With Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election should George Clooney be the ire of the Democratic Party and take blame for the defeat?
On June 11, President Joe Biden clinched the 2024 Democratic nomination but little did anyone know at the time that he would soon be talked into stepping down. Despite a concerning job approval rating of under 40%, Democrats remained optimistic. After all, Obama’s job approval rating was 38% in 2011 but he was still re-elected in 2012.
Biden, a very pro-union president, easily won the endorsement of United Steelworkers back in March but union members in Pennsylvania decided to vote for Trump once Biden dropped out. Hence, Bernie Sanders’ recent comments suggesting the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class.
In 2020, Biden won Michigan and Pennsylvania due to union support. This is partly why Philadelphia Democratic Chairman Bob Brady recently said Biden would have been re-elected if he were the nominee.
The presidential debate didn’t help. The general reaction was that Biden did not perform well. George Clooney, a darling of the Democratic Party despite his primary residence being in France, wasn’t happy. So, he decided to write an op-ed to be published in the New York Times.
One month earlier, Clooney had helped raise funds for Biden’s campaign but panicked when he observed that Biden wasn’t the same as he was before. Clooney withdrew his support for Biden, explaining, “It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
The most scathing statement in his editorial simply reads, “We are not going to win in November with this president.” Clooney’s claim was based on Biden’s health, but Biden defeated Trump in 2020 despite voter concerns about his health.
In 2024, Biden was the best option to defeat Trump. How can one think that changing the presidential nominee two months before the election would somehow result in a victory? This also showed Democrats that their respective votes in the primary were irrelevant.
Clooney didn’t consider that Trump’s chances of winning would greatly increase if the Dems changed the nominee. They had the incumbent president yet honestly believed someone else had a better chance despite initially not even knowing who that someone else was.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison had consistently supported Biden’s run for re-election but Clooney’s letter couldn’t be ignored. Suddenly, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and other big names within the party expressed similar thoughts. The worst part was that Clooney’s letter would cause damage even if Biden did run.
Did George Clooney overreact? Who is he to determine whether or not the president is fit for the job? Perhaps he thought his opinion carried such weight because he played a doctor on TV. Perhaps he thought he could be a hero because he played Batman. Perhaps he let it all go to his head and believed he knew better than everyone else simply because he was a Hollywood star.
He doesn’t.
If Biden had been reelected and, for example, his health significantly declined in 2025 then he could’ve reasonably been considered unfit for office and replaced by Kamala Harris.
Ironically, it was Harris who became the nominee. Why did the DNC believe she had to run for president when she simply would’ve become president if Biden’s supposed ailing health failed him? I won’t hold my breath for Clooney’s op-ed apology.
Published: Nov 8, 2024 03:28 pm