As you know by now, June 27, incumbent President Joe Biden had his first 2024 debate against once and possibly future Viceroy for Russian North America Donald Trump, and the universal consensus is that Joe did not have a good night. Which is a polite understatement on the level of “Maybe the Germans should have brought more winter supplies to invade Russia”, “Napoleon was a pretty good artillery captain” or “Michael Ironside has been in a few bad movies.”
If nothing else I got an answer to my question as to why so many people hate Joe Biden and can’t give him credit for anything his Administration does, because Americans can only see the superficial and optics are everything. And Donald Trump understands this better than anyone else. And that is why he has been leading Biden, because Biden actually looks his age while Trump wears a Tribble on his scalp and paints his face the same color they gave David Soul in that one Star Trek episode with the giant lizard head.
But Biden’s age in itself isn’t an insurmountable issue. It’s been the given for quite some time. And he has proven to be pretty sharp on several occasions this year, notably the State of the Union speech, though I recall his voice was going out there too. But in this week’s debate, Joe just seemed out of it. Like, he’d been roped into a Juneteenth celebration and he had no idea what that music was. Sure he focused and started swinging back at Trump by the second half, but that didn’t correct the lethal first impression, especially if you, like many viewers, watched for five minutes, shot your TV and then started looking up prospects for a work visa in Ireland.
The point is, Biden’s performance was so bad that after the debate, all through the night various insiders with ears in the media started making noises to the effect that Democrats need to replace him at the Democratic National Covention.
Guys: Are you really going to go there? Because if you’re serious, you need to explore just how serious your options are.
First off, as I have said, if the president dies or has to retire, he already has a replacement set up, and in this case the replacement is Kamala Harris. And frankly: If people thought Kamala Harris was up to snuff, Democrats would not be in a state of total panic right now. Indeed my position is, and has been, that Biden is only running for a second term because he knows Kamala Harris would be even less popular versus Trump than he is.
And then the second question is not whether they can pull off a brokered convention. If that decision is made, then the process is secondary. The question is who they nominate. Because just as the awful truth of the Republican Party is that there is nobody (except maybe Nikki Haley) who has a chance of winning a national election other than Trump, there is probably no one in the Democratic Party with the national profile and popularity to win the race other than Joe Biden – except perhaps Bernie Sanders, who like the running candidates is real, real old, and technically not a Democrat.
The people with the strongest profile are in different categories. First, Senators like Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. In these cases, that would be taking an incumbent Senator away from the Democrats when their margin is only technical, one seat is guaranteed to flip Republican because Joe Manchin isn’t running in West Virginia, and Democrats are going to need a Senate majority if they win the White House or especially if they don’t. Then you have some non-elected people who are prominent Democrats like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, but in his case, he ran for President as an openly gay man and found out that certain demographics of Democratic voters aren’t as “progressive” on that issue as he needed them to be. And then of course you have Gavin Newsom, Governor of California. I’m sure he’s sincere when he says he’s supporting Biden, if only because of the practical issues involved in switching horses mid-stream. But if someone gave him a serious transition plan, I’m also sure he wouldn’t turn it down.
And then there’s Biden himself. All the news insiders are saying that the only one who can make him step down is him, and the only people who might convince him to do that are people of the same stature whom he respects, namely: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. But then, they’re the ones who decided Hillary Clinton was a better candidate than Joe Biden in 2016, so how good is their judgment on this matter?
On an online forum for The Bulwark staff, Bill Kristol declared his position by saying, “If there is no solution, then there is no problem.” You just go with what you have, which is still the most realistic option.
And it just points out the critical difference between liberals and “conservatives” – liberals still act like facts matter. They still act like they have standards. When Biden or some other Democrat is stupid or incompetent, they will actually call it out. They may try to spin somewhat, but they don’t deny what they see. Whereas for the past few weeks, at least, Trump’s fan club and pet media have seen him on the podium insult his own audience or go into a fugue state, and they still act like he built the Pyramids, wrote the King James Bible and invented sliced bread.
Maybe Democrats need more of that. And I think I saw some of that when I looked at the YouTube comments on various people’s pages. I saw people saying basically the same things: “I’m worried, but I can’t vote for Trump.” “We can’t let Trump win.” “I’d rather vote for a ham sandwich than Trump.”
Wishful thinking and denial of reality. Democrats ought to try it out. It’s worked great for Republicans so far!