Tag: Joe Biden

Step Aside…Both of You

First, let me state that I will vote for whoever the Democratic candidate is for President. If it is Joe Biden, I will vote for him. If it is a sack of potatoes, I will vote for it. In my mind, Trump is not an option; he is dangerous.

Second, the media should subject Donald Trump’s mental health to the same scrutiny given to Joe Biden’s condition. Op-ed pieces in major newspapers should be calling for Trump to step down (as the Philadelphia Inquirer did) for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is that he is a convicted felon, found guilty by a jury of his peers.

With those two stipulations, I believe the right thing for Joe Biden to do is to step aside. This judgment is not offered because I think it enhances the Democrats chances in the election or consigns us to lose. It is simply the right thing for him to do.

Despite all the pundits’ insights and poll results, we don’t know how it would play out. Biden, as he currently presents, is not a strong candidate. As my brother pointed out to me, those voters who are willing to entertain voting for Trump are not being given a reason to choose Biden. So those who say that changing candidates now is a recipe for disaster, may not be clear eyed about what we are facing if he remains on the ballot.

I believe Joe Biden has been an excellent president. He has navigated unbelievably challenging times, and the country has benefitted from his administration’s policies in many ways. I have admired him throughout his career and believe him to be a good man with a kind heart, but I believe he is in denial about his cognitive abilities. This is not unusual. Unfortunately, in my family we have observed many people go down the path of dementia. Having good days and bad, covering for themselves (and family members covering for them), and not wanting to recognize what is happening are common reactions. Biden’s unwillingness to submit to a cognitive exam is troubling to say the least. Cognition doesn’t get better; they don’t recover. It just gets worse. Explaining his debate performance by saying he was tired, or it was just 90 minutes of him not at his best, does a disservice to him and the country.

When he walked stiffly, I was not alarmed. When he stuttered, I empathized. When he fumferred for words, I made little of it: who over the age of 50 doesn’t struggle to retrieve words? All of that can be understood, some of it has been true his entire public life. The incoherence at the debate, his inability to recall if he had watched the debate in the interview with Stephanopolous, are something else. He looks vacant some of the time. That is a change. This is not a matter of getting enough sleep, though I don’t doubt that is a factor. Being tired takes a toll. Unfortunately, being President of the United States is pretty much a 24/7 job. He can’t afford to have an off 90 minutes at the NATO summit today.

I believe when he made the decision to seek reelection months ago, he was in better condition cognitively. At least better enough so that it seemed reasonable to continue. Something has changed and now it is public. The patriotic thing to do is to step aside. If he doesn’t have the confidence in Kamala Harris to ‘anoint’ her, there are other options. Pundits are dwelling on the lack of an obvious choice as the reason Biden should stay in the race. I think that is short-sighted for so many reasons.

I know how important the question of who takes his place is.  And, almost equally important is the question of through what process. These are essential issues, but they are separate from whether Joe Biden should continue. We need to have confidence in our president. As much as I admire the work he has done, and believe that he has surrounded himself with competent, good people, that is not enough to lead us forward over the next four years. He no longer inspires confidence. We don’t elect a team; we elect one person. Dr. Jill, or any other person in his inner circle, should not be the de facto president.

Democrats have a convention coming up. It offers an opportunity. No, it isn’t the same as having primaries, but there is wide representation at the convention – all 50 states, different wings of the party, many of whom are elected officials in their own right. One could argue that the drawn-out candidate selection process we usually use hasn’t worked well anyway – generally speaking the extremes of the party (this is true for Republicans too) are overrepresented in the primary process. The convention may be messy, and it may be difficult, but it wouldn’t be undemocratic to let it play out that way.

As many know, my husband is a doctor. If he were to show signs of mental impairment (more than just slowing down) such that his judgment was no longer sound, and he was in denial about it, I would feel an obligation to step in. The consequences of his making mistakes are too high, people’s lives are at stake, I would need to discuss it with his colleagues, and of course urge him to retire. It would be painful. I would hate to be in that position, but in good conscience I could not delude myself or him. I would not want him humiliated by not being able to meet the extraordinarily high standards he has met his entire career. I would want to preserve his dignity in the process, but I could not let him put patients at risk. Joe Biden has far more responsibility for far more people. Those around him owe it to the country and owe it to Joe Biden to be honest about what is happening. It doesn’t sound like they are doing that. They may think they are protecting him or the country, but they aren’t.

Finally, for those who look back at history to try to predict how this will go, there are important differences between now and any previous time. Everything goes so much faster now thanks to (or we can blame) the internet and social media. People’s attention spans are shorter. One might argue that having a shorter period of time to campaign in a concentrated way could be more effective. The candidate might not be losing much, if anything at all, by being out front only from August to November. I don’t believe we have faced an analogous situation in our history.

By the way, though this is truly yelling into the void, the Republicans need to cast aside Trump and choose another candidate, too.

It’s NOT the Economy, Stupid

Maybe it’s just me, but the political narrative that gets presented in the media makes no sense. I’m listening to a podcast where New York Times columnists are talking about the relatively healthy economy and why people are still not optimistic or confident in it. They are hypothesizing about Covid lag, lingering inflation, negative feelings about Joe Biden. Those things may be relevant, but I don’t think that is what is at play in the poll numbers.

I think the reason the polls show negativity is because, though the survey questions may target the economy, people are pessimistic because the world is going to shit. Everywhere you look, it is scary. I think this view applies to Democrats, Republicans and Independents. Personally, I find the divisiveness in our country, whether it is around Trump’s trials, the war in Gaza, global warming or the issues the panelists were talking about (lingering effects of Covid and inflation), call into question whether we will be able to come together to address the problems. I don’t think I am alone in being pessimistic. We are a country famous, maybe even envied, for our optimism. I’m not sure that still applies.

In fact, just the other day I was at a gathering at my daughter’s house. A friend of hers was talking about his lack of hope generally, that it was hard to find things that inspired confidence in the future. He made the point that one of the few bright spots, something he was grateful for, was the young children of his friends. When he looked at them, their innocence and promise, it made him feel better. The man who was expressing this thought is in his mid-thirties.

Ever since that march in Charlottesville in August of 2017, the Unite the Right Rally where folks were marching with tiki torches, and our President couldn’t condemn it, I have been uneasy. I imagine for some that might not have been as seminal a moment as it was for me, but there have been so many things that have happened since then that make me question whether we live in the same reality. That event hit me hard. I thought I was watching something that happened fifty years ago, not a protest in an enlightened college town. And things have only gotten worse. The chasm has widened.

There is the possibility that we have always been this divided, but we just didn’t know it. People’s ugliest thoughts weren’t broadcast on social media. If someone stood on a soap box in a town square, even Union Square in New York City, and proclaimed that (insert your favorite scapegoats) were the devil, it was likely to fall on deaf ears. Now that person gets support from people across the globe who share a similar warped world view and the idea gets momentum. It also gets overrepresented in the social media narrative because it generates clicks – controversy or outrageousness always does. It is hard to get a handle on how many believers there really are when you have bots and trolls and foreign and domestic agents who benefit from the chaos.

If you ask me that classic question, “Are you better off today than four years ago?” I don’t know how to answer that. My economic situation is about the same, maybe better, but the precariousness of the health of the world, in every sense, affects my response. My feeling has little to do with Joe Biden or his policies. To me it feels like he is working to hold back a tsunami of terrible things – trying to preserve women’s reproductive rights, slowing climate change, bolstering the economy, minimizing inflation, reducing tensions in the Middle East, addressing crime, the list can go on. Some would include the southern border as a crisis. In some ways it is, but in other ways it is a manufactured panic. There are real problems with our immigration system, but some politicians are invested in keeping it a problem rather than making it better. I think Biden is doing a reasonable job against staggering obstacles. He has not created these problems.

No matter how good a job he does, though, it pales in comparison to the challenges. And it is done in the setting of unprecedented division.

I see footage of what is going on at Columbia University and other college campuses where backers of Palestinians have set up encampments to protest United States support of Israel and the universities’ investment in Israel and/or our defense industry that aids Israel. Separate and apart from the rightness or wrongness of the protesters’ positions (a topic for another essay), there is a way to get your message across effectively. If the idea is to win people over to your side, persuade them of the righteousness of your position, it isn’t by shutting down traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge or harassing Jewish students or impeding folks from getting to their calculus class. In most cities, (perhaps all cities – I am not a lawyer) you need a permit to stage a protest or march. There is good reason for this. It goes back to the balancing of different legitimate interests: the protesters and other citizens going about their lives. It is fine to disrupt the routine, to a degree. But you can’t purposely jeopardize public safety. I’ve attended any number of rallies for causes. I believe in showing up to voice my opinion on public policy, but there is a way to do it. Chanting hateful slogans doesn’t help either.

We live in confusing times. I think the polls reflect people’s general uneasiness, not a judgment of the economy. I wish Biden was more effective at communicating his vision for the future of our country. I do fault him for not showing clarity of purpose and leadership, but I don’t hold him responsible for the sorry state of our union. I believe we are suffering the effects of the cynicism, greed and fear that has become the stock and trade of the Republican party, along with the poisonous influence of social media over the last decade. Add in natural disasters which are increasingly frequent with climate change, seemingly endless wars across the globe and it feels overwhelming. I don’t know what the solution is, but we need to understand and acknowledge what we are dealing with before we can find answers. Polls are not shedding light on the issue. We need to be asking different questions.

Healing

Healing is on my mind. I thought Joe Biden struck the right tone in his speech Saturday night. He appealed to Americans to stop looking at each other as the enemy if we belong to a different political party. Easier said than done, though.

Is healing a bridge too far?

I am fortunate in that I don’t have a lot of experience in needing to heal relationships. I have never been estranged from my parents or brothers, or aunts, uncles or cousins. At least not that I am aware. I’m not suggesting that there hasn’t been ebbs and flows, or hurt feelings here and there, but never a breach in the relationship. The one significant friendship that was broken happened when I was in elementary school. I learned a lot from that experience. I think about it today because though it was a personal relationship, I think it bears on the challenge that faces our country.

I wrote about this incident previously on this blog (here). I was playing with my good friend in the alley between our houses when other kids from the block showed up and started taunting her. Rather than defend her or take her into my house to escape, I joined in. I’m still horrified by having done that, but I can’t deny it. I felt terrible and after some time passed, I apologized to her. She accepted my apology and we went back to being friends and remain so to do this day – more than 50 years later. I can’t speak from her perspective, but I have thought about why we were able to overcome my betrayal.

I did offer a genuine apology. I knew I was wrong, and I think I owned that. Whether she truly accepted my apology immediately, or whether she decided to give me second chance to see if she could trust me, I can’t say. Either way, her willingness to do that was huge. Many people would not be able to move on from that hurt. I don’t know if over the years I have disappointed her, but I do know that she has remained in my heart even when we don’t see each other for long periods of time (she lives on Long Island, while I am in upstate New York). When we do speak or get together, we pick up right where we left off.

What does this have to do with our country? I’m doubtful that the conditions that allowed us to repair our relationship are in place, despite Joe Biden’s appeal to our better angels. Will anyone take responsibility for the wrongs they have done? I’m not painting myself as a hero, but there is risk in apologizing. I needed to accept that I had done wrong, and I needed to take the chance that she would reject me and we both had to give each other time to rebuild the trust. Is either political party up to the task?

Democrats have participated in gerrymandering and their rhetoric has been extreme at times. Democratic candidates have been guilty of putting the desire for power over good policy choices. I think the Clintons, in particular, were guilty of that. Will they own it? Will any prominent Democrat acknowledge their responsibility?

From where I sit, though, I believe the Republicans have more to apologize for. In allowing Trump to behave as he has, in turning a blind eye to his (and his family’s) corruption, in not rejecting his hate speech, they have a lot to answer for. And, actually, going back to Newt Gingrich, who ushered in (I believe) this culture of scorched earth politics, is any Republican willing to disavow that approach. Will anyone apologize to Merrick Garland, or more importantly, the American people?

It seems to me that Biden was suggesting that we put all of this behind us and start anew – rather than reckoning with the damage. For healing to happen, though, I don’t believe you can just sweep it all under the rug. Maybe, in truth, he isn’t suggesting that we heal, but rather just move on.

I think healing would be far healthier, if we can do it. We have never faced our divisions or confronted the wrongs – we still haven’t reckoned with the Civil War for crying out loud. It is a huge undertaking but if we don’t do it, will we inevitably face another one?

The path forward requires that those who have done wrong to publicly acknowledge it. And by wrong, I am not talking about policy mistakes. We can debate immigration or economic policy (though putting children in cages is more than just a policy mistake). I am referring to processes – the systematic hoarding of power, the disrespect shown to adversaries, the corrupting influence of money and the spreading of lies. The fact that these things have been done has to be admitted.

If Democrats and Republicans take that first step of taking responsibility, then they will have to take another difficult step. They will have to give each other another chance.

I’m not sure anyone is ready to take either of those steps. It won’t be enough if it is only Joe Biden who does. We need more Democrats and we need a lot of Republicans to step up. With Trump at the helm, and still denying defeat, it seems unlikely. I have no expectation that Trump himself is capable of taking responsibility, but if those Republicans who remain in leadership positions don’t do it, I don’t know how we make progress.

While I am very relieved that Biden and Harris won, and I want to be hopeful, the challenge before us is daunting.