BIDEN OFFERS A LESSON IN HUMILITY AND SERVICE AND HARRIS A MASTER CLASS IN ETHICS AND PROFESSIONALISM

 For the past fifty-two years, Joe Biden has distanced himself from other politicians in taking the moral high ground at the service of his country and democracy. Elected to the Senate when he was barely thirty, his long political career has been bookended by personal tragedy—the deaths in 1972 of his first wife Neilia and their infant daughter Naomi in a car crash a month after he became a senator, and the death of his rising-star politician son Beau of brain cancer in 2015, when, as the incumbent vice president, Joe Biden was first considering running for the presidency—a dream quashed not only by his son’s tragic death but also by a call from then-President Obama for him to stand down in deference to Hillary Clinton.

In both cases, Biden put country over self, overcame his own immense personal sorrow, and concentrated on how best to serve his country. Biden has been, over the years, the embodiment of John F. Kennedy’s dictum: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” In the first case, the junior senator became famous for commuting by train between his home in Delaware and his job in Washington as a means of taking care of both the business of government and his duties to his two surviving and motherless children, Beau and Hunter. In the second, he put aside his grief and the sting of his former boss’s having passed him over in favor of Clinton, and threw his hat into the ring for the presidency in the 2020 election, with the well-placed conviction that he and his long experience in government would be sufficient for him to defeat Donald Trump after Hillary Clinton lost her bid to do the same in 2016.

In hindsight, had Obama thrown his support behind his vice president in 2016, perhaps this would have been President Biden’s second term in office rather than his first, and we would not have had to witness the chaos and disarray into which the political arena has been thrown by questions regarding his age, health and suitability for continuing as president. More importantly, perhaps Donald Trump would have been a mere flash in the pan and the US would not have had to endure the dire consequences of his narcissistic, authoritarian machinations and his clear and present threats to democracy. But we’ll never know. Maybe, however, this is part of the reason that former President Obama is being so circumspect this time around.

Once again, this past weekend, we saw President Joe Biden put his country and party before his own personal wishes and goals. Despite his burning desire to remain in office for another four years and continue the job he had started, as well as staving off the unmistakable threat to democracy of another Trump presidency, he faced the hard and painful fact that he had, because of his age and failing acuity, lost the confidence of many Democratic voters and Independents, as well as of many of even his staunchest supporters within the party itself. In light of this, he seems to have clearly seen that his continued candidacy might well bring another victory for Trump and end up being the death knell for American democracy as we know it. As such, he last Sunday withdrew his bid for a second term and threw his full support behind his vice president, Kamala Harris.

While Harris has been something of an enigma and, for some, a disappointment as vice president, one could make the case that she is largely misunderstood. The vice president is a politically savvy person of truly superior intelligence, as she has clearly shown throughout her political career in California—both as a firebrand prosecutor and as state attorney general—and as a Senator for that state. Personally, I see her as a very sharp and capable poker player as well. 

A case in point. During the presidential primary debates for the 2020 election, as Joe Biden’s rival on the debate stage, she did the unthinkable and challenged him on his stellar record as a civil rights activist. She made it personal as well as political. Harris challenged Biden, saying that she wanted to make a point on “the issue of race.” She then prefaced her remarks by saying that she didn’t believe him to be a racist, but quickly went on to criticize him for making “very hurtful” statements about how he had worked with segregationist senators in opposition during the nineteen-seventies and eighties to a federal busing mandate.

Biden had made his comments in the context of his being someone who knew how to work across the aisle in Congress as a means to an end, even when in general disagreement with the other lawmakers’ politics. But Harris demonstrated that politics were about more than policy victories. They had real consequences that affected real people. And to bring the point home, she said, “There was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”

The statement caught Biden off guard and forced him into a half-truth when he countered saying his stance was being mischaracterized, adding that, “I did not oppose busing in America. What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education.” In the days that followed, the statement was fact-checked repeatedly and found to be false. In point of fact, the record showed that Senator Biden had been a staunch opponent of busing on principle, and not simply when ordered by the federal government. The exchange had served Harris well and showed her to be a force to be reckoned with.

Had Biden and Harris been different people than they were, it could have ended there, with Harris returning to the Senate and Biden going on to be president of the United States. Instead, however, it seems clear that Biden respected Harris for challenging his largely deserved record as a champion of civil rights and highly likely also felt it was better to have her in his corner than as a challenger. Or perhaps he felt the best way to heal the blow she had dealt him on race relations was to choose her—a highly capable woman of color—to be his running mate—the first woman, the first black and the first Asian in history to ascend to the vice presidency of the United States. Whatever the case may be, it is clear that Biden chose her because she was the most capable to serve in the post. The points he gained in race relations and ethnicity issues were an added perk, and it turned out to be a match made in heaven.

Of course, all of that is anathema to the openly racist and sexist MAGA Republican leadership. Just forty-eight hours after Joe Biden withdrew from the race and threw all of his support behind the vice president, Harris has come under both racist and sexist attacks. The GOP dog whistle for these attacks as voiced by Texas Republican Senator Chip Roy, for instance, is DEI. Many of us would have to rush to the Urban Dictionary to even know what the initials stood for—diversity, equity, and inclusion. Used in the best sense of the term, DEI refers to policies which seek to promote the fair treatment and full participation of all people, particularly groups who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination on the basis of identity or disability. But in the mouths of MAGA racists like Roy, it becomes a racist and sexist epithet.

Tennessee GOP Representative Tim Burchett got even uglier a day after Biden backed the VP, not only calling her “a DEI hire”, but also recalling that President Biden had said he would pick a black woman as his running mate and wondering aloud, “What about white females? What about any other group?” This could no longer be referred to as a “dog whistle”. This was venturing to say the blatant racist part out loud. And by mentioning white “females”, he was also seeking to lower the status of women to their gender identity rather than seeing them as persons or individuals of equal weight in government and all other walks of life.

On X, Burchett tweeted: “The incompetency level is at an all-time high in Washington. The media propped up this president, lied to the American people for three years, and then dumped him for our DEI vice president.”

Doubling down when questioned by CNN’s Manu Raju, he said, “Biden said he’s gonna hire a Black female for vice president. What about white females? What about any other group? When you go down that route, you take mediocrity and that’s what they have right now as a vice president.” He reiterated on questioning by Raju that he believed Kamala Harris to be, basically, a token black as vice president, saying, “One hundred percent she was a DEI hire.”

Ex-president Donald Trump himself piled on at his Doral Golf Club in Florida, saying that “If Joe had picked someone halfway competent, they would have bounced him from office years ago. But they can’t because she’s their second choice.”

There is really no way to see any of this as any less shocking and egregious than it clearly is. But the impropriety of this sort of racist and sexist talk is rendered even more ironic and hypocritical considering that Trump’s own pick for the VP slot, J.D. Vance, has all of about five minutes of political experience. And his only claim to fame is of having been a failed hedge fund manager and having written a book about his hillbilly upbringing that caught on and became a bestseller. Somewhere along the line, he met up with far-right-wing tech-billionaire Peter Thiel, who became his political mentor and financial backer, and the rest is history—five minutes of history.

Trump clearly picked Vance because he was sure to appeal to the former president’s far-right, white, evangelical base, not because of any political or technical skill sets he brought to the table. So questioning the current vice president’s political background and acumen seems quite rich coming from Trump, whose own pick is so incredibly incompetent to serve. Especially if the Trump ticket should win the election only to have something happen to Trump while in office that requires his vice president to stand in for him. If Trump was, is and always will be a government outsider who plays everything by ear and based on his gut, Vance is a total novice, who basically hasn’t the slightest idea how the world works.

It seems that in the ever more authoritarianized and dominant MAGA wing of the GOP,  Vice President Harris’s career as a renowned, high-profile prosecutor, as the attorney general of the most populous and most politically and economically powerful state in the union, as a senator for that state, and as vice president to a man who has had one of the longest and most storied careers in American politics are insufficient credentials to keep the Alt-Right from characterizing her as anything but “a black female” and “a DEI hire.” Fortunately, Harris’s stellar education, long political experience, maturity, poise, ethics and intelligence are far more than enough to render such characterizations ridiculous. This is especially true considering the incredibly dubious credentials of the two men she and her ticket-mate will be running against—one a convicted felon and insurrectionist, and the other an absolute newbie in the world of politics.

In short, a prosecutor running against a criminal should make for an interesting election.

Contrary to what many critics have suggested, Harris has also played her cards incredibly well and close to her vest as vice president. She has been there in whatever capacity the president has needed her to be, offering her intelligence, experience and hard work to help find solutions to problems the administration has sought to remedy. The rest of the time she has been a friend and close collaborator to the president, a sounding board for his ideas, treating him with utmost respect, and doing her job without ever seeking to second-guess or overshadow the office Biden holds.

In her role as vice president, she has taken a major political risk by taking charge of anything the president pushed her way. Thus, she found herself overseeing the thorny issues of COVID response, voting rights, women’s reproductive rights and civil rights in general. She was also handed the explosive package of issues surrounding the border crisis. This is the issue on which the GOP is now seeking to hammer her, despite the fact that, thanks to actions taken by the Biden administration, border crossings are significantly lower than previous highs. Furthermore, the GOP is seeking to saddle Harris with the blame for continuing difficulties at the Mexican border, when the remaining crisis is largely of the Republicans’ own doing. That is to say, Donald Trump’s doing.

It is public knowledge that the Biden administration—to a large extent thanks to the brokering efforts of Kamala Harris—managed to cobble together an historic bipartisan legislative package to effectively deal with the border crisis. But that deal never made it into law for one simple reason. Donald Trump kicked over the negotiating table, badgering his MAGA lawmakers into backing the GOP away from the deal. He made no bones about the fact that such a deal could very well prove successful, and he didn’t want to “give” that sort of win to the Biden administration, basically telling GOP lawmakers to hold off until he was president again so he could take the victory lap for a border security package created through the efforts of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and the most reasonable lawmakers in the GOP.   

Most important of all, however, has been the ethical capital that Harris has displayed as VP. She has shown unbending loyalty to the president throughout recent months in which he has been increasingly criticized for what people on both sides of the aisle have seen as his failing physical strength and mental acuity. No matter how politically devastating the attacks have been, the presidency and vice-presidency have demonstrated a monolithic front against all comers. In other words, despite having a shot at the presidency within her grasp, Harris has shown herself to be of the highest political and ethical pedigree, a person of honor and loyalty despite her soaring political and intellectual acumen, and her clear desire to serve as president of the United States.

That said, however, she also has been savvy enough to have her ducks in a row if called upon to serve, and within twenty-four hours of President Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 race, she had consolidated overwhelming support among nearly all major figures in the Democratic Party and had garnered such incredible grassroots support that her campaign raised an all-time record eighty million dollars in a single day. This stupendous show of support has left Democrats who were pushing for a “mini-primary” dangling, with their feet kicking in the air. And it has rendered utterly ridiculous and caricaturesque the tentative challenge by Independent (quasi-Republican) Senator Joe Machin, who said he might re-register as a Democrat and go head-to-head with Harris, whom he considers “far-left”, which just goes to show how extremely far-right he is, despite presuming to call himself a centrist.

Sadder still was Manchin’s apparent ignorance of the fact that this election has become one in which age has loomed as a major issue, with the vast majority of Americans—and especially America’s youth—feeling discouraged that they were once again being given a binary boomer choice between two men who would either be, or would become, octogenarians while in office. Joe Manchin, who will turn seventy-seven next month, falls squarely within this rejected profile as well. This also casts a funereal pall over the third-party bid of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., himself a septuagenarian, much of whose momentum has been based on the otherwise unsavory choice between Trump and Biden, especially since RFK Jr.’s campaign sounds basically like MAGA without Trump.

In the end, after months in which the shadow of an election where—despite President Biden’s extraordinary service to the country—the best voters could hope for was “the lesser of two evils,” Americans have been in a somber and hopeless mood. But with the arrival of Kamala Harris on the electoral scene, the clouds have suddenly started to lift for both Democrats and a large segment of independent voters. The political scene is being very quickly injected with a new dose of energy and promise. There is now a very genuine choice between more of the chaotic, hate-filled Trump era that we know will just be more of the same, and a new political energy led by a mature and experienced, yet still young and dynamic presidential candidate whose entire career has been devoted to democracy and the rule of law.

Suddenly, Donald Trump is the only grumpy ol’ man in the race. And MAGA’s barrage of open insults, racism and sexism demonstrates just how suddenly off-kilter and desperate they are.   

 

WHENEVER YOU WANT ‘THE AWFUL TRUTH’, ASK MIKE

President Joe Biden...to be or not to be

 Award-winning documentary filmmaker Michael Moore succinctly said this week what I’ve been trying to tell people, ever since President Biden short-circuited during the first—and very likely last—presidential debate with former president (and convicted felon) Donald Trump. Namely, that President Biden’s wife and his inner-circle of aides are not doing him (or democracy) any favors by pushing him to run again when he is very apparently no longer in any shape to do so.

Okay, let me preface any further remarks with this: As long as the Republicans’ opposition candidate to the incumbent president remains Donald J. Trump—court-confirmed sexual predator, thirty-four-count felon, and the man who sought to overthrow the government and remain in power as an ad hoc ruler—the only option open to anyone who gives a damn about the future of American democracy will be the man or woman running against him. The salient point of this upcoming election isn’t a choice between candidates. It is a choice between democracy and authoritarian rule. (I defy you to read Project 2025—aka Agenda 47—and tell me I’m wrong).

The truth is, if President Joe Biden remains the candidate for 2024, he is all we’ve got. Perhaps he’ll surprise us all by proving to be an even better leader in his second term than in his first, since he’ll no longer be distracted by the perpetual campaign cycle which is, unfortunately, part and parcel of the contemporary political scene. But even if he isn’t, let me make this clear as my unwavering stance: Joe Biden spark-shower short-circuited is a better president than a seditious and felonious Donald Trump and his band of neo-fascists. In fact, Joe Biden in a coma is better than the unspeakable alternative. 

For any true patriot, any person who cares about preserving the two-and-a-half-century democratic traditions of the United States of America, Donald Trump is simply not a viable alternative. On the contrary, he is a clear and present danger to American democracy. If you don’t believe me, read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, or watch the excellent TV series of the same name, and then read the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Atwood couldn’t have written Agenda 47 better (or worse, as it were). In fact, it’s almost as if the Heritage Foundation had used Atwood’s novel as a blueprint for the kind of dystopian, post-democratic world they wish to create.

That said, however, Mike Moore, typically, with much less diplomacy than I or anyone else has applied, is telling it like it is. In an interview on MSNBC, Moore said, “The problem here is that I think there’s a form of elder abuse going on here, where the Democratic Party and the people that are part of the apparatus are pushing and pushing and pushing him (Biden) to stay.”  Moore, who himself is seventy, expanded on the image of “elder abuse”, saying that “watching the debate…was heartbreaking.” He went on to say, “Imagine that was your father up there…Why isn’t anybody doing anything? Why did they do it? Why did they even let him go out on the stage in this condition? Who was looking out for him? Who’s looking out for him right now?”

These are all questions I’ve been asking myself as well. There are many, myself included, who are being perceived as attacking the president over his disastrous debate performance, when what we are instead asking is if the president was in the shape he was in, why on earth did his campaign team, his closest aides, and indeed the first lady, not say he was too ill to go on, and simply cancel or postpone the event? Putting the party’s campaign ahead of the president’s health and welfare is precisely how we got into this mess in the first place, and it has been a disservice to both the president and to the Democratic presidential campaign. So it is the campaign and the party that are to blame. Not the president, who, through no fault of his own, was in no condition to totter out onto that stage.

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore

And instead of fessing up and doing damage control, his aides continue to double down. Or, failing that, to shut down the dialogue, telling everyone that the debate’s over, it was no big deal, nothing to see here, now move the hell on. But it was a big deal. The dialogue is going to go on whether they like it or not. Not because the press is talking about it, but because the voters and the international community are. And that’s scaring the bejesus out of a lot of the down-ballot candidates and world leaders alike. The down-ballot Democrats because their political survival may depend on it. World leaders because, if Trump should win again, their literal survival will be at risk.

The NATO allies view with horror a second Trump presidency. It nearly sank NATO the first time around, and now after three and a half years of working with Biden to rebuild that seventy-five-year-old alliance that Trump so undermined, they hear the former president saying that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin should do “whatever the hell he wants to” in Ukraine. European leaders don’t believe Putin will stop with Ukraine. So hearing that, they can only see Trump 2.0 as not only a threat to American democracy, but to a free and democratic Europe as well.

In that sense, President Biden made a miraculous comeback from the debate episode when he this past week hosted the annual NATO conference, this time in Washington. By all accounts, the president was on his game, greeting world leaders, holding talks on Ukraine, and handling other weighty topics with knowledge and aplomb. This was President Biden in his element, since there has probably been no other president in living memory with such an intimate working knowledge of international affairs. But even at his current best, there was a glaring disconnect when he spoke of the courage of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in resisting Russian invasion, and then introduced him to the conference as “President Putin”.

I watched the president’s post-NATO summit press conference last evening. As I did, I think I probably felt like many other viewers who have long admired President Biden, based on his half-century in government and lawmaking, and think of him as the leader who stopped Donald Trump and saved American democracy from dissolution. That is to say, I found myself agitated and sitting on the edge of my seat, hoping with all my heart that he would be able to show the country and the world that the issues that affected him at the debate were merely the product of overwork and exhaustion, not of any permanent cognitive failing.

The other feeling that I had was one of growing irritation that the president was having to field question after question regarding his fitness to continue serving for another four years, when the man he is running against is a morally bankrupt, grossly perverse, criminally unfit insurrectionist with a now well-documented authoritarian agenda for the future of the United States. I was thinking that President Biden was doing well, sounding strong and confident, despite knowing that his debate performance has placed him under a magnifying glass.

The president worked so hard to allay all of the concerns that have swirled about him since the debate, and did such a good job at it, that there was a moment when I asked myself if we hadn’t all just panicked and made a mountain out of a molehill. But then it happened. In answer to a query about whether he was confident in Vice President Harris’s ability to lead the country if, for some reason, he couldn’t. "Look,” the president responded, “I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president if she was not qualified to be president.”

As a veteran newsman, I knew that the press would jump on such a short circuit with both feet. It was what everyone was waiting for as they listened, reconfirmation of their growing suspicions that Biden’s mind was indeed addled. I wasn’t wrong. The gaffe has been in headlines all day today.  But they weren’t wrong either. The error went right by the president. He never caught himself, never self-corrected. To their credit, the reporters who asked the President about his mental health afterwards, never mentioned the fact that, right there, while he was defending his fitness to serve, he had called his own vice president by his bitter rival’s surname.

Perhaps this gaffe wouldn’t have been quite as noticeable if it hadn’t followed another crossed-wire incident earlier in the week. I’m referring to when, in an interview with Philadelphia-based WURD Radio anchor Andrea Lawful-Sanders the president said, “By the way, I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, first black woman, to serve with a black president.” Obviously, he meant that he had been the VP of the first black president and that he was the first president to appoint a black woman as his running mate and vice president. But it came out as a brain salad.

Leaving that aspect aside for a moment, however, those of us who are capable of looking at this from a human as well as political viewpoint are heartbroken to see how a man with an admirable and uncommon half-century political career, who preceded his own term in the Oval Office with an eight-year stint as vice president to one of the most popular leaders in US history, is being politically manhandled, humiliated and raked over the coals, essentially, for being unwell, instead of being placed under the care of the elite teams of physicians that, as president, he has at his disposal.

Unfortunately, these meltdowns didn’t take place in the privacy of President Biden’s own home in Wilmington, Delaware. They happened in the homes of many millions of Americans. And no one with any experience in these matters believes that his shocking debate performance was a one-off, or “a bad night”, as the campaign is spinning it. Rather, to anyone who has known someone who has suffered through such old-age problems is bound to feel that it is likely only one in a series of frightening moments.

Bernie Sanders

As Mike Moore said in the interview with MSNBC, “Something was wrong that night. We all saw it. We can’t unsee it. And as Richard Pryor and before that, Chico Marx said, ‘Who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes?' My eyes weren’t lying, and yours weren’t either.”

Like Moore, I don’t believe age alone is a disqualifying factor. There are people whose mental acuity and physical resilience continue to be more than acceptable at the president’s age. For instance, anyone seeing and hearing Vermont’s Independent Senator Bernie Sanders—Biden’s most successful liberal contender for the presidency and later staunch supporter—would still have trouble making a case that he is too old to remain in politics, despite the fact that he is eighty-two. But by the time one reaches, as I myself have, one’s mid to late seventies, continuing to function like a well-oil machine becomes less and less of a certainty. It becomes the thing you fear.

Still, there are incredible cases, like that of renowned linguist, philosopher, sociologist and democratic activist Noam Chomsky who, at least until a very recent stroke, continued to have one of the most brilliant minds in America, even into his nineties. I’m thinking too of renowned newsman Robert Cox, the man who was my mentor when I started out in journalism fifty years ago this year, and who, at a lucid ninety, continues to travel internationally and to accept public speaking engagements and TV interviews in his second language. But these tend to be admirable and enviable exceptions to the rule.

As usual, Michael Moore has jabbed his finger into a gaping open sore that many others are trying hard to ignore. That’s what he does. He tells “the awful truth”—which was the name of his riveting and sometimes hilarious investigative TV show on the Bravo Network, prior to the fame he has accrued as a brilliant documentary film-maker. The truths that most people would rather not hear, he tells and demonstrates in such a way that, like a train wreck you can’t turn away from despite your best efforts, he forces you to face “the awful truth”. 

While some people close to President Biden, including First Lady Jill Biden, might see as traitors the—up to now—seventeen Democrat members of Congress who have openly asked the president to step down, or other highly influential Democrats like former President Barack Obama or retired House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who are reportedly discussing the issue in private. But they are not. Most of them have both the well-being of the president and the well-being of the nation in mind.

In the end, the most patriotic mission that the president has right now is to ensure that Donald Trump never again sets foot in the White House. And if that means stepping down and handing over the mantel to a more viable candidate, then that is clearly what he needs to do.

 

A STARK AND BINARY REALITY

 Last Thursday’s presidential debate demonstratively brought home the grim reality of the decision facing US voters this coming November: Do we vote for a serial liar-sexual predator-insurrectionist-felon, or do we vote for an incumbent who has devoted his entire life to public service, but who is now suffering the effects of old age to such an extent that it has become impossible to ignore his increasing incapacity to serve effectively.

The outcome of the debate was a huge win for former president and convicted felon Donald Trump’s blindly loyal base—the Trump or die cult. But it left independents twisting in the wind and Democrats in a state of shock. Joe Biden, the savvy career politician with a half-century trajectory, twelve years in the vice-presidency and presidency, and a well-earned level of respect in Washington, appeared frail, confused, and at times at a complete loss. It was clear that his train of thought was consistently broken and he appeared uncomfortable and ill.     

The lame excuse of President Biden’s closest collaborators was that he “had a cold”. It was also later reported that he had been tested for COVID. But the responsible response to this is that, if the president was sick enough to be weak, fevered and disoriented, then the debate should have been postponed or called off. He, octogenarian that he is, should have been home in bed. Failing that, if he was “good to go”, then a cold is no excuse for the horrifying performance that he put in. He is, after all, the president of the United States, and it is utterly ludicrous and disingenuous to cite “a cold” as justification for what was, by all accounts, the political train wreck that was his delivery during the ninety-minute debate.

Former President Trump, meanwhile, appeared well-coached, and physically strong. But there were no pleasant surprises in his performance either. He was as unrepentant as ever about the January Sixth Insurrection. He failed to commit to accepting the results of a free and fair election. He repeated lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election that he lost, and contended that felony convictions and criminal charges remaining against him were part of a political witch-hunt orchestrated by Biden’s administration to keep him from running.

Overall, fact-checkers were able to demonstrate that Trump told thirty lies over the course of the event, which works out to about a lie every minute and a half, since only half the time was his. In other words, the former president lied just about every time he opened his mouth.

But what seemed most alarming was that the current president was incapable of a coherent comeback against any of those lies. President Biden’s first answers to questions from impeccable moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash were halting and confused and given in a hoarse murmur. It was painful to watch, especially for anyone who likes the president and considers him a decent man and a sound statesman.

The entire debate was, in fact, a bit like seeing your favorite fighter caught off-guard by a stunning blow in the first round, kissing the canvas, managing to struggle to his feet before the count of ten, but never fully recovering for the rest of the twelve rounds. He might manage to stay on his feet, with knees wobbling, for the entire bout, but throughout the twelve rounds, you tensely watch him teetering on the brink, fighting desperately on the defensive, and you know that one well-placed glove to the head or liver will lay him low for good. Even though, after he struggles through to go the distance and the other fighter has to win on points, you can’t feel okay about the outcome. You have to ask yourself if it isn’t time for your one-time champ to step down from the ring and retire with dignity.

And that was precisely what happened to even Biden’s most avid fans—like The New York Times editorial board, which advised that “to serve his country, President Biden should leave the race.” Earlier, one of Biden’s staunchest supporters, columnist Thomas Friedman, also of The New York Times, told Biden in an opinion piece that it was time for him to step aside. Said Friedman, “Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election.”

Friedman described himself as a friend of Joe Biden’s. Indeed, he has long been known as a Biden confidant. He said he had watched the debate alone, “and it made me weep.” I too watched the debate alone, and although President Biden doesn’t know me from Adam, his performance made me feel the same way. Seeing the one-time firebrand who, back in the day, was criticized in Congress for being too young and too brash, or the later experienced statesman brokering across-the-aisle deals that led to some epic legislation, it was heart-rending to watch him mutter, stammer and struggle to recall what he was talking about.

While Friedman, specifically, and The New York Times as an institution couldn’t have been blunter, there is a very real problem with that advice. It comes extremely late in the game—perhaps too late. So does that of so many Democrat politicians, who flew into a panic last Thursday after (during) the debate. More irresponsible still is the inner circle of Biden’s administration and campaign, as well as Democratic members of Congress who have been dealing with the president for the past three and a half years, and who also knew him for decades before that as vice-president and as a high-profile senator. While they might have sought to convince the public that the president’s mind was as sharp as it had ever been, they can’t have helped but notice in private government and diplomatic dealings with him that he had grown elderly and that his health, both mental and physical, was failing him.

In short, the time to tell the president that he should refrain from standing for a second term would have been midway through this one, when it started to become apparent, even to those of us who tried hard to believe that it wasn’t, that the president’s capacity to continue to lead the country for another four years was fading fast. This is especially true because the possible need to replace the president should have been obvious to his inner circle from the outset, considering his advanced age, and contingency plans should have been quietly created. That would have been an act of political realism considering that the average life expectancy for males in the US is slightly under seventy-five years, and the stark truth is that those of us who have reached that point in life are, therefore, living on borrowed time. It is also an awful truth that while many elderly people remain lucid to the end, a large percentage do not. And when someone is in a position of worldwide power, as is anyone holding the office of president of the United States, that is, indeed, something that must be taken into account.

Does that mean that there should be a cutoff age for presidential candidates? No. But it does mean that the inner circle and campaign managers of those who run in their “golden years” need to be aware of the increased inherent risks and have plans to deal with them. It’s clear that this has not been the case with the Democratic hierarchy.

Is it too late for something to be done to save the Democratic election campaign from the aftermath of the debate debacle? Maybe not, but if not, just barely. For the Democrats, there are only two choices. One, get the president to immediately say that he will not be the candidate this November so that another candidate can be chosen and promoted, or, go on as planned, campaigning hard on the premise of democracy.

Considering his criminally seditious behavior under his first presidency, it is clear to any realist that Donald Trump poses an imminent and existential threat to American democracy, one that would only be heightened in a second term, when he would, literally, have nothing to lose. And in the post-debate public perception of far too many Americans, that might be the sole reason to continue to plan to vote for the incumbent—namely, to deny an autocrat who sought to overthrow democracy a second bite at the apple.

If the president were to announce right now that he is stepping down, it could—though not certainly would, depending on how it’s handled—have an unexpectedly positive influence on Democratic election results. Clearly, polls tend to show that the vast majority of Americans are incensed about once again having to choose between Trump and Biden, neither of whom, they feel, is fit for office—President Biden because of his age and mental health, Trump because of his immorality, seditious nature and criminal behavior. The right Democratic candidate could well spark new enthusiasm and optimism among Democrats and Independents alike.

It’s not like the Democrats have no choice. They have several, all sound politicians and honest potential candidates. Vice-President Kamala Harris, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar all spring to mind. But the fact that we are now just four months away from the general election makes it imperative that any decision to change horses midstream be made with the greatest of celerity, and that the positive momentum of doing so be exploited to the maximum.

For that to happen, President Biden, in the spirit of service to the United States that has carried him through his half-century of government, should listen to Tom Friedman and other friends who are wisely encouraging him to step aside. Otherwise, this November, in perhaps the most consequential election in history, Americans will be confronted with a disheartening binary choice—between decency or criminality, between democracy or autocracy, and the end of the traditions that have set the US apart for the past two and a half centuries.

 

THE ‘KING’S’ SPEECH

 

Three nights ago, I once again watched The King’s Speech, with brilliant and moving performances by Geoffrey Rush, as an Australian speech therapist with an uncanny talent (but no credentials) for gifting speech to the speechless, and Colin Firth, as the reticent, stammering Prince Albert of Britain, who was to become King George VI, upon the abdication of his older brother, David, who gave up his crown in exchange for the love of a twice-divorced American commoner with a racy reputation—a love story that would resonate throughout the English-speaking world as a popular fairytale for years to come.

Firth and Rush in "The King's Speech"

The following night, I watched, in its entirety, President Joe Biden’s 2024 State of the Union Address, and I couldn’t help but strike a parallel in my mind between the award-winning film and the president’s stunning performance. Granted, Biden has a half-century history in American politics and has learned to tackle public speaking with vigor and aplomb. But like King George VI, Biden has struggled all his life with a speech impediment, a stammer that has always taken great concentration for him to overcome. Journalists and commentators who should have done their research and, as such, should have known better, have far too often, on hearing Biden’s sometimes halting and disjointed speech, echoed the president’s bitterest opponents in misconstruing it as diminished mental faculties, due entirely to the fact that he is, without a doubt, an old—but not, for that, automatically elderly—man.

I suppose the reason I naturally struck the comparison between The King’s Speech and President Biden’s speech was that, at least in my mind, there were unavoidable parallels. In order to be a constitutional monarch at the service of his people, George VI (father of Queen Elizabeth and grandfather of King Charles) had to overcome his crippling stammer and attendant terror of public speaking to become an effective head of state of the British Empire through some of the darkest years in its history. As if that weren’t enough, he also had to clear the hurdle of his unpopularity as the also-ran replacement for the former, if short-lived, heir to the throne, his flamboyant and popular brother David (a.k.a. King Edward VIII).

Biden’s situation is similar. Not only does he follow four years of Donald Trump, which, for better or for worse (worse), reshaped American politics and rendered the Republican Party unrecognizable as the respectable Grand Old Party of yesteryear, but he is also, as a former two-term vice president, “heir to the throne” of Barrack Obama, the most rock-star-popular and dynamic president in living memory, and one of the nation’s youngest and most consequential leaders. And, like George VI, Biden continues to struggle with his life-long speech impediment and with the prejudices of the ignorant and mal-intentioned, who seek to equate that struggle, applying flawed Medieval logic, with unsoundness of mind.

Like George VI, but with the comparative disadvantage of cable TV and a twenty-four-hour news cycle, Biden is under constant observation, with supporters holding their breath that he “doesn’t screw up”, and opponents gleefully awaiting the moment he does. Meanwhile, his political rival, former President Donald Trump, who is only a little more than three years Biden’s junior, screws up consistently. For instance, confusing Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi, confusing the current administration with the Obama administration—once even talking about running against Obama when he meant (or perhaps didn’t) Biden—and failing to pick his own second wife, Marla Maples, out of a photo line-up. Indeed, he even confused Maples with his sexual assault victim, newspaper columnist E. Jean Carroll. And those only form a small portion of his gaffs.

But as Trump himself once said, he could “shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue” and wouldn’t lose any votes. Over the years, if we’ve learned anything about MAGA Republicans, it is that this is shockingly and sadly true.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, vulgar and rude as ever.

That said, anyone listening to, and indeed watching, Biden’s State of the Union Address to Congress on Thursday night heard and saw a rejuvenated and articulate Joe Biden. The octogenarian president was vigorous, energized and upbeat, yet critical and combative, as well as extending an invitation to politicians of all colors to eschew hatred and division, and to negotiate and compromise on major issues for the good of the country, and the world. He was ready for hecklers in the MAGA camp, clearly knew in advance what each of his own statements would elicit, and responded intelligently, often wittily, and with admirable grace to what were clearly rude and vulgar interruptions—led, of course, by the ever crass and inappropriate Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose behavior was so unacceptably boisterous that she was threatened with removal by the Sergeant-At-Arms.

Biden was, in short, how every critic on both sides of the aisle posit he should be—strong, sharp, edgy, in command, but still willing to compromise, within ethical limits, to get what the nation’s people need from a reluctant and, in part, completely renegade Legislature. If anyone attended that historic event either fearing or hoping, depending on their political bent, to hear a confused and bumbling “Sleepy Joe”, they were either pleasantly surprised or bitterly disappointed.

Michigan Representative (D) Debbie Dingle, who was on the floor of the chamber for the speech, said it was “very clear” that her Republicans colleagues were “uncomfortable”, both with Biden’s strong showing, and with loud displays of impropriety from the MAGA sector in their own ranks. That behavior only seemed to underscore Biden’s pointed references to the undemocratic disorder and chaos sown by Trump and his most ardent supporters. Clearly, Republicans had set a miserably low bar for this State of the Union speech, believing their own electioneering hype in thinking that the perception would be that of a confused, doddering old man, who was obviously unfit to serve.

They were about to be disappointed. The president came out swinging from the very beginning, landing a stunning blow to the jaw of the MAGA wing, by opening with a quote from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, in 1941, told Congress: “I address you at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union.” 
Biden then embraced that idea as his own, saying that, back then: “Hitler was on the march. War was raging in Europe. President Roosevelt’s purpose was to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary moment. Freedom and democracy were under assault in the world. 
“Tonight I come to the same chamber to address the nation. Now it is we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the Union. And yes, my purpose tonight is to both wake up this Congress, and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either. Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today. What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack, both at home and overseas, at the very same time.” 

From that moment on, in strong and vibrant terms, he enumerated the things that, against all odds, his administration had been able to accomplish, and passed back to the GOP the bundle of failures that they have sought to lay at his door. At the top of the list was the continued chaos on the US-Mexico border, and in the immigration system as a whole. The president pointed out that while he had managed to prompt a bipartisan solution to the crisis with some of the most conservative members of Congress, the GOP leadership had bent to Donald’s Trump’s personal will in not passing the immigration bill so as to keep from giving Biden a major policy win before the elections. To which far-right Oklahoma Senate Republican James Lankford, mouthed the words “that’s true.” Biden made it clear that, if there was no improvement on the immigration front, the fault was entirely that of Trump-led Republicans, and that their reasons for rejecting the bipartisan solution were strictly a matter of political electioneering.

Lankford - "That's true"

In point of fact, Biden never mentioned Trump’s name in the nearly ninety-minute address, referring to him only as “my predecessor”. But those references were to number a baker’s dozen, always remaining within the initial context of the speech, positing that Donald Trump is a clear and present threat to American democracy.

Nowhere was that clearer than when he said: “Overseas, Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond. If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not. 

“But Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons it needs to defend itself. That is all Ukraine is asking. They are not asking for American soldiers. In fact, there are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine. And I am determined to keep it that way. But now assistance for Ukraine is being blocked by those who want us to walk away from our leadership in the world. 

“It wasn’t that long ago when a Republican President, Ronald Reagan, thundered, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.’ Now, my predecessor, a former Republican President, tells Putin, ‘Do whatever the hell you want.’ A former American President actually said that, bowing down to a Russian leader. It’s outrageous. It’s dangerous. It’s unacceptable.”

Biden went on to underscore the obvious link between Trumpism and authoritarianism, saying: “History is watching… My message to President Putin is simple. We will not walk away. We will not bow down. I will not bow down.  History is watching, just like history watched three years ago on January Sixth, (when) insurrectionists stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy.” 

Biden continued to drive this point home, saying that the insurrectionists, “had come to stop the peaceful transfer of power and to overturn the will of the people.” 

Recalling the anti-democratic infamy of the chaotic end to the Trump presidency, Biden qualified the historic significance of that incident, saying: “January Sixth and the lies about the 2020 election, and the plots to steal the election, posed the gravest threat to our democracy since the Civil War. But they failed. America stood strong and democracy prevailed. 

“But we must be honest, the threat remains and democracy must be defended. My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth of January Sixth. I will not do that. This is a moment to speak the truth and bury the lies. And here’s the simplest truth. You can’t love your country only when you win. As I’ve done ever since being elected to office, I ask you all, without regard to party, to join together and defend our democracy!”

The president went after Trump and the MAGA Republicans on another burning domestic issue, saying that “history is watching another assault on freedom.” He went on to say that American women’s reproductive rights were under continuing attack following the overturning of Rowe v Wade during the Trump presidency. To make that point, he introduced two women in the audience, one who had had to escape the law in her own state to terminate a pregnancy in which the fetus had a fatal condition and carrying it to term would put her at medical risk and would threaten her ability to have children in the future, and another woman who had also had to leave her state after local laws declared embryos to be people, and the IVF facility where she and her husband were seeking relief from infertility shut down.

Biden described both cases—like thousands of others—as being the direct outcome of the overturning of Roe v Wade, opining, in juxtaposition to the Supreme Court ruling, that Rowe v Wade “got it right.” Taking more precise aim, he said: “Many of you in this Chamber and my predecessor are promising to pass a national ban on reproductive freedom. My God, what freedoms will you take away next?”

In assigning blame for the diminishing of women’s rights, he laid primary responsibility at Trump’s door, saying: “… My predecessor came to office determined to see Roe v Wade overturned. He’s the reason it was overturned. In fact, he brags about it. Look at the chaos that has resulted.”

To the Supreme Court Justices sitting in the front of the chamber, he quoted their Rowe v Wade decision back to them, saying: “In its decision to overturn Roe v Wade the Supreme Court majority wrote, ‘Women are not without electoral or political power.’ No kidding! Clearly, those bragging about overturning Roe v Wade have no clue about the power of women in America. They found out, though, when reproductive freedom was on the ballot and won in 2022…and they will find out again, in 2024.”

Meticulously throughout the evening, the president laid out issues affecting the United States both at home and abroad and underscored how MAGA Republicans are conspiring to stymie any and all solutions, despite Democratic efforts to reach across the aisle and achieve suitable compromises to enact improvements in the state of the union.

But the president also listed his administration’s achievements—all too often given short shrift by detractors and the media in general—despite this overwhelming opposition from the far-right. He touted, among other things, a record fifteen million new jobs in three years, unemployment at fifty-year lows, a record sixteen million Americans starting small business ventures, historic job growth and small business growth for Black, Hispanic, and Asian-Americans, eight hundred thousand new domestic manufacturing jobs, more people having affordable health insurance than ever before, the greatest reduction of the racial wage gap in twenty years, and a drop in inflation from a soaring nine percent to just three percent annually, and six hundred fifty billion dollars in private sector investment in clean-energy production that promised to add thousands of good-paying jobs to the workforce. He praised the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed into law on his watch and promised “buy American” policies would apply to both manufacturing and labor that formed part of the resulting construction projects. And he proudly discussed his administration’s part in taking on Big Pharma to bring down exorbitant drug prices for Americans, specifically talking about the reduction of insulin prices that had already been slashed for seniors from four hundred to just thirty-five dollars a month, with future plans to do the same for the rest of the country’s insulin users.

In short, it was, perhaps, the most political State of the Union Address in history. It was bitterly criticized as such by the MAGA opposition. But that factor also drew certain expressions of disapproval among some of the generally friendly mainstream media.

I disagree. If there was ever a time for a powerfully political State of the Union Address, instead of the usual meaningless waffling that goes with trying to please everyone, it is now. Biden is not wrong. US democracy is facing an existential crisis, the visible authoritarian head of which is Donald Trump, who has hijacked the former GOP and turned it into a cult of personality at his complete service.

Biden spent the first part of his term staying aloof of the fray, while Justice independently took charge of enumerating Trump’s transgressions and turning them into criminal indictments. But as the wheels of justice turn with agonizing lethargy, and it is clear now that insurrectionist and populist autocrat Donald Trump will once again be on the November election ticket, there is no longer any room for Marquis of Queensbury rules.

Democrats must strictly maintain the constitutional rules of democracy at a governmental and legal level, and see to it that they are obeyed by others, especially in the MAGA movement, who would burn it all down and plunge the country into anarchy. But at an electoral level, Biden and his party need to be ready to gird for battle and, when necessary, to get down and punch it out, to paraphrase the late Johnny Cash, in the blood and the snot and the beer.

The most indubitable point that President Biden made in his address last Thursday was the first one: US democracy is under mortal attack by authoritarians both at home and abroad (and all too often in cahoots with each other). The stakes are intolerably high. What is in play, is democracy’s very survival. And like it or not—in the absence of a strong third party conservative candidate willing to torpedo the GOP’s chances for the sake of the nation—re-electing Joe Biden is the only safeguard against democracy’s otherwise certain demise.