It's a Family Decision...but one for a Bigger "Family"
...we ALL have a huge stake in this, Joe
A historically great President
I revere Joe Biden. He’s a good man and has had a thoroughly remarkable career in public service. And, unlike many in politics, I think he’s been there for the right reasons.
He’s been a historically great President.
Under Biden’s governing:
COVID was tamed;
The US economy rebounded faster and stronger better than any economy in the world;
Long-overdue infrastructure investment is finally a reality;
The CHIPS Act is bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to America.
Legislation was passed resulting in historically large investments in renewable energy to counter climate change.
NATO became stronger and larger, and came to the aid of Ukraine when it was attacked by Trump’s sponsor, Czar Putin, in an act Trump described as “genius” and “savvy”;
Unemployment is at historic lows;
Inflation — driven by COVID-induced supply chain snags and labor shortages — is finally being tamed.
MOST OF ALL, Biden was there when we needed someone to beat Trump in 2020.
But he does not seem to be up to the task this time around
Joe Biden’s approval rating now hovers at about 36%. In light of his accomplishments over the last 3 years, in an exceedingly difficult political environment, such sentiment strikes me as terribly unfair.
Perhaps some who register disapproval may feel good about what he has done but feel like he is too old and not up to meeting the same challenges for four more years, especially in light of his shockingly disturbing June 27 debate performance and the subsequent media frenzy.
Others are clueless because they live in a right wing bubble of shameless lies, influenced by vulgar and despicable players in Congress and the right wing media slime machine, and have no interest in facts that don’t fit their narrative.
But voters think he is too old, and true or not (I reluctantly have been convinced that he is) that impression is now iron-clad.
My hope is that he will realize that, and realize that he can cement his legacy with the selfless act of withdrawing and enthusiastically campaigning for whoever emerges as his successor.
A couple of my favorite NY Times columnists, Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman had praised Biden’s record…and urged him to pass the torch, in the best interests of the country.
Krugman, a Nobel Prize winning economist, wrote:
Joe Biden has done an excellent job as president…I consider him the best president of my adult life. Based on his policy record, he should be an overwhelming favorite for re-election. But he isn’t, and on Thursday night he failed to rise to the occasion when it really mattered. I could and would complain about the lack of real-time fact-checking as Donald Trump spewed a fire hose of lies and about the general prevalence of theater criticism taking the place of policy analysis. But complaining about those things right now isn’t going to save American democracy in this moment of crisis.
Given where we are, I must very reluctantly join the chorus asking Biden to voluntarily step aside, with emphasis on the “voluntary” aspect. Maybe some Biden loyalists will consider this a betrayal, given how much I have supported his policies, but I fear that we need to recognize reality…although I hate to see Biden in this position, he’s a good man, and I hope he’ll do the right thing.
…And Friedman — reportedly Biden’s favorite columnist — recalled George Washington’s announcement that he would not pursue a third term in a column also urging the President to withdraw his candidacy and support a process to draft a successor:
How might Biden do what is best for the country and worst for Trump — a small man at a big time who is so unwilling to say goodbye that he will not even admit he lost the election in 2020 fair and square? Not by scrambling to shift a few panicky donors to his side to tough it out until November, insisting that he just had one bad debate night. And not by daring the party to remove him. He should elevate himself and the party above the whole fray.
That would entail declaring that he will release the delegates who vowed to vote for his nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August and work with the party to set up an orderly process between now and then for the next generation of Democratic candidates to make their cases to the public, and for the convention delegates to choose a new nominee…
Gautam Mukunda, a presidential scholar…pointed out to me…that “in 1783, when George Washington announced that he would surrender his commission, King George III of England — the man whose empire he destroyed — said that if he did this ‘he would be the greatest man in the world.’ Fourteen years later Washington did it again, leaving the presidency willingly when he could easily have made himself president for life. The father of our country sealed his greatness by showing that sometimes the best thing a president can do for his country is give up the presidency. Today, in the face of the worst threat to our democracy since the Civil War, Joe Biden can cement his legacy by following Washington’s example.”
Biden, besides being a good man, has been a truly consequential president. He deserves to be remembered as the leader who saved the country from Trump in 2020, lifted us from the dark days of the Covid pandemic, passed critical legislation to rebuild America’s infrastructure, renewed the dignity of work, promoted the transition to a green economy — and, in the end, knew when and how to say goodbye.
Unfortunately, as I type this blog late Saturday, Joe Biden seems dug in and determined to stay in the race.
It's a Family Decision...but one for a Bigger "Family"
...we ALL have a huge stake in this, Joe. News reports say that Jill Biden (especially) and Hunter Biden are urging him to stay in, as are long time associates…they say that this will be a “family” decision.
To that I would tell them, “listen folks, this might be a family decision, but it is bigger — much bigger — than the Biden family. The “family” that needs to have this discussion includes all Democrats…it includes traditional Democratic constituencies like labor unions and Black churches, and women who are seeing rights rolled back.
This is not the Bidens fighting the good fight to the end. If they lose, we are all collateral damage. And I fear he’ll lose.
I found this exchange in the Stephanopoulos interview telling and unnerving.
Stephanopoulos: “If you stay in, and Trump is elected, and everything you’re warning about comes to pass, how will you feel in January?”
Biden: “I will feel, as long as I gave it my all, and I did the — good a job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.”
This cannot be about you, Joe. It’s about all of us.
Too Bad the MAGA-Mob Didn’t Attack the Supreme Court Building Instead of the Capitol
…maybe then the six radicals would have seen Presidential Immunity differently.
Their decision was absolutely breathtaking, even though it was somewhat telegraphed in their oral questioning. The most stunning part is the finding that plotting with and ordering the DOJ to overturn an election would be an “official act,” and that proof of such a brazenly nefarious act could not even be entered entered into evidence, because it was an “official act.” Thus Trump’s attempted gambit to get DOJ to 'just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.'
They have upended the rule of law in America. These “originalists” and “textualists” — who ignored the origins and text of the 14th Amendment when they ruled that states could not keep the Insurrectionist-in-Chief” off the ballot — made up Presidential Immunity out of thin air. It’s nowhere in the Constitution.
As the NY Times editorial board wrote:
Now that Mr. Trump knows he could get away with that, how much worse would things get in a second term? The most urgent danger is his possible abuse of the legal system, because as the dissent suggests, if every conversation between the president and the Justice Department is considered a protected official act, there is no limit to the kinds of illegal conduct that could be plotted, even fabricating evidence.
What doesn’t count as an official act? The justices in the majority would not say, but it is hard to identify any clear guiding principle — perhaps because they couldn’t find any.
Prior to this decision, there was no grant of criminal immunity to presidents; though the authors of the Constitution gave a form of that privilege to members of Congress, they declined to do so for the chief executive. For a conservative majority that pretends to rely on historical precedent, the newly created standard is remarkable for its lack of basis in the Constitution, law or any precedent of the court. It was made up out of thin air.
They apparently bought Trump’s assertions that “a President has to have absolute immunity” even though Presidents have managed wars and crises for almost 250 years without needing it.
This decision exponentially rachets up the importance of this election.
We can’t turn power over to the lawless and vengeful Trump Gang.
This court has shown how vitally important it is to be the one controlling SCOTUS nominations…SO MANY TIMES.
There Will Be Blood
January 6 showed just how far these MAGA soldiers will go. But as if we needed a reminder — oops, well I guess the polls confirm that a reminder is necessary after all…So, you will recall that Trump said at a rally near Dayton, Ohio this spring: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath. That’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.” To be fair, he may have been speaking about trade issues, but given his penchant and apparent love of violence, I would not give him the benefit of the doubt.
But there is no ambiguity in what the head of the once respectable, if conservative, but now off-the-rails and full-on MAGA Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, recently said on a conservative podcast: “We are in the midst of a second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Nazis made similar threats beginning a century ago. This is not hyperbole.
Joyce Vance, a Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law and a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama (2009-2017) writes about Roberts, Project 2025, and his threats here. And the NY Times reports on it here.
Roberts’s “bloodless, if the left allows it” is particularly galling given the ugly January 6 violence from the right, which could have been much worse, as well as their armed-to-the-teeth appearances at statehouses demanding the repeal of COVID restrictions and attempts to frighten election officials.
Is he ignoring their violent proclivities — or warning us that “if you don’t give in to our Christo-Fascist aspirations we’ll shed your blood”?
