“We’re all told at some point in time that we can no longer play the children’s game, we just don’t… don’t know when that’s gonna be. Some of us are told at eighteen, some of us are told at forty, but we’re all told.”
— Moneyball, 2011
President Joe Biden released the following statement today:
I’m not sure why we have to wait until later this week for President Joe Biden to make a public statement. But, we’ll wait.
Regardless of your feelings about Biden, let’s pause a moment to reflect how hard this had to have been for the president. You spend most of your adult life pursuing this dream. You lose once. You don’t even get considered in 2008. You get shoved aside in 2012, just to watch your party lose.In 2020, you finally attain your dream. Mentally, you still think you can do it in 2024, but your body is letting your mind down. But everyone clears the path for you. Then when the actual campaign comes, your mind and your body give in to age publicly, and every doubt about your ability to serve another four years is confirmed.
It’s unfair, but it’s reality for all of us. But Biden is like Tennyson’s Ulysses, who mourns,
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
So let’s recognize the sacrifice Biden is making, for his party and for his country. Let’s also recognize his most important accomplishment, holding together the Democratic Party in 2020 to defeat President Donald Trump.
Now we enter a new phase of the campaign. In his statement withdrawing from the race, Biden endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), along with many Democrats, quickly jumped aboard the Harris bandwagon.
However, former President Barack Obama reminds us that the Democratic Party has not yet made a final decision.
We will be navigating uncharted waters in the days ahead. But I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges. I believe that Joe Biden’s vision of a generous, prosperous, and united America that provides opportunity for everyone will be on full display at the Democratic Convention in August. And I expect that every single one of us are prepared to carry that message of hope and progress forward into November and beyond.
Let’s assume, however, Harris is the nominee. She enters the race with low expectations and some baggage having been named the Biden Administration’s point person for controlling the southern border. She has a reputation for meandering aimlessly through issues as if it was the first time she heard them. She burned through staff like Spinal Tap went through drummers.
On the other hand, Harris has the advantage that she is neither Biden nor Trump. Given the negatives for both candidates, she may be given a fresh look. Certainly there will be buzz in the period between now and the convention. And, if she turns out to be a bust, Democrats can still pick someone else at the convention.
I’m not convinced Harris is the best candidate for the Democrats. However, Biden stepping aside gives the Democrats a chance to put their best step forward. Or, in the case of Harris, at least a better step forward.
—– —– —–
Republicans are already trying to flip Democrats’ charge against Trump that he is a threat to democracy on its head, For example, former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a Trump campaign surrogate, posted on Twitter (X):
I don’t want to hear a word from Democrats about honoring the results of elections. They had primaries and caucuses and @JoeBiden won. They plotted a coup and forced an incumbent to withdraw from the race weeks before the convention. So much for democracy.
My former editor John Bicknell, who has spent enough time researching political party history to know better, also posted recently:
“We will crush this threat to democracy by ignoring the votes of millions of primary voters and selecting a new nominee in a smoke-filled room.”
Let’s get real.
- Let’s remind everyone that political parties are private organizations, free to nominate whomever they want.
- The delegates did not yet meet to make Biden the official nominee.
- Listening to Walker and Bicknell, Democrats would not be able to field another candidate if the incumbent suddenly took ill with cancer or a heart condition. Until recently, Democrats believed that Biden could run a successful campaign. Biden cannot, so Democrats made a change with Biden’s cooperation. Biden’s delegates are free to choose whomever they want, just as political parties chose their nominees until relatively recently.
- Let’s imagine what the primaries would have been like if the Biden we saw at the June debate made an appearance in December. How many Democrats would have jumped into the race? How many calls would there have been for Biden to drop out? Instead, Biden ran against token opposition with his biggest opponent being “uncommitted” to protest support for Israel.
This really is a desperate attempt by Republicans to change the subject: they nominated a candidate for president who orchestrated a fake elector scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election, a coup d’tat, while at the same time inspiring a violent insurrection to put pressure on the Vice President and Congress to go along with the scheme. The Republican nominee for president remains the greatest threat to our constitutional order, no matter how much foo foo dust Republicans throw in the air as a distraction.
