I had to lecture in town this morning so I experienced the normal D.C. pain of a trip taking well over an hour each way, plenty of time to reflect on life. I write today’s words with humility, sadness, and gratitude for a life spent in serving others.
I likely will lose friends over this column but I learned the lesson in 1977 that ‘friends’ may sever ties when I say things unpopular things. A woman I had known well overseas told me she couldn’t believe I was working on a General Accounting Office audit of the Army because people at her Ivy League school would not even talk with the military, much less do a job in any way tied to them. We never spoke again. I found it bizarre but only the first of so many peculiar encounters in life. We do still live in a country, as of now, where we are allowed to speak our own analyses.
The only way that Joe Biden can defeat Donald Trump is by stepping down from the ticket. The centrality of Biden as the nominee is the key problem today rather than Trump, as painful as that may be for anyone opposing the former president to accept but it is the reality.
Explaining Donald Trump’s unending list of disqualifying characteristics has become, frankly, irrelevant. The voters know he is incapable of telling the truth, he cheated on three wives, his administration put children in cages because they were illegal immigrants, he tossed paper towels to a Puerto Rican crowd of utterly devastated people following a hurricane in 2017, he chose to burden future generations with trillions in debt because he would not be held accountable, he disdains very and and active duty military personnel as ‘suckers’, he belittles those with disabilities, and he is enchanted with authoritarianism and Fascism. He has committed countless other despicable acts that I cannot even recall at this moment. The majority of voters know that and accept it about him. His lead in the polls is growing.
Let me repeat this: people know and have accepted these disgusting behaviors because they do not want another four years of his 81 year old opponent. Biden’s more than fifty years in Washington is part of what is dragging him down rather than some miracle that will turn things around when they understand it. A majority of those who matter most right now—the few independents who are not lashed to one party or the other—are rejecting Joe as too old, too feeble, too too too too too.
Before you stop me, yes, Biden has support among Democrats but not the majority of the voters in the country (according to polls) not in key states as our peculiar system mandates.
I wrote yesterday and once last week that Biden and Trump occupy the same age cohort and both men should depart this race. Biden, however, is the one they are rejecting, despite the remarkable accomplishments of rebuilding infrastructure, securing a seat for the initial African American woman on the Supreme Court, rebuilding (and then sustaining) alliances and partnerships across both Europe and East Asia, and being a decent man who stood by as he watched his son convicted a crime, resulting in part from the all-too-painful and common scourge of addition, and several others.
The problem, of course, is that—like Taiwan being 100 miles off the Chinese coast for the rest of our natural lifetimes—age is unchangeable. Biden will never be as young as he is today but too many voters are rejecting that. Regardless whether he can deliver a whizzbang speech (which some of you dispute, I know) or can maintain an insane schedule for the month of July in mercilessly hot Washington, he looks like people’s grandfathers who they find boring and not up to the task. They fear for him four years from now in office.
Biden cannot roll back the years so it is an immutable reality that he cannot get elected.
Are we truly surprised by this? I haven’t even mentioned the strong voter opposition in some quarters to his policies on either the border or Israel, both of which are bleeding support from the ideas he espouses in other policy areas.
He runs the risk, as Colorado’s Democratic Senator Michael Bennet stated yesterday, of not merely losing the White House but handing every single branch of federal government to the Republicans with their declared anti-American vision of Christian Nationalism.
My words will not matter but I this is no longer an election about Trump but instead campaign indicating the voters reject Biden for four more years.
The painful reality is that Biden now bothers the voters rather than Trump. Staying in the race, Biden risks voters actually supporting Trump over the incumbent as the only way to register voters’ sense of futility over age and exasperation over Biden outstaying his welcome on the political scene. This strikes me as obvious, as unfair or as pitiful as we are to elect someone unqualified to apply for a most basic security clearance.
The choice in November is not merely about personalities but about what policies these victors will enact in this country. Trump too will depart the scene at some point but he is, unrealistically, less the focus of voter rejection than is Biden.
Two powerful, competing visions of the United States still persist in this nation. Either the tolerant, law-abiding, hopeful and inclusive vision is strong enough to win without Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., or it is not but the ultimate judgment should not rest who is on the name atop the ticket. Values and ideas rather than personalities are what motivate people to mark their ballots unless they are rejecting someone out of hand. We run a most basic risk of obscuring the differences between the visions because voters are stuck on a portrait they reject because of age, doubts, and tiredness.
No, perhaps Gretchen Witmer or Kamala Harris would not defeat Trump so it is a risk but we are seeing evidence right now the public opposes Biden. That doesn’t strike me as a logical path to continue pursuing Einstein said, supposedly, that doing the same thing repeatedly, then expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity.
Right now, however, the obstacle to seeing that distinction is the incumbent. He needs stop avoiding the accumulating evidence about the damage he is doing to any movement to prevent a dangerous vision from coming into power.
I don’t take any of this lightly. I hate that I am covering it but hearing that a lesbian Democrat is winning her race in Wisconsin while Biden is falling further behind Trump is an amazing sign. Things only continue deteriorating for the current president with nothing that can change the age problem.
I love this country but we must work to maintain the goodness we have as if it could not disappear by denial and misjudgment. I understand Biden and his family don’t want to accept this but we are well beyond that point. Fairy dust is not enough.
How will people feel if Biden were to stay in the race, only to see Trump win in November? How many times have people begun blaming Ruth Bader Ginsburg for staying on? This is infinitely more important a choice.
No one ever told any of us that life is fair or that we always get what we want. If Biden truly cares about the country, he must abandon the race immediately. It’s really what the public is asking.
Leaders put country over self. This trade off contributes a a great deal to what sours so many on Trump who never puts anything above his personal both goals and benefits. Biden can do that for the sake of the country and the future we talk about so often. He must.
I welcome your thoughts. I appreciate your time. Please feel free to circulate this if you feel it of value. Thank you for reading every day and thanks especially to whose whose financial support allows me to read so many sources which helped inform my analysis.
Be safe and be well. FIN
Jim, I agree with some of what you say (use of the song is perfect. Thanks for the spyranscription). I don’t agree with the characterization of the ‘left wing media’. There are ELEMENTS in the media all over the metaphoric spectrum in so it just strikes me as a false accusation. I also think the piece in weekend’s WaPo, hardly left for anything these days, that noted the extremely rapid deterioration people noticed with pin the past few months in Biden. Trump has made COUNTLESS nonsensical statements but few, even his worst opponents, ask him to drop out. We are caught in a reality TV show which no one wants to turn off.
Interesting perspective. I try to stay out of political discussions because people are so divided these days. No matter how factually-based the discussion is, emotion will overtake the dialog. But, since that door is open, I'll just provide these thoughts. Just to prove I did listen in NWC... our favorite dead German, Carl Von C said: "War is a mere continuation of policy by other means..." My derivative of that is: "Politics is strategic chess being played on the world stage." Not nearly as profound but...
At the chance of being proven wrong, Obama started this by not supporting his VP as his pick to replace him once his term was up. Instead, he chose to support Hillary Clinton against Trump. No one thought Trump would win that contest (probably including Trump) and the Dems put forth little effort assuming it was a cake-walk. Had Trump lost...I doubt he'd have ever run again. His ego wouldn't allow it. Had Biden been the nominee and had he won....he'd most likely be finishing up his 2nd term right now which would have been perfect given his health decline. We'd have two presumably "fresh" and younger faces for both parties going head -to-head. How satisfying would that be?!
I'm not sure if was a posting you had or a news article I read but it was about France and the difference in how the population there views politics and political battles. I may have this wrong...but... the gist of it was, they are less concerned about the figure-head leader of any given party. Instead, they focus on the policies and platforms of the parties and what they stand for, what they intend to do, etc. Their elections are less about the person and more about the Party. So to your points about Trump's failings as a decent human being, my feeling is that many Republicans are less interested in him as the figure-head leader of the Republican party and more interested in the policies and programs the Party is pushing. Republicans wish they had a more "Presidential" candidate who displayed civility and had a modicum of decency and restraint...but they don't. Democrats wish they had a vibrant and fully-cognitive candidate who could last the next 4 years...but they don't. So we're all left with trying to make a crap sandwich taste like prime-rib.
Clearly Republican and Democratic approaches to a wide range of issues are 180 degrees out from each other with very little common ground. Add to that the deep divisions within the Congress, a lame-duck President (if Biden or Trump win) and it's a cocktail for 4 years of zero movement on most everything. With all we have happening in the world (and Nation)... we really can't stand for a stand-still for 4 more years. Sad.
I'm reminded of that hit song of 1973 by Steeler's Wheel: "Stuck in the Middle With You" The song starts with:
Well I don't know why I came here tonight
I've got the feeling that something ain't right
I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair
And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs
Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right
Here I am stuck in the middle with you
Pretty much how many of us feel about now. Don't get me started on the mess the White House has caused w/ the lack of transparency. And it only took 3 years for the left-leaning media to figure out they were getting the wool pulled over their eyes. Even though they're way-late to the party, the media is right to be upset, challenging and puffed-up. The American people should be as well. Here's my prediction as to how the media is working out the headline options right now:
If Biden sticks it out and goes into the election as the Democratic nominee...and loses...he'll be lambasted by the media and Democratic party as a self-centered egomaniac only concerned with remaining in power at the expense of democracy and the Nation.
If he wins...he'll be boasted by the media and the Democratic party as a savior of the United States against all odds and the last defender of democracy.
If he resigns voluntarily, the media will tout his brave, heroic and historic actions at great self-sacrifice for the good of the Nation; thank him for his years of self-less service and wish him and his family well as they fade into history.
I'm betting all three stories are currently being written and just waiting to be published. It's a mess and from a strategic chess game perspective, the Democratic party have themselves to thank for getting painted into this corner. They didn't read the board correctly and severely underestimated not only their opponent...but also their own player. No matter what happens, they're going to have paint on them before it's over.