It’s come to this: choose between an “only I can save you” candidate and an “only I can beat him” incumbent president. It is a choice between two self-serving candidates, one who Christian evangelicals think was sent by God and one who says “only the Lord Almighty himself” can stop him from running. Score: God 2, America 0.
Don’t we, the electorate, deserve better than this?
On the one hand we have the twice impeached Trump (both times acquitted by his Senate acolytes). He is also subject to a ruling that he committed fraud (by NY State, Trump appealing the case), a hush money felony conviction (by the Manhattan D.A., sentencing delayed courtesy of SCOTUS) and a conviction as a defamer and a sexual abuser of E. Jean Carroll (cases now out on appeal). Then there is the Department of Justice’s charge that he committed felonies removing White House documents to Mar-a-Lago (the Trump appointed Judge Aileen Cannon is indefinitely postponing the trial). Add to this the indictment by Fulton County, GA of his participation in a conspiracy to commit Election Subversion (naturally, the case is not expected to begin before the November election). And, finally, perhaps the most serious of all, the Department of Justice’s grand jury indictment of Trump for Election Subversion, his actions culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot (?), insurrection (?) peaceful tourist exploration of the U.S. Capitol building (?) (please fill in one of the choices depending on your political persuasion). This case is now knee-capped by the recent conservative leaning Supreme Court, three of whom were Trump appointed. Those are the challenger’s credentials.
On the other hand, we have President Biden, whose old man shuffle looks very bad but, worse, shows signs of cognitive decline during his presidency culminating in his own suggestion of an early debate (“make my day, man”). Sad. The President essentially is a good man, having moral values that we, who have lived long enough, have seen erode over our lifetimes. Although politics has always been a rough and tumble arena, the old guardrails of acceptable social mores and civility are failing in an iPhone-social-media-consumed world where 240 characters and the Internet equivalent of chain letters pass as thinking.
He has, as his family and handlers insist, done many good things. Bringing us back into the world of nations with some shred of respect might be among the most significant. But Dr. Jill, his wife, is both right and wrong that a poor 90 minute performance should not erase the accomplishments of 3-1/2 years. The legitimate concern is the next 4-1/2 years. And beating the cult of Trump is not an easy task even for a younger, more vigorous candidate as the Electoral College, not the popular vote, decides such elections. The next five months must be filled with intensive campaigning in those swing states. This is going to be an election season which will be ground out, yard by yard. And as the Presidency goes, the makeup of the House and Senate could follow: high stakes, indeed.
That 90 minute debate presented so many opportunities for a more-in-the-moment candidate to simply respond to Trump’s avalanche of invectives, lies, non sequiturs, and his vision of an apocalyptic America. Just a “will you listen to what this man just said?” would have been sufficient. It is a well known rhetorical device to overwhelm the opponent with so much garbage in a short period of time that it is impossible to respond to all. But Biden failed to capitalize on those opportunities and robotically went onto his own bullet points, poorly presented, trailing off into mumbling, painfully allowing Trump, an expert in reality TV to use his logorrhea and body language to eviscerate Biden.
The point is, we all saw the so called “debate” and once seen it can’t be unseen. The same point should be made about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. We all saw Trump urging the crowd on, and, once seen, it can’t be explained away.
To make matters worse, on Friday July 5, Biden agreed to an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC. Presumably this was supposed to show us the new and improved Joe. It only brought out more issues. Early on he was asked the pointed question: “Did you watch the debate afterwards?” First he had that deer in the headlights look, until finally responding “I don’t think I did, no.” Oh, Joe, is the answer really “no” or you already don’t remember? Most chilling though was his insistence that only God could make him drop out of the race, and then to the question of how he would react to losing to Trump he said: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest [sic] job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.” In other words, if we give it the ‘ole college try, that’s good enough? In an election which may decide if the American experiment is over?
He frequently turns to his wife for advice but publicly she is proving not to be objective. Given the high, high stakes, perhaps we need a much more forceful intervention by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
To the repeated question of whether he would take a cognitive or neurological test, Biden implied every day was such a test (given his responsibilities), dodging the answer. Both candidates should take two tests, a cognitive test and one to determine an Antisocial Personality Disorder. Publish the results so, as Mitch McConnell infamously exclaimed blocking Merrick Garland’s SCOTUS nomination, “the American people can decide.”
Peggy Noonan accurately framed the Democratic Party’s dilemma in the July, 6/7 Wall Street Journal: “It makes no sense to say, ‘Joe Biden is likely going to lose so we should do nothing because doing something is unpredictable.’ Unpredictable is better than doomed.”
Exactly 248 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence a new British Prime Minister was elected, Keir Starmer, who told Britons the following day “Country first, party second.” Might it be time for both the Democratic and Republican parties to adopt the same priorities?
