Oh No Joe Biden VOTED

Yes, they're serious with this shit.

President Joe Biden was having a pretty good start to the midterm election season, what with signing historic legislation on climate, healthcare, guns, US computer chip manufacturing, and help for veterans harmed by burn pits . The economy continues to create new jobs, gas prices are declining, and inflation is no longer racing upward (although it did go up yesterday and the markets freaked out). Plus there's all the momentum from women and men who are very pissed about the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade , and on top of that, Lindsey Graham proposing a national ban on abortion . Oh, but then Biden had to go and throw away all that goodwill by voting in an election . That monster. 

The tone of the "coverage" was set by Bloomberg White House correspondent Jennifer Jacobs, who listed all the extravagances lavished upon Biden — in the form of everything that's completely normal when a US president goes anyfuckingwhere.

“Biden employed two motorcades, local police protection and the Boeing 757 version of Air Force One to fly from DC to Delaware vote in an election with no high-profile races on the ballot, @Jordanfabian and @jendeben report https: //t.co/OwotM5qFZW”

— Jennifer Jacobs (@Jennifer Jacobs) 1663113114 

Biden employed two motorcades, local police protection and the Boeing 757 version of Air Force One to fly from DC to Delaware vote in an election with no high-profile races on the ballot, @Jordanfabianand @jendeben report

Incidentally, in addition to trying to suggest there's something scandalous about the ordinary level of protection provided for presidents, Jacobs got the significance of the election wrong, too: The primary involved a race for state auditor that was legitimately high stakes, since the Democratic incumbent, Kathy McGuiness, was convicted on misdemeanor criminal corruption charges in July and was awaiting sentencing. Her opponent, Lydia York, ended up winning the primary handily with 69 percent of the vote, and if she wins, will become the first Black woman to serve in that office.

Oh noes, Biden went to Delaware just to vote in an important election that had a lopsided victory for the challenger, so he should have stayed home!

And now big media outlets are falling all over themselves to turn a short flight — in a JET AIRCRAFT! — from DC to Wilmington, Delaware — WITH SECRET SERVICE PROTECTION! And LOCAL POLICE TOO! — into some sort of massive gaffe, because couldn't Biden have requested an absentee ballot, or couldn't he have voted early while he was in Delaware for the weekend, and just who is this man who thinks he can just imperiously up and fly somewhere — in a JET!!! — for something so trivial as voting in a primary election?

 Here's an extremely stupid tweet from the New York Times, which of course is joining in the dumb piling-on:  

“President Biden voted in the Delaware primary election on Tuesday. The process involved a hasty announcement to the press, multiple motorcades and two jet flights. https: //t.co/VnrmVmUhiY”

— The New York Times (@The New York Times) 1663153215 

We're especially impressed by the attempts to make the trip seem sexcessive:  multiple motorcades (like to the airport and back in both cities) and two jet flights, because apparently going to Delaware might have been tolerable, but returning? UNPRECEDENTED LUXURY! And that announcement — my god, it was hasty!! How is this man allowed access to the nuclear codes if he's so flighty?

Yes, kids, it's all very silly. And sure, voting by mail might have been preferable, but as an American citizen, Joe Biden gets to vote, even if the election isn't important enough for some reporters. As for the suggestion that Biden is a TOTAL HYPOCRITE on climate, we'd point out that, as jets go, the twin-engined 757 is a pretty efficient plane compared to the big four-engined 747, and a trip from DC to Delaware in the smaller jet — for voting! — takes just a tiny fraction of the fuel and expense of a single round trip fromEdwardsAndrews Air Force Base to Florida for a single weekend golf trip (as of August 2020, Trump had made 134 trips to Mar-a-Lago, and damned if we're going to bother looking for a more definitive number). As more than one person has pointed out on Twitter, a whole bunch of the pretended outrage seems to depend on people having no idea how close Delaware is to DC.

We're seeing tweets from rightwingers claiming that Biden's trip to Delaware cost as much as $177,000 — we suspect that's exaggerated, and we have no idea where they're getting that number — which even if accurate , pales in comparison to a 2019 GAO report that found that four trips to Mar-a-Lago early in the Trump presidency cost an average of $3.4 million each, although other, lower, estimates put the cost at a million dollars per trip.

In other news, prepare to hear about this until November or the heat death of the universe, Jesus fucking Christ this is a stupid planet, then end.

[ Bloomberg / NYT / NPR / Image generated by DreamStudio Lite AI ]

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