If you’re one of the millions of Americans wondering how the country ended up stuck between a two-time convicted felon and an increasingly fragile incumbent president, Ray Dalio can sympathize.
The billionaire founder of Bridgewater, the world’s largest financial group fourth largest hedge fundsaid the sad reality is that he, like about half the country, wished there was a realistic alternative to Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
“I feel like I’m faced with a choice between a strong, unethical, almost fascist Republican Party and a fragile, lying, enigmatic Democratic Party,” he wrote in a statement. column For Time he simultaneously published on LinkedIn“As things stand, there is no good presidential candidate or good party to choose from.”
There are a lot of very interesting and important things happening, which make me think and write more. My latest article deals with the latest developments affecting the domestic political order.
The article examines issues related to the selection of members of the Democratic Party…
— Ray Dalio (@RayDalio) July 9, 2024
The speculator, who handed over the reins in Bridgewater in 2022, Fortune CEO Alan Murray told before the first Iowa primary that he was already fearing a possible revenge Trump vs. Biden.
Since Dalio wrote that he respected and liked Biden, he instead turned his sights on leading Democrats who were seeking to hide from the American public the president’s “state of weakness and rapid decline.”
By pretending that the 82-year-old had the constitution to face another four years of the most demanding and important work possible when it was clear that the emperor had no clothes, the party undermined confidence.
“This is obviously ridiculous and an insult to people’s intelligence,” Dalio wrote, adding that claims that Biden could still function most hours of the day would only lead to a “terrible loss of confidence in his honesty and judgment.”
“I think Donald Trump is on track to win this election. And maybe even win it handily and take the Senate and the House of Representatives with him,” Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet told me in a widely publicized interview. “I think we could lose everything, and that’s mind-boggling to me.” pic.twitter.com/k0M97PntVA
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) July 10, 2024
Major Democratic Donorsincluding the Disney heiress Abigail Disney, reported their reluctance to finance his re-election campaign further, comparing Biden to a elderly parent whose car keys should be confiscated.
“Four months left” to avoid a wave of roundups in November
On Tuesday, Michael Bennet became the first Democratic senator to State publicly that Biden was likely to lose to his opponent in November.
Speaking to CNN, the Colorado lawmaker went even further, saying the president’s continued candidacy could trigger a landslide victory for Trump’s party and a sweep of the House, Senate and presidency.
“We have four months to figure out how we’re going to save the country from Donald Trump,” he told the cable news network. “The stakes couldn’t be higher.”
In a sign of the conflict within the party, Bennet acknowledged that he spoke only after his comments, made privately to his peers, had been leaked to the press.
In Dalio’s column, the Bridgewater founder concluded that Democrats now have only three options moving forward, none of them particularly appealing.
.@jonstewart explains where concerns about Biden’s (and Trump’s) performance might come from…with a chart! pic.twitter.com/qY33Bd5XLK
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) July 9, 2024
They could either rally behind Biden in the hopes of handing him a victory and then tackling the issue (“bait and switch”), hand the nomination to Vice President Kamala Harris on a silver platter and toss her into the race (“coronation”), or hold a shortened election between the leading contenders to take Biden’s place (“mini-primary”).
While the latter option is Dalio’s preferred one, since it would give Americans a choice about who should lead the election, he acknowledged that it would likely hurt their chances of winning in November.
“I still hope that honest, intelligent, strong, and ideally moderate and bipartisan Democrats (or Republicans) will show up,” he wrote.
By then, it appears that neither Trump nor Biden will deserve his vote – or his donation checks.
