This is the most consequential Presidential election since 1860. The Supreme Court has just handed the Presidency most of the powers of a Roman Emperor, Fascism is on the rise all over the world, people are frightened and desperate. And we, by which I mean those who would preserve the rule of law, constitutional government and the civil rights of the vulnerable are blowing it. We are losing a winnable, desperately important election.
If things continue as they are, Donald Trump and his cabal will win this election. The Republic will be ended, possibly with violence, more likely with acquiescence and obsequious bowing and scraping. Whether with a bang, or a whimper, the rule of law, the presumption of equality, the progress of women and minorities and civil government will be over.
The Trumpist cabal has readily given public promises to do all these things and worse. The Christian Supremacists, racial agitators and who would ride their success to cultural and political dominance are transparently eager to remake society in accordance with their theocratic, bigoted, authoritarian vision.
Millions of voters, some of them desperate, some of them deranged, many of them plainly hateful, stand ready to sacrifice the Republic to their resentment and fear. If we are to stop this, we must gather every vote, every effort, every dollar to resist.
But we aren't doing that. In the great and futile tradition of the Mensheviks, the Weimar Republicans, the Jacobins, and, again, the Democratic party, we are instead engaging in ever more wasteful and furious infighting. We will not coalesce, we will not pull together.
By contrast, the GOP, which is now a fully owned body of the Trumpist cabal, is united in a terrible purpose. Come Hell, high water, sexual assaults or thirty-four felony convictions, they will stand by their candidate to the bitter, bloody end.
The Democratic party – the only organization that has a reasonable chance of putting a legal and non-violent stop to the Trumpist march to dominance has instead decided to spend a great deal of time, energy and money sabotaging their candidate in favor of what some of them see as a more exciting prospect – picking another candidate by convention – a slap in the face to everyone who voted in the primary, but so what? Much better we allow a group of insiders to pick someone – anyone – other than the choice of the members of the party.
That replacing an incumbent President who has won the primaries would be a massive disruption in so many ways, procedural, financial, and political, seems not to faze the panicky clique that have suddenly discovered that Joe Biden is old. The fact that a contested convention is a formula for party disunity and a bruising floor fight is of no concern to them. The fact that those who would shove Biden aside have yet to coalesce around a new candidate does not suggest to them that the chaos they are prepared to unleash might be far more damaging that a less-than-optimal debate performance.
“Oh, it's not just the debate!” they rush to say. Suddenly evidences of decline and unfitness that weren't evident during the long, grueling primary process are discovered, many of them dishonest, or plainly bigoted ageism.
The catalyst for this rush to self-destruction was a poor debate performance by President Biden. Now that there has been a single, poor performance, suddenly there are many concerns, retrospectively discovered, about the candidate's age. That making an issue of the candidate's age is unvarnished ageism, and that his opponent is not much younger and in poorer health doesn't seem to deter them as they rummage about looking for every awkward pause and slip of the tongue to cast doubt on their own candidate.
The media, of course, ever ready to use an irrelevance to destroy someone and attract eyeballs to the carnage, have played up this “controversy” and this nonsensical question. Considering Biden's opponent has now been convicted on thirty-four felony counts, one would think that Trump's lack of fitness for office would be the story. But no, the story is that an octogenarian who has successfully held the world's most stressful job for four years occasionally pauses for thought, or isn't as vigorous as a forty year old.
Joe Biden is not Jack Kennedy, or vintage Bill Clinton, or peak Barack Obama. He is not the vigorous, inspiring leader that we would have hoped for in these dangerous times. He is a career politician, a cautious, pro-corporate “triangulating” moderate of the sort that has often lost recent elections for the Democrats – the Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton sort of candidate. If we could have picked a candidate who could lose to a horror like Donald Trump, Joe Biden might have been the man we'd select.
But he has traits that none of the above had. For one, he is the incumbent President, with all the advantages that entails. He has run the office of President competently for four years. He has been a very successful fundraiser.
But most importantly, he has demonstrated that he can win votes, and win an election over Donald Trump. He's done it before. He has won the Democratic primaries.
So, you'd replace him with someone who has none of those qualifications. And who has never won a Presidential election. And who must begin a campaign far behind in recognition and party support. And who must explain to millions of Biden supporters why their candidate should be shoved aside for the shiny new thing.
When a united force meets a fractured one, the united force wins. The lessons of the Napoleonic Wars, and the 2016 election seem to be lost on the Democratic party. If we lose, this is why.
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"I don't belong to any organized political party; I'm a Democrat."
-- Will Rogers
If “they” replace Joe then 45 wins….and we lose.