I have been somewhat taken aback by Democrats’ hemming and hawing about whether President Joe Biden should continue his candidacy against former President Donald Trump in the wake of what, by all accounts, was a disastrous debate performance on June 27.  For those who believe both that the President’s campaign has sprung a fatal leak and that the fate of our democracy depends upon defeating Mr. Trump, such dilly-dallying is inexplicable.  I’ve been considering a number of maxims I accept in reflecting whether I was too hasty when I declared in these pages after the debate that he should step aside.  Let’s review them.

If they’re talking about Biden, Trump is winning.  If they’re talking about Trump, Biden is winning.  Right now, they’re talking about Mr. Biden’s age, frailty, and acuity.  They’re not talking about Mr. Trump.  Progressive pundits keep declaring that attention should not be centered on Mr. Biden but instead upon Mr. Trump’s evident authoritarian and aberrant inclinations.  Such assertions ignore reality.  Mr. Trump has said and done so many outrageous things over the last nine years that the public is inured to them.  To think that the former president will say something between now and Election Day that will materially affect the trajectory of the race is simply Woke naiveté.  

The first party to break out of the “Double Hater” (a media description for the majority of Americans who polls indicate don’t want either man for the next four years) Paradigm will win the White House.  By rejecting former SC Gov. and U.N. U.S. Amb. Nikki Haley, the Republicans have already blundered away (or were bullied out of) their opportunity to present voters a fresh face.  Now, it’s the Democrats’ turn – one way or the other.  We’re conditioned by our commercial culture to be attracted to the new.  The public interest and excitement that would be generated by a different Democratic nominee cannot be overstated.  The day before he went to prison 🙂 , the Washington Post quoted Trump advisor Steve Bannon:  “Trump’s [presidential debate victory] was a Pyrrhic victory. … [If Mr. Biden withdraws] [y]ou’re going to take out a guy [we] know [we] can beat … and we’re going to have a wild card.”

 A vote for anyone except Biden is a vote for Trump.  The election will not be decided by the bases of either party.  It will be determined by the votes of swing state undecideds.  If those who detest Mr. Trump but consider Mr. Biden physically unable to serve another four years decide to either vote for a third party candidate or stay home, Mr. Trump wins.

Democrats have the more popular side in most of the substantive issues now facing the country.  Apparently true; in the abortion issue, Mr. Trump’s offhand comments about revising Social Security and Medicare, his obvious past kowtowing to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his obvious incitement of the January 6^th insurrection seem to provide Democrats an extremely strong hand to persuade decisive swing state swing voters that the former president is morally, substantively, and intellectually unfit to serve another term.  (Democrats arguably even have the means to blunt Republicans’ potent immigration thrusts by noting that Mr. Trump publicly took credit for scuttling a bipartisan immigration bill.)  But this only underscores the President’s weakness as a standard bearer because polls uniformly indicate that he is losing.

The most important last:  former President Bill Clinton’s oft-stated observation:  Elections are about the future.  Mr. Biden keeps talking about what a good job he has done.  Even so, those who appreciate what he’s done are understandably focused on where we go from here.  (Recall that less than three months after the Allies defeated the Nazis, the British people voted out Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his Conservative Party, believing the Labor Party could better lead the United Kingdom in the postwar era.)  Even before the debate, virtually all Biden supporters whom I spoke to expressed severe reservations about his age.  (“He’s so old,” with a shrug or shudder.)  They truly doubt his ability to effectively conduct the presidency until he’s 86.  This is unlike the misgivings spawned by former President Ronald Reagan’s feeble first debate performance in 1984; in that contest, the majority of public didn’t tune in with the preconceived notion that Mr. Reagan was too old to serve another term.  Mr. Biden’s performance merely confirmed and reinforced doubts that were already there; his ability to reassure the public through subsequent appearances is accordingly significantly less than Mr. Reagan had.  I’m personally appalled by Mr. Biden’s excuses that on the most important night of the 2024 presidential campaign, he maybe had a cold, or was exhausted, or had jet lag (a week after his last trip), or didn’t follow his instincts, or whatever.  I don’t think his performance can be dismissed as one bad night – as one might a poorly-delivered stump speech among dozens of others.  The Debate was the night.  And he bombed.  It is not unreasonable for voters to want a leader who’s able to respond best when most challenged.  While Mr. Trump is also obviously slipping physically and mentally, his animated manner makes his decline less apparent to the casual observer.

Sports presents trite (in this context) yet perhaps apt allegories.  Jackie Smith is enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame for his performance as a tight end over the 1960s and 1970s; yet all the casual football fan remembers of Mr. Smith is that he dropped an easy pass that cost the Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl XIII.  Bill Buckner had an outstanding career, with over 2,700 career hits and records for most assists by a first baseman in a season; yet all the casual fan recalls is that he let a ball roll through his legs that cost the Boston Red Sox the 1986 World Series.  Sometimes, one big event outweighs all else.  Cruel?  Certainly.  Reality?  Without doubt.

The upcoming presidential election will be decided not by diehards but by casual fans.      

Now, to the realities.

Mr. Biden has a hammerlock on the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.  While I put little credence in the President’s claims to Congressional Democrats that during the primaries, Democratic voters spoke “clearly and decisively” on his behalf – in the wake of his debate performance, I’d like to see how the President would now fare against a credible Democratic opponent – it cannot be denied, as the President also noted in his communication, that he is the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee.  He will be the nominee unless he voluntarily chooses to withdraw. 

You can’t replace somebody with nobody.  The best argument I have heard for the President continuing in the race is that Democrats are most likely to turn to Vice President Harris if he withdraws.  While I’m ready to be convinced otherwise, I’ve heard of no polls indicating that Ms. Harris would fare better against Mr. Trump than Mr. Biden in the swing states (her ability to run up bigger totals than Mr. Biden in deep blue states – which will show up in national polling numbers – is irrelevant.)  While I understand that any attempt to bypass Ms. Harris might trigger a revolt by the Democratic Party’s powerful constituency of color, if former President Barack Obama shares my concerns about Ms. Harris’ electability, Mr. Obama is going to have to take a hand here.  (This note is long enough without my spouting about the pros and cons of other potential Democratic nominees.  I can name at least two that I think could beat Mr. Trump in Wisconsin; for each of them, MD Gov. Wes Moore would be an excellent running mate.)

Mr. Biden is apparently choosing to pass the buck to the Lord Almighty.  During an interview with George Stephanopoulos following the debate, Mr. Biden declared, “I mean, if the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I’d get out of the race. The Lord Almighty’s not coming down.”  While the President is by all accounts a man of deep faith, the rather flip nature of his comment invites a response which I – and I suspect he – heard in our youth:  “The Lord helps those who help themselves” – which I would suggest that in this context, means He expects the President to use his power of discernment to determine and take the steps which will best enable America to preserve its democracy.  In retrospect, the Biden Team’s decision to hold a debate before the Democratic Convention has unwittingly provided Democrats the opportunity to change course that would not have been evident or available otherwise.

I prefer to post on either Friday or Monday, and targeted this note for today for much of the week; I concede that I now feel a bit caddish about its timing, like I’m piling on when it is reported that quite a number of Democrats are going to call for the Mr. Biden to step aside in the near future.  That’s as may be.  I continue to believe that the President should end his candidacy.    

If Mr. Biden persists, the fate of our democracy will rest on his ability to fulfill his now-shaky pledge to defeat Donald Trump this November.  In the end, he might be right; recall that the specter of Donald Trump stilled what all forecast to be a “Red Wave” in the 2022 federal election cycle.  Although I believe that the President is a genuinely good man who means well, if he loses, the consequences of his decision to stay in the race – a decision that a close friend described to me as “pure hubris” last weekend – will fall upon all of us; but among those opposing the authoritarian impulses of Mr. Trump and his MAGA cultists, the responsibility for the destruction of our democracy will ultimately rest with Joseph R. Biden, Jr., and with him alone.

We’ll see what happens.

We didn’t watch the debate.  We had an important conflict, so we recorded it, and I could have watched it by now; but the unanimous assessments of pundits across the political spectrum has made it unnecessary.  I see no need to watch a guy for whom I have genuine respect, who I think has done a really good job as president, embarrass himself.  Over the last several days, these pages joined hundred of pundits in suggesting what strategies President Joe Biden might use to debate former President Donald Trump.  He apparently didn’t effectively execute in any manner.  It doesn’t matter why it happened – I understand that the President’s apologists are claiming he had a cold – it happened. 

Describing the first – and ultimately, pivotal – 1960 debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, Theodore White wrote over sixty years ago in The Making of the President 1960: 

“There was, first and above all, the crude, overwhelming impression that side by side the two seemed evenly matched – and this even matching in the popular imagination was for Kennedy a major victory. [Emphasis Added]”

By all accounts, the “crude, overwhelming impression” left with voters last night was that the 81-year-old President is not up to another four years.  It doesn’t matter if, as a number of commentators have indicated, that former President Donald Trump repeatedly lied (since I didn’t see the debate, I need to take that one on faith, but it doesn’t take a lot of faith  😉 ).  Mr. Trump will undoubtedly gain some percentage of the heretofore undecided voters dismayed by Mr. Biden’s seeming infirmity, but I am going to guess that Mr. Biden’s greater political wound will be the irretrievable loss of those swing voters who can’t stomach Mr. Trump and were as of last night’s debate willing to be convinced that Mr. Biden could serve another four years – but will now stay home or vote for a third-party candidate.  Mr. Biden needed those voters to overcome Mr. Trump’s rock-solid cultish support.  I don’t think even a bravura performance by Mr. Biden in the men’s second debate can overcome the disastrous impression left by his first performance (most commentators at the time considered the last three Kennedy-Nixon debates a draw); even if Mr. Biden does well, there will undoubtedly be the lingering suspicion in the minds of some moderate voters that maybe the President is on uppers, as the Trump Camp claims.

Democrats now face two obvious challenges: 

First, to convince a sitting President who has already secured sufficient committed delegates to secure the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination to release his delegates, and withdraw from the race. 

I am confident that it would be hard for anyone who has experienced the power of the presidency of the United States to accept the notion that s/he needs to voluntarily step aside (particularly if one believes, as I understand the President does, that his beloved son would never have been prosecuted had he chosen to forego a second presidential campaign).  However, given the vehement and unanimous view among his supporters about the probable impact of his debate performance, the President needs to do what he’s always done – put the country first.

Second:  Whom to nominate in the President’s place:  a candidate who can hit the ground running – i.e., who already has some national presence — and defeat Mr. Trump. 

It’s clearly way too early to speculate widely on potential replacement Democratic presidential nominees.  That said, if one believes, as I do, that in the current environment no Democrat can win the White House unless s/he wins Wisconsin, it cannot be Vice President Kamala Harris.  I suspect that in the coming days, Democratic WI Gov. Tony Evers will be telling major national Democratic politicos a version of what I consider the most vital fact about Ms. Harris:  not even one of our most progressive friends living in Madison, Wisconsin – perhaps the most progressive enclave between the coasts — thinks that Ms. Harris can beat Mr. Trump in Wisconsin. 

At the same time, to win 270 Electoral College votes, Democrats must find a candidate who will secure the enthusiastic support of the African-American voters and other voters of color, whom they cannot afford to alienate through any seeming slight to Ms. Harris.

While this note seems an extremely abrupt, heartless about-face about the President, a cold-blooded dismissal of a good man who has served the American people well for over half a century, what has persuaded me without even watching the debate of Democrats’ need to seek a different nominee was the reaction this morning of MSNBC’s Morning Joe’s decidedly-liberal panel.  It was apparent that they had genuine sorrow for a fine gentleman whom they know personally and have real affection for – but now no longer believe can defeat Mr. Trump. 

Mr. Trump is still Mr. Trump.  He must be defeated.    

The only good news for Democrats – a point that I’ve seen made elsewhere – is that because this debate was so early, it’s not too late to make a course correction.  Mr. Trump remains beatable in at least the northern swing states – if the Democrats are able to unite – quickly — behind the right candidate.  They’d best get to it.

We’ll see what happens.  

According to a well-known account of a conversation occurring at the end of the last day of the 1787 Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, when the members of the Convention had just finished hammering out the Constitution under which we live today (as amended), one of the grand ladies of Philadelphia society, Elizabeth Willing Powel, asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

According to the legend, Mr. Franklin replied: 

“A republic, if you can keep it.”

By all indications, a Senate deal which would provide both stringent border protections favored by Republicans – controls, indeed, that I have seen reported as being much more rigorous than Republicans will ever secure in the future if in 2024 Democrats retain the White House and regain complete control of Congress — and aid needed by Ukraine to effectively continue its defense against Russia that enjoys bipartisan support, is about to be scuttled because former President Donald Trump has instructed his Republican minions in Congress to kill it.  It appears undisputed – this is the crux — that Mr. Trump doesn’t want our border challenges to be addressed because he wants to be able to blame President Joe Biden for the chaos during the upcoming campaign.  Republican U.S. UT Sen. Mitt Romney has called Mr. Trump’s action “appalling”; Republican U.S. NC Sen. Thom Tillis has called it “immoral” to reject a border deal to help Mr. Trump politically.  Bowing to Mr. Trump’s bidding, MAGA Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson has declared that the bipartisan Senate arrangement will be “Dead on Arrival” in the House.  After Mr. Biden expressed support for the Senate agreement late last week, Mr. Johnson sharply criticized the President, claiming that Mr. Biden should instead secure the border by executive order.  (The irony here is particularly thick.  Republicans have done nothing but accuse Mr. Biden of executive overreach ever since he took office; at the same time, Mr. Trump’s instructions could well politically backfire on him if Democrats have the savvy to run continuous reels, particularly in our southern border states, of Messrs. Romney, Tillis and their Republican Senate colleagues blaming Mr. Trump for the deal’s failure.)

I admit that I haven’t educated myself on immigration policy and issues over the last several years in the way I have intended; that said, it is clear even from liberal media outlets that — no matter whose fault it is, or what factors contribute to it — we face a human, security and logistical crisis on our southern border.  A large segment of our people are highly exercised about it.  Senate Republicans clearly think that the deal they have struck with their Democratic colleagues will markedly improve our current challenge. (I note that Mr. Romney said that the bipartisan bill would “solve” our border dilemma; I doubt any piece of legislation could do that.)

At the same time, I have for months been painfully aware that Ukrainians are fighting and dying daily to defend their homeland, that they’ve been running out of munitions, and that their ability to withstand any future major Russian onslaught will be extremely compromised without the aid that this bill would provide.  It takes no prescience for anyone who has spent any time over the last 80 years considering U.S. foreign policy to understand that not only Western Europe but America will be less secure if Ukraine falls to Russia.

There is reportedly a solid majority in both Houses of Congress that would approve the Senate deal if it was allowed to come to a vote.  If so, the fate of the suffering people at the border, relief for our fellow citizens whose lives are being disrupted by the onslaught of migrants, and the destiny of a Ukrainian people struggling to defend themselves (and the world’s democracies) against despotism is being hamstrung by the spasms of one old, evil, demented megalomanic.

According to accounts of Congressional Republicans such as Mr. Romney and former U.S. WY Rep. Liz Cheney, the vast majority of Republicans in the Senate and most Republicans in the House have nothing but contempt for Mr. Trump.  They nonetheless kowtow to him because they fear losing their hallowed offices.  In addition to rank ambition, a rationale sometimes offered for these Republicans’ shameless obeisance to Mr. Trump is their fear of MAGA physical retribution against themselves and their families.  These are frankly pitiful attempts to rationalize a monstrous dereliction of duty by those who have intentionally sought and won membership in the branch of our federal government that has the Constitutional power to declare war – the power to send our men and women of the armed forces to fight and to die on behalf of America’s interests.  Those in the military and their families don’t get the luxury of ducking their responsibility in order to preserve their positions and their physical safety.  They have to follow whatever these craven blowhards decide is in their own political self interests.

I’m not sure whether I feel greater antagonism toward those MAGA officeholders who want to institute an American Apartheid or for those Republican officials who would support bipartisanship if they did not fear retribution.  Frankly, it doesn’t suffice to call the latter group, “cowards.”  People are fighting and dying for freedom in Ukraine, and they don’t have the guts to stand up.  They are — I know what crass epithet comes to my mind as an apt description; but I leave that one to you.

Meanwhile, last week a jury found the MAGA Messiah before whom these Republicans prostrate themselves liable to E. Jean Carroll for over $83 million dollars for continuing to defame Ms. Carroll after a jury of three women and six men had earlier found that he had sexually abused her.  (If you don’t know and still care to learn what Ms. Carroll testified that the former president did to her before the jury rendered its verdict, the substance of her account is readily available via internet search.)  The New York Times reported that as he left the courtroom last week on the day before the verdict was rendered, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee loudly declared, “This is not America.”

I ironically agree with the former president’s aggrieved declaration – although obviously not with the lies he spews.  The despicable, toxic posturing and pandering now occurring in the United States House of Representatives is not America – my America – a country in which, to use Historian Jon Meacham’s analogy which I particularly like, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan have been figuratively debating our best course over the last 90 years.  The two have certainly had vigorous disagreements, and each in life was a wily politician sensitive to the moods of his people, but each always urged in good faith what he felt was best for our nation, believed that it was in America’s strategic interest to use our power to constrain despotism across the globe, and understood that compromise between divergent views held in good faith was the core of our system.

At this most perilous time, when I see a compromise that could provide vital benefit on multiple fronts sacrificed to ambition and fear, I hearken back to Mr. Franklin’s exchange with Mrs. Powel.

I wonder if we can keep it.

“You must not weaken in any way in your alert and vigilant frame of mind.  Though holiday rejoicing is necessary to the human spirit, yet it must add to the strength and resilience with which every man and woman turns again to the work they have to do, and also to the outlook and watch they have to keep on public affairs. …

[W]e have yet to make sure … that the words, ‘freedom,’ [and] ‘democracy’ … are not distorted from their true meaning as we have understood them.  There would be little use in punishing the Hitlerites for their crimes if law and justice did not rule, and if totalitarian or police governments were to take [their] place ….”

• British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, May 13, 1945

Before our last 4^th of July holiday, I quoted these remarks by Mr. Churchill in these pages – which he delivered to the British people on a date after the fall of Nazi Germany but before the defeat of Imperial Japan, and as the indications of Soviet Russia’s designs for eastward European territorial domination were first appearing – and there’s at least an even chance I’ll cite them at least once more before another of our 2024 national holidays.  There has not been a time in over 75 years in which they have been as relevant as they are today, as former President Donald Trump, unabashedly using rhetoric that is often a direct lift from Adolf Hitler, seems poised to win the presidential nomination of a major American political party whose adherents now consist of the fascist, the poisonously tribal, the cowardly, or the blind.

For most of my lifetime, presidential elections have been won by the candidate that was most effective at obtaining the votes of those in the political middle of our electorate.  More recently, given a closely-divided, hyper-polarized polity in which virtually all of our citizens have hardened leanings either right or left, winning has involved turnout – i.e., which side is better able to squeeze more votes out of its supporters.

This year, if democracy is to be preserved – assuming that Mr. Trump does win the Republican nomination – the supporters of the Democrat opposing him – overwhelmingly likely to be President Joe Biden – will need to be good at both.  Democrats will need to persuade enough of the disaffected and disappointed – particularly among minorities and the young – that it does matter for their futures to go to the polls to vote against Mr. Trump.  At the same time, Democrats will need to convince enough older voters who would in normal times lean toward a traditional Republican candidate that what matters in 2024 is preserving democracy — that there will always be another election in 2028 if Mr. Biden is reelected, no matter what he does.

It must be faced:  Mr. Trump’s cultish supporters will not leave him, and will show up on Election Day.  Mr. Biden’s seemingly increasing physical infirmity and what certainly appears to be a mishandled situation at our southern border clearly hurt his prospects.  The animating issue of abortion, together with what increasingly appears will be a soft economic landing and Mr. Trump’s chilling fascist rhetoric, are obviously powerful political assets to help Democrats persuade the open-minded.  Foreign policy (our apparently waning willingness to continue to support Ukraine, and our clearly dwindling patience with Israel’s manifestly indiscriminate destruction of Gaza) and the outcomes of Mr. Trump’s criminal and civil court proceedings are political wildcards.

It’s going to be that close.       

So as we celebrate the dawn of another year that has been given us, and amid whatever other New Year’s resolutions you may be contemplating, let me offer this:  consider how you might, as Mr. Churchill suggested over 75 years ago, apply your strength and resilience in the coming year to the work we have to do to preserve our democratic way of life. Don’t let exhaustion win.

Thank you for the honor of allowing me to share these posts with you again in 2023.

May you, your family and friends have a Happy and Healthy New Year.