Please, don’t try to gaslight me. I haven’t written anything for a long time. While there has been some exceptional coverage, e.g. on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the tone of the site has been much more acerbic, especially since Trump was elected. (Some people make everyone around them better; others make everyone around them worse, e.g. Trump.)
When I read the common stories here, there are so many that see what they want to see and interpret things the way they want them to be, and marshal the information to conform with what they believe. We all do that to some extent, but if we’re going to live in the real world, we cannot ignore any information, whether it fits with what we want or contradicts what we would like.
I thought that Joe Biden was a mediocre candidate in 2020 and would have preferred someone like Elizabeth Warren. But Biden ran a superb campaign and in retrospect may have been the only Democrat that could have beaten Trump. But let’s look at the data. He won the popular vote by about 7 million but where it counted it was razor close. Take Wisconsin, for example, and compare his performance with Hillary Clinton’s, who lost by a hair. While the MAGA folks are saying he stole it by running up the score in Milwaukee, he actually won it by shaving a few votes off Trump in most counties, including deep red ones. If he had relied on just running up the score in Milwaukee, he likely would have lost. MI, PA, GA, AZ, are similar. Can he repeat that in 2024? Look at the polling. Biden was running way ahead of Trump in 2020 and the closeness of the election was a shock to most analysts. Now Biden is running consistently behind.
Until the debate I didn’t think there was a problem. I expected Biden to crush Trump, call out his lies, contrast their performances, and goad him into a full-on display of his ridiculousness. None of that happened. If you think that Biden’s performance wasn’t dreadful, go back and watch just five minutes of the debate with the sound off, like Trump would do. The orange menace looks in command, and one of the best Presidents in my lifetime looks like a doddering old man, slack jawed, looking down, and not fully engaged. After watching that, go back and consider the debate the way I prefer, read the transcript of Biden’s statements. There are just far too many times where his remarks are simply problematic. (Trump’s, in contrast, were a tsunami of lies in a stew of braggadocio, bombast, and idiocy.)
The readers on DKos are going to stick with Biden despite the debate, and I am certainly in the number. But the voters that we need are those marginal voters, possibly dis-attached, maybe double haters, and less inclined to vote, maybe those few votes in rural Wisconsin that switched from Clinton to Biden. Do you really think that Biden can attract those voters after that debate performance?
I’m a 75 year old Irish-American Catholic who has voted Democratic his entire life, and my political engagement goes back to working for Gene McCarthy in NH in 1968. I know that switching candidates late in the game is highly problematic. I still work full time and workout virtually every day. But I also know that I’m not the same, at least from a strength perspective, as I was four years ago. And looking at Biden, he’s not aged as well as I have, not surprising given his job. But his admission that he needs more rest and can only work limited hours should be concerning. And his actions since the disastrous debate don’t suggest to me that he can both function as our President and run a successful re-election campaign.
I started this by asking people not to gaslight me. I don’t think anything on the Democratic side comes close to the Stop the Steal or the January 6th related gaslighting on the Republican side. But I do think that we haven’t been told the truth by the administration about Biden’s capabilities and how they have changed over the past four years. Anyone that is going to say that they haven’t deteriorated is simply trying to gaslight me. (It may not be fair to Jill, but I’m reminded of Nancy Reagan’s comments during the final years of Ronald in the White House.) It’s one thing to defend your husband; it’s something very different when you attempt to mislead the American public. It’s understandable for those in the White House to protect the President. But it’s not acceptable for them to misrepresent his capabilities to the voting public. (And please, don’t even think about contrasting this with the Republicans misrepresenting Trump. The Democrats still represent a political party while the Republicans have devolved into a cult.)
Biden has been a superb President. But he has not been a good campaigner in 2024 and shows no signs of improving, the brief interview with Stephanopoulos notwithstanding. Recent polling shows him behind, marginally more now than pre-debate, with MN, NM and NH potentially in play. Recent Supreme Court decisions, especially the immunity decision and overturning Chevron, increase the already huge stakes.
Is switching to Harris a gamble? Absolutely. But with Biden at the top of the ticket, the chances of Democrats losing not just the Presidency but also the Senate, which will be tough anyway, and the House is frighteningly high. With Harris we stand a chance of re-energizing voters in the traditional Democratic base that Biden to date has unable to attract. And Harris can bring a prosecutorial approach to dealing with the opposition and renewed emphasis on abortion. We need someone who can say to Trump “You can’t handle the truth” and then eviscerate him on his 61 failed court cases after the 2020 election.
I suspect that this perspective will anger many here. That would be good if it causes a re-evaluation of all the evidence before us.