People from all over have lined up to talk about their high esteem for Joe Biden and to credit him for the decision to quit the race. For those of us on the outside, the decision may have been obvious and perhaps long overdue but we should not forget the seductive allure of power, especially for someone who spent a lifetime in politics and sought the job he now has and finally won it.
All of us older people tend to believe that we can still do what we have done before and that there is no need to step away. One can easily persuade oneself that there is more to be done and that you are the best person to do it. Furthermore, in the US, being a one-term president is a sign of being a loser. So the desire to run again must have been immensely strong and Biden must be credited with accepting the realization that the time has come to leave the stage for the good of the party and the country and hand the reins over to someone else.
It is not hard to imagine what might have happened on the GOP side. Even if serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT) were to speak and behave in an even more deranged fashion than he currently does, so that it would be obvious to anyone outside his cult following that he should be under constant care, he would never leave the stage of his own accord and none of those around him in the party leadership would have the guts to be the first to state that the emperor had no clothes, even if he literally took off all his clothes in public, an image that I apologize for foisting on you.
Stephen Colbert was one of those who saluted Biden for his decision.
A rather different (and more accurate) view:
I don’t buy that we need to explain away Biden’s reluctance to withdraw his candidacy with “the seductive allure of power.” Getting old is hard. It can be difficult to recognize one’s own cognitive decline, much less come to terms with it. As a very busy president, I doubt that Biden has taken the time to process.
It’s nothing magical, it’s just a human being making crappy decisions. Just like RBG did when she chose not to retire during Obama’s presidency.
@invivoMark: Thank you! I’m fed up with Biden’s reluctance to step down being framed in such negative ways.
From what I’ve heard, he was actually discussing complex topics in ways that showed he was still mentally sharp behind the physical slow-down; unfortunately, he’d hit the point where some of the neurones for implementation of his thoughts just weren’t firing when they ought. But, as the incumbent president with a huge majority in the primaries and as the person who already *had* beaten Trump in a head-to-head, he was still in an uniquely good position to beat Trump, and he also knew that if he stepped down after the primaries there would be a huge risk of chaos over the choice of replacement causing a 1968 repeat, which he would have very understandably wanted to avoid. Since he does not, in fact, appear to be descending into dementia, I think his choice to continue was because he had genuine reason to believe that that was better for the country.
invivoMark @ # 1: Just like RBG did when she chose not to retire during Obama’s presidency.
As Ginsberg herself pointed out, and all of her critics apparently blanked out, what happened to Merrick Garland’s SC nomination shows that her early resignation would have accomplished nothing-to-negative results.
It must taste quite bittersweet to Biden to go from so many bad-faith denunciations to such wide but shallow praise and celebration literally overnight. Certainly the timing of his move caused a lot of confusion in Team Trump, but they’ll recover their balance quickly: lies, slanders, and bigotry are cheap and easily aimed and launched.
The whole dementia talking point is just another example of “every accusation a confession”. Trump’s brain is melting in real time, so the MSM and the Republicans are bleating about Biden having dementia to distract the easily-distractible and the willingly-distractible.
This is also an example of attacks, such as when Warren was gaining traction and Trump started screeching “Pochohontas!” at her because she has a family story that they have Native American blood. Warren took a DNA test and the results came back that she did, indeed have Native American DNA. This didn’t stop the screeching from the right and from the left who insist they’d TOTALLY vote for a woman…just not THIS woman or THAT woman or THE OTHER woman or…Just shut up, they’d TOTALLY vote for a woman.
The right is already building their attacks on Harris that center on her having the extreme bad taste to be born female. ZOMG, she LAUGHS! And she has HAIR!
As for Biden, I don’t cast apersions on him as other are doing. He is already doing a very hard job and doing it well--no hours of “executive time” for him, no weeks spent golfing. He’s been dealing with Russia and the Israelis waging war and everything going on in the USA. He was sick the day of the debates, then got Covid. I’m sure that was the last straw, when he realized that he wasn’t 20 anymore and doesn’t bounce back like a 20-year-old. But during his administration, he has an amazing list of accomplishments.
Most of you, maybe.
Not me. I know I’m in my dotage.
(Gotta accept reality)
Maybe because in the past I have taken prescription medicines that significantly altered my mental state, and because I now take ones that definitely make me less alert, I am used to not only trying to assess how I’m doing, but also asking others eg “Is my driving still safe? Could we go out for a drive to check that now I’m on opioids?”. Being on a substance that meant I lost track of sentences part way through them was scary, worse would be killing or even worse yet severely injuring someone through inattentive driving. And one of the things I can admire in my father, is that when I told him he wasn’t safe to drive -- after he started to pull out into the path of an artic (semi) on the motorway and I yelled at him to pull back in -- he did get rid of his car, spending his final mobile decade or so walking or using public transport. Of course I miss some of the things I can no longer do, but not to the extent of lying to myself about my capabilities.
My two cents worth amid all the (oh so tiresome) verbiage, with the benefit of brevity!
Any choice of US President is always “the lesser of two
evilsmonsters”. The last US president who was arguably less than a monster was Jimmy Carter. This is our reality. Harris is (by far) the lesser evil.Just as Starmer is the lesser evil in the UK.
@John Morales @6
That self awareness should go along with action too , no ?
Are you planning on retiring from responding to provocations 🙂 ?
@Pierce R. Butler #4,
Don’t assume that I forgot about Merrick Garland. There were 7 long years of Obama’s presidency that weren’t the last one. If she had retired prior to 2015, there would have been no opposition to Obama’s replacement because the Senate was solidly Democrat-controlled.
Her decision not to retire in 2014 was a crappy one, and one that a lot of people knew was risky. She had pancreatic cancer in 2009, which could have come back at any moment.
Whyever would I do that, even if I could?
As I age, I care less and less about taking it easy on people, and about being politic.
A bit less effort on censoring myself in case people freak out.
Besides, I noted I realise I’m ever more decrepit, but even this loss of ability still leaves me sufficiently competent to respond to provocations.
As you see. 🙂
…Since he does not, in fact, appear to be descending into dementia, I think his choice to continue was because he had genuine reason to believe that that was better for the country.
As I’ve said earlier (I forget where), I strongly suspect Biden’s COVID diagnosis played a major role in the Democrats’ drive to persuade him to withdraw. No matter how mentally sharp Biden still was, any serious illness is still VERY dangerous for anyone his age — he’s likely to take a much longer time to recover than a younger person (if he recovers at all, let’s not forget “long COVID,” whose symptoms include permanent fatigue and brain-fog), and no one would know how long it would take until it’s too late. Biden seems to have recovered rather quickly this time, but if he hadn’t, or if he catches something else later on, that would mean precious weeks of campaigning lost, and total failure/collapse for his entire party.
If people in the know say Biden is quite sharp and energetic for an 81-year-old man, I won’t dispute it. But “sharp and energetic for an 81-year-old man” is NOT sharp enough to face the Christofascist insurgency we’re seeing today.
Equally, I think we can do without the obsequious paeans to his decision to withdraw. Comparisons to Cincinnatus for fuck sake! Calm down, people.
Holms:
<snicker>
Oh, right.
Because Cincinnatus is perfectly well-documented, as opposed to Biden.
(Ain’t the people who should calm down)
(No hagiography there, right?)
So the geezer that confirmed that corrupt guy as judge in the supreme court is a great guy?
The guy who has been cheering on Israel.
Fuck him.
I thought the debate fiasco, and those subsequent appearances in which Biden did not have a teleprompter, were clear evidence of cognitive decline (in the latter, his sentences repeatedly trailed off into “Anyway” as he lost his train of thought). Then there was the evidence of George Clooney, who said that at a recent meeting he encountered the Biden of the debate; and in retrospect, some of his famous “gaffes”, such as referring to long-dead leaders (Kohl, Mitterand) as if they were still in power, are suspicious, sugesting a reversion to earlier stages of life that is characteristic of dementia. And comparing recent appearances with those from his 2020 campaign reveals a huge deterioration in apparent vigour and coherence. But in a sense, it doesn’t matter: as long as he was the candidate, the topic of his mental and physical fitness was going to dominate the narrative, and thus he was almost certainly going to lose. Predictions of chaos and division if he stepped out have fortunately not been realised; the tidal wave of endorsements, donations and volunteering or Harris have effectively refuted the charge that it was only “the elite” who wanted him to go (BTW, who is more “elite” than the POTUS); and Trump and the Republicans have been wrong-footed. There’s no guarantee Harris will win, and she will undoubtedly have to deal with racism and misogyny, but she has already shown she can and will campaign vigorously, in unscripted settings -- which Biden could not.
I’d add that I agree with cartomancer@1 -- and Owen Jones -- that Biden has forfeited any claim to moral decency by enabling Israel’s genocidal destruction of Gaza.
Nutty-yahoo is in DC right now screaming that the USA needs to help him exterminate all of Palestine…and he’s getting standing ovations. As we saw after 7 October, there are a massive block of USAians who believe the land was given by the Invisible Sky Fairy to the people who have been committing genocide for the better part of a century and there is no atrocity the Israelis can commit that is a bridge to far.
Zero moral decency, that’s your claim.
He has never ever ever done anything at all, whatsoever, nothing that could be considered morally decent.
Every single action he has ever taken, every single position he has ever professed, none of those matter one whit to people who can’t cope with realpolitik. Forfeited!
(Hard to take people seriously when this is their expressed opinion)
Presumably, they too have forfeited any claim to moral decency by enabling Biden.
(I react poorly to moral martinets)
Certainly, the legal system and the political system have also enabled Biden so that he could enable Israel.
Presumably, they too have forfeited any claim to moral decency.
(Nothing decent is left, other than the morally pure judgmental opinionators who did not enable Biden)