It has now been a couple of weeks. We were on vacation and pointedly ignored newscasts, so when we returned on that Sunday it was to the announcement (just made; I suppose they were waiting for us) that President Biden is stepping aside and passing the torch.
Politics as usual was never much of a thing, only to those who pay too little attention to what actually goes on and respond only to the surface, but this is one for the history books. Biden won all his primaries, so everyone assumed it was a done deal (forgetting of course that primaries and caucuses are not part of the Constitution, were in fact Party devices that were not formally adopted at a national level until after the 1968 election season, and then only as an attempt to avoid the kind of messy floor fights that were hallmarks at the national conventions. Even afterward, it was assumed that a Dark Horse might emerge at the regular convention. Point being, none of this was built into the system originally and those feeling that something fundamental has been overturned are not as informed as they might believe.)
What Biden did, then, is in no way illegitimate, just startling, but hey, we could use a little shock just now.
I did not feel Biden had cause to do this. A poor performance at the debate was not indicative of his ability to govern. He was governing, he continued to do so, ably. But we are very much wedded to Performance Politics—not in how well the office might be managed but in how our representatives look while doing their jobs. Poor appearance has become deadly, regardless of actual ability, a factor in our politics which I abhor. We have for too long elected politicians based not on their ability to run an office but on how well they campaign, and while raw skill may have a lot to do with both, they are not the same skillset. But Americans have always responded to glorious bullshit more readily than actual ability, a trait that has only become worse.
That said, it was becoming clear that Biden has lost the confidence of many in the Party, and regardless of actual accomplishments and ability, he can’t do his job with that kind of disaffection. It would get overly complicated and ugly and he risked damaging the very thing he has worked to build, namely the kind of selfless dedication to service that ought to be the hallmark of our politicians. This is something his opponent seems constitutionally incapable of understanding.
So he bit the bullet, as it were, and did what he thought best for the country. However one may feel about the circumstances that put him in this position, his decision cannot be criticized but only applauded. Whatever the outcome, he did this for the good of the country.
Barring any kind of blindsiding floor fight at the convention, Kamala Harris is our nominee. She has been pulling support from all quarters and for the moment looks to be a lock. It seems that people were waiting for someone to vote for, not just someone in opposition to the other guy. With only a few months left in the campaign season, this has left the GOP scrambling. They honestly seem not to have considered her a threat. That’s bad planning, but what do you expect? Harris is a woman, nonwhite, something of a progressive, three factors the GOP have spent a lot of time dismissing as irrelevant. How could a progressive black woman possibly beat the Great White Hope?
Stay tuned.
It doesn’t matter to me, I intended to vote in opposition to Trump no matter what. For me this is simple. We have a candidate who states clearly his intentions to do away with our democratic system. Only by the most contorted of mental gymnastics can one take him as being anything other than a wanna-be dictator. The kool-aid was spiked with everclear and perhaps some psilocybin for those who think he is in any way going to preserve their rights under the Constitution. It may be that he could face a Congress arrayed in opposition, but why should we have to go through that kind of a fight when we have a sane alternative?
But I confess to being just a bit more hopeful than before. I like Joe Biden, I appreciate what he has done, what he tried to do, and I wholeheartedly approve the general direction he was taking the country. The other guy’s constant assertion that Biden has destroyed or is destroying the country flies in the face of dozens of facts and metrics that show otherwise. But Trump is fully immersed in Appearance Politics and substantive change doesn’t play well on his stage. He’s a jingoist and all he sees is how he looks on the Jumbotrons. Making America great for him is entirely a matter of what can be covered up beneath a veneer of bombast. If the crowd is cheering, he’s been successful.
But then they all go home and none of the problems that nibble at their lives like ducks have been fixed. Blaming it on the Democrats only goes so far, especially when a Democrat has actually overseen real solutions to many of those problems.
Nothing happens in this country at the national level quickly, but a large segment of the electorate seems to think it should. Solutions to problems that took 50 years to create will not be solved in a year or two. But we have no patience, it seems. Especially when the lives too many take for granted feed into the problems. The great problem of the American voter has always been a demand to Fix It But Don’t Change Anything.
Harris comes from a generation that may well believe otherwise. Regardless, this is what handing it off to a new generation looks like.
Back in 2015, Harris was one of those contending for the nomination I rather liked. Of course, Clinton was anointed. Now it’s Harris’s turn.
Let me be clear: I pretty much reject nearly everything the Republican Party has come to represent. You cannot have their program unless you’re willing to strip rights and privileges from certain people. Too many of their number seem to think that granting equal rights to those they have traditionally disdained means losing those very rights for themselves. They want to feel in charge, not equal. They feel, perhaps, that the largesse of our nation should be theirs to dispense as they see fit, not share as a matter of basic human dignity. The people the current GOP seems to speak for are people who want to hurt my friends.
We will not see a decent future in the hands of racial and political elitists who are afraid of anyone who does not resemble them.
Lastly, we need to pay attention to the down-ticket races. The only way substantive change can happen is if we purge the statists. In my own state, we have two senators neither of whom speak for me. (Hawley has made something of a name recently trying to gain compensation for victims of nuclear waste left over from WWII. In this he’s positioning himself as a champion of the people. I agree, compensation needs to be made, but a broader look at Hawley shows that, in my opinion, the chief benefit for him in this position is that it is another way to make the federal government look bad, and these folks are all about that, because they wish to limit the broader protections that attend to federal laws. Nothing else he supports is consistent with any kind of “man of the people” mantle.)
So again, I urge you: vote. In this election, sitting it out is, to my mind, a betrayal.
We’re working to keep Sauron out of the White House. We can debate the merits of who actually tossed the ring into the fire afterward.