### Reader’s Letter to The Guardian, 12th April 2025 ###
Dear Editor,
I read Martin Pengelly’s report on Ron Klain’s revelations (in Chris Whipple’s book) on President Biden’s frailty and the confusion in the run-up to his dropping out of the 2024 campaign (The Guardian, 2. April 2025, link below) with both shock and sorrow.
My heart went out to Mr Biden and I was shocked by the fact that his team had not protected him from his own hubris. For me this is a damning indictment of the Democratic Party who obviously knew of Mr Biden’s condition well in advance but neither discouraged him from standing nor fostered alternatives. Massively irresponsible!
So now that Mr Trump is in, I have been looking back, trying to categorize the parties and define the difference between Trump and Biden/Harris: The landscape no longer slots into simple models of “left” and “right”.
This opaqueness was greatly clarified in an interview with Chris Hedges (link below) in which he states that Democrats are now “corporatist” (i.e. serving that clientele) while the Republicans are “oligarchic” (and disruptive). With them both leaving the working- and the middle- classes out in the wilderness.
For me Mr Hedges’ view dove-tails very neatly with the revelations of Ron Klain: As I see it, the Democrats (and their allies) didn’t care whether their candidate was cognitively compromised. They simply wanted a passive figurehead to front their (lobbyist) agenda.
But this clarification does not at all calm my concerns: It simply confirms that we are stuck between an ugly rock and a hideous hard-place.
PS: The other interesting thing here is that Ron Klain seems to have flipped between high-ranking roles in government (Chief of Staff) and AirBnB (Chief Legal Officer). This helps to confirm that there is a revolving door in operation between the Democrats and “The Corporates”.
Yours,
Alan Mitcham
Link to original article: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/02/biden-ron-klain-trump-debate-prep-book-chris-whipple
Link to interview with Chris Hedges: https://www.aljazeera.com/program/upfront/2025/1/31/democracy-doesnt-exist-in-the-united-states-chris-hedges
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