He showed up….

POSTNOTE June 29: I plan to do a specific post, probably simply titled “Joe”, probably within the next week or two.  Check back if interested.

June 28, 2024: I did watch the entire debate last night, and my comments are at the end of this post, preceded by other comments about last night that I’ve received.  The initiating post, with six other comments, is here.  I will add additional comments, if any, at this page, so feel free to comment yourself, and/or check back in awhile to see if there is anything new.

from Carol: Instead of listening to whatever recap foolishness they always have afterward, [my husband] and I just had our own recap.  He’s probably been more of a Biden fan than me, but he totally agreed.  Biden’s polling is going to go in the toilet after tonight.  And hopefully Trump’s will drop as well.  You know who won tonight?  That crazy Kennedy guy who wasn’t even on stage.  Either that, or this mess just ensured that a whole lot more folks won’t vote at all.  The Democratic party had better take a very fast hard look at this, and punt.

Of course Trump lied like a rug the whole time, and made faces and acted like the big bully that he is.  He’s awful, just awful.  I told C more than once tonight how I would JUST LOVE to slap [Trump] silly.  I tried to think of just one thing he said that was even true.  But how many Republicans do you really think are going to fact-check him?  I mean, they already know what a liar he is, so why would they be surprised?  He looked energetic and forceful, and that’s all they’ll care about.
Biden of course had facts and figures on his side.  And tonight that didn’t matter one whit.  (It also seemed that he had a lousy cold.)  He came across as intimidated and nervous plus confused – which is an awful look.  And whoever encouraged him to try to get down into the gutter with Trump should be fired.  I’m embarrassed knowing that the whole world was watching this.  I think Biden has done an excellent job – esp. given what he had to work with.  He was the person we needed at the time.  He should have stuck to his promise to be a one-term president.  He would have gone down in history as being very effective.  Looking at him tonight, NObody is going to honestly think that he can do the job for four more years.
I have never seen anybody who can handle Trump – and I’ve been waiting for a long time now.  The only way would be to have the ability, when he tells one of his whoppers, to hit a replay button and have actual video show up on a screen in real time.  Listing all his lies the day afterward doesn’t work.


Carol #2:  The NYT has a column by Nicholas Kristof saying that Biden should withdraw, plus a ton of comments agreeing.  If he did that, maybe it wouldn’t split the party apart.  Tonight was more than just having a cold, or a stutter.  It was Biden losing his way and then speaking gibberish exactly in the same manner that Trump has been mocked for recently.  Seemingly having no mental agility in responding to Trump.  I said less than 5 minutes into the debate that he had just lost the election.  And pretty much everything from then on just reinforced that.  By the time it was over, I was shaking and couldn’t stop.

There were many comments in the NYT asking Jill to talk to Joe.  Gonna be interesting.  I told [a friend] the other day that it seemed to me Joe’s heart isn’t really in it anymore.

from Lindsay (who has a comment in previous post, to which I had responded): I agree with your comment wholeheartedly! It’s feeling harder and harder to participate in our political landscape with how things are going. I hope some walk away from tonight’s debate having seen the babbling lunatic for who he really is, and perhaps go the reasonable route, but boy does this feel unlikely. You would think so many would have already jumped ship by now.

from Patti: All I can say is wow1wow1wow1  What an eye opener tonight’s broadcast  was.  Everyone who is going to vote this November should have watched this program.  My eyes were opened as to just how dangerous a situation we are in.  I will have to double my prayers.


from David: Reading the NYT’s various commentators’ opinions on last night’s debate, it seems like the consensus is that Biden had one key  job: Demonstrate that he’s up to the job of defeating Trump and he failed. Tom Friedman sums it up well “Joe Biden is a Good Man and a Good President but he Must Bow Out of the Race”.

My own opinion is the Joe Biden is a solid patriot who kept Donald Trump from a second term. Right now he needs to ask himself this question, “Trump is a paramount threat to our democracy. Why do believe that only I can stop him?” Someone else running for president once said, “I’m the only one who can fix it.” Joe’s better than that.


from Jeff: I didn’t watch, perhaps saw one min and Biden’s voice was muddled, Trump was clear and direct (and lying)…

The Dems and pundits are in a panic.   But this was simply waiting to happen.  A good man, needs to face hubris and pass the torch, should have a year ago. now it’s crisis instead.
I don’t understand voters who say they want Biden but have to vote for Trump (a sign of our entire calcified political system which is zero sum 2 choices) but there it is in a nutshell.
Gretchen Whitmer [prospective candidate].

Jeff added, later: the question is strictly about marketing and electability….not the good intentions or soundness of mind of an octagenarian.  As is, Biden would have a hard time winning Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, NV, and Pennsylvania….Trump is evil incarnate, and a Trump White House and a GOP Senate and as seen today Hard Right SCOTUS, would do significant damage even if he didnt become a dictator.


from Chuck:  We got the Debate we deserve. The Democratic party has lost touch with reality. Trump only knows reality TV, while the GOP swears loyalty to a delusional narcissist. Thus, “We the People'” are getting what we deserve. H. L. Mencken said, “Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance” and “the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” If we fail to elect a leader in touch with reality, very hard times are coming.

Standing under our Flag we have all pledged loyalty to “liberty and Justice for all”. Collectively however, we have all put our political partisanship ahead of our children’s future. As it is now our Constitution is incapable of achieving any one of the seven intentions in its preamble. Consider the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln who wrote that our “Declaration of Independence is our Apple of Gold” and our “Constitution it’s Silver Frame.” Yet our democratically elected officials have never even considered codifying “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”.

It should be a self-evident truth that failing to protect nature and meeting the most basic needs for all people- will never end well for any of us. Because “Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable…. And that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort….” Jen Easterly. CISA director. Oct. 29, 2021. [the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency is our nation’s newest federal agency established by the Trump Administration in 2018]. Ms. Easterly is still Director, and our environment is humanities most fundamental and essential infrastructure!

from Terry (in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune.  Terry is on this Listserv). Strib letter.jpg


From Dick:  
Last night, right after the show….  The chattering class on the TV is micro-analyzing the performance (the debate, which, after all, is a show).  I like all of the chatterers, but enough is enough.  Off to bed.  90 minutes done, and 160 days left to the election, near two months before the Democratic Convention.

Most perceptive comment I heard from the chatterers was from Lawrence O’Donnell, graybeard of the bunch at 73,  who sagely observed that Warren Buffet, one of the richest of the rich, is near 93 years old, and still making wise decisions.  In other words, keep the age thing in its proper perpspective.

I look forward to the fact checking blizzard which starts in the morning.

June 28 9 a.m.: The Church Guys, regulars on Friday morning, were next table over as usual today.  No mention at all of the debate. One brought up discussion with his late 80s Dad’s about pro-life, but that’s about it.  It’s important to keep this in perspective.  Not everyone was engaged in this business of watching a debate last night.

One of my life skills, learned in the trenches of dealing with public school teacher matters for 27 years, was learning to resist jumping to conclusions.  What seemed obvious at the time was never quite so obvious weeks or months later when push came to shove.  Frequently perspective was gained driving in the car from one place to the next; or sitting with a cup of coffee in a restaurant, or on and on.  Insights need to mature.  Snap judgements are natural and even useful but not very reliable long-term.  Time tends to modify judgements, as we all know.

Twelve hours out – minutes from the initial ‘shock’ (if that’s what you felt) from the the ‘debate)’ – I find myself thinking about my cousin, Vernon Sell, who had a passion for family history.

Vernon was one of those people who showed up when something needed to be done.  He was on the Court.

Vernon had his doctorate and professorship, but all that paled against his tenacity, which culminated in presentation of a plaque to the family church in St. Lambert, Quebec, built on land donated by the ancestral family 150 years earlier.

He was literally at death’s door when he made the presentation to a packed church.  He’d had an emergency blood transfusion.  Less than a month later he died, at age 69, one of his dreams realized.  I think he literally and deliberately lived just long enough to complete his work.

June 27, 2024, and many, many times before, and Lord willing, to come, Joe Biden has showed up.  Of course, the questions now being raised are legitimate, but also they’re raised in the heat of the moment, and perspective will come only with time.  As I’ve said, Joe is just a kid in my own personal context.  I know the quandaries faced as you get older; I also know from life experience that age is only a single criteria and there are no guarantees for anyone at any time.

(If interested in seeing Vernon and his plaque and the church in question scroll down here.  The last six photos are of the occasion referenced.  I missed this reunion due to a family wedding the same weekend.)

June 29:  I’m adding an old powerful graphic someone used at a meeting I attended probably in the 1970s.  It seems to fit pretty precisely the crisis reaction of the moment:

PDF of below Crisis Sequence 1970s – what happens after  shocking event occurs.  This was a handout saved from some long ago workshop I attended.  It has always made sense.

POSTNOTE Sunday June 30, 2024: I’ll be doing a post, tentatively titled “Joe”, in the next day or two.  If you happen to see this, and can deflect some time from Jay 4 week, take a look.  I hope to have a reflective piece, largely about US.  Your choice.

from Jim:   Well…  At least Dean Phillips, his political career now thoroughly ruined, can go to bed each night and drift off to sleep knowing that he did the right thing and tried to warn us all, right up to and including saying “If no one else will do this, I’ll do it myself!” – even though there was never any chance of his gaining traction.
Pundits and commentators like to point out that the only person Trump cares about, even when he is doing something that does have popular support, is himself.  And that’s true.  It’s time for Biden to step up and think of someone other than HIM-self, or history will judge him similarly harshly.  That is, if he buys in to what his own campaign has been saying all along about this election being “existential” and all the stuff about “democracy itself” being at risk should Trump win.  It is now all but guaranteed that Trump beats Biden in November, if Biden is still the candidate.
Even though I am “only” 69, I have had four medical conditions in the last decade where a doctor has told me “This does not get better.”  For a couple of them, I was told “You can live with this, at least for a while, if you don’t want surgery now.”  But, ultimately, you do what you have to do because the condition will get worse.  Sadly, I know from watching my own paternal grandmother, and my dad, that senescence, one thing that I personally have so far been spared, is one of those things.  It progresses in only one direction.  Maybe some day in the future medical science can change that, but right now we KNOW that Joe, God bless him, is senescent, and in the 4.5 years until the end of a second term, it will get worse.  In that amount of time, it will get MUCH worse.  It is time for Democrats in general, his family more particularly, and Joe, himself, specifically, to stop living in denial.  No, it is NOT fair that, while only three years younger, and nasty/loony/evil/pick-your-own-adjective, Trump shows little or no sign of being similarly senescent, but that is the reality.  By November, for those handfuls of “late decider” voters – those who do not have a horse in the race, yet – it will be beyond irresponsible to vote for Biden.  As such, from last Thursday forward, he can no longer win.  He has to stand down, and I will go farther than most of the pundits and commentators –  If he will not stand down, the movers and shakers in the Democratic party have to MAKE him stand down, by whatever means necessary.  At least, that is true if they, too, believe in all the “existential election / risk to democracy” rhetoric surrounding a Trump win.
James Carville (remember him?) was quoted Saturday with what I think is a brilliant idea.  Biden should have Obama and Bill Clinton over the White House.  They should hole up in the Oval Office for the lion’s share of a day, and when they emerge, Biden should go before the press, with the other two standing either side behind him, and he should announce the five (or another number of their choosing) Democrats that THEY want the Convention to consider.  So that no one has to risk his/her career by “coming out”, or risk being passed over by not doing so.  The nomination is not Biden’s to confer on any one other person, including Kamala Harris, but it IS his to decline, and this is the best way to do it.  Carville, always larger than life, but also such a lightning rod, always has been a favorite of mine – brilliant in both strategic and tactical ways…  I’ve been reading all the various pundits and commentators, and this is the best idea I’ve seen for doing what has to be done in a way that at least MIGHT not destroy others’ careers.
Regarding just running on policies/values/issues – essentially, arguing that our guy is senescent, yes, but their guy is nasty/loony/evil/pick-your-own-adjective, so, dear voter, use some other criterion:  I think it behooves Dems who want to WIN to realize that 40+% of voters LIKE Trump, and the critical “decider” 10% or so either don’t hate him, or hate them both.  And to know that, among both the Trump supporters, AND that “late decider” crowd, it is understood that Trump drove the body politic toward a recognition that the border does in fact need to be dealt with in some way, and that the bipartisan consensus paradigm of just 9 years ago for “free trade” was wrong.  Biden has done little or nothing to reverse those two paradigm shifts – he has basically adopted them, though one can argue about how well either man has implemented either of them.  Polling shows they are IMMENSELY popular stances.  Also, while I’m not at all sure I agree, polling shows overwhelmingly that most Americans think the economy was better FOR THEM during Trump’s four years than during Biden’s 3+.  The poll numbers on this are WORSE for Biden among “late decider” voters than they are for the whole public.  Running behind Biden and emphasizing policies/values/issues is TRULY just another way to lose.
The Dems – the party of change, of risk-taking, of open mindedness – need to make a change, take a risk, and trust in the open-mindedness of the American voters.

 

 

3 replies
  1. Larry Gauper
    Larry Gauper says:

    I am just sick about Biden performance last night. I have always said he should have been grooming somebody instead of trying to do another four years. Kamala doesn’t cut it for a presidential run. He should have replaced her. Now, it’s too late. But there is still time to unbind his delegates and have the convention piclk Hakeem Jeffries, leader of the Dem caucus, New York’s 8th Congressional District. He’s out of the Obama public speaking and solid thinking mold. Have heard him many times. He’s 53. OR..if the Dems could convince John Kasich to run at the top of the Dem ticket with Jefferies as VP,,that would be a hard to beat ticket. It would save our democracy from a liar, felon, and revenge seeker. But last night Biden looked like some of the guys I visit in nursing homes. He’s my age and he needs to give it up! Now!

    Reply
  2. norm hanson
    norm hanson says:

    The challenge will be, it seems to me at least, is how to get the focus of Biden and Trump personally and to get votes to focus on the very separate sets of public policies of each of the candidates. Focusing only on the characteristics and personalities of only the candidates and not on the public policies they have proposed, or support seems to only be a shallow exercise that can harm our country.

    Reply
  3. Terry Burke
    Terry Burke says:

    Thanks, Dick. I’m still sorting this through. What makes it very complicated is that usually the incumbent VP is the next nominee – and the US is never going to vote for a Black woman. And the Black community will be greatly offended if Kamala is ignored. It’s not going to be easy to pick another Dem nominee.

    Reply

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