Interesting Times

Another week, another big piece of news on the 2024 campaign trail. Last week it was Donald Trump almost getting shot at a rally in Pennsylvania, and this week the big news is Joe Biden deciding not to seek reelection after all. After the Republican National Convention this week, a friend was having anxiety about the GOP's new confidence, and I told him that the news cycle would move on.

Listen, though, I didn't expect this.

Like pretty much everyone, I tuned in to the debate last month and was horrified to see how bad Biden sounded. This isn't to imply that he made Trump sound like JFK, but it kind of pointed up all the things that the GOP has been saying since the campaign started, somewhere around 28,000 BC. It didn't suddenly make me want to switch my vote to Trump (sorry, spoilers), but it certainly wasn't what we needed to show that Biden was the person who could beat Trump.

I kept faith, though. As I said, one debate performance isn't as important as keeping out a man who packed the Supreme Court with anti-abortion rights judges who've essentially dismantled the administrative state; who banned Muslims from seven countries from entering the US (though notably not from the country that provided most of the 9/11 attackers); who handed out positions to cronies and crooks; who oversaw the worst response of any country to the Covid-19 pandemic; and who, when he was turned out of office in the 2020 election, declared it a fraud and engineered an insurrection to stay in power. And yeah, I haven't touched on his personal conduct, but he's also a felon. So.

But clearly, the opinion polls and the pressure from various Democratic grandees became too much, and Biden decided it was time. With respect, this wasn't the time, because we've already gone through the primaries and there aren't any real national figures that I think can beat Trump. There was a bit of an attempt to primary Biden earlier in the year, but it came to naught, and now we face the prospect of Democratic infighting as we go into the Democratic National Convention and, worst case, into the election itself.

I am reassured that Biden did endorse his VP, Kamala Harris, but I've read that the Democratic elites don't believe she's the right candidate. I have my misgivings about a candidate who suspended her run for the 2020 nomination before a single vote had been cast, but I also worry that shutting her out makes the Black vote stay home in December. If the Democrats actually believe that Trump is a threat to democracy, which he is, then they shouldn't play around and they should get behind Harris.

Was Biden a flawed candidate? Yes, of course! You can quibble over whose fault the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan was (Biden was in charge, but Trump negotiated it), but the crisis in Gaza is entirely his failure. The only person who'd probably have done a worse job of reining in the Israelis and minimizing Palestinian deaths is Donald Trump; but I feel it when Arabs call for people not to vote for Biden. It's hard to argue that anyone else would be worse for the Palestinians than Biden when literally the worst is coming to pass.

Anyway, the die is cast. Biden's stepping back from the campaign trail and endorsing Harris. As I've said, we need the Democrats to TAKE THIS FUCKING SERIOUSLY and rally behind her. Because the question isn't only who's going to be in the White House next January, it's who's going to be in control of the Senate and the House. It's also about who will have the power to appoint new Supreme Court justices. People who were calling for Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to step down before the election (to avoid the fate of Merrick Garland's nomination in 2016) drew some glares, but that time has now passed. The Republicans would totally hold that seat empty again in the hope of winning the election and getting to fill the seat themselves.

So yes, we're living, unfortunately, in interesting times. I'd be happy for some boring times come November, and we're only going to get those if the Democrats win the White House, and ideally both houses of Congress.