Tick-tock, Mr. President; tick-tock. You say you are still running, but right now it’s the clock that’s running; please don’t let it run down much more.
It’s time to go. There has been a problem with your campaign, and it has not gotten better.
While the debate last week was dreadful, you had problems before that. People did not want an 85 year-old President (Biden will be 86 at the end of a second term; Trump will be 82), and, as you admitted after the debate, “I know I’m not a young man…” which you followed with, “I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to.” That is exactly the point, Mr. President.
To a point, I empathize with the humiliation that must have resulted from the debate, and the subsequent discussions, like this one.
But Joe Biden is the President, not my friend. If he isn’t up to a debate against Trump, it seems unlikely that he is up to four more years of the presidency. Biden has been largely insulated from unscripted contact with the press and the public, but everyone knows what they saw at the debate, and we can’t unsee it. How can we expect not to see it again?
Mr. President, you did some good things in your one term, especially with a completely dysfunctional Congress. But it’s time to take a bow, accept our thanks for not ending democracy, and turn this task over to someone that is younger, has more vigor, and can respond to an opponent that needs responding to.
For the past three years, I have celebrated when you get up or down the ramp from Air Force One without incident. It’s tough to get old, but it gets us all eventually, and it’s not your fault, unless you don’t address it.
If you stay in the race, you may lose, but if you have another public “episode,” you WILL lose. If you stay in too long, and then withdraw in a month or two, your successor will not have enough time to establish credibility and an agenda. Tick-tock, Mr. President.
Don’t patronize us. Your team referred to those of us that are concerned as bed-wetter’s. They announced that you had a cold, an hour into the debate. Now they say you were exhausted from extensive foreign travel (you returned ten days prior to the debate). Travel IS part of the job.
And, don’t forget the Supreme Court’s recent decisions, that can make this an even more consequential election.
So now what? What happens when you withdraw? The campaign focus can move away from your age, and can move back to your opponent, and his age, his lies, his legal problems, and his agenda (see June 27 column on Project 2025 — https://wtvbam.com/2024/06/27/667031/).
Here is an idea: let’s throw out both candidates, find a couple of qualified folks under eighty and restart the campaign today.
Several names have been hinted as replacements for Biden. But realistically, it makes no sense to bypass Kamala Harris.
Realistic options, moving forward, are:
1.) President Biden continues his campaign, and some seismic executive success allows him to pull off a surprise victory; more likely, nothing changes, or the President experiences another public gaffe, and Biden loses big to Donald Trump in November.
2.) Kamala Harris takes over the reins for the campaign, chooses a dynamic VP from a swing state and starts the process of proving to voters that she brings wisdom, clarity, vitality, and fairness to the job, while leveraging the historic nature of her candidacy to energize partisan voters, to win over independent voters, and to calm voters concerned about 80-year-old candidates.
The case for Harris? She is known. She boasts legitimacy in her party by having served as VP on a party ticket that has already won an election against Donald Trump. With experience as a district attorney, California attorney general, U.S. senator, and vice president, her resume is substantial. She is articulate and she is 59 years old.
A new CNN poll shows her to be close (and very slightly ahead of Biden) in a matchup with the Republican ticket. Her candidacy would eliminate the argument of the double-haters (that large portion of voters who want neither Biden nor Trump as President).
Mr. President, you can’t afford to hit the snooze button on this one. The clock is ticking.
Curt MacRae is a resident of Coldwater, MI, and publishes opinion columns regularly.
Tweets @curtmacrae — comments to rantsbymac@gmail.com
Comments