Why Biden Continuing to Run is No Longer Sustainable.
I am currently on a trip to Greece with the family to celebrate our daughter Brennan’s graduation from Northwestern University. Turns out that whenever one of my family members accomplishes something, it somehow leads to me eating my weight in tzatziki.
Because of the time difference, we didn’t get to watch yesterday’s Presidential Debate live, We had planned to wake up in the morning and watch a recorded version without reading any commentary so our reactions would be genuine. However, getting the service required typing in a verification code which they texted me. And this necessitated me looking at my string of incoming texts which shows the first few words of each one.
The first few texts my eye caught before I could pull myself way said things like
= “We’re so F***ed”
= “What a catastrophe”
= “It’s over”
= “He was like a corp”…(I had to guess at the rest of that one)
= Trump just lied and Biden …. (I guessed this didn’t finish “showed him what for!”)
And these texts were all from hard-core Democrats and Biden supporters.
At that I found the verification code, watched the debate, watched some of the post-debate commentary and read some of the first-take punditry. After this excrutiating process (which involved also skipping my morning tzatziki) I came to the painful conclusion that Biden persisting with his candidacy is a disservice to him, but more importantly, a disservice to the nation.
To be clear, this is not a commentary on him as a person or a president. I believe he’s been excellent in both rolls. This is solely a judgement on his continued politic al viability and electability.
I have been a vocal defender of the Presdident’s. However, being that has involved ignoring some pretty bright red flags. The lack of press conferences and TV interviews including the refusal to sit for the traditional pre-Super Bowl interview.
I also struggled to ignore the tightness in my chest and the involuntary holding of my breath whenever Biden was asked a question. I never felt that with Barack Obama, or Bill Clinton, or even my Uncle Martin, who often ask people if they wanted to see the surgery scar on his stomach.
Biden, whose record (perhaps the most impressive since LBJ) should be leading him to an easy victory has had a few problems, but one which stands out above and beyond all others. To many persuadable voters he appears feeble, frail and just plain too old to be president for another four years.
Last night’s debate was a critical opportunity to either dispell or reinforce those appearences. As horrific as Trump’s personality and policies were last night, he is already known, by pretty much everybody to be crazy-go-nuts. Nobody was paying attention to that. America was solely focused on whether Biden was up to the job of leading the free world for the next four years.
This was already going to be avery close election. I don’t fully understand why close to half of the country is just fine with a felonious narcissist who tried to violently overturn the results of the last election and whose top campaign promises include setting up massive concentration camps to hold non-white immigrants and his political enemies. But it is what it is.
Fairly or unfairly, last night ended Biden’s campaign. And if you imagine what a Biden campaign looks like going forward, I think you’ll agree.
All of Biden’s most painful moments from the debate are currently being shared on news cites. In a few days, that will shift to social media posts and then, in September, probably a half a billion dollars will be spent showing the American people Biden being unable to finish an answer to a question.
Since the debate, dozens of liberal, Biden-supporting commentators and political operatives, including those from the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, the Obama campaign, members of Congress and even the Biden campaign itself have said that Biden is no longer up to the job. Another quarter billion dollars will be spent showing swing-voters all of these avatars of the truth saying that Biden is unfit to serve. As I go on Politico or CNN now, there are literally dozens of headlines all saying variations of “Biden Crashed and Burned”. These headlines will be the only thing you see on your TV and computer screens this fall.
Even more problematic, Biden himself will now be under enormous pressure to publicly perform amazing tricks of the brain. The only way to even SLIGHTLY ameliorate the damage (and slightly is the best we can hope for) is for Biden to now start giving interviews to everyone from 60 minutes to “Rudy and Kit’s Podcast for the Lovelorn” in South Saginaw Michigan. Even slight gaffes or stutters will be magnified by a gleeful Trump campaign;. Plus, there is another debate scheduled. There is almost no way that is going to be helpful.
Going forward, there will be a growing and inevitable belief that Biden is doomed. Congressional Democrats running for their own survival will distance themselves from Biden. Nobody is going to want to campaign with him. Money will dry up. People will fear (not irrationally) that defending him will damage their credibility. Who is going to be willing to go on TV and boldly say that Joe Biden is fit as a fiddle and sharp as a tack?
Republican leaders who were considering endorsing Biden because….well…Trump, will pull back. He’s likely to get far fewer editorial endorsements, or union endorsements, etc., In short, in every single way that matters, Biden’s campaign, should it continue, will shrivel, shrink, wither and die. There is no coming back from this, and if we tell ourselves there is, we are misleading ourselves, which seems like a really dumb thing to do given the stakes.
And the stakes are enourmous. The environment, the social safety net, civil rights, the rule of law, democracy itself are on the ballot, not to mention the world order where America opposes, rather than emulates and supports dictators like Putin.
As painful, bloody and risky as it is, the Democratic Party must take this election seriously enough to rip off the bandaid, and find a new nominee while there is still time.
