crimes and instead focus its efforts on sinking Bernie Sanders’ momentum.

In the week following the launch of impeachment proceedings, the ruling class received a boost to its anti-Bernie agenda when the Vermont Senator experienced chest pain and required two stents to relieve a clogged artery. Establishment pundits immediately speculated about Sanders’ health and subtly advocated for him to drop out of the race. Yet while Sanders experienced a minor health complication that most individuals recover from quite well, not one pundit in the corporate media advocated for Biden to drop out of the race based on any one of his numerous campaign mishaps. It is all too clear that the ruling class is not concerned with the wellbeing of the candidates, but rather the health of the unjust and oppressive system that U.S. presidents are charged with governing.

Joe Biden has a long history of safeguarding the white supremacist and profiteering interests of the rich. Biden helped draft several monumental crime bills in the United States, including the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act and the infamous Crime Bill of 1994. These pieces of federal legislation greatly contributed to the massive increase in the U.S. prison population, an increase which mainly affected Black American men who were incessantly labeled “super predators” and other dehumanizing tropes over the course of the 80s and 90s. Thanks in part to Biden’s “tough on crime” past, the U.S. currently holds five percent of the world’s population but twenty-five percent of its prisoners. Furthermore, evidence suggests that Biden would act as a deregulator-in-chief should he somehow make it to the Oval Office. Biden helped make the banks rich by voting to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act and spent much of his early career fighting to bar workers from the right to file bankruptcy on their student loan and other debts. Biden is also well-known for being a top recipient of Israeli patronage and has been a loyal friend to the U.S.’ project of endless war around the world.

In other words, the DNC has much to protect when it comes to Biden’s image. Sanders, on the other hand, doesn’t rely on elite patronage and thus represents a threat to the ruling elite. The Sanders campaign receives much of its support from Wal-Mart and Amazon workers. These workers are the victims of capitalist accumulation and must thus be silenced on the political stage. The DNC agenda to kill Sanders and protect Biden is becoming more vicious as the 2020 campaign moves into its more advanced stages. Democratic Party elites hope that impeachment will take the edge off the social democratic wishes of the masses and neutralize Donald Trump at the same time. Sanders’ minor heart complications only provided more cannon fodder for New York Times editor Sydney Ember and the rest of the corporate media to write him off as nothing but a nuisance whose time is up.

There is a high likelihood that the DNC agenda to protect Biden and sink Sanders’ presidential aspirations will backfire. That is, if one believes that the DNC is beholden to anyone except its corporate donors. The DNC would much rather protect Biden’s corruption and lose to Trump then allow Sanders and his legion of small donors to have a fair shot at the nomination. Wall Street understands quite well that Biden is on their team. Wall Street also knows full well that Sanders’ overall agenda arouses workers to clamor for dignity and a better life. With Biden, accountability is not an issue because no one expects a life-long servant of the rich to provide anything tangible to workers. With Sanders in the White House, millions of ordinary workers would expect Washington be held accountable for meeting their needs for the first time in decades.

Impeachment provides a time-consuming distraction from the pressing problems facing workers in the United States and around the world. The DNC-led effort to impeach Trump pollutes the air with Russiagate-like talking points about Trump’s so-called “unpatriotic” and unlawful behavior. The charade also places Biden’s already struggling 2020 campaign on life support. Still, the DNC views Biden as the most credible servant of military and corporate power. That’s why the Democratic Party is pitifully shielding Joe Biden from political folly while simultaneously putting in overtime to sink Bernie Sanders.

*(Featured image credit (basic image): PBS NewsHour/ YouTube)

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