— Feature, Musings —06.27.2024 10:42 PM
It was bad. For Joe.
Shit.
I supported Barack Obama. I worked for Hillary Clinton in three different states, including at her Brooklyn headquarters. I worked the phones for Joe Biden in 2020.
If there is any political party that I still support, it is the Democratic Party. Four years ago, right about now, I was working the phones for Biden, from New York to California. Four years later, for months, I kept asking myself why I wasn’t doing so again. Something was holding me back.
I couldn’t put my finger on it.
The 2024 presidential “debate” between Joe Biden and Donald Trump gave me the answer. I wasn’t rushing to help the Democrats, for the first time, because I silently wondered if the critics were right. I wondered if Joe Biden – after so many amazing achievements, after so many amazing years in public life – was too old.
No, not that. Not too old. Up to the job: that’s what I worried about. That’s what I wondered. Is he?
For six years, since he decided to pursue the presidency and remove the stain that is Donald Trump from our lives, I have completely and fundamentally believed in Joe Biden. I believed that he was up to the job.
The reason? Because, for many years, I campaigned for a guy who was also older than his opponents, also regularly mangled grammar and syntax, who everyone also said would never win. That guy, of course, was Jean Chretien. Biden reminded me of him. He really did. And both men won when everyone said they wouldn’t.
Well, that was then and this is now. With that execrable “debate” now over, I believe that Joe Biden is going to lose, and he is going to lose badly.
And don’t get me wrong: it was the worst fucking political debate in the history of political debates. Trump looked and sounded like he was on meth. He lied, he was insane. But Biden – my guy – looked and sounded like something was terribly, terribly wrong. Everyone noticed.
Last weekend, a smart guy came to film me for a documentary he is making. We talked about my affection for Biden, whose 2020 campaign sign still hangs on the wall of my house. The smart guy said to me that his wife is a physician and she thinks that Biden is stricken with something. Maybe Parkinson’s, maybe something else.
I gave him my talking points about Chretien and Biden, which are a few paragraphs up above. He seemed unconvinced. I felt unsure.
After watching what CNN called a debate, I felt sad and unsettled. And I felt and feel – because I owe you guys the truth – that Biden lost, badly. And that Biden needs to go.
So, as I sit here in the dark contemplating all of this, five parting observations.
One, there is only one Canadian who is pleased, tonight. And it is Justin Trudeau. Because Justin Trudeau will now argue, over and over, that Pierre Poilievre is the wrong guy to lead Canada through another Trump White House. Conservatives may not want to hear it, but many Canadians are going to agree with that.
Two, I am not the only guy kind of freaking out tonight. The leaders of the European Union, NATO, and all of America’s allies are all wondering, tonight, if the end is drawing a bit nearer. That should worry all of us, not just them.
Three, anyone thinking that Joe Biden can step aside, and that civilization can be saved by someone like Gavin Newsom stepping in, are dreaming in Technicolor. In the United States, there is this thing called the 25th Amendment. You should read it. If Joe Biden steps aside, Kamala Harris becomes president. Period. And she’s even more unpopular than Joe, these days.
Four, I am so angry at the White House staff and the Democratic establishment – some of whom I know, and I have relied upon for advice – who clearly lied to all of us about Joe’s fitness for another term. The FDR deception is nothing compared to this.
Fifth and finally: thank God I’m a Canadian, and thank God I live here.
Because things, which definitely have not been good?
They’re about to get a lot worse.
Shit.
No doubt about it. Worst debate performance I’ve ever seen and Biden’s second term is now hopeless.
I suspect many high powered Dems will be gaming out serious high stakes scenarios in the next week or so.
Completing Biden’s first term and running again are two separate issues and I think he could still complete his term.
Much as I like Harris, she obviously can’t win, so the most plausible solution is a Newsom – Harris ticket with Biden completing this term. Needs to be a unanimous convention to make it fly.
But something clearly needs to be figured out in the next week or so.
Because of how US politics works, Harris also would have to step aside if Newsom became the Democrat Party’s presidential candidate. I forget all the particulars, but basically the presidential and vice-presidential nominee cannot be from the same state under U.S. election law. I will leave it to more educated people than myself to explain the context.
My father had Alzheimer’s and watching Joe Biden tonight, I saw so many similarities. Worst of all was the blank stare where he looked as if he was trying to remember where he was and why he was there.
Warren,
One. Sure Trudeau can say whatever he likes but Trump can still be stopped in an election. I don’t expect Biden to resign the presidency. He should serve out his term. Will he become incapacitated between now and January? I doubt it. I hope he does an LBJ.
Three. Some think Harris doesn’t have what it takes to meet the moment. I disagree. Sure, there is some misogyny and sexism in the air but she is far too underrated by the politicos and the media. I would give her her shot against Trump.
Four: Joe got old. That’s pretty much it. They went through the motions with Reagan in his second term when his Alzheimer’s was slowly making gains. I doubt Joe will suddenly drop dead between now and November but you never know.
Harris polls terribly, worse than Biden. That’s a fact.
Yes.
Martin,
She has had a slight uptick of late. Harris was my first choice. Then Pete and then only grudgingly Biden.
Warren,
I’ve had a feeling for quite some time that Trump will have a stroke between now and January which will either kill him or render him incapacitated. Take my hunch for what it’s worth but I can’t shake that feeling.
That’s funny just noticed this Ronald and I’ve had the hunch too for some reason. He’s not exactly the picture of health himself, especially with his diet.
Wishcasting will not rid us of Trump.
Doc,
The Almighty, or The Fates, should have ZeroTrumpToleranceTM by now. We can only hope. Only Putin deserves it more than Trump does. But I digress.
Derek,
Does the McDonald’s-Diet Coke mortuary exist yet?
Ronald-I wouldn’t count on that. I have known many people that have lived and continue to live into their nineties that should not have. All I have is that alcohol is some kind of preservative and T does not have that vice.
Martin,
Point taken but I can dream, can’t I? LOL.
We’re saddled with the reality that the Democrats at least have some semblance of concern (albeit not enough) about the viability and well-being of their candidate, which will be their ultimate undoing… because the Republican Party could not possibly care less how erratic Trump is or what he does. They don’t care. They have no principles. Nothing matters to any of them as long as Democrats don’t win.
Biden never “inspired” me per se, but I still believe that in 2020, he was what America needed. Now, I cannot for the life of me understand why nobody shut this campaign down a year ago.
As I understand it, people who know Biden well say he’s got an unfortunate stubborn streak in him.
Doc,
This ain’t about stubborn. It’s exclusively about a DoubleCaseOfStupidTM. Read Joe and Jill. Biden is toast and they both KNOW it. And yet they persist…
Jill is basically committing elder abuse.
I think Warren pointed out a while back – and it is so true – the most difficult and often elusive decision in politics is knowing when to pack it in without being dragged out the door. Almost all politicians get it wrong. Very… very ….few get out on their own two feet. Biden is clearly getting it wrong at the moment. He is definitely caught in that weird nexus between madness and inspiration that seems to inevitably consume most politicians at the end. He’s more aligned with that peculiar trend than counter trend in that regard.
I agree, that’s why LBJ’s decision looks so good and sensible all these years later. Because those sorts of decisions are too rare. Even though Nixon won in 1968, LBJ was right to get out of the way.
Aside from being stubborn, Biden is prideful. Both are character flaws that are in the way of doing the right thing.
Doc,
It kind of helps too to do an LBJ if you happen to have offed your predecessor. Oh sorry, wrong president.
The debate was painful to watch. It’s the worst debate performance I’ve ever seen.
Who’s running the White House?
With no joy – that was ugly.
I was very willing to admit how wrong I was on Trump specifically “how much damage can he do in 4 years?”
As a conservative one tends to frame every liberal as ruining the country and vice versa. But, this one is different. It’s not good vs evil but it feels close.
Joe Biden did not lose the debate – America lost.
There is no way in hell either man should win but we all slow down to look at the car wreck in the other lanes don’t we?
I’m not so smug about living in Canada today we have a deviant autocrat not far from our northern border and an expansionist southern neighbour could be coming with a return of the con-mander in chief.
America really matters on the world stage and America is fucked.
That the idiots running for Prime Minister are 40 years younger does not improve my opinion that our potential leaders are every bit as self-serving and incompetent.
I’m no fan of either, but neither of our leaders has DSM V categorizable personality disorder (as Trump has) or is debilitatingly senile (as Biden is).
So it goes when politics becomes more about what people hate as opposed to what they stand for.
Calm the fuck down Jason.
Martin,
IMHO, Water off a duck’s back.
Arguing whether Trump or Biden is better is like arguing which Taco Bell shart is less embarrassing when in a date with a hot super model.
Democrat establishment trotted out poor Joe, knowing full well he was going to be a train wreck.
Paving the way for Gavin Newsom.
For that to happen, both Biden AND Harris would have to resign. An arcane rule prevents the allotment of a state’s electoral votes toward a presidential ticket where both parties are from that state. If they were from Idaho, nobody might care. But California, Dems can’t afford to lose. And even if Joe DOES disappear from the ballot, Harris isn’t going anywhere. Unpopular as she is, Newsom is not liked among anyone but the most ardent progressives and die-hard bureaucracy fans.
Democrat establishment calls the shots.
They make the rules; everyone else must abide.
Biden and Harris don’t have to resign.
They can finish out the term (January 2025).
Douglas,
Yup. But it’s always the divine right of kings (and queens) with the Dems. That’s why Biden gave way when Hillary ran again, even though he wanted to run then.
Ronald,
Agreed. So the pressing question remains: who will they anoint?
Whomever it is, it must have Obama’s blessing.
Word on the street says the former president has been calling the shots, the past couple of years.
I’m talking in the context of next term – resigning as the 2024 candidate, not as the sitting VP. That’s an election rule, not a partisan one. Though it is in the realm of possibility that one of them could rubber stamp themselves as a NY resident to get around it, if they chose. After all, Trump became an R-FL at the drop of a hat.
Who resigns first: Biden or Trudeau?
Biden.
We have Justin for another year.
Douglas,
If either or both resign, that would make me a political incompetent…
When the debate began my first impression was why did they let Biden appear so greyish white? He looked sick and vulnerable.
Biden has a great smile that was crushed by his bewilderment.
I felt for him as I would about Hemmingway’s Santiago being pulled by a giant marlin out further and further into the gulf stream.
The debate could have been a pay-per-view in North Korea and Russia.
I guess sometimes you should retire a champ and not a chump. Biden is a great man, but his years have caught up to him as it will for us all.
This just depresses the shit outta me. That’s all I got. How the hell is the world going to withstand 4 more years of that absolute see you next tuesday in the White House again.
Warren,
The so-called Biden braintrust is counting on a second debate bounce back. Those fools. There won’t be a second debate. Not in September, not ever.
Nope.
Warren,
CNN is still going with it tonight. In fact, they attributed it directly to Biden ce soir. Their reporting, such as it is, specifically cites a September debate.
Warren,
CNN is also going on and on about how other presidents were lousy in a first debate and came back. The diff is that those presidents were at 50%+ approval ratings, while Biden is now only at 38-41%.
As WK is wont to say, stick a fork in him.
He should definitely do an LBJ and stand down.
I’m just about as anti-Trump as it gets, but today I realize that the whole “Biden is dysfunctionally senile” thing is yet another example of what Ruy Texiera calls the Fox News Fallacy: i.e., this tendency among liberals to dismiss any and every storyline pursued by right-wing media as illegitimate (classic example being the border/immigration). This was a storyline pushed hard by right-wing media, but at its heart was truth.
Another point this disaster illustrates: when it comes to Presidential Politics, the US Democratic Party is one of the most inept in the history of the world.
To wit: in my lifetime, there have been basically two Democratic candidates for President who were actually talented politicians: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The rest? Consider this pantheon of pathetic doomed losers, one after another: Hubert Humphrey. George McGovern. Jimmy Carter’s utterly doomed quest for a second term. Walter Mondale. Michael Dukakis (!). Al Gore. John Kerry. Hillary Clinton (whose epic unpopularity in vast swaths of America was utterly unappreciated by Canadians).
And now they’re doing it again, basically committing electoral suicide. It blows my mind.
Freeland channeled HRC with her “cold, cruel and small” comments. Likely moved a couple of votes in the By-election.
By that standard: Gerald Ford, George Bush Sr., Bob Dole, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Trump all lost, just a big parade of Republican losers. One after another, non stop loosing machine loaded up with hopeless bozos. The only two over that span of time with any political ability appear to have been Nixon and Bush Jr.
The truth is Dems have lost the popular vote exactly ONCE in the last 36 years. 2004. That is the only election they lost.
They must be doing something right.
In the modern era, I’d put Dems record of Presidential Election wins against Reps any day.
Sean,
Sure, but no Electoral College, no candy.
Even if we shift to the E.C. standard – in the last 36 years Dems in power 20 years and Reps in power 16 years. That’s a lot of candy for the of team inept losers.
Sean,
I take your point but the EC already clearly favoured Trump before the debate. Imagine now.
Hence the problem of perenially picking candidates based on who offends the fewest members rather than who inspires the most.
Sean I take your point but you omitted two-term winner Ronald Reagan, which is a pretty notable omission. I didn’t like Reagan at the time, but he was an extremely gifted politician and communicator. Bear in mind I’m congenitally pro-Democrat when it comes to US Presidential elections, so I’m not coming from some anti-Democrat partisan corner when I point this out.
Warren,
Which is worse, Biden’s performance or the steady negative drip theory on all the networks? It’s not a drip two-day affair. It’s a drip-drip negative pile-on all the way to Chicago. My God, it can’t get any worse than this. If I was an American, there’s no way I would vote for Biden after this disaster. They could put a gun to my head and I still would never vote for asshole Trump either.
Sad to say, but Joe sure lost that one. I mean, I agree with most of what he says, but Trump, with all his lies and deception, he seems sharper, and poor Joe looked stunned.
As for Biden having Parkinson’s or something along those lines: my partner is a RN, and she said to me during the debate that Biden looks like he could very well have Parkinson’s. A RN friend of ours, who also watched the debate, was over tonight and said the same thing. Sigh.
For the good of the Democratic Party, the United States, and the whole effing planet, Joe Biden needs to gracefully step aside. If he does, he’ll have had a career that would make anyone proud. If he doesn’t and he’s defeated in November, which seems like the more than likely outcome, his hubris will forever be remembered with infamy.
Ugh. That debate made me sad, even if Trump lied throughout while also not answering a single. Darn. Question. Evil sometimes triumphs, despite our frevrent hooes. Sigh……
the last word you said above was shit. you do realize Trump audibly filled his diaper during the “debate.”
As somebody who wanted Biden to run in ’16 and was so excited when he announced he was running in ’20, I noticed even back then (during the Democratic primaries) that Joe had, at best, begun to lose a step or two. I always refer people to his appearance on the television show “The View” in 2017 with Meghan McCain to show how bad even back in 2020 things had gotten. Granted, he killed his two States of the Union in the past two years but the lack of press conferences, not doing the Super Bowl interview, and last night’s debate were just the nails in the coffin. It’s sad because he would’ve won in 2016. Time to go to the bullpen.
What I find really depressing is I was following politics in 1980, and this very much has the feel of the 1980 Presidential campaign. And by that I mean this sense of inevitable doom among Democratic Party supporters that they’re basically stuck with this candidate whom everyone with a lick of sense knows is going to lose.
I remember reading an article in Rolling Stone back then where they were interviewing Democratic Party insiders, and one of them just sighed and said “I guess we’re walking the plank with Carter.” Feels pretty much the same right now.
And I remember back then thinking “Why the fuck don’t they do something about this? Why this sense of utter resignation and powerlessness?” It’s even worse this time out because the candidate is even lousier and the stakes are way higher.
Doc,
Obama and Hillary dutifully came to Biden’s rescue. Big mistake. OrangeAssholeTM is just salivating about returning to The White House. He can’t wait. That fucker needs to be stopped now. To do that, Dems must throw Biden to the wolves and fast.
One of my younger brothers died of a very aggressive form of Parkinson’s and that is exactly what I thought 10 minutes or so in.
Martin,
Sorry for your loss.
Want to bet that The West Wing and Hill Democrats all know about it? Then it gets concealed from the American people and worst of all, they all line up like lemmings to go straight down the hole arm-in-arm with Biden. Fucking fools.
Chretien is no Biden. Chretien always seemed to put the country before the party and even last time he was in the news (his birthday party?), chretien was vigorous and lucid. Biden seems to care only about himself; if Trump were as bad as he says, he would step down in a moment to let someone else who actually had a chance beat Trump.
Warren,
From CBS News:
“Increasing numbers of voters don’t think Biden should be running after debate with Trump — CBS News poll”
“Does [Biden and Trump] have mental & cognitive health to serve as president?
NO: Biden 72%
NO: Trump 49%”
[Add Pelosi and Clyburn to the list of the previously deluded about Biden’s chances of re-election.]